Please understand while reading my responses. I'm trying to constructively criticize your argument here. I agree that women are objectified to an entirely unnecessary degree and would love to see more realistic women in the gaming world.
@generals3, I apologize for hopping into your discussion with Aardvaarkman. I found it too interesting to pass up. Perhaps my points can help refine or clarify your argument
Aardvaarkman said:
Your argument about political parties is similarly dubious. Many of us believe in free speech and freedom of assembly. That means lobbying for the rights of political parties which we don't necessarily agree with. Just as the civil rights movement was successful because most people empathized with other people, even though it wasn't in their own self-interest.
Exactly whose civil rights do you feel are being infringed on here? Are you defending the rights of lines of code not to be forced to be arranged to look like exposed cleavage? Do you believe that humans have a right to have media tailored to their wants and desires? Even at the cost of others wants and desires?
Lobbying to make developers change their work would do more to attack the developer's civil rights than not trying to force them to change is harming anyone else's rights. It'd be like demanding that Alexandros of Antioch put a shirt on Venus de Milo so that his artwork would also appeal to people who are otherwise insulted by nudity.
Granted, Venus de Milo is tasteful art, but the comparison sticks.
It's interesting how you use the word "consumer" - it's quite objectifying. It just reduces people to being walking wallets. I consider myself a human being primarily, not an object of consumption.
Consumers are the only people that matter or should matter to companies producing a product for them. You do not design a remote control to be ergonomic for dolphins when your target market is solely comprised of humans. You can consider yourself a human all you want, but it is frankly unethical to demand that companies not distinguish between consumers of their products and non-consumers.
OK, well show me the market studies that show that ridiculous sex-object representations of women in gaming sell better than those that don't include them. Call of Duty is one of the biggest-selling games on the planet, and it doesn't include women with enormous, gravity-defying breasts. In fact, it's pretty much a sausage-fest.
While I applaud your challenge of conventional wisdom, it is a generally accepted and proven fact that sex does sell. Do you have any reason to believe that this is no longer the case or that video games are somehow exceptions to the rule? I don't think the premise of your argument should be that sexually exploitative styles are bad business. You will likely lose there unless you can show a financial incentive to not exploit human nature to gravitate towards sexually pleasing images. Take the Dragon Crowns game for example. Most of us were entirely unaware of this title before the audacity of the sexualized designs proved news worthy. Would you say this move helped or hurt their sales? I'd say it bought PR and marketing that only incentivizes the practice all the more.
The argument then, can only be successfully fought along the lines of ethics. "Yes, it makes them more money but it is unjust" for whatever reasons you can produce. If the proportion of male/female consumers buying the game is particularly skewed to one or the other gender, would it still be morally wrong to portray the other gender in an objectifying way?
I do personally have a problem with female characters whose only role is to be sexually pleasing. It's weird, creepy even. Like having a digital harem. But no one's rights are being harmed. I like seeing more capable women in games, women I can actually respect are more attractive to me than a big breasted bimbo. I see no reason why creating legitimate female characters would harm business. It's even fine to make them attractive. While sex does sell, there has to be diminishing returns at some point, especially when done at the cost of actual character.
The argument is about the lack of inclusion of female characters in games. The argument is that they [strong]are[/strong] depicted, but when they are depicted, they tend to be represented as sex objects much more than male character. You're missing the point so much here.
I agree with this sentiment. But please keep in mind that I believe they are represented as sex objects moreso by their roles in the games than their apparel or ridiculous proportions. Saying that they're sex objects because they're designed to be really sexy is actually somewhat like calling a girl in form-fitting "Juicy" brand shorts an objectifier of women. If you would call girls who dress rather sexually out on objectifying themselves and other women, then you'd at least be being consistent here even if I'd disagree with you.
Again, show me the evidence that the ridiculous representation of women in games drives sales to male gamers.
Please show us evidence that video game marketing works differently than other products. I recently passed a jewelry store in the mall that had a life sized add in the walkway of a female soccer player in skin-tight shorts. Her body was faced away from the camera with her face turned towards it, entirely emphasizing her ass that was next to a completely unrelated photo of a watch (while she was wearing no such apparel). Tell me, why do you think they did that? It certainly got my attention. That's why. We are evolved to be attracted to those things. They are, for all intents and purposes, taking advantage of biological predispositions. Here's an honest question, the original Tomb Raider games were fun and even innovative all by themselves. But do you think they would have sold as well or recieved anywhere close to as much marketing back then if she was just a random guy? Do you think the magazines with her on the cover as a pinup would have sold anywhere as well as they did comparatively?
You're kidding, right? Male cosmetics is a huge industry. Have you never seen all the ads for Gillette razors, or colognes, or hair-replacement surgery? The cosmetics industry realized long ago that males were an under-tapped market, and has put a lot of effort into marketing toward males.
I think you know what the poster meant. I'm pretty sure specific markets like makeup or pantyhose would suffice as the argument. But any kind of product where the customer base tends to one side generally warrants direct catering. Should we be mad that men can't get a job as panty hose models? I don't think so. Do some men wear pantyhose? Most certainly.
The studies mentioning that the gaming market is distributed 53%/47% men/female is significantly misleading. Less than 50% of the individuals who identified as gamers in that study had even purchased or were planning to purchase even one game for that year. Likewise, a 2009 study showed that 80% of female console gamers' consoles were the Wii. This is a significant hole where 360 and ps3 titles could only count on 11% and 9% (respectively) of their target market to be female. The thing was, the huge AAA titles were mostly on those consoles and not the Wii due to processing differences. That information could be extrapolated to tell us around what the target market would look like. If we account for the fact that just over 59% of males had the 360 (38%) or ps3 (21%) as their primary console (with the Wii coming in at around 41%) and accept that the ratio was 60%/40% (male/female) at the time of that study then the result is pretty skewed towards men being the vast majority of the people using those systems. 60% of male console gamers compared to 20% of female console gamers. That's a huge gap without even knowing the exact numbers. If there were 100 total gamers, 60 would be men, 40 would be women. 60% of the men would be 36 men while 20% of the women would be 8 (total size would be 44). That's just over 18% of 360/ps3 owners being female regardless of what the numbers actually are. That's a significant group, but in the clear minority.
Please note that, with that in mind, Nintendo is a LOT more female friendly.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that that proportion has significantly changed since 2009? Women did go from 40% of the total percentage of "gamers" to 47% during this time but we've also seen a rapid adoption rate of smart phones and game apps during that time (Angry Birds, for example, came out in December of 2009 and you see where we are now with iOS gaming).
