Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?

[Sticky]

Sales mean more than good characters to them and this whole "sexist" shit is the easiest way to do this. Macho men and women with big boobs are here to stay. They're trying to appeal to the biggest audience - men.

The horror!

Men aren't the biggest audience. Women actually outnumber men on this planet.

Women do not traditionally buy these kinds of video games. That's where the argument comes into play in the first place. There is a great divide between people who play video games and the games that we are discussing are far outside the realm that any market research has ever indicated women may be interested in.

It's where a problem comes in of the self-feeding cycle, it makes no business sense to market toward women because they typically don't buy these games to begin with. And indeed they don't, most women on the internet have no interest in brawlers or fighting games or anything else for that matter.

But maybe that is a function of not being marketed to, like Jim says: How would they know, they've never tried! I'm not going to blame developers for not trying because they have it in good faith that marketing toward a demographic that doesn't exist won't work. I'm not going to blame players for enjoying things that are marketed toward them either.

If I'm going to blame anyone, it's going to be the developers who produce cookie-cutter character-less garbage and wonder aloud why women don't like their games.

 

[Raioken18]

I said most MMOs because while I had been playing WoW and I think it's fair in it's depiction of women, I had seen an advert for Scarlet Blade... I don't know what audience that game is aimed at... but it is still hardly every MMO.

Sales mean more than good characters to them and this whole "sexist" shit is the easiest way to do this. Macho men and women with big boobs are here to stay. They're trying to appeal to the biggest audience - men.

The horror!

Men aren't the biggest audience. Women actually outnumber men on this planet.

In terms of media sales? I think not!

Actually that was a misdirect, women but a lot of Dvds, usually romance or sci-fi. Doctor Who does it for the ladies.
The thing is those interests translate quite badly into the videogame industry (There is a Dr Who video game but it blows). But hopefully we might see more coming out now graphics have gotten a lot better.

I think a fantastic idea for a Good Doctor Who video game is to play as

Spoiler

Clara

and be lead through the universe by a crazed guide The Doctor. You'd often be left alone and clueless and have to solve unique puzzles to continue the storyline. I think it'd have the potential to be one of the best games of all time. Only have a unique storyline not related to the show, as I think following the televised storyline would stifle the thrill and adventure.

 

[Izzyisme]

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Aha. Here is the issue. You seem to be implying that the only way that something can affect someone is if it is real. I would only think smoking is cool if I read a non-fiction work about a person who achieved great things while smoking. Often times, the opposite is true. What is more convincing and more moving is fiction. It is not as though you consciously say, "Oh. This work of non-fiction tells me that X is true. X must be true. But Y is fictional. So everything in Y is false." Fiction is grounded in reality. You don't say "In this work of fiction, gravity moves people to the center of the Earth, but it is fiction, so gravity must not exist." Obviously, this is an extreme case, but you get the point. Now the line between what aspects of fiction are grounded in reality and what aren't isn't so clear. So you agree that in this fictional world, saving lives is a heroic act. You agree with that. But in this fictional world, it is also true that women are sexual objects. You might say "Hmm. Women aren't like this in real life. This aspect of the work of fiction is untrue." Or, you might also say, "Wow, this fiction seems so real. The physics is just like in real life, and women are sex objects just like in our society." You clearly don't think about this consciously, but you do think about it. And if enough fiction has, as one of its non-fantastic aspects, a certain portrayal of women, it can and does affect you and how you think about women.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that harmful representations have to present themselves as real for it to be harmful. I firmly believe that people are capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. The problem comes in when media attempts to portray itself as real. Like it is something to emulate.

I can't say video games are guilty of that. Nothing is more absurdist than the entertainment medium we've created for ourselves where you can recover from a gunshot wound by sucking your thumb for a few seconds.

Just to be clear: It was never my argument that things that aren't real can't harm people, I even made that refutation initially when discussing media as a whole, my argument is that video games and several other kinds of media fall outside any realm of believability and therefore aren't capable of causing the drama people are spinning it to be.

Also I'm reasonably sure that no one in their right mind would ever assume video games to be "real". At least not in their current form. The closest I could ever find to anyone who thinks that way are people who play Train Simulator 2013, and I have faith that the objects of their affection falls squarely in the realm of trains.

