Jimquisition: Creative Freedom, Strings Attached

[Catrixa]

From reading a few of the comments here, I think I've found the problem with this whole debacle:

Saying something does not properly represent women is not an excuse to jump to conclusions. For anyone (developers, gamers, publishers, Christian moms, feminists, farmers, WalMart slaves, etc.). The phrase "GTA V does not properly represent women, because it does not allow one as a protagonist," is an almost meaningless statement if there's no actual, concrete, definitive meaning for "represent women" (which, last I checked, there isn't). If there's no concrete definition of something (as in, it is not a fact, like "the atmosphere is blue when light from the sun hits it"), it's probably an opinion. You are free to not share an opinion. Personally, I don't necessarily think having a male-only protagonist prevents a game from "properly" representing women, but it can help.

If you are watching/reading/consuming any media, hear the words "does not represent women" and conclude, in order: This thing is Sexist->Sexist is hating women (misogynist)->Misogyny is an attribute of a fundamentally bad person->Creators of misogynist things are fundamentally bad people->Consuming things that are misogynist makes me a fundamentally bad person, stop. If someone says you are a fundamentally bad person for liking something they consider sexist, ask them to cite sources saying the material in question causes personality changes.

We all like something that someone has deemed "bad," "offensive," "juvenile," etc. Maybe it's because we're bad people. Maybe it isn't (you can appreciate an offensive joke without constantly offending the person/group the joke is about). Most of the "sexist" material being produced today is done from ignorance, not deliberate malice. This ignorance should be corrected. That is what calling something sexist, not representing women, etc. is trying to do. If you feel this threatens your worldview and should not be questioned, you have not yet found your own solidarity on this topic, and should challenge yourself to think about these things. Not every claim of "this is sexist!" will be right, but don't just dismiss them because it's easy.

 

[Lilani]

You do get that's completely wrong? And I don't even get where you got that from?

I got it from the very words you said on the first page of this thread.

To throw a wrench into this...

It's impossible for a playble character (when playable) to have a gender other than the players. The player is part of the playable character, and the physical absolutes that defines the genders are impossible to measure on virtual character. Than logic follows that what the player identify as define the gender of the playable character.

Edit: What I'm saying is that if Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case. If played by someone idenifying as male, Gordon is male.

Those last two sentences say it plain as day. "When Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case." In my experience, no he was not, he was still a male to me. If that wasn't what you were trying to say, then please explain.

 

[Bostur]

No other media even puts itself up for these kinds of demands. Movies, books, art, the audience sees these after the fact and are only upset when they're based on some other work and unwarranted changes are made. I understand the defense of the question being able to be asked, but I don't think it's a very good one. Would we ask why Lucky Number Slevin cast a male lead or why Harry Potter was male? No, it's part of the writer's story and is meant as such.

The demand of a media to be customized around us is unrealistic in most places and I think it can really be unrealistic in some narrative driven games. Asking why Nathan Drake can't be a woman and demanding it even would be silly. The question can absolutely be asked but it's not wholly unlike demanding Picasso to put a little bit of red in those blue period paintings of his because some people like red and would rather see it.

I like the idea of games increasingly including females as an option to play as. I don't care what other people choose when I'm given a choice. But pressuring writers to alter their vision is a wrong in my opinion.

I had some of the same thoughts. Games do allow for an audience that is more involved in the process though, and that can explain why we have more specific expectations. Games also get updated after release, and many are even published in the beta phase, something that is quite unique for games and other software. So this extra involvement and the expectations that follows does make more sense.

However I do get worried when art is criticized based on its political qualities rather than its artistic qualities. If a piece of art has a political agenda its fine to criticize it politically, it is the subject matter after all. But basing aestethic criticism on political arguments feels out of place. The '70s was had some grave examples where everything was expected to be political, and a lot of art suffered for it.

Games do have a blurry line between artistic freedom and involving the audience. Game designers shouldn't be completely isolated in an ivory tower, but gamers shouldn't put too much pressure on the process of creation either.

 

[Lightknight]

If I could offer an alternate suggestion: I think that the greater reason why there aren't as many female protagonists is because most game designers are males. Maybe this is self-perpetuating--males know how to write male protagonists, so not as many women get into gaming to become developers--but I don't think that's really the "fault" of games themselves.

The vast majority of AAA gamers are male. The current ESA study that puts the male/female ratio at 53%/47% not only fails to divide them by console/pc/mobile dive and game genre, but the study so loosely describes "gamer" that it includes more than half of the respondants who did not plan to buy even one game in 2012. That means that over half of that study isn't the target audience of AAA developers.

