Men in Gaming

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

Probably one of the reasons I appreciated Heavy Rain was the characterisation of the main protagonist Ethan Mars. I thought he was a fairly convincing example of a damaged character struggling against adversity in an attempt to protect his son. Probably one of the most nuanced male characters I can think of.

 

[Maximum Bert]

As an interactive medium, story is second to experience. Having a decent story with shitty gameplay is awfully different from having decent gameplay with a shitty story.

I agree with the first part for me games are all about the experience but to a large extent so are (story) books and Filma and any other type of entertainment.

I am not sure if you are equating gameplay to experience but I disagree if that is the case the experience is the whole package some lean more on gameplay some more on story some have a mix.

Just as a quick example look at Super Mario Bros 3 not really a good story there but I think the gameplay is pretty good with well designed levels and tight controls. Now on the other end we have stuff like Planescape Torment which has a great story and characters but the gameplay well I dont think too many would disagree if I said its not that good.

So which one offers the better experience? I dont think we would have a unanimous decision on the matter or anything close.

I would say in most games your player character is a badass whether they are a man, woman or anthromorph whatever the only time you fail is if the game says nope you aint winning here or you give up.

 

[lacktheknack]

Big boys cry... they cry bigger tears than everyone else...

If you want men to show emotions in gaming, though, you have to look to horror games and point-n-click adventure.

Silent Hills 1, 2 and 3 all had men come dangerously close to crying, and they were definitely having feels.

<youtube=YEuNySeWQy0>

You're now full of feels.

And there's also games like Myst (while man-crying is rare, Myst III still has Brad Dourif being violently sad)... and... others.

...Geez, this is hard. D:

 

[JimB]

Cloud Strife. Yeah, yeah, he has a big sword. He's also a loser so devoted to pretending to be someone who doesn't suck that he nearly destroyed the world, and he got his best friend killed. He might weep at some point; I can't recall for sure, but I feel like it happens.

 

[Psychobabble]

So ... I'm not sure what we are discussing here. Is it cliche that men don't cry in games yet women do? Should game makers be trying to break the stereotype with strong heartless female characters and fragile, emotional male characters? Does this quandary really have nothing to do with gender parity, and everything to do with video game characters being nothing better than a strung together group of soulless stereotypes? Should we be looking into this issue as a male vs female thing, or as a stop with the inept script writing thing?

 

[briankoontz]

We need a complete rethinking of gaming. For one, stop weaponizing the main character, marking progress by how much more competent he gets at murder. Let's not follow in the footsteps of Ted Bundy (xp gains for seduction, rape, and murder), Anders Breivik (proficiently murdering liberal "monsters") or Hitler (level 50 as a result of millions of "monsters" killed, extensive looting of the dead accomplished).

Stop being insecure about your masculinity. There's no need to kill thousands or millions of "bad guys" or "monsters" in a game in order to prove yourself. If you're so eager to prove you're a man then do something good for the loved ones in your life. "Saving the world" in a video game isn't having any effect on the world.

Games should be like other forms of art, in that their value is in what they teach us about the world we live in and about each other. Murder is ongoing right now in the world, 50,000 people die each day due to easily preventable starvation and disease (murdered by the global economic system), so clearly murder needs to have a place in artistic mediums, and there's nothing wrong with playing as a mass murderer in a video game. But human existence is vast, varied, there are many important things going on, and murder however important is merely a small part of human life. So it's simply wrong for it to play such a key role in the video game industry.

Video game after video game teaches us that the world is filled with monsters, bad guys, whose job is to offer token resistance prior to being murdered by the player through a proxy with the ability to time travel even after death (the reload function) and access to human intelligence and adaptability. Is that really such a good lesson for us to learn? Is romanticizing ourselves into heroes, empowering ourselves into superheroes while demonizing the rest of the world into monsters or bad guys, kicking their asses, taking names, and asking questions never, such a tremendously good idea that it deserves to be a large majority of the industry?

