Jimquisition: Accepting the Isms

[aba1]

Can a game even be sexist or racist or what ever have you? A game is a object so it has no opinion one way or the other. I have never seen a game character say "all women or men in real life are _________" either.

Either way if people don't care for how the characters are in other peoples games they don't have to play them and if it even bothers them that much they can start their own company and game nothing is stopping anybody.

 

[Redd the Sock]

It's not that people don't understand why someone might find something offensive, it's that we don't give a shit. Most of us avoid what we find offensive and generally speaking don't feel the need to make waves when we come across something we could never like. We just move on. There's a series of adult comic books that feature the rape and mutilation of women. I find that very offensive, and don't buy them. Someone else goes for that, as long as it stays in the realm of fantasy, it's not my issue. Someone else see this on the other hand, and it becomes an issue. Some say they just want to have the conversation, but ultimately, the point of complaining is the hope that your complaint will be addressed. You say they don't want to take our games away, but if that were 100% true, they wouldn't be opening their mouths to say how wrong they think "sexist thing A" is. They do so in the hopes that "sexist thing A" will go away, something through censorship, and sometimes in the hope that you can, by complaining, bring others to be offended by what you're offended by so "sexist thing A" won't be in demand anymore.

I can't (without being a hypocrite) tell people not to complain about whatever grinds their gears, and it can be well justified and the best way to achieve and end goal, but we need to quit pretending that all the "isms haters" out there just want to talk and have the conversation. The conversation must have an end goal in mind, or else people are just raising issues to hear the sound of their own voice.

And I won't deny gamers can be a bit over-reactionary to someone bringing up issues. Face it, we've seen the whole medium get judge for violence by a few titles, or on sex by one cutscene from a game the pundants didn't even play. It's not hard to see any issue as overblown when somehow the medium can't have anything with sexism or racism within it, or the whole medium gets dragged through the mud for a few bad examples. That if we have the conversation all that will happen is a few incidents will become the indictment of the whole industry because to those complaining, they don't see the industry, only those games with impossible boobs and outfits, or the white character killing black cannon fodder. I'm not sure how to break through this, but a good step would be for those that wish to talk about video game sexism to come with numbers to the discussion. If we're going to have the discussion, let's talk about the industry, not a sampling that paints a picture based on Lolipop Chainsaw, not The walking Dead, Persona 4, Portal, Minecraft, Virtue's last reward, Ni No Kuni, pokemon, ....

 

[squid5580]

I kinda feel that this vid was very one sided. There is the other side as well. Those who aren't offended by the things you showed. Things we are told we are to be offended by and are scolded and berated if we aren't analyzing every single piece of the over all picture. I had no problem with the Hitman nuns. I thought the "zombie bait" was a pretty cool collector's item (as did my gf). So I am an insensitive jerk oblivious to the world around me. It has never been a problem of OMG they are going to take away my games because of this or that. What worries me is they are going to take away my games because of what I percieve of the over reactions of far to thin skinned folks raging over everything all the time limiting what they can and can't do within this industry. It disappoints me Deep Silver felt they had to apologize for zombie baitgate. If you don't approve fine no one is forcing you to shell out the extra to buy it. But don't try to take it away from me. That is far more offensive. Same goes for most of what was shown. If it offends you so much don't buy it but don't try and get it censored. Once that happens then we can sit down and have a rational discussion.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

How the hell did you go from "quite a few people who felt offended" to "OMG EVERYTHING NEEDS TO CHANGE SO NOTHING EVER IS OFFENSIVE EVER AGAIN ANYMORE"? I know we're on the topic of Assassin's Creed, but that skip in the record is even more dramatic than a 200ft swan dive into a pile of hay.

I was just citing an example of some people overrating to a game. Chill out.