Now then, if you go to the previous study that was 60%/40% (male/female) just a few years ago, we also saw that 80% of female console gamers owned a Wii as their primary console. This means that the vast majority of AAA console titles saw a sea of more than 80% of males in their target demographic for both the ps3 and 360. There is no evidence to say that this distribution has necessarily changed. Especially now that the ESA opened up iOS into the study. To make matters even more confusing, we don't even know if the game genres preferred by both genders are the same. For example, males may lean signicicantly towards FPS titles while females may prefer something else in different proportions. Like RTS games.

The Puppeteer character is VERY animated and the game is highly narrated (saying fancy and troublesome words like "boy"). You're talking about spending what could be significant resources just to let someone play with a slightly diffently dressed hero. On the face of it, you're demanding that an artist redo his work.

And to what purpose? Why edit your work like that? It's the story of a boy hero, why isn't that enough? Should movie studios have two versions of movies they put out where they just switch out the lead according to what the person wants? Should digital copies of books automatically neuter pronouns and replace the name and gender of the protagonist (sounds like a money making application...)? No. That's not the storyteller's burden. It just isn't. So seriously, if the gender of a protagonist is that important to the person, they just shouldn't buy the game. Like the guy said. The debate isn't ethics or some such lofty goal.

It's a subjective matter. "Why isn't the sky poop brown," they asked the sky's creator in the game? Is it a valid question? Sure. Should it be allowed to be asked? Yeah. Is it a good question? No. It's that way because someone made it that way. Because someone wrote a story and defined the characters. I get that there are people who can't handle that. But there are a ton of games coming out now with entirely customizeable characters. There have been for years (I remember playing through Resident Evil a few times for example). Why should every game conform?

 

[Erttheking]

Most of the bad games with a brown haired, white man, in his mid 30s sucked because the story was boring or the gameplay was bad; so a different main character won't fix these problem.

The character has very little influence on the story; which is why no one ever says that a game would been better if the protagonist had been blond, black, a woman, or a child.

But this kind of raises the question of if these characters are so unimportant to the story, why can't they be something else? I mean clearly their identity isn't really that important. It's like Jim said. "Why a guy?"

Because it's what the developer wanted to write a story about. They don't need any more justification than this.

Yeah they don't NEED any more justification than that, but don't expect me to keep my mouth shut about the countless games with brown haired mid 30s white guys and how freaking boring and unoriginal they are.

 

[Lilani]

"GTA V does not properly represent women, because it does not allow one as a protagonist," is an almost meaningless statement if there's no actual, concrete, definitive meaning for "represent women" (which, last I checked, there isn't). If there's no concrete definition of something (as in, it is not a fact, like "the atmosphere is blue when light from the sun hits it"), it's probably an opinion. You are free to not share an opinion. Personally, I don't necessarily think having a male-only protagonist prevents a game from "properly" representing women, but it can help.

I don't think anybody is asking for GTA V to "represent" women in some way, as much as nobody thinks GTA V in its current state "represents" men in some way. It just seems like a stroke of thoughtlessness. FPS's are filled to the brim with 30-40 something white dudes, so why bother making three different playable characters if you're going to make them ALL 30-40 something white dudes? Variety is the spice of life, after all. I mean, with the way so many shows and such like to shoehorn in the "token woman" or "token black guy" just so they don't get in trouble for forgetting non-white people exist, it almost would have taken some effort for them to make their entire cast white and male.

I have a friend who I've known since middle school. She's a bit shy, but when you get to know her she'll talk your ear off. She fought with clinical depression for a long time, and I've talked her out of suicide more than once. But recently she's gotten on the right medication and found the right therapist, and she's doing great. She's acing her college classes, she's on a first-name basis with the head of her department, she's about to graduate with a bachelor's in psychology and she'll be moving right on to get her master's degree, and she's spending a lot of time volunteering at our local hospital. She's been chosen as volunteer of the month like three times now, and she's on a first-name basis with some of the higher-ups in the hospital.

And there's something else I noticed about her only just recently. She's Mexican. Well, half-Mexican, but her hair and skin color are definitely of hispanic origin. I've known her for like 10 years now and I only recently put a significant amount of thought into it. As a kid I never thought about it, I had to grow into an adult and just happened to be thinking about non-white people I know due to another conversation on these boards. It almost felt like an epiphany, in a way.