Should we hide behind the all-encompassing answer of "fun", ignoring everything else? Should we hide behind our supposed fantasy of being super-powered killers, saving the world from the bad guys, one corpse at a time?

 

[the December King]

I have no problem with men in gaming. I'm just sick of all these fake gamer guys co-opting it.

the writer's gripe about Ellie crying after murdering a rapist the moment that Joel appears and thought to myself:

The complaint is that she's constantly a badass until story constraints require her to be emotionally fragile and for a dude to fix her emotional boo-boo. Everything I've seen about the game paints this as accurate, and yet people constantly seem to misrepresent the author of that list's complaint. But then, I'm not sure I expected honest with an opening like "Hur dur Feminism, Hur Dur Anita Sarkeesian. Hur Dur Castrate all living males" even in jest.

It's funny how murdering a violent rapist and surviving makes her emotionally fragile, isn't it? I see it as more of a failure to depict plausible character development through gameplay that encourages combat, especially in the case of male characters. And as to the presence of Joel, everyone should have someone to help them deal with such life-shattering boo- boos, in my opinion- again, I think that story telling in an inherently violent game structure still has a way to go.

Is this an Alpha/Beta thing, I wonder? Like, these hulking silent protagonist men that are killing machines are caricatures of the Alpha male, and so naturally Beta males, or just people who associate more with the Beta male identity and have been led to believe that they are lesser men because of it, see this as the way Alpha males act in the face of horrible violence or combat, and make the escapism all the more fantastic. On the other hand, the popular idea of the Alpha Female isn't necessarily the same as the Alpha Male- she could be more aggressive and no-nonsense, but still display emotions.

Anywho, these are just my thoughts!

 

[the December King]

And I agree to an extent but I still reckon we can try to work harder, put men in more physically painful and even humiliating positions and break the stupid sacred seal of masculinity that's been acting as a blockade for potentially interesting stories for too damn long now.

And this is the crux of it, I think. For me, I want to escape my life of emasculated servitude to society and complacency. For just an hour or two, I don't want to be a victim, and I certainly don't want to be humiliated- even if it's just a persona that I'm playing out in a game.

Do I want to be a growly white tough guy? Not necessarily, it has been done to death. Do I want to be a badass warrior woman? No, not really, that's just me. But I think that your idea of breaking that seal is a great idea where deep narratives are concerned- it just might be hard to make happen in the AAA first person shooter/action genre, because these elements often inhibit the freedom and escapism that people are looking for.

Just my thoughts!

 

[deathbydeath]

So yeah, some non-badass male characters would be nice. Personally I've always wanted to play an unapologetic coward. Could fit well with a stealth game.

Garrett, maybe? I dunno; he's a weird middle ground.

On another note, I'm curious as to how Max Payne would fit in here. If we're ignoring the third game (as we should) and focusing largely on the second (as again we should), then we have a character that frequently admits weakness and pain, but never actually cries. I kinda want to dissect this more, but I fear for a derail.

 

[skywolfblue]

You don't really see men cry a lot in games. And that's not something men can relate to more and more these days. I am reminded of Moviebob's video about GI Joe, how for his grandfather he was a real guy who did some of the same stuff he did, for his father it was a realistic guy with the real tools to do real things, and for him it was a bunch of made up guys who fought made up villains. The model of man in video games is one of a few tropes:

Fatherly badass
Young badass

The thing is that any guy who does the right thing and fights off the bad guys comes off as a bit of a badass. So I'm ok with badasses.

Two examples I'd point two are Alan Wake and Isaac Clarke.

Alan Wake is a psychologically messed up, arrogant, pretentious writer. He has flaws through and through, and the story doesn't shy away from showing them. But he cares for his friend and loves his wife.

In Dead Space 2 Isaac isn't a badass super-marine, he's just an engineer trying to fend for his life and is constantly haunted by the memories of his dead girlfriend.

