Poll: Videogames and Women

[Farseer Lolotea]

Have any of you seen what MovieBob had to say on the matter in one of his vids? I think he puts it better than anyone else. It's not so much the fact that sexy women are portrayed, but how they are portrayed. It mainly has to do with the body language of the characters in the media outside the initial games. The video's called "Gender Games", so look it up.

Yeah, I actually mentioned it a couple of times.

To clarify further: it's not that there are sexy ladies. It's that the sexy ladies are always striking a pose or putting on a show for the audience rather than actually being, you know, characters.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I'm a girl and I'm insulted by it exactly, I just think it's a little pathetic. Do developers really really feel the need for their female characters to be sexy? If it has something to do with their personality that's different but if it's just for the hell of it then, really? And the whole sex sells thing I think its both lazy and insulting. Not all guys are ruled by their dicks you know, they are capable of seeing boobs and having rational thoughts at the same time. And by going with sex appeal they're basically saying 'we can't be bothered thinking of a way to make you want to buy this so here have some boobs'.

Still say that "Big Picture" said it best: it's the homogeneity that gets irritating. In a lot of games, you can tell a lot about the male characters by just looking at a still image. The female characters? "She's hawt, and she's striking a pose."

...this is why I want to go back to school, really.

Most people don't get defensive about it. I'm the only one debating with you here.

That's why I changed the post.

I just think its unfair that people want to tell game makers how to make their games.

Even if that were the case: what's "unfair" about it? The market is more than one demographic.

Sexuality is part of human nature and part of everyone's fantasies in their own minds, so why can't we put it in our fantastical games?

Fair enough. So why cater to only one particular market, then?

You may call it criticism but I still feel like what you want is to make them change the way they make their games.

It is criticism. Sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable, but that's really on you.

There was an article on this site a while ago about a rising trend in Japan of female orientated games. Can't remember what it was called, there was always a strong female protagonst in these games who got to choose who to romance from a group of physically perfect men during the course of whatever adventure she was on. Id like to see games like that take off In the west. Let the girls have their games, the guys theirs and everything in between. So there's that to critiscize the games industry with.

Ah-ah-ah! You're still falling into the "games are for boys" trap.

And your suggestion of dating sims is actually a bit insulting.

Not enough balance in the industry, but I still don't think it's fair to take one of these games and say they are wrong for their sex appeal. Or judge people who do like the appeal.

My bingo card is getting a workout here [http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/?p=4#14]...

Anyway Miranda's purpose behind being sexy in mass effect is that she has actually been genetically engineered to be 'perfect' by her rich father in the womb iirc. Both physically and mentally, and she sort of hates that he did that to her.Also you can have romance the men in it anyway.

I know about Mass Effect. I wasn't talking about Mass Effect.

Fair enough about mass effect. And im sorry I insulted you with the dating sim thing, except I didnt really mean dating sims, more games with romantic elements. But I really dont want to offend you.

I agree with you though, I dont think they should cater to one market, but theres nothing wrong with the ones that currently exist that cater to men. Its just a lacking in other games that should exist.

I still wonder. Is it wrong to have games for boys? We allow movies, magazines, books and television shows obviously aimed at women to exist and nobody complains. Are those wrong? Why is it wrong to have a game aimed at a demographic? Its not like they are stopping someone from playing it because of their gender.

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

I still wonder. Is it wrong to have games for boys? We allow movies, magazines, books and television shows obviously aimed at women to exist and nobody complains. Are those wrong? Why is it wrong to have a game aimed at a demographic? Its not like they are stopping someone from playing it because of their gender.

Gendered marketing as a whole strikes me as kind of insulting, to tell the truth. I'm not sure if you saw me expressing contempt for Twilight, Lifetime, and the "shrink it and pink it" mentality up-thread, but...that's this culture's idea of marketing things to women.

If I had to choose between that and...well, mainstream games minus any pretense of marketing them to anyone but teenage boys with weird ideas about women? I think I'd become entirely disgusted with the hobby.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I still wonder. Is it wrong to have games for boys? We allow movies, magazines, books and television shows obviously aimed at women to exist and nobody complains. Are those wrong? Why is it wrong to have a game aimed at a demographic? Its not like they are stopping someone from playing it because of their gender.

Gendered marketing as a whole strikes me as kind of insulting, to tell the truth. I'm not sure if you saw me expressing contempt for Twilight, Lifetime, and the "shrink it and pink it" mentality up-thread, but...that's this culture's idea of marketing things to women.