So again, nobody's looking for somebody to "represent" women, as much as my friend doesn't "represent" Mexicans to me. We just want some variety. Plus, the whole whitewashing thing is a bit reminiscent of a time not long ago when non-white people were deliberately excluded from media because they weren't white, which still makes many uncomfortable or at least dubious (I know it makes me a bit curious as to why).

 

[nightazday]

Well both parties were in the right. Gaming as a whole needs more female protagonist, but if you add one just to satisfy a quota you'll just get tolkienism.

 

[Goliath100]

Those last two sentences say it plain as day. "When Half-Life 2 is played by someone identifying as female, Gordon Freeman is female in that case." In my experience, no he was not, he was still a male to me. If that wasn't what you were trying to say, then please explain.

1) Gordon Freeman IS a non entity (as a character), how can you feel one way or another?
2) This concept has never been presented for you before (I guess), so you have no grounds say that Gordon "male", because the idea of Gordon being female never enterd your mind.
3)How anyone "feels" about this changes nothing.
4)Actions define characters, player define action of playable character, therefore player defines playable character. In other words: The player is part of character's psyche. Psyche defines one's gender. Therefore, playable character changes after player's gender.

 

[Mahoshonen]

Okay, let me give my two cents: There is nothing wrong deciding to go with a male character instead of a female character. Take a film like Glengary Glen Ross. The story and themes are such that replacing any of the characters with a woman would fundamentally change them. The film is inheritely about masculinity, and replacing an actor with an actress would have changed the movies chemistry.

That said, a developer should be able to articulate why they made the character selections they did. It shouldn't be a thoughtless choice, and if they act defensively when the question is presented, it's only going to invite more criticism. That's because avoiding the discussion is seen as evidence that you don't have a good reason for the choice you made, fairly or not.

These conversations are not going away. I thinks folks would be satisfied if Rockstar came forward with why they went with male-only PCs. They don't even have to spoil anything, just say 'given the story we want to tell, we feel that a female lead wouldn't be appropriate. Once the game is released we'd be happy to discuss this further.' Attempting to bury conversation with the broad brush of 'censorship' will only embolden the other side to continue to press the issue.

 

[MB202]

I find this snippy response to be rather unwarranted to an otherwise simple question. I'd like the option there, unless the game absolutely REQUIRES that the main character (who in this case, is just a puppet) has to be male. After all, what's the harm in just including the option, ESPECIALLY if the gender doesn't affect the game itself. See, trying to be more inclusive is not the same as "pandering" to certain "demographics".

 

[Darth_Payn]

You sound a bit weird today Jim. Still suffering from Pax Flu?

I recorded this on Friday when I was possibly at my worst. I almost didn't record as I was choking on my own filth while trying to talk. Sorry it was so noticeable in the final recording, I did my best, and Friday was basically my deadline.

Actually Jim, I didn't notice the "Con Flu" sound in your voice in this video, compared to how you sounded in last week's Rhymedown video. You sound like you're getting better already.
OT: This video has one of the best arguments in gender relations I've heard in a long time. Creators make their products as how they designed them, and criticism of them only works when the creators do something dumb. The problems occur when it gets arbitrary, like bringing up the lack of female PC's when the games' creators just didn't think to put them in. You could make your character in the Saint's Row games female, right?

 

[Goliath100]

Sounds like someone's upset because people consider Gordon Freeman to be a man because he's a man. Also the player cannot turn Freeman into a woman, as the player's psyche has no effect on a person's gender.

You don't think "gender" is psychological?

 

[Lilani]

Being intersex doesn't make you a third gender. Their genitals may not indicate whether they're male or female but their brains do. This has been confirmed by scientific studies on children with malformed genitals which showed that boys and girls with both sets of genitals responded the same ways as boys and girls with normal genitals. There have never been any cases of children acting like a third gender.

Oooooh, I get it, this isn't about intersexuals or hermaphrodites. This is about transgenderism. Well, I can assure you that exists too, known as gender dysphoria [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria] or gender identity disorder to psychologists. A very real condition in which a person feels dysphoria and discontentment with the sex they were assigned at birth, and/or the gender roles which come with that sex. And this can be observed at a very early age, [http://nypost.com/2013/06/24/transgender-6-year-old-wins-civil-rights-case-to-use-girls-bathroom-at-school/] just as homosexuality can often be observed at a very early age (if the parents are paying attention and are open to the idea).