Let me just reiterate my previous post. People know fantasy from reality. People know, when they read Harry Potter, that magic isn't real. But fiction is supposed to reflect something true about the real world. If it didn't, then nobody would enjoy it. It is grounded in reality, or else we would have no way to connect to it. The characters feel emotions that we feel, and the societies often function like our society, or are supposed to evoke aspects of our society. So when a movie portrays Bruce Willis gunning down several thieves in an office building, we know it is a fantasy, but we enjoy it. We think it's cool. It is cool because they are the bad guys and Bruce Willis is saving the day.

But what about things that aren't true or false. Fiction, including video games, as prescriptive as well descriptive statements. The hero is someone who never gives up. Is that true or false? Should we connect with that emotionally, or not? Suddenly, it becomes unclear. People can derive very different messages from fiction. Did Fight Club convince you that nihilism is awesome and punching people in the face is masculine, or that it is pointless and you need to grow up.

tl;dr That was a bit pretentious, but my point is that fiction relies on us believing certain things about how world works for us to enjoy it. If those assumptions it demands are harmful, it could have a harmful impact.

 

[camazotz]

Gender issues? On the Escapist? In Jimquisition specifically?
That could NEVER happen...

OP: Can we talk about ANYTHING other than gender issues. It's getting to be borderline obnoxious. Pick any other dead horse you like.

We need to make a randomized dead horse picker for topics in the escapist

amongst the topics we can have

gender issues
objectification
games should be art
on disc DLC
DRM is bad
is piracy OK?
Racism

and that's just for gaming

"Flogging a dead horse (alternatively beating a dead horse, or beating a dead dog in some parts of the Anglophone world) is an idiom that means a particular request or line of conversation is already foreclosed or otherwise resolved, and any attempt to continue it is futile; or that to continue in any endeavour (physical, mental, etc.) is a waste of time as the outcome is already decided."--Wiki Definition

Whew! Good to know those are all resolved and done with. Can ya tell me how they turned out? I haven't seen a satisfactory measure of closure on any for some bizarre reason.
.
.
.
.
(Reality check: let's see what gets the most page hits. There's your Escapist Article picker, right there)


All praise Jim, for he has devoured the FSM and taken his power!

 

[Izzyisme]

But that's not objectification. If you are given agency, you can choose how to act, even if some of your choices will be judged harshly by societal standards. But if you don't have agency, you don't even get to choose.

The definition of agency, as we're using it here, is "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power". Having the capacity to exert power doesn't mean that you aren't acting as an agent for someone else. If we narrowly limit the definition of agency to choice then most male protagonists lack agency as well, Link for example.

I'm sorry I didn't make this clear, but I didn't mean just narratively. I mean what the player experiences as well. The player controls Link, and the player defeats the monsters and saves the Kingdom (and the Princess). On a narrative level, obviously it is more complex. But Link has agency experientially. But how does the player experience men and women differently in games? That is the key question, and it involves both player experience and portrayal in the narrative. More often than not, men are the protagonists and they seem to have agency because we control them and we feel, if the game is good, that our actions are causing whatever is happening on the screen to happen. Female characters are far less likely to be protagonists. How about characters who we do not control? Then on a narrative level, the question is how much power they exert. If women in games are limited to only expressing sexual power, which is not really power at all in most games because of the lack of sexual agency, then that is objectification. Women exist to express sexuality alone, and it is not a sexuality they have control over. But men can express agency in sorts of ways.

Look, if agency means free will, then maybe nobody has agency because it's possible that nobody has free will. But how does that character feel in the narrative? Sometimes the two contradict each other, like in Metal Gear Solid. It is a brilliant commentary on this distinction, because the player feels like Snake is cool and in control. You experience a character with agency, but the narrative reveals that he has no power. It still feels pretty cool to play as Snake, and the same isn't as often true with female characters.

 

[Sticky]

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That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that harmful representations have to present themselves as real for it to be harmful. I firmly believe that people are capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. The problem comes in when media attempts to portray itself as real. Like it is something to emulate.

I can't say video games are guilty of that. Nothing is more absurdist than the entertainment medium we've created for ourselves where you can recover from a gunshot wound by sucking your thumb for a few seconds.

Just to be clear: It was never my argument that things that aren't real can't harm people, I even made that refutation initially when discussing media as a whole, my argument is that video games and several other kinds of media fall outside any realm of believability and therefore aren't capable of causing the drama people are spinning it to be.