Spoiler: He does cry

When they find the Gunship and Isaac forces Ellie to leave, when he sits down you can tell by his face he's crying without tears. That's one of the most powerful moments of the whole game.

 

[Muspelheim]

I'm in agreement. It's a bit of a shame that we've still got this flat and constraining idea of what a male character should be like. Certainly, it's not at all a problem exclusive to gaming. But being a young, interesting medium with many different ways to say something, gaming ought to be the best place to start experimenting with non-standard character designs.

Hopefully, this will get better with time, and we'll get characters that are allowed to grow. While AAA-studios might be tempted to put characters in emotional lockdown for focus group appeal's sake, this gives plenty of room for the more pioneering indie scene to bloom.

"Men don't cry" isn't a videogame trope, it's a real life trope.

The last 10,000 years or so men have been expected to put emotions aside.

Well, the last 200 years or so of men, anyway. Crying was required of a true Baroque gentleman who believed in what he wanted to have said. Those roles have always been subject to change over the years.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well, a lot of men cry in JRPGs...Of course, they're often taken to the other extreme of being too emotional. Some characters are well-written, but others...yeah.

Luke fon Fabre from Tales of the Abyss has a meltdown when he first sees a person killed (by Jade I think), then suffers a bigger meltdown when he himself is forced to kill the first time, and then an even bigger meltdown after Akzeriuth weighs on his concience. I don't remember if he cries or not, but these moments of fear and weakness, I found, were excellently written into a very well developed character arc.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

"Men don't cry" isn't a videogame trope, it's a real life trope.

The last 10,000 years or so men have been expected to put emotions aside.

Actually that may not be true. Tears used to be a sign of manliness...apparently.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19780_5-gender-stereotypes-that-used-to-be-exact-opposite.html#ixzz2Ctbs29Oa

I find it hard to believe that in the societies named it was actually considered manly. It doesn't look like the most trustworthy source when it comes to history either.

However, not considering it manly doesn't mean that it never happened (obviously) or that people didn't write about it.

Perhaps it is looked upon as is today, that men are allowed to cry when something truly horrible happens.

Men used to be allowed and even expected to weep in many societies throughout history. There are hundreds of references to weeping men in the Latin and Greek texts from the pre-Empire and post-Empire periods. Tales of Chivalry from a much more recent historical period - from France and England I've read myself, other languages I can't say but for my teacher's word on the subject - have knights and kings weeping openly before each other and their people when they are moved by some great act of heroism or something tragic. Historically, the ability to display the possession of a depth of emotion (and yet have mastery of that emotional depth in that you did not fly off on tangents or hysterics, but only responded when a situation truly merited a response) was considered a mark of manhood in many Western cultures as well as Eastern cultures. It was not thought that men could not have emotion (as the trend was in the last century or so) but that they were masters of their emotions, not the other way around (whereas women were considered to be less than masters of their emotions and more ruled by them). So it was OK for men to display all the spectrum of emotion, so long as they did so at appropriate times and in the appropriate measure (as set by the societal norms for their gender and their culture setting).

"Crying" is not a "manly thing" these days - I had a history teacher to tried to peg the time this may have changed for the Western world at least, and he put it in the interwar period - between WWI and WWII something seems to have culturally shifted with all the focus on the death of so many and the gap between the men who had served in the war vs. those who hadn't and women and an importance of that being the most promising lead, for his doctoral thesis anyway.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Well, a lot of men cry in JRPGs...Of course, they're often taken to the other extreme of being too emotional. Some characters are well-written, but others...yeah.

Luke fon Fabre from Tales of the Abyss has a meltdown when he first sees a person killed (by Jade I think), then suffers a bigger meltdown when he himself is forced to kill the first time, and then an even bigger meltdown after Akzeriuth weighs on his concience. I don't remember if he cries or not, but these moments of fear and weakness, I found, were excellently written into a very well developed character arc.