Care to explain why toddlers exhibit these same preferences despite not being told what they like? What about babies and chimps which show the exact same preferences with anyone every telling them what they're meant to like? This isn't due to the media, it's due to the way that humans have evolved (which is why men and women have different types of brains).

The only thing that needs to be examined is why some people seem to believe that the mass media is able to "brainwash" children into liking dolls or trucks when the mass media isn't able to make them eat vegetables or not take drugs.

Of course they're being told what they like, all the time. Just turn on a movie or kid's TV show. The little girls like little dolls, and the boys like boy toys. And just watch the commercials to see this even further solidified--the girls are always playing with dollhouses and kitchen sets, and the boys are always building stuff and driving cars and saving the world.

Also, I'm not so sure if you want to bring animals into this discussion, because then that allows me to bring up lions which sort of deflates your whole "females never hunt and gather" thing. It's really low-hanging fruit, and rather irrelevant because if we're going to start comparing our behaviors to chimps, then please tell me why we aren't having as much sex as bonobos. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo#Sexual_social_behavior] Which, yes, are a type of chimpanzee.

Notice how the historians are unsure whether these tribes had matriarchies because there's very little evidence as to how they were ruled. In fact almost all of the descriptions of these matriarchies come from people who didn't belong to these cultures. It would be interesting to see if these cultures actually considered themselves to be matriarchies.

Another thing I noticed is that none of these matriarchies seems to have had a written language or bronze age technology so it could be claimed that matriarchies are an ineffective form of government.

There seems to be little dispute about the Hopi tribe, which still exists today (there's a user here on the Escapist who is Hopi I can refer you to if you want to talk about that, it's pretty neat really), as well as the Iroquois Confederacy.

And if you really think "government" has anything to do with how quickly a culture develops writing then you really are in the dark here. To put it in perspective, Japan didn't have writing at the time either. Their writing system came over from China, but first it had to pass through Korea. And our own writing system came from the Phoenicians who traded with many cultures, and needed a set writing system to be able to keep tabs on things. Necessity is the mother of invention, so if a culture is doing fine without writing then they won't develop it. Because they don't need it, just as we don't waste time developing a set of egg beaters that can mix up all of Lake Superior in less than 90 minutes. We just don't need it.

Research has shown that these traits are common among all cultures, not just mine. For example young men are more likely to commit crimes across all cultures than young women; men are more likely to work in STEM jobs than women; women are more likely to be stay at home mothers even when they can choose to work and the father can raise the children. The fact that you're dismissing these similarities simply because you don't like they just shows how uniformed you are.

Now either name some cultures where the oppose of these traits occurs or admit that you're wrong.

Name the studies which say these, first of all. I've cited many sources, and you can feel free to do the same. I'm well aware there are many inherent traits, but the problem I have with this is even if you cite sources for any of this all you're going to give me is statistics. Statistics are not research, they are numbers. Statistics don't provide cause or give any explanation as to why, they're simply plots on a chart. Yes women are more likely to be stay at home mothers, but that sort of makes sense in a country like the US which provides no paternity leave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_leave] You're just willing to look at statistics and take them at face value. You don't seem to have any intention of thinking about what outside forces can be at play. I'm not saying these outside forces always exist or would always lead me to be correct, but the least you can do is think about them and not take all of this at face value.

As far as I'm concerned anyone who wants to spout their ideological nonsense and ignore what has been scientifically proven is an idiot.

Then I'm afraid you aren't going to last very long here. Because it doesn't matter how much scientific proof you think you've accumulated, if you can't at least pretend this isn't the playground in kindergarten then your childishness is not welcome here.

 

[Catrixa]

Excerpt from what I wrote.

I don't think anybody is asking for GTA V to "represent" women in some way, as much as nobody thinks GTA V in its current state "represents" men in some way. It just seems like a stroke of thoughtlessness. FPS's are filled to the brim with 30-40 something white dudes, so why bother making three different playable characters if you're going to make them ALL 30-40 something white dudes? Variety is the spice of life, after all. I mean, with the way so many shows and such like to shoehorn in the "token woman" or "token black guy" just so they don't get in trouble for forgetting non-white people exist, it almost would have taken some effort for them to make their entire cast white and male.

I have a friend who I've known since middle school. She's a bit shy, but when you get to know her she'll talk your ear off. She fought with clinical depression for a long time, and I've talked her out of suicide more than once. But recently she's gotten on the right medication and found the right therapist, and she's doing great. She's acing her college classes, she's on a first-name basis with the head of her department, she's about to graduate with a bachelor's in psychology and she'll be moving right on to get her master's degree, and she's spending a lot of time volunteering at our local hospital. She's been chosen as volunteer of the month like three times now, and she's on a first-name basis with some of the higher-ups in the hospital.