Oh, and I'm an English person who wasn't offended by the trailer

Ok I never said every English user was offened, I said "a few".

and told the people who complained that A) I didn't think a game with a Native American protagonist would be very likely to paint the Patriots in an all-happy all-shiny light, B) both armies were British - this is British-on-British violence and therefore hardly prejudiced, C) the character who writes all the database entries for the games is a British historian who probably isn't going to be brimming with American patriotism, D) the game was created by a French-Canadian developer, not an American one, and E) the game developers had already stated that you'd be fighting on both sides of the war at varying stages of the game.

I managed to point all of that out without resorting to yelling, "OMG WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO CENSOR EVERYTHING???" I was quite proud of myself.

Good to see that you kept a cool head.

I awarded myself a chocolate biscuit.

Biscuits? You mean a cookie? haha jk

 

[T_ConX]

>Anita Sarkeesian

Haven't heard that name in a while. Whatever happened to her?

Oh, it seems like after getting her six-figure pay day, she hasn't made any videos in the last SEVEN MONTHS!

Why did we think this woman was a threat?

 

[Nurb]

I just don't get why enjoying pretty women in fictional entertainment is a BAD thing.

Enjoying pretty women is not a bad thing. No one is saying that. As I mentioned in another post, that is simply a strawman that gets trotted out and tackled whenever anyone tries to criticise the representation of women in a game.

I have mixed feelings about the Hitman trailer, but I think the negative response can generally be summed up as, "Maybe we shouldn't market games on the basis that beating the shit out of women who are dressed in latex fetish outfits isn't 'fun male escapism'." It was also less to do with the fact that it was women being beaten up (which is understandable since they were armed with rocket launchers and the suchlike), but why the marketing team felt it was necessary to have the women dressed up like the back room of an Ann Summers in order to make the extreme violence more "sexy". The sexual element to video game violence only seems to get introduced when there are women involved (I don't recall any of the enemy soldiers in Call of Duty running around in camo hotpants and wiggling their bums seductively every time time you plug them with another bullet), and considering how much sexual violence there is against women in everyday society, that's kind of disturbing.

Think about it this way. When Agent 47 goes "undercover", all he does is don the uniform of whichever soldier/chef/pizza delivery guy will help him blend in the best. There's escapism in the games but the actual tactics you use are grounded in realism. Then the Saints come along as "undercover" nuns, and their idea of blending in involves so much latex that their lives must be an endless medicated drama of talcum powder and applications of Bio-Oil. Running around in those outfits would be ludicrously detrimental to any kind of assassination mission, or indeed any mission that took place outside of a strip club. No wonder they all get their asses kicked.

If I was a straight guy, I'd be insulted that this was how the marketing team chose to sell a stealth-action game. Talk about appealing to the lowest common denominator.

It's not a strawman, it's just what it is. They wanted attention and went to the extreme in every way possible. And them dressing that way isn't out of style for the game universe, which is nearly cartoonish. Last game had him dressing up as santa and a clown to take down targets, and he had to track down an albino in a bird suit... In a previous game he went after an comically obese man hosting a wild fetish party in a large meat locker. In one before that, he went up against ninjas, and in the first one, he had an over-the-top encounter with a Scarface-like drug lord. So sexy nuns is completely within the game's level of absurdity.

Also Hitman and COD are completely different gaming experiences and universes, you can't equate them with one another.

As a bi-guy I wasn't insulted by the marketing; I was insulted by them screwing up a great franchise by making it into a damn action game. That's why I didn't play it.

Here, have a video.

 

[Spearmaster]

What is the point of calling attention to things like sexism in games then? If the intent is not to change the game people like then why draw attention to it, if its there people will see it for themselves, if they don't play the game they aren't offended... unless internet media whores start using it to start flame wars to increase their video/article hit numbers...wait...I've said to much.

As a side note, I'm tired of people coming out of the woodwork every time an article/video points out some offensive bit of a game when many of them have never even played said game but yet they are soooo offended, why? Because a video/article highlighted one offensive bit and thus the whole game must be offensive garbage, internet based game journalist need to take a more responsible approach to their trade and stop whoring the most minimal negative parts of a game just for a few hits.