Also I'm reasonably sure that no one in their right mind would ever assume video games to be "real". At least not in their current form. The closest I could ever find to anyone who thinks that way are people who play Train Simulator 2013, and I have faith that the objects of their affection falls squarely in the realm of trains.

Let me just reiterate my previous post. People know fantasy from reality. People know, when they read Harry Potter, that magic isn't real. But fiction is supposed to reflect something true about the real world. If it didn't, then nobody would enjoy it. It is grounded in reality, or else we would have no way to connect to it. The characters feel emotions that we feel, and the societies often function like our society, or are supposed to evoke aspects of our society. So when a movie portrays Bruce Willis gunning down several thieves in an office building, we know it is a fantasy, but we enjoy it. We think it's cool. It is cool because they are the bad guys and Bruce Willis is saving the day.

But what about things that aren't true or false. Fiction, including video games, as prescriptive as well descriptive statements. The hero is someone who never gives up. Is that true or false? Should we connect with that emotionally, or not? Suddenly, it becomes unclear. People can derive very different messages from fiction. Did Fight Club convince you that nihilism is awesome and punching people in the face is masculine, or that it is pointless and you need to grow up.

tl;dr That was a bit pretentious, but my point is that fiction relies on us believing certain things about how world works for us to enjoy it. If those assumptions it demands are harmful, it could have a harmful impact.

And I can't agree with that sentiment when it comes to video games. I can't say that video games in particular could have any harmful impact to the person playing them. They are merely a function of imagination.

If we're going to argue 'coulds' and 'shoulds' then we should be instead arguing if video games can affect the person playing them. Most studies disagree with you when it is shed in that light.

I also highly contest the 'could' in that previous statement, for that to be proven, it would seem to me that there must be a conclusive link between video games and behavior of any kind.

It goes back to the argument that used to plague the internet in the late 90's: Are video games really harmful to people? Now, just as then, I say no. Science is still conflicted on the matter, but promising research has agreed with my stance. So I have stuck by it.

I also can't say that I disagree with Jack Thompson or fundie Christians and make that claim that video games have any kind of adverse effect on people. And I can't see how you can make that claim either.

 

[Izzyisme]

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That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that harmful representations have to present themselves as real for it to be harmful. I firmly believe that people are capable of differentiating fantasy and reality. The problem comes in when media attempts to portray itself as real. Like it is something to emulate.

I can't say video games are guilty of that. Nothing is more absurdist than the entertainment medium we've created for ourselves where you can recover from a gunshot wound by sucking your thumb for a few seconds.

Just to be clear: It was never my argument that things that aren't real can't harm people, I even made that refutation initially when discussing media as a whole, my argument is that video games and several other kinds of media fall outside any realm of believability and therefore aren't capable of causing the drama people are spinning it to be.

Also I'm reasonably sure that no one in their right mind would ever assume video games to be "real". At least not in their current form. The closest I could ever find to anyone who thinks that way are people who play Train Simulator 2013, and I have faith that the objects of their affection falls squarely in the realm of trains.

Let me just reiterate my previous post. People know fantasy from reality. People know, when they read Harry Potter, that magic isn't real. But fiction is supposed to reflect something true about the real world. If it didn't, then nobody would enjoy it. It is grounded in reality, or else we would have no way to connect to it. The characters feel emotions that we feel, and the societies often function like our society, or are supposed to evoke aspects of our society. So when a movie portrays Bruce Willis gunning down several thieves in an office building, we know it is a fantasy, but we enjoy it. We think it's cool. It is cool because they are the bad guys and Bruce Willis is saving the day.

But what about things that aren't true or false. Fiction, including video games, as prescriptive as well descriptive statements. The hero is someone who never gives up. Is that true or false? Should we connect with that emotionally, or not? Suddenly, it becomes unclear. People can derive very different messages from fiction. Did Fight Club convince you that nihilism is awesome and punching people in the face is masculine, or that it is pointless and you need to grow up.

tl;dr That was a bit pretentious, but my point is that fiction relies on us believing certain things about how world works for us to enjoy it. If those assumptions it demands are harmful, it could have a harmful impact.

And I can't agree with that sentiment when it comes to video games. I can't say that video games in particular could have any harmful impact to the person playing them. They are merely a function of imagination.

If we're going to argue 'coulds' and 'shoulds' then we should be instead arguing if video games can affect the person playing them. Most studies disagree with you when it is shed in that light.

