Poll: Videogames and Women

[Farseer Lolotea]

That was an alright episode. And predictably the comments are full of "feminist bitches amirite?" responses, which is exactly the problem. Huge swathes of the gamer population aren't just unconcerned, they're incapable of considering the problem even when challenged.

Yeah, that's about the size of it. Criticize the game, and you'd best have your bingo card [http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/?p=66] on hand. (And maybe a link to Derailing for Dummies [http://derailingfordummies.com/], while you're at it.)

Also, you've gotta wonder how many of those guys actually bothered to watch the video.

Really though, If i'd improve any "Equality" thing in games it would be fat people. I want to see more fat people in games, just chilling out or as characters, And I mean FAT not "300 pounds but 80% is muscle"; Jelly rolls and visible odor.

I'm all for the addition of more body types...but how, exactly, would equating weight with poor hygiene be any sort of step forward?

I'm just sad my boobies aren't as shiny as the ones in soul calibur now :'<

Tbh there are far more games that are better than the fighting games and that single screenshot shows mass effect in a bad light when it's got multiple strong female characters in it.

Agreed.

For some reason, I'm reminded of a recent debate on the WoW forums. Someone said something about the portrayal of women (I think she was focusing excessively on chainmail bikinis) in the game; someone came back with "Rift treats women worse!"

I actually found that rather amusing: While Rift does seem to have more chainmail bikinis, it's also got a greater ratio of stand-out female characters and less "teasy" animations. (Or maybe it's just that I almost exclusively play bahmi women, who are Proud Warrior Race Girls and look the part even in chainmail bikinis.)

Female characters are sexual fantasies, male characters are power fantasies so there is room for better characters all around.

As my husband would put it: men the fanboys want to be, women the fanboys want to do.

 

[AyreonMaiden]

Eh, tolerable.

The industry could use better female characters (insert the usual Jade, Alyx, blah blah blah) but I'd be lying if I said I don't also value* a hot piece of ass dressed in slutty armor or skin tight nothing every now and then. I'm honest like that. So eh. Tolerable. Room for improvement, but there's also room for both.

*HAHAHA JUST KIDDING I DON'T VALUE WOMEN AT ALL BECAUSE I HAVE MANLY URGES AND I ADMIT TO THEM.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Most male characters were all meat and no personality for a long time, with a few exceptions. Even today there are a lot of dumb muscular white male characters in games. So it's gonna take some time before we start seeing good female characters more often than boob carriers.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Yeah, I'm constantly surprised at how terrible the community is for multiplayer games. You could make a very good case that the way videogames portray women has something to do with it, but I think that those are independent problems. After all, teh haloz tends to have unusually low sexism (gratuitous Cortana shots aside), and that community is famous for being immature about this issue.

 

[J-meMalone]

Honestly, I feel insulted by this kind of portrayal of women.

As a heterosexual male, yes, I like breasts, but this philosophy that "sex sells" drives me mad! That people treat us as such idiots we'll like anything with sex appeal is ridiculous!

Not only are they objectifying women, they're treating men as drooling idiots who act only on base desires. In a way it shows an interesting fact about us as a society. Yes, we can treat women badly, but in subtle ways we treat men in bad ways that go completely unnoticed by many.

Sadly I'm in the minority here, and honestly I feel more people should be offended by it, not just falling for it or treating it with apathy.

 

[esperandote]

If she wants to play a game with a not sexualized strong female protagonist make her play Silent Hill 3.

 

[Andy Dittmar]

Most male characters were all meat and no personality for a long time, with a few exceptions. Even today there are a lot of dumb muscular white male characters in games. So it's gonna take some time before we start seeing good female characters more often than boob carriers.

sad but true

 

[RagTagBand]

I'm all for the addition of more body types...but how, exactly, would equating weight with poor hygiene be any sort of step forward?

If you're going to pick apart the blatantly exaggerated description I wrote for the sake of a comedically visceral mental image i'm surprised you didn't opt for pointing out how Odor can't be visible. Surely that would have satisfied your pedantry moreso?

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I've been playing games for 20 years - from girlhood to womanhood.

Yes, there's still room for improvement - a whole lot of it actually. We've actually run into the problem where wanting to be portrayed normally has become some type of intense woman's rights argument and tied up in feminism, when really it's just a desire to see ourselves in the games we play (and most of us are not busty, poured into our suits, perfect hair after falling down a mine-shaft types... and yes I'm aware of the argument that most men who play games aren't 40 inch muscle chested army bad-asses either, but that's somewhat tangential to my point).

Either you play through the pain and accept that games are what they are for now and continue to work for them to be better wherever you can (which is what I recommend, since there are so many issues in the world that need attention as well, some that are actually quite a bit more pressing, if not so constantly close to our everyday) or you play games like Fallout/Skyrim where you don't hardly ever see the main protagonist after character creation and the game world is evenhanded enough (some might say generic, but I mean it as a positive here so I won't) to be comfortable.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Honestly, I feel insulted by this kind of portrayal of women.