 

[acosn]

Stop talking about Sarky. No, stop it. You already got taken for a ride off her scam, stop talking about her.

If you have sex with three people you should expect consequences. Men value loyalty from women, and in a game based in a early medieval setting? Doing it with the lights off between the bedroom sheets when you're married is sacrilege. Having sex with three people means you're Stan Hitler. Skyrim's a bad game but it's not exactly sexist. "Sexism" has become such a loaded term that the gaming "journalism" circuit just uses it to generate page hits, because internet scandals are a measurable occurrence that you can expect and rely on. It's what Sarky was betting on and provoking. Now she gets to spend another few years parading around as a pho-intelectual while pushing high school grade writing for academic circles and continuing to peddle her internet videos which have more in common with basic level propaganda than any form of healthy debate.

You can't have a healthy debate online in a well known public forum for debate. It's just a given. You wouldn't do it on 4chan, you can't do it anywhere. You're asking people to discuss something without setting any bar for them to meet.

 

[Fiairflair]

Honestly a major part of why I simply don't give a shit about the "isms" is due to what I've heard called the "colonialism syndrome" or sometimes the "Holocaust syndrome". Growing up I was exposed to a good decade and a bit of "education" by teachers who wouldn't understand history if it kicked them in the genitals, and after a while pretty much everyone got so utterly sick of hearing about how "evil" their ancestors were for what they did to the Indigenous Australians that they simply stopped caring about the issue completely and embraced apathy, and in some extreme cases actually did a complete 180 and started being actively racist.

You can only bang on about something, no matter how important the topic is, so long before people get utterly sick to death of hearing about it and just want people to STFU. Yes there are problems in the gaming industry, yes colonialism was bad, yes the Holocaust was evil, but if you keep banging that drum without break for long enough otherwise reasonable people will simply tune you out... or worse start opposing you out of sheer spite.

You need to be careful when it comes to "preaching" or you'll do more harm then good... just look at PETA, the organisation that has done more harm to Animal Welfare then Cruella De Vil!

Separately to that, there is also the siege mentality infecting the gaming sub-culture, we've been under attack for so long by so many different groups that any perceived attack is reacted too with extreme negativity. And you know what? That's okay. We've got the freaking NRA attacking us at the moment! We've got Fox News, CNN, and the loony right banging on about how we destroy morality, we need to be watchful, we need to police ourselves, lest we give those turds more ammunition. Unfortunately this leads to the "traitor" mentality, where if a member of the gaming subculture starts looking at things, no matter how reasonable, they are seen as aiding the enemy, giving them a crack in the wall to exploit.

Those people actually do want to take away our games.

You can bring up what you think are real issues all you want, but you should consider if it really matters, and if it does, how you can you make the point without attacking the entire subculture, without appearing like a smug self satisfied git.

I can certainly understand your frustration with the way Indigenous Studies is taught in Australia, but I think blaming discussion itself is going too far. I had a similar experience, in that my own reading and research of Australian indigenous affairs showed a far more complicated situation than I would have otherwise known about. Discussion was not the problem. My teachers were.
The same applies to game '-isms'. Circulating false information and half-truths does eventually degrade a discussion, but it is only through discussion that those untruths are challenged.

It is okay to respond when you feel under siege, but part of fixing that discomfort comes from discussion. As you said, we unfortunately have a "traitor" mentality. But people who attack gaming in general aren't winning the fight. The companies that make money selling games win out in the end.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

Errrm. Chill out? Those words in capital letters are a direct quote from you.

Um...what? Do you mean to be quoting someone else? I never typed "OMG EVERYTHING NEEDS TO CHANGE SO NOTHING EVER IS OFFENSIVE EVER AGAIN ANYMORE". Here is my exact post....