And there's something else I noticed about her only just recently. She's Mexican. Well, half-Mexican, but her hair and skin color are definitely of hispanic origin. I've known her for like 10 years now and I only recently put a significant amount of thought into it. As a kid I never thought about it, I had to grow into an adult and just happened to be thinking about non-white people I know due to another conversation on these boards. It almost felt like an epiphany, in a way.

So again, nobody's looking for somebody to "represent" women, as much as my friend doesn't "represent" Mexicans to me. We just want some variety. Plus, the whole whitewashing thing is a bit reminiscent of a time not long ago when non-white people were deliberately excluded from media because they weren't white, which still makes many uncomfortable or at least dubious (I know it makes me a bit curious as to why).

Point taken, perhaps my initial example was bad. I was trying to express the situation that arises when people start bringing out the Bechdel test. A better phrase to replace "represents women" is not immediately coming to mind, but... well, I'm not sure where to go from here (really having a tough time describing it). Anyway, the point of my post was not to specifically discuss that exactly, but rather to address people's trepidation of simply discussing how something has the possibility to be non-progressive in the department of equal representation. As I'm sure you've noticed, most people would rather the subject simply disappear, nothing to change, and the status quo to be maintained as though it were the writ of God. I was trying to suggest that jumping to the conclusion that criticizing something is an absolute determination of the quality of the people that consume that something is actually a huge assumption, and possibly indicative of their own uncertainty (or at least unwillingness to analyze their own opinions). The utter defensiveness some people exude actually drives me up the wall sometimes.

I'm sorry for any confusion, I'm actually really awful at getting my point across (I blame the 5-paragraph essay. I cannot write anything concisely if I tried, and I've tried :/). Let me know if this has helped, or if I'm still not making sense.

 

[Lilani]

1) Gordon Freeman IS a non entity (as a character), how can you feel one way or another?

Because his name is Gordon Freeman, and everyone else in the world addresses him as a male. His presence is recognized by the world, and he has an effect on the world around him. In fact that's sort of the quick summary of the Half-Life series: Shit happens and Gordon Freeman deals with it. That makes him an entity. Just because he doesn't say anything doesn't mean he doesn't have an effect on the world, or that he's "imaginary," as the definition of a non-entity would suggest.

2) This concept has never been presented for you before (I guess), so you have no grounds say that Gordon "male", because the idea of Gordon being female never enterd your mind.

I had no reason to think of him as a female, because the game outright told me he wasn't. Here, in this video, at 2:57.

3)How anyone "feels" about this changes nothing.


4)Actions define characters, player define action of playable character, therefore player defines playable character. In other words: The player is part of character's psyche. Psyche defines one's gender. Therefore, playable character changes after player's gender.

So, how I feel about the character's actions defines how I see the character. Got it.

I think I get what you're saying, but I feel like it's rendered a bit irrelevant by every single other character telling me Gordon is a male. This could probably apply to Minecraft Steve, but Gordon Freeman has an identity that is plainly stated by the game and recognized by the words of every other player he comes in contact with. He isn't a non-entity by definition because he isn't a person of no importance and he isn't imaginary. Unless you're going to go fully abstract on me and say all of the Half-Life world can't exist because it revolves around a person who can't (or won't) speak.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Thanks for another great video, Mr. Jim Sterling. I once again think the gods for you.

OT: I've never heard of the Puppetier before, and it doesn't really sound like my thing, so... yeah, nothing to really say about that.

As to GTA 5 - yup, Rockstar has the right to make the game about whomever they choose. And I have the right to not buy GTA 5. And so I won't.

However, if Rockstar had included a female protagonist - and I'll bet that someone at Rockstar would have been up for writing something like that, if given the chance - then I would be buying GTA 5.

I preordered Saints Row 4, paying full price for it. Even with games I know I'll like, I often wait for a price drop before purchasing them. However, I preordered Saints Row 4 (two days before release) because it not only included freedom over the protagonist but "romantic" options freed from gender constraints. Saints Row 4 said "We welcome everyone, no matter who you are." - and that was enough for me to want to support them by paying full price on day one.

So, to Rockstar games, I'll say this - you can do as you like. But, if you don't have a story to tell about a female character, then I don't have 60 dollars for you. Good day.