Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?

[Aardvaarkman]

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.

I agree with you about the self-feeding cycle, that's exactly why things are the way they are.

But it doesn't actually make good business sense. It's the equivalent of a computer company in 1999 saying "Who cares about laptops, smartphones or tablets? We sell heaps of desktop computers!"

Now, we all know what happened to the desktop computer market. It crashed spectacularly, because of the lack of forward-thinking by the companies selling desktop computers. I think the same thing is happening to gaming. Females aren't genetically allergic to games - the only reason for a historical bias toward males in gaming is just that - purely historic. If companies don't wise up and realize that females are just as significant a market, then they will crash and burn just like the desktop computer market did.

Ignoring 50+% of the market just doesn't make any sense. Just like the food industry pretending that only women cook or shop for groceries was a big mistake. Although the food industry seemed to wake up to this fact much more quickly than the videogame industry.

 

[Howling Din]

Women idealized in their appearance is not exclusive to games. Women have been judged by their appearance by far more extreme standards than men since the dawn of civilization. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing.
Consider this, if you have high expectations of someone, that means you think highly of them.

 

[Subscriptism]

Cue the masses claiming, "this isn't a problem, stop talking about it".

There are bigger problems, this doesn't need as much attention as it's getting.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

2nd point: I did not use the term entitled to dismiss an opinion, is not the point of all these discussions to say that people are or should be entitled to stronger female characters? If they feel they are not entitled then there is no problem. If someone says someone should provide them with something then that is entitlement.

No, that is not the case.

I don't recall anybody saying that they are entitled to stronger female characters. People have said that they would like this, but that is not the same as feeling entitled. For example: I might desire a supermodel girlfriend, but by no means does that mean I feel that a supermodel is obligated to be my girlfriend.

 

[Bashfluff]

2nd point: I did not use the term entitled to dismiss an opinion, is not the point of all these discussions to say that people are or should be entitled to stronger female characters? If they feel they are not entitled then there is no problem. If someone says someone should provide them with something then that is entitlement.

No, that is not the case.

I don't recall anybody saying that they are entitled to stronger female characters. People have said that they would like this, but that is not the same as feeling entitled. For example: I might desire a supermodel girlfriend, but by no means does that mean I feel that a supermodel is obligated to be my girlfriend.

If they're not, they should be. We should demand better from our female characters and how they're treated, because they deserve better, and so do we.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

How does the reverse not apply then? Why are men suddenly supposed to feel good about every game displaying idealized versions of their body?

I don't recall anybody making that argument.

You seem to be somewhat uncomfortable with this idea, even though men are generally portrayed as the heroes of videogames. So, maybe you can understand how women feel when they are portrayed not only as not-heroes, but simply as objects of desire with no agency of their own?

Don't you think they could feel just as bad and inferior in the wake of these displays of perfection that women are suddenly taught what men are supposed to be like?

I think you accidentally hit the nail on the head here. Women are more often than not presented as [strong]displays[/strong] in videogames, not as active characters. They tend to serve the purpose of eye-candy.

Meanwhile, most videogame protagonists are male, and they are the ones with power. You're not supposed to ogle them, you are supposed to pretend that you [em]are[/em] them.

Wouldn't it be easier/a better plan if every main character in video games and possibly movies would be fat neckbeards instead, so women lower their standards and start accepting inferior specimen over time?

How about simply doing what Jim suggests, and try to raise female characters to somewhere close to the quality of male characters, rather than just painting them purely as sex/romantic subjects?

How are men supposed to live up to those role models that they are taught to be more like?

They aren't. Men are generally taught that they can be whatever they want to be, and a pretty woman will support them through their troubles.

This is an obvious double standard for everyone not clouded by the stink of feminism and there's no arguing around it.

OK, good luck with that. Arguing that your argument isn't arguable isn't much of an argument.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

If they're not, they should be. We should demand better from our female characters and how they're treated, because they deserve better, and so do we.

Meh, I'm not sure that fictional characters deserve anything in particular, nor do we deserve to have fictional characters written in a particular way for us.

