People freak out over Gamespot GTA V review

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I don't get what gamers are pissed about. Scores just happen to vary, some are 9, some are 9.5, others blindly go in with a 10.

It injected personal bias into a review that didn't need to be there.

Its like saying I give a film with George Clooney in it a 9/10 instead of a 10 out of 10 because he's a democrat.

I'm sorry, the story is now off limits? Look, if a developer gets lazy in the portrayal of a certain group then why isn't it okay to call them out on it? 95% of that review covered the game as a whole and the reviewer can't bring up that they found something tasteless in a couple of paragraphs? Good lord. Ebert didn't have to put up with this shit. The protagonist not being sympathetic enough or sexist/racist portrayals of groups are common criticisms in movie reviews. Michael Bay has gotten a lot of heat for his portrayals of black people in his films. Is bringing that up in a Transformers review too subjective?

Sorry but having all the women be wives of main characters or feminists (which isn't even true) isn't sexist, and it certainly isn't tasteless. Try again.

I don't have to. The reviewer found it tasteless so she put it in her review. No explanation required.

 

[Sal-999]

zenn3k
I made an account just to reply to you. You are embarrassing yourself. You have no idea what youre talking about. Satire is using exaggerated to sterotyped people or topics- and USING THAT EXAGGERATION TO MAKE A POINT.

90% of the stereotypes and parody and making-fun-of IS satire. And Its mostly done well. When you make fun of, stereotype or exaggerated a group with no intention of making a point but just because 'lol', its not satire. Its plain old sexism/racism/whatever.

I suspect the poster knows GTA is based on satire, but you are just failing to grasp that their portaryl ofwomen just doesnt happen to be satire. How difficult is that to understand? As a whole, women have no personalities at all to even exaggerate. Women in this world are not important, worthy or human enough to have personality and to not be objects. Anything thats important involves men-- that idea being presented (and its not only rockstar, its 99% of games and 90% of media) is very dangerous and demeaning.

But I digress. Is it enough to dock a point? Certainly its enough to dock *something* considering a) reviews are subjective b) a game that places a big stake in its social commentary has to have its story content reviewed c) sterotypes without satirical intent is an example of a small bit of bad writing. only in this one area, a small thing that has little impact on everything else. but its still an area of non-perfection, which means it not a ten.

Something likr 9 point something.

I think a whole point is a lot. A whole point for a gameplay design fail, sure, but for a minor writing falw, no. half a point, just maybe.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So? That's begging the question of why is that bad, why do they need to be present in this story as "named characters"?

Why do men have to be present in works of fictional media as named characters?

And it is never informed by reality, or historical setting and they are never based off real world characters or events or other works.

You might have missed the part where us women exist in real life too. In fact, we make up about 50% of the human population. This is pretty much a non-issue though since it rarely applies to computer games.

Do you honestly believe that? Like do you really think that a story with no strong/significant female characters in it is automatically bad?

Because I can think of some great examples that prove you wrong.

Nice strawman. Bad writing does not automatically mean a bad work of fiction and particularly not bad games. A story can be really good and still have signs of bad writing, such as lack of diversity in the main cast.

 

[Yuuki]

1) It's a GTA game
2) Reviewer is female

1 + 2 = claims of misogyny/sexism were almost guaranteed to pop up in the review.
So why are people going ape-shit over it? It's simply her criticism/opinion, and she is only one reviewer. She could claim disliking how the the GTA cars are made out of metal instead of marshmallow...and again, that would be perfectly fine because it's simply be her criticism/opinion.
Game reviewers get paid to do that.

Nice strawman. Bad writing does not automatically mean a bad work of fiction and particularly not bad games. A story can be really good and still have signs of bad writing, such as lack of diversity in the main cast.

So a story (no matter how good) can't possibly be free of "signs of bad writing" unless it has a perfect representation of all genders. Interesting.

I feel, however, if a show like Game of Thrones can have strong female characters, despite being set in a regressive setting equivalent to Medieval Europe

From whatever little I've seen of Game Of Thrones, all the "strong" female characters (with the exception of that insanely huge one) gained their "strength" by relying on the loyalty of their male guards/friends/protectors to follow their orders/wishes, keep them safe, fight/kill for them, etc. Arya is cute, but Jon's the true badass

It's not that hard. It literally only takes one most times.

That's...not really how art works. Nothing should be arbitrary.

It's less "Needs more Buffy and GURL POWAH!" and more just wondering why many writers' interest in women doesn't extend past pandering stereotypes.

Maybe because most development teams look like this:

Spoiler

And most of their audience looks like this:

Spoiler

I dunno, just a guess from me. There are obviously tons of games that have great female characters, but I'm simply attempting to answer your question of "why many writers".

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I still don't know why we care about reviewers' opinions. I watch Zero P for giggles, not because I take it seriously. It's more of a stand-up act with overly elaborate metaphors than actual criticism. I read Ebert's reviews because I like the way he writes them, not because I agree with him (or want to).

 

[stereotype]

I signed up here just to say that anyone who thinks the GTA games actually convey a sexist/racist message, anyone who doesn't notice the *massive* satire which becomes obvious at the latest when you turn on the radio or TV, is completely thick and should just stop trying to interpret or review anything.

Have a good day.

 

[deloftie]

OK. Give me a few examples of organized crime rings being busted and how many women were among the arrested as well as what they were charged with.

You say that as if I can't just type "Female mobsters" into Google and get back 2 million hits.

Here is just a few returned links

http://www.thelisticles.net/people-and-politics/top-ten-gangster-females-of-the-world/
http://elitedaily.com/slideshows/baddest-female-gangsters-time/
http://newsone.com/1451065/top-5-most-notorious-female-gangsters-of-all-time/

You want to explain to me why Rockstar wouldn't have been able to write any of these complicated characters into the story?

 

[shootthebandit]

It doesn't need to have them if they aren't relevant to the story.

In a game the size of GTA V, with such a large cast of characters, you really need to ask yourself if more characters couldn't have been women though. The problem with your statement is that it is essentially not an argument, because the story is written by the writers and so they determine what is relevant to their story. Calling them out on not making women more relevant to the story is the entire point.

And now we're getting into quotas and the question of why does there even need to be women in it?

Edit: I should point out that I've barely played the game but I have come across women, just saying that there are movies and games that have little to no women in them and no need either so I'm speaking in a general sense.

A good example would br reservoir dogs. A movie with an all male cast, one of the most psychotic characters with a similar mentality to the guys in GTA and a torture scene far worse than the one in GTA 5. Yet reservoir dogs is massively critically acclaimed and GTA is criticised for the same things