I also highly contest the 'could' in that previous statement, for that to be proven, it would seem to me that there must be a conclusive link between video games and behavior of any kind.

It goes back to the argument that used to plague the internet in the late 90's: Are video games really harmful to people? Now, just as then, I say no. Science is still conflicted on the matter, but promising research has agreed with my stance. So I have stuck by it.

I also can't say that I disagree with Jack Thompson or fundie Christians and make that claim that video games have any kind of adverse effect on people. And I can't see how you can make that claim either.

Edit: Changed it because a claim I made was unsubstantiated.
I'm not talking about video games causing people to take a certain action. I'm talking about video games and other fiction helping to mold attitudes. I don't think video games can cause people to do something terrible. But like any kind of fiction, I definitely think they can affect your attitudes towards things.

 

[likalaruku]

It took me a very very long time to learn to accept & live with the way women are portrayed in comic books & games & anime. Now I can play Mortal Kombat 2011, feel a bit of breast envy, & simultaneously resent how none of the men are remotely attractive & pity them for having to wear so much clothing.

So now that I've learned to live with & even love these asskicking strippers, I just want to objectify men equally. I absolutely agree that male characters are made to appeal to straight men, because even though I can't speak for all women, I can tell you that this woman has never seen an attractive male character in a non asian game.

But there are some changes I'd like to see on the women's side. I want the woman to save the men. I want the woman to hit on the men, more bitchy snarky tsunderes, more whip-cracking dominatrixes, more tomboys who aren't interested in romance, more female villains. As for Eastern games/anime/manga...Their women have become annoyingly weak, have annoyingly childish voices, & need to wear pants, even if they're skin-tight....It wasn't that way in the 80s, at least not in Japan.

 

[Izzyisme]

I'm sorry I didn't make this clear, but I didn't mean just narratively. I mean what the player experiences as well. The player controls Link, and the player defeats the monsters and saves the Kingdom (and the Princess).

Given that the problem with male/female representation in games is a narrative issue that makes the agency of the player an irrelevant point. I'm ignoring the rest of this, I don't mean to sound rude but it doesn't have a flying fig to do with anything I've said.

No, I think it does have a lot to do with it. Sorry you ignored it. I think it's important for understanding objectification. I think the player experience is actually deeply connected to the narrative. The back story can tell you that Link is a toy of fate, but the experience of cutting down Moblins and collecting Rupees is very different and seems to show real agency. You can disagree if you want. But when you play as Link, do you feel helpless?

 

[Zeles]

For the 'smug' bit you could have just put up a flashing sign saying "satire". Maybe then people would connect the dots, or learn a new word...
Has anyone ever ask female players what they'd like their female (and male) characters to look and act like?

Oooh! Ooooooooh! Can I say what I want my female characters to look and act like? I'm gonna!

I want a female character who wears practical armor. Nothing with slots for boobs or any crap like that. I want them to be a hero, to be able to kick ass, but also be feminine when she feels like it. Like, Veronica from Fallout:New Vegas. A personality like that!

 

[Izzyisme]

No, I think it does have a lot to do with it. Sorry you ignored it. I think it's important for understanding objectification. I think the player experience is actually deeply connected to the narrative. The back story can tell you that Link is a toy of fate, but the experience of cutting down Moblins and collecting Rupees is very different and seems to show real agency. You can disagree if you want. But when you play as Link, do you feel helpless?

Once again, the issue of how the characters are portrayed, how they are presented to you, is an issue of narrative and not mechanics. No, you do not feel as if you're a plaything of fate when you control Link. You would not feel as if you were a damsel in distress if you were controlling Zelda either, especially if you have a halfway competent design team. It is an irrelevant, and silly, point.

Right, but do you get to control Zelda? Other than in those Phillips CDi games or in Super Smash Bros.

 

[Alar]

Your use of forward slashes has totally changed my way of doing things. I'll do a top ten gaming babes next week.

Wooo~! Lookin' forward to it!

In all seriousness, I do have to agree. We are idealized in games, but personally I would like to see some of that for women too. Not that settling down on one generalized thought of what men and women are 'supposed' to be is a good thing, but simply because it would open things to wider audiences and give us broader viewpoints to see and play games from.

I like the option to play as a female protagonist. I like the option for her to be strong and brave and capable. I like the ability to romance other people from her point of view. These things are not bad or negative, but I suppose that coming from a roleplayer's point of view, they only make sense.

Good video.