That said, better and more rounded fictional characters would be a nice thing to have in our fictional entertainment.

 

[Celador]

15 pages of people justifying their desires for big boobs and fears of emasculation.

Well done Jim!

 

[Aardvaarkman]

There are bigger problems, this doesn't need as much attention as it's getting.

So, what problems should we be paying attention to? And why are you wasting your time commenting on this thread, rather than dealing with these bigger problems?

 

[Celador]

So, what problems should we be paying attention to? And why are you wasting your time commenting on this thread, rather than dealing with these bigger problems?

Sometimes i think that theres a highly secretive society of misogynistic videogame players which sends out their agents exactly for this purpose - to divert attention elsewhere and derail threads into pointless demagogy about non-existant social studies and prove of unprovable.

 

[wolfyrik]

Cue the masses claiming, "this isn't a problem, stop talking about it".

Thankfully im not one of those however i will say "Lets talk about it but just not repeat ourselves with the same thing so that it doesnt become as much of a discussion and more of a pls-agree-with-me-footrace"

In the sense that, yeah i like that we're having the discussion i just dont like any discussion, discourse and debate to be onesided or to be basically all the people saying the same thing but formulated differently, thats not what debate is to me.

Please post the previous episode where Jim covered the claim of men being objectified-therefor-equal. Cos I missed that one, which is funny since I watch this show every week.

You don't seem to be aware that the nature of debate is to cover each point as it comes up and address each one. These videos on sexism in gaming are essentially a debate, with Jim addressing the main questions forwarded by the opposition. Since live debate isn't happening, post by post debate it has to be. It's also kind of unfair, unlikely and ludicrous to expect Jim to debate these issues with thousands of people at the same time.

You're not interested in addressing this issue? Fine. Don't take part. Go be an attention whore elsewhere.

Meanwhile the rest of us ARE interested in this debate and are very keen on the views of our net journalists. We want to know what people think about it and for many of us it's important because sexism in gaming is a real threat to the industry. Games are quickly becoming the horrendous sausage-fest we've been trying to prevent them being for the last 20 years. I like having female protagonists and I want gaming to be open to both sexes. Partly because I enjoy the fact that my girlfriend is a gamer, partly because I don't want gaming to go back to being seen as something only done by pervy teenage boys and 40 year old male virgins in basements.
For example, if it hadn't been for people like Jim, A:CM would have had an all-male cast. Making a bad game, reprihensable, given the source material.

I'm greatful and relieved that someone is covering these issues and I hope that Jim and others continue to address them. You don't like it? Tough.

 

[Ryan Minns]

Hey look, more people claiming to have the slightest grasp on what an entire gender that's billions strong want...

Why can't people grasp they do NOT represent an entire gender? Claiming you have the SLIGHTEST grasp on what men or women as a whole want is rather silly. You represent yourself and others like yourself at most... being a woman or a man doesn't mean you magically gain the ability to know what everyone else thinks

 

[Fiairflair]

As far as I'm concerned, videogames exist to provide a virtual fantasy world. Don't get upset because you don't belong in the target audience of the person providing the fantasy. As for sexual objectification, Roger Ebert sums it up pretty well in his "Hugh Hefner has been good for us" article:

"Nobody taught me to regard women as sex objects. I always did. Most men do. And truth to tell, most women regard men as sex objects. We regard many other aspects of another person, but sex is the elephant in the room. Evolution has hard-wired us that way. When we meet a new person, in some small recess of our minds we evaluate that person as a sex partner. We don't act on it, we don't dwell on it, but we do it. You know we do. And this process continues bravely until we are old and feeble."

Now please, stop being so goddamn sensitive.

Roger Ebert's confusion of sexuality, sexualisation and objectification offer no justification for telling people to stop objecting to things that matter. Jimquisition is not mandatory viewing. If the theme or the discussion it generates causes offence then the solution is obvious.

Hint: It isn't to tell people to be less sensitive.

Why do these things matter?

AFAIK they don't cause any demonstrable harm, and they can be ignored.