Go back and look at some threads when the Assisans Creed 3 trailer came out. There were quite a few English people who felt offended that the main character seemed to be singling out Redcoats. They felt that they were demonizing Redcoats. I mean wtf, if there was a game set in Ireland would these same people want the Black and Tan's to be portrayed in a positive light as well?

All I did was point out the massive disparity between the reaction you described and the example you gave. Also, you cited an example of some people reacting, not overreacting.

I disagree, the comments I saw were needlessly antagonistic to the US and bad mouthed Americans for a game that was being produced by French-Canadians.

That's the point Jim was trying to make in the video. Just because someone's assessment of something doesn't align with your own, it doesn't mean that they're overreacting.

And who gets to decide whether or not they are overreacting? Its subjective.

And saying, "You're just overreacting," is kind of a poor response when people raise legitimate concerns about something that they see in a trailer.

"Legitimate" concerns? No, not a chance.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Honestly a major part of why I simply don't give a shit about the "isms" is due to what I've heard called the "colonialism syndrome" or sometimes the "Holocaust syndrome". Growing up I was exposed to a good decade and a bit of "education" by teachers who wouldn't understand history if it kicked them in the genitals, and after a while pretty much everyone got so utterly sick of hearing about how "evil" their ancestors were for what they did to the Indigenous Australians that they simply stopped caring about the issue completely and embraced apathy, and in some extreme cases actually did a complete 180 and started being actively racist.

You can only bang on about something, no matter how important the topic is, so long before people get utterly sick to death of hearing about it and just want people to STFU. Yes there are problems in the gaming industry, yes colonialism was bad, yes the Holocaust was evil, but if you keep banging that drum without break for long enough otherwise reasonable people will simply tune you out... or worse start opposing you out of sheer spite.

You need to be careful when it comes to "preaching" or you'll do more harm then good... just look at PETA, the organisation that has done more harm to Animal Welfare then Cruella De Vil!

Speaking as an Australian who went through the same era of education who has a passing familiarity with international criminal law, what our government did to the indigenous Australians technically constituted genocide.

If you think the issue is being hammered too hard, just think about that, and think about the fact that the Australian government still hasn't recognised that and didn't offer anything resembling an apology until 2007. We basically look like Turkey, sitting there pretending that thing with the Armenians never happened.

I'm not condemning Australia specifically - nearly every country in the world has a gross crime against humanity in its national history, usually because they occurred before crimes against humanity were legally formalised - but it's important for a nation to recognise and indeed emphasise its past failures, rather than glossing over them in the name of patriotism. Almost no nations ever do that, and considering that Howard tried very, very hard to exculpate any mention of our treatment of the Aborigines from the history curriculum, I don't think it's justified at all to say that the issue is overblown.

Think about it this way. If you've been told that colonial Australia treated its natives horribly so many times that it is literally sickening, that's a good thing. It shows that the education system, or at least your microcosm of it, isn't whitewashing its national history the way John Howard wanted them to. If it bothers you, then simply every time a teacher or a hippy or one of those goddamn Socialist Alternative people on campus tells you that our government committed genocide, say "Yes, yes, I've been informed," and move on. They do get so deflated when you drop that line.

 

[cahtush]

A bit off-topic but why does the phalanx at 1:50 have what seems like corinthian helmets?
Shouldn't they have phrygian of attican?

 

[targren]

Jim, you've got a valid point here, without a doubt. Taking negative criticism to a game you like as an insult to yourself, your clan, your religion, and your country is, to put it mildly, a tad excessive. On the other hand, though, your admonition feels a bit one-sided (acknowledging that your show has length considerations) though. While the "gaming community" could certainly use a bit more temperance, dignity, and self-respect, they don't have any monopoly on foaming-at-the-mouth extremism. I did note that you acknowledged this when you mentioned "extreme viewpoints," but one point you kept coming back to isn't true: "No one wants to take your games away."

