bananafishtoday said:
I think a better analogy would be if you were unaware that "bank" could denote the shore of a river, and when I pointed that out, you explained that wasn't what you meant and went on to state that my drawing that conclusion was invalid or unreasonable.
There are two sides to this. On the one hand, if you called me later complaining that I wasn't at the riverbank, I wouldn't be justified in saying "
Why on
Earth would you think I was talking about the river?" because the ambiguity is clearly present. On the other hand, you wouldn't be justified in saying that I'd
really meant the riverbank, and it was my fault for not showing up there.
Both are logical leaps that sort of shift blame onto the other party, when really, a communications breakdown is usually a two-party error. It's mostly the sender's fault for not being clear, but it's partly the recipient's fault for not considering the sender's perspective. That's why it's really important that the sender's perspective not just get thrown out on the basis that intent doesn't matter.
I'm reminded of that blog post by the lead writer of DA3 on female perspectives (link [http://dgaider.tumblr.com/post/36214913229/the-female-perspective-in-game-development]):
I've read that blog post and I sort of know what you're saying. I guess what I'm saying is that if it'd never been pointed out, and Bioware had gone ahead with the offending material in DA3, and someone had been offended, it would be unfair to the writers if they were told that it
didn't matter that they were unaware the material was offensive. In that scenario, you can only blame the writers for ignorance, not sexism. They're obviously not sexist - as soon as it was pointed out, they couldn't cut it fast enough. Should we blame them for just being unaware?
It's often very difficult to tell what will or won't upset other people. This particular potentially offensive element that Gaider talks about was nipped in the bud, but as this very thread shows, people can get upset about extremely innocuous material. You can't expect the writers to be prescient.
Anyway, it's not so much holding the recipient's perspective over that of the sender as it is recognizing that the sender is the one crafting the message, and thus the responsibility of crafting an unambiguous message falls on them. (This is exacerbated by the fact that content creation has one-to-many rather than one-to-one correspondence. If a sender has a specific intent, they need to recognize that multiple interpretations are possible and tailor their messages accordingly.) Some people will always interpret things differently. But if a large group of people draw a conclusion you didn't intend, it's your responsibility to learn enough about their perspective to make an informed judgement as to whether it's "Well, that's just your opinion" vs. "Y'know, I never looked at it that way."
I actually disagree here. If a sender has to craft a one-to-many message, that dramatically increases the risk of misinterpretation because he can't possibly account for the reactions of every recipient. I think that actually
lessens his responsibility. You're perfectly correct in saying that the more recipients there are, the more interpretations are possible, but I think expecting a writer to somehow craft a message to account for
all of those myriad possible interpretations in a way that will offend absolutely no-one is aiming a little high.
I sometimes think that the reason there are so many kerfuffles like this one is because we expect writers to know ahead of time that so-and-so might offend someone, when really they
don't know if something is going to be offensive until it's offended someone. The gaming media kind of performs this logical backflip where they say "You should have known this was offensive!" and then turn around and say "It doesn't matter if you don't think it's offensive, it offended someone!"
I don't think writers should just blaze forward heedless of their audience's concerns. I think that Bioware post you linked is a great example of how to filter out potentially offensive ideas. In that case, it was as simple as having a woman around to point out something that would only offend a woman. But I also think that video game writers are never going to catch
every offensive message. And if one slips through, we shouldn't react as if the writers intended to offend people while simultaneously telling the writers that it doesn't matter that they didn't intend to offend anybody. (I'm not saying that's what you were doing! :/ It's just the specific type of double bind I often see writers put in these kinds of situations.) Ideally, the fact that no offence was intended should clear up the offence that was caused.
Anyway. I've basically made my point. Thanks for responding all gentleman-like.