The objectification of men in video games (or lack-there-of) is important because it is cited as justification for ignoring the objectification of women in video games.
I'm starting to sound like a broken record player on these forms, but, since you ask, it matters because no man is an island. Ideas are proliferated by their distribution. If an artist or developer makes material that promotes a certain point of view (and their material is successful) that view spreads. It is important that discussion occurs on what ideas are promoted. Discussion is the mechanism by which individual views are tempered and improved, allowing for greater individual reason.

 

[wolfyrik]

I somehow thing you are overexaggerating the problem if you just compared skimpy armor in a digital medium to slavery.

When did I do that?

I was simply commenting on your interpretation of how various civil rights movements played out. Which was mostly inaccurate. You were the one who brought up such movements in relation to the videogame discussion, not me. I never mentioned skimpy armour at all. You directly stated that gay rights did not progress by people bitching and complaining. I simply disagreed with that specific comment.

Do you not consider gay rights and feminism on par with other civil rights?

None of the progress that has been made in these areas came about by people just shutting up and letting the majority put them in their place. They were hard-fought battles.

What I would give for a 'like' button right now.

 

[Bashfluff]

We can admit to the medium needing to change on the whole without saying that there's something wrong with enjoying a character that only exists for sexual stimulation. All characters are tools to make us feel some emotion or to stimulate us in some way. Jim brought up the habit of the industry to satisfy the male empowerment fantasy using muscular, badass protagonists. But you know what? There's no shame in that. We all go to games for different things. Fantasy is one of the base needs games satisfy. Exploration and discovery! An overwhelming sense of adventure. Falling in love with a story or characters. And sometimes, it's something as simple as a particular emotion.

The erotic is just another tool to make us feel something, to satisfy a basic need. It shouldn't be at the core of your game, but there's nothing wrong with it playing a part. Every tool has its place, and I wouldn't begrudge it that.

But like any tool, we have to know when not to use it. I remember watching an Extra Credits episode about stepping out behind fun. To paraphrase, "Games need to be able to be more than fun. It's not that fun is bad, but that games have more to offer than fun. And the fun games will be even more fun for that."

You people sure do do seem to start sounding like broken records.

Again:
1) Show me these games, better yet show me statistical studies to how many percent of games this applies to, I see people throwing around numbers like "90%" and similar that are simply way off the charts and not based on any reality whatsoever.
I've provided a metric above that you people could use to prove your point. Take the last ~100 Releases off of any given platform and count how many of them contain "objectified" female characters. Alternatively take the releases of the entire year and do the same.

There is no reason to use your metric that is a poor standard of evidence when you insist of evidence of the highest caliber from us. It's useless. This doesn't account for what type of games get published on steam as opposed to other consoles, and the prominence of each game. This...one to one ratio of determining the problem is lackluster at best. If you were to take all of the best selling games from the last three or four years, and look at the "objectification" or whatever else in those, look at the marketing, look at all games that game out and look how there was "objectification" in those so that we might have some more data, then we're getting somewhere.

As it stands, your metric is useless.

At most you could prove that there was a overrepresentation of certain character types in certain parts of the industry.

Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. This over-representation of "character types" where women are concerned is the problem. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot insist that the problem I laid out only exists 5-10% of the time, then claim it is, in fact, overrespresenting the ladies.

2) Who is this hurting? Why should this change? Is there any real world example where this has led to anyone being harmed (even a single one)? No offense, but I couldn't give two shits about what "Jim Sterling", "John Walker" and "Jason Schreier" have to say, no matter how often they repeat themselves, how sanctimonious they sound and not even collectively. They don't speak for me or likely the majority of the gaming population or the market results would look rather different.

Because we generally don't want to alienate women, and the way women have been designed can make women feel like this wasn't something made for them. It's a sentiment I understand completely as a gay guy. If you read my post, however, instead of skimming a few parts, you'd know I addressed this too. Gaming is better for being more diverse, for having a variety of different types of games made from people with different perspectives and ideas on character. That doesn't mean these things have to go away, or even should.

People making new games that don't pander to those things won't hurt us one bit.