As a heterosexual male, yes, I like breasts, but this philosophy that "sex sells" drives me mad! That people treat us as such idiots we'll like anything with sex appeal is ridiculous!

Not only are they objectifying women, they're treating men as drooling idiots who act only on base desires. In a way it shows an interesting fact about us as a society. Yes, we can treat women badly, but in subtle ways we treat men in bad ways that go completely unnoticed by many.

Sadly I'm in the minority here, and honestly I feel more people should be offended by it, not just falling for it or treating it with apathy.

Well...for what it's worth, you're not alone, even among straight males. My husband, for one, would agree with you on pretty much all counts there.

If you're going to pick apart the blatantly exaggerated description I wrote for the sake of a comedically visceral mental image i'm surprised you didn't opt for pointing out how Odor can't be visible. Surely that would have satisfied your pedantry moreso?

No...because odor can be indicated visibly. For example, via the use of wafterons [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BriffitsAndSqueans], or by having flies buzzing around like the centaurs in WoW.

And I'm not sure what, exactly, you think you're proving by getting snide and huffy.

 

[manic_depressive13]

It's tolerable, I suppose. Games just tend to be shitty and poorly written in general, which is why I tend to play MMOs, RTSs and Action RTSs that are more about skillful gameplay than decent plots. I don't have to deal with crappy characterisation, and the characters are always too small for me to care that their tits are hanging out (in the case of all the female avatars in HoN, for example). I don't feel the need to focus on the portrayal of female characters when it's really a much larger issue of immaturity in games. The fact is that they're about gameplay and at the moment they are no where near being on par with books or film as a medium of expression. Do they have the potential to be a fantastic medium for expression? Absolutely. I do think games are art, after all. They're just almost exclusively bad art, and that's because the target market of young males is almost exclusively stupid. The majority of games are to boys what shitty fiction like twilight is to girls. If you can get immense popularity by being terrible there's not much incentive to improve.

 

[Vault101]

I've been trying to get my sister into videogames lately (need an extra player for my HoN team), but one thing that's putting her off is the utterly reprehensible attitude that games, and gamers, have towards women.

We've all laughed at the Evony ads. But even mainstream games like

Spoiler: Mass Effect

Spoiler: Soul Calibur

Spoiler: Ninja Gaiden

treat their female characters like...pieces of meat to be drooled over. Is this really the image we should be presenting to the world? The press is quick to label games as juvenile adolescent male fantasies and our response is to EMBRACE this criticism? What the hell?

And the community is barely any better. Friends of mine regularly keep their identities secret (unless teamspeak is involved) because of the torrent of abuse they get online. Don't believe me? Check out the fabulous http://fatuglyorslutty.com/ to see the vitriol lady gamers get.

This attitude is PERVASIVE. Look at Battlefield 3, banning women from its launch party (rather than telling the men "Dude, don't be a creep"), the creator of a fighting game (forget which, MvC maybe? I've lost the link) discussing, in a panel about female character design, which of his creations he'd like to have sex with.

Games have an image problem. But we don't want to fix it, we're happy in our little corner with our boobalicious characters and internalised misogyny.

We can be so much BETTER than this. How can we expect gaming to be taken seriously as an artform, and as a hobby, when we're happy to let this behaviour run unchecked?

mass effect?..I digree

mass effect has some of the best female charachters ever..(they have COMANDER SHEPARD for crying out loud) and miranda? *sigh* thats just like picking and choosing examples to fit what your trying to say...its actually a part of Miranda charahter

ALSO...you know what? I dont see this probelem *that bad* thease days in western games at least no more than movies or comics ...yes thats right, I havnt come a cross a female charachter so sexualised it made me annoyed

there might be less good females in agmes..but we'll get there..more or less

now that said..the abuse females get online..yeah its annoying

and banning women from Battlefeild 3 launch party? why the fuck did they do that?

bottom line...if it were that bad I wouldnt play games as much as I do

 

[Vault101]

I dont really have that much of an issue with how women are displayed in games. Ya I know its rare to find one who isnt just there to be a sex object/piece of meat but it just doesnt bother me but I think it is a major part of the problem.

.

Ive already said this...but

personally..after all the game Ive played currently in this generation, my experience hasnt been that bad..at all

most of thease "over the top" sexualised charachters some from fighting games (non western?) and over the top stuff like Bayonetta

sure the females we have usually taken a backseat to the guys...but hardly any of them have worn less than a bikini

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

But... Is it so wrong to have a piece of entertainment designed to be enjoyed by men? Why not stop attacking games with sexy women and start asking for new IPs to be created that are more aimed at women and gender neutral while also allowing us men to enjoy digital boobies once in a while.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

and banning women from Battlefeild 3 launch party? why the fuck did they do that?