Damn it! You just had to go into that as Tales of the Abyss finally reached the top three in my "To Finally Play" list...(OK, I actually didn't mind the spoiler that much)

Anyways...Like I said, I think emotional breakdowns are very good in certain character arcs. In fact, I generally enjoy seeing the weaker side of a character. My comment about JRPG characters being taken too far was sort of a way of making a joke out of the "angst-driven suicidal teen" stereotype that people often criticize the genre for, and I also wanted to point out that we shouldn't take giving male characters more complexity too far. Yes, they are often too one-dimensional right now, but we don't want another Samus Aran* on our hands either (assuming you didn't like her character in Other M).

*Yes, I know Samus isn't a guy, but the same logic still applies.

 

[Thr33X]

HOWEVER the fact still remains Lara Croft was being reinvented specifically to be a hero for a new age and also a hero for the growing female audience to identify with and look up to. With that in mind, especially when she stands alongside other badass manly heroes, perhaps it would have been better if the trailer had done a better job of conveying Lara as a badass warrior, killing baddies, taking names and blowing shit up while doing deft defying leaps and exploring tombs. That's the character and the angle to go for and something I suspect a pretty starved female audience would want to see. A kickass heroine doing kickass things.
Instead the trailer decided to appeal to the innate male desire to protect the helpless female and showcased her vulnerability in a gratutious and dare I say even kind of exploitative manner and despite how much I WANTED TO LIKE THAT GAME for a long time the marketing campaign looked a little bit questionable to say the least.

I read your entire post word for word, but I wanted to zero in on this point. There was a time when Lara Croft was EXACTLY what you explain here, pure unapologetic bad-assery...from the 1st Tomb Raider until the reboot. She wasn't even a "sex doll" as you put it, even then her attire was pretty practical for someone who's occupation involves lots of athletic feats as she does. The problem though is that soon enough the same type of people who complain about the role of females in games today pegged her as the "man with boobs" label...that she wasn't genuine and if it were a man in her spot nobody would know the difference. The point I'm trying to make here is that someone's always gonna cry foul no matter what is done, what changes are made and what direction is taken towards character development in games. So what's a design team to do except for stick to their vision and who cares what naysayers think...do it for the people who are going to enjoy the game for what it is.

 

[Weaver]

I was reading the latest article from cracked that stirred this month's sexism thread (The one from last month being mine I think.)

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Sorry, I couldn't read past this part.
Sexisim thread, as in singular? We have like 7 a day; not one a month.

Or did you mean on the cracked forums?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well, a lot of men cry in JRPGs...Of course, they're often taken to the other extreme of being too emotional. Some characters are well-written, but others...yeah.

Luke fon Fabre from Tales of the Abyss has a meltdown when he first sees a person killed (by Jade I think), then suffers a bigger meltdown when he himself is forced to kill the first time, and then an even bigger meltdown after Akzeriuth weighs on his concience. I don't remember if he cries or not, but these moments of fear and weakness, I found, were excellently written into a very well developed character arc.

Damn it! You just had to go into that as Tales of the Abyss finally reached the top three in my "To Finally Play" list...(OK, I actually didn't mind the spoiler that much)

Sorry! I promise they're not much of a spoiler, that stuff happens pretty early in the game, while you're still adding characters to the party. The Akzeriuth thing... well, there's a major plot point involving Akzeriuth. Promise it'll be just as shocking.
(now play the damn game, it's AWESOME)

 

[Bad Jim]

One of my all time favorite games, Catherine, had Vincent who was anything but a badass or a hero. He's a nervous coward and the game is all about him!

I am struggling to come up with other examples.

Lester the Unlikely perhaps?

Or maybe even QWOP. Even if you do master the controls, the fastest anyone has made him run 100 metres and jump 1 hurdle is still over a minute. You'd have to run about five times faster to ever qualify for the real Olympics.

I can't think of any good games though. Perhaps that's a sign that it isn't a great idea.