And to be honest, it makes us seem backward. It's embarrassing to me when my state is so intolerant of homosexuals. Mostly because I'm one, but hey. More civilized places look down on us and they laugh, you know? Because this isn't how enlightened people act. This isn't how intelligent, reasonable people behave. Just as most gay men aren't physically harmed by bullying past adulthood, I do not believe women are physically hurt.

But no one claimed they were being hurt. Not even close. They're claiming it's a game design system that's exclusionary and degrading. It's not that women can't be sexualised. It's that it's all they can be. It's what's highlighted about most girl characters in modern gaming--sex appeal. And that's some backwards ass thinking going on. Do we ignore every real problem because no one is being physically hurt?

Again, I want studies or at least anyone qualified giving statements.

You're not qualified. Why are you speaking? Rational argumentation combined with physical evidence, partner. All you need is a working brain.

When FOX News claimed that Bulletstorm caused rape, as retarded as that might sound they at least had some sort of studies and opinions of child psychologists and similar to show on the topic, even if they skewed the quotations for emphasis: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/08/bulletstorm-worst-game-kids/
Which was then lengthily debunked by the same publications that throw around baseless accusations without even that very basic of argumentation based on the "feelings" of a few "gaming journalists".
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/21/bulletstorm-gate-fox-news-responds/

So you respect shitty journalism that was solely created to create a false image of gaming? Forged evidence and twisted quotes deserve commending? That's...something else.

3) Does the depiction of fantastical characters have any measureable influence on the players of such a game. Again, numbers, studies, expert opinions. How is this any different than the argument that violent videogames cause violent tendencies in players, that has now often enough been disproven?

I will tell you how it's different! That argument has actually been made. Your argument has not. No one is arguing the influence these types of games have on players.

4) What do you propose the "solution" for this should be? Penny Arcade brought up an interesting point: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/04/24/character-selection

I already gave it, but since you didn't really read my post and just had a knee jerk reaction, I'll sum it up. Support the idea of advocates in the community to make new, interesting, different games, which helps both groups. There's nothing wrong with the titty games. It's just getting a little stale and we need new games that move beyond that.

Till anyone provides anything of the likes (especially concrete studies that prove any negative impact on anyone, actual opinion polls of large cross-sections of gamers and some expert opinions of psychologists and the likes) it will boil down to a discussion of taste with baseless claims and borderline stupid accusations without much, if any merit.

Why do you need extensive research to show you what you should be able to figure out intrinsically. If there's a pattern of dehumanizing objectification going on for all of your gender in an industry, that gender is going to feel excluded, left out. It's a very simple idea that doesn't take a lot of thinking to come up with.

And the best you'll get is ridicule because the basis of the argument seems rather inane for most rational thinking people.
If you want anyone to take these sorts of arguments seriously outside of the small circle of the initiated you better deliver something more concrete than "muh feelings" to argue with.

We have. You have not. And even if we did only have "muh feelings" and not something else, you'd never know it. You never bothered to read and understand the arguments in front of you. You just wanted to brand the people who disagreed with you as unintelligent, as people who were putting forth stupid arguments that no one was actually making. In short, you just put forward a bunch of strawmen and then tried to draw yourself up above your opposition to make yourself seem better than us.

And you know, we don't need that poisoning an already sensitive topic.

 

[wolfyrik]

So what you're saying is, it does happen, but people shouldn't complain because it doesn't happen often?

Fuck, I hope you're never on a jury involving a sexual assault.

 

[sweetylnumb]

As far as I'm concerned, videogames exist to provide a virtual fantasy world. Don't get upset because you don't belong in the target audience of the person providing the fantasy. As for sexual objectification, Roger Ebert sums it up pretty well in his "Hugh Hefner has been good for us" article:

"Nobody taught me to regard women as sex objects. I always did. Most men do. And truth to tell, most women regard men as sex objects. We regard many other aspects of another person, but sex is the elephant in the room. Evolution has hard-wired us that way. When we meet a new person, in some small recess of our minds we evaluate that person as a sex partner. We don't act on it, we don't dwell on it, but we do it. You know we do. And this process continues bravely until we are old and feeble."