Here's a quote:

"Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts. Though we?ve done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we?ve certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event.?

No, really [http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=5811].

But... Is it so wrong to have a piece of entertainment designed to be enjoyed by men?

Time to break out the bingo card [http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu3zv0hom61qm8qvvo1_1280.png]! Here's a "but it?s not FOR women."

Why not stop attacking games with sexy women and start asking for new IPs to be created that are more aimed at women and gender neutral while also allowing us men to enjoy digital boobies once in a while.

Funny...I haven't seen any attacks at all. Or anyone saying anything against sexy women, for that matter.

 

[BrionJames]

Maybe it's not true in other countries, but here in America I find that pretty much every other market is geared towards women. Yes, yes I know we have SPIKE TV and other shitty channels like that. Once in a while there are movies that aren't pandering to all demographics, but most of the time I feel like there aren't anything that is strictly for men. I hate Axe commercials and Spike TV for the fact that it makes us all out to be dumb neanderthals, barely capable of forming coherent sentences, and only live to reproduce and hit things. I feel guilty at times for enjoying the T&A in the games listed in the post, but at the same time I don't want video games to turn into everything else. Something that must adhere to a specific set of rules, so that no one is "offended". I know for every Indigo Prophecy, where real people are portrayed, there's a DOA volleyball game, but if the video game market becomes like everything else I'm going to become a hermit. I know eventually it will become like everything else because of how popular it is, but we don't need to help send it to an early grave.

_!spoilers ahead!_ (for Bio Shock, if you haven't go fucking play it already)

EDIT- I forgot to include a point here, so here we go...Is the way women are objectified in certain games deplorable? Yes. The most we can do is not buy certain games. I just get tired of this constant debate over how women should be depicted in video games. It's fan service, will those games be taken seriously? No. Should they? No. Just like every tv show, book, movie, or piece of art has to be judged on it's own merits, so should video games. It's not that video games aren't art, it's just that no one is willing to view them yet in that light, except those of us who have enjoyed them. Remember playing through Bio Shock for the first time, seeing Andrew Ryan's demise, being shocked by Atlas' betrayal, and saving all of the little sisters and getting to see them all grown up on your deathbed. So...stop debating this useless topic and lobby for video games (good ones, anyway) to be seen as art!

 

[DanielBrown]

Room for improvement.
While I can't say I don't mind, being a guy and all, it gets really silly sometimes. Men are also exaggerated as fuck, though I agree it's not really on the same level.

A female game character I really like is Elena from the Uncharted series. One of the few times I've actually thought a character could be a real person. I know Emily Rose does her voice and motion capture, btw.
Would like to see more games with protagonists like her. I thought Square Enix had wised up with their new Tomb Raider, but looking at the trailer I was quickly proven wrong.
CLEVAAAAAGE!

 

[Vault101]

and banning women from Battlefeild 3 launch party? why the fuck did they do that?

Here's a quote:

"Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts. Though we?ve done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we?ve certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event.?

No, really.

but....but....

BUT THATS BULLSHIT!!!!!!!

I just *gasp*..ok...ok calm down

you know what? they should have made it female only..yes, made it female only for this very reason and make that absolutly clear, that would have shown them ..

 

[Vault101]

Maybe it's not true in other countries, but here in America I find that pretty much every other market is geared towards women. Yes, yes I know we have SPIKE TV and other shitty channels like that. Once in a while there are movies that aren't pandering to all demographics, but most of the time I feel like there aren't anything that is strictly for men. I hate Axe commercials and Spike TV for the fact that it makes us all out to be dumb neanderthals, barely capable of forming coherent sentences, and only live to reproduce and hit things. I feel guilty at times for enjoying the T&A in the games listed in the post, but at the same time I don't want video games to turn into everything else. Something that must adhere to a specific set of rules, so that no one is "offended". I know for every Indigo Prophecy, where real people are portrayed, there's a DOA volleyball game, but if the video game market becomes like everything else I'm going to become a hermit. I know eventually it will become like everything else because of how popular it is, but we don't need to help send it to an early grave.

what?....sorry your not making any sense

ok heres how I perceive western entertainment

1. stuff for women (its usually SHIT)

2. stuff gor a general audience (which somtimes has a more male slant too it)

noe enough stuff for men? theres PLENTY that caters to mens taste...

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

but....but....

BUT THATS BULLSHIT!!!!!!!

I just *gasp*..ok...ok calm down

Yes.

Yes, it is.

you know what? they should have made it female only..yes, made it female only for this very reason and make that absolutly clear, that would have shown them ..

But of course, that wouldn't have worked. There were men organizing it, you see.

And kicking the douchebags out if and when they surface? Clearly too stressful.

1. stuff for women (its usually SHIT)

In short: Lifetime, Twilight, and other such products of applying "shrink it and pink it" to content rather than aesthetics. Shit is the word.