While it's definitely true that not everyone calling out an "-ism" has that in mind, there is certainly no lack of a very vocal, rabble-rousing minority calling for "bans" on whatever target du jour that offends their sensibilities or opposes their pet crusade, spanning both sides of the poorly-named "conservative/liberal" line.

 

[JudgeGame]

Will the males be wearing bikinis and have implant-augmented tits shoved in them? Because then you might have a fair comparison.

Your example is blatantly false equivalence.

The equivalent of a female made to appeal to men is a man made to appeal to women. Not some ridiculous monstrosity made with the sole purpose of saying, "Screw you men!"

While you are completely correct, I think what's most interesting about the analogy is that it is dificult to find female fantasies that involve completely dehumanizing and humiliating their male sex object. That's not unexpected though, given the nature of sexism.

There are females who prefer the dominant role and tend to be more on the sadist side of sadomasichism. perhaps they are a little rarer, but they exist. unless you are refering to wearing revealing clothing and acting provacative as being "dehumanising" in which case I direct you to the many examples of women saying that males actors are hot and prasing movies for shirtless scenes.

There are very clear lines of trust, consent and respect in the BDSM community. People who are actually into SM sexuality are attracted to humiliating their partner because they fully understand that their partner is a human being with thoughts and emotions like them, something I can't say for a lot of other people.

 

[JudgeGame]

Jim, you've got a valid point here, without a doubt. Taking negative criticism to a game you like as an insult to yourself, your clan, your religion, and your country is, to put it mildly, a tad excessive. On the other hand, though, your admonition feels a bit one-sided (acknowledging that your show has length considerations) though. While the "gaming community" could certainly use a bit more temperance, dignity, and self-respect, they don't have any monopoly on foaming-at-the-mouth extremism. I did note that you acknowledged this when you mentioned "extreme viewpoints," but one point you kept coming back to isn't true: "No one wants to take your games away."

While it's definitely true that not everyone calling out an "-ism" has that in mind, there is certainly no lack of a very vocal, rabble-rousing minority calling for "bans" on whatever target du jour that offends their sensibilities or opposes their pet crusade, spanning both sides of the poorly-named "conservative/liberal" line.

Did you miss the part in history where videogames were declared protected by the US Constitution? No one can take your games away. Unless your country moves away from Democracy, it is completely unthinkable.

 

[JudgeGame]

jim has opened the bottle on a larger issue than just games. look around these days you can only love or hate things, you can only be a real fan or a poser, hardcore or dismissed as a casual. its not just gaming its movies, tv shows, music, politics, everything you cant open a news story only without the comments being vicious or the exact opposite.

i dont know whats happened but we seem to of whole heartedly embraced black and white thinking and having only polarised views enmass without even realising we do it.

It's your choice to conform to that binary.

 

[Seneschal]

Perhaps, but there are those out there who will use those tiny little things to attempt to undermine the entire art form.

Not that it justifies the willful ignorance of certain issues but yeah, in this day and age when people can somehow equate Mass Effect with child killing...you can see why some gamers over-react.

I doubt that FOX News reporters get deep enough into Skyrim to uncover potentially sexist quests. When people say "I think the Dead Island torso is offensive" or "I can't find a single woman in CoD", these are mostly gamers that feel excluded. The gaming public has become vast enough that if you make a game tailored to a single group, especially if it flatly ignores or belittles all the other groups in order to appeal to its target demographic, it's going to get noticed.

And the slippery slope arguments that we're going to stare into blank screens if this continues are bullshit. I enjoy politically incorrect humour too -- in my circle of friends, where everyone uses it and understands it's a joke. But would I tell Hitler jokes in front of an Auschwitz survivor? HELL NO! The attitude that I should be allowed to do so, because the aforementioned survivor's sensitivity is actually leading us to a humourless dystopia, is toxic. It only serves to justify people that can't hold their tongue when they know they should.