Now please, stop being so goddamn sensitive.

I hope your wrong. I really hope so. Otherwise anyone who doesn't stand up on their tits or dicks is fucked. Yay.

 

[HappyRat]

Because I'm a gamer and I have been for a long time. I want to experience the fun of the gameplay without having to sit in a stripclub to do it...I also want games where I feel empowered. I don't think that's so bad.

Is someone stopping you from this? As you mentioned, you're buying Saints Row IV over GTA5 because you can make a female character. I don't think anyone, teenage boys included bother to buy Dead or Alive to feel 'empowered'. You argue as though you are forced to buy and play all games ever made. In truth, there is a heap of games with female potential for protagonists (Bethesda anything, Saints Row), are gender neutral, and/or a few with a decent female lead. Certainly plenty with female supporting characters or NPCs who are not overtly sexualized. You have the breadth of the game industry at your disposal without confronting this issues. As did Jim, which is why he relied so much on one game to make his point and only mentioned or showed four overall.

You don't have to go to the stripclub, you don't have to buy Duke Nukem. You have that purchasing power. Which leads to...

The point is they are portraying women poorly and as a female gamer I don't like playing those portrayals. So I'm asking games developers to consider that.

Why is that so bad.

That in itself is not. They broaden their market base by not offending you with Titty McHugebounce in Skyrim certainly, but at the same stroke, I'd expect Titty McHugebounce in Duke Nukem more than Skyrim. Why should a developer making a game heavily implied to have overt sexualization of females stop doing so to prevent offending someone who wouldn't be a customer anyway? If they toned down the jiggle physics in a Dead or Alive sequel, you wouldn't suddenly buy it with that bad taste still in your mouth.

So if you vote with your wallet, and others vote with their wallets, and you claim it's still a significant problem, this implies a means of stopping it beyond your own purchasing power. Censorship. Maybe not like top down government type censorship, but even industry censorship or self-censorship is still censorship.

That is what is so bad. We are wary as gamers about that because it is a relevant issue that threatens our hobby moreso than a few shitty developers making DD cup gals. That is what lurks that one babystep beyond 'this is wrong' into the territory of 'someone should do something'. Usually that someone is not nuanced, and that something is big, broad-stroked and ugly.

I'm not saying you have to enjoy female objectification or ridiculous sexualization in games. By all means, boycott publishers, don't spend a dime on those games, and the like. Accept though that games are a form of media, and this kind of stuff happens everywhere in the media. Games are suffering from this merely because games are not an exception. Just because you like them more doesn't make any difference in that regard.

So you don't think anorexia is more prevalent in western society because of how women are portrayed in the media? That's strange because I think everyone else accepts that as a fact.

Media affects the way we think whether we like it or not. Maybe not to the extremes that are sometimes suggested but it scrapes away at us.

Anorexia is more prevalent in the West because the places that have mass media like magazines and modern games have enough food to invent something as silly as Anorexia. Find me an Anorexic sub-Sahara African. Seriously.

Also, while it is completely true media influences us, this is an excellent case in point (much like people who say FPSs cause mass killings) that it probably doesn't do so too well. Only 0.3 to 1% of women (and .1% of men) are affected by it in developed countries. The same media, bombarding us all, and only three to ten women per thousand. That's even assuming all three to ten are influenced solely by media, which is most likely wrong. Anorexia has a number of biological, sociological and psychological causes. It's actually rather complex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_nervosa

The societal argument doesn't make much sense, partly because strong correlations to any real phenomena are almost impossible to find or identify, and because the media has all but always existed. It's not an emergent new problem. Sexualized, objectified women in games are based off tropes and practices from television and comics, which are based off tropes and practices from books, which are based off tropes and practices of mythic oral tradition until you got all the way back to the Venus of Willendorf with gravid huge breasts, lack of a face and a pregnant belly.

We can buck the trend, both overall and in our little corner of the media, but it won't go fully away, not without coming down hard and stifling the artistic rights of the entire spectrum of gaming.

That should be the argument, not a silly game of 'who is objectified more', or justifications for Kratos's pecs.