Yeah, the female stuff in nerd culture pretty sad. But I just dont want to see everything whitewashed into gender neutrality and political correctness. A game like bulletstorm would probably never be made for fear of offense. It did offend, remember it being accused of causing rape by fox news?

 

[Farseer Lolotea]

Yeah, the female stuff in nerd culture pretty sad. But I just dont want to see everything whitewashed into gender neutrality and political correctness.

...tell me you did not just trot out the old buzzword that almost invariably means "but I don't want to be considerate!"

A game like bulletstorm would probably never be made for fear of offense. It did offend, remember it being accused of causing rape by fox news?

That's because Fox News is a ridiculous den of scandalmongers.

*snip!*

Those guys are idealized (in different ways), true; but they're clearly presented as heroic figures rather than as bland and rather passive eye candy. (I know where there's an image diagram illustrating the difference; however, I'm not sure how appropriate it is.)

 

[Mr. In-between]

I'd like to see a gaming heroine with small boobs and hairy pits. I think that would really throw people for a loop.

 

[CaptainKarma]

Spoiler: Deodorant commercial

Spoiler: Shoe commercial

Spoiler: Photo camera commercial

Spoiler: Jeans commercial

Spoiler: Commercial for Fries

I hope you get the point from those few "samples", or rather welcome to the world we live in There's nothing wrong with video games doing the same as everyone else and if you want to "change" anything about it you probably have to go a lot deeper than that. Personally I have nothing against boobs or ass as I feel attracted to them, I won't base my buying decision on that, but there it is...

On the other hand we also have

Spoiler: Resident Evil

Spoiler: Final Fantasy

Spoiler: God of War

Spoiler: Street Fighter

etc. which are "sexualized" in their own way and there's enough actual commercials with half-naked men on them too out there, I see nothing "wrong" with either.

And btw.

Spoiler: Mass Effect

got Yvonne Strahovski to represent Miranda, but they also got Mark Vanderloo (a male model) to be stand-in for Shepard.

"but but...other people are doing it too" isn't really valid justification, when video games do it worse.

And look at the men you posted. Large and ripped, effeminate and coifed, fat, thin, tall, lots of body shapes. While nearly all women are two grapefruits on a stick.

And like Lolatea said, there's a huge HUGE difference between sexualising men in a "I'm gonna kick your goddamn arse" way and the way women are portrayed as literal objects.

 

[Vault101]

I'd like to see a gaming heroine with small boobs and hairy pits. I think that would really throw people for a loop.

I find your comparision between not shaving and small breasts a little...distasteful

small breats are not as off putting as body hair

(yes yes I do get the joke and all)

 

[TehCookie]

-snip-

Notice how every non-videogame example you posted probably has sexy men in advertising their products. Old Spice dude for deodorant, athletes for shoes, hot guys shirtless in jeans ads (I tend to notice Levi does that quite often). If I took the time to look I probably could find an attractive guy eat fries or posing for a picture.

So how are any of videogame characters you posted exploited for fanservice? Not that many people oppose sexy women in games, just the way they act. Oh and I'll clarify fanservice as fanservice directed towards the female gamers. If you sexualize men for other men that doesn't help female gamers at all. I find it worse since it's just outright ignoring them.

People like fanservice. I'll admit I like fanservice. I'm not saying we should get rid of it, but we should level the paying field a bit and have fanservice for all!

 

[iLikeHippos]

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?

It do not think it be a matter of sexism, but a matter of minority.

Let me tell you a story from one of my most brilliant teacher I've ever known. He told me a story, of when the first black people emerged into the society of Sweden. It was such a rarity, so the people often watched in awe as a black man crossed the street. "Look! It's a black one! :O" they'd often go; but not out of any form of racism as Scandinavians have no beef with the African-originating public. Not at all racist, no feelings of hatred or anything, but sheer awe. It even affected the industry a bit in their commercials, hell, everything in society.

Frankly, I see the same thing with the female population in video games and teamspeak, etc. and even those who stay long enough to enjoy the game, can find the people stare at them and go "Look! It's a girl! :O" and just outright leave due to the awkwardness. And as such, I feel it has come to the minds of even publishers, that they take note of this rarity.

However, as more and more black people integrated into the Scandinavian community as a whole, you won't see anyone today go "Look! It's a black one! :O" They rather go "Meh".
I feel the entire world population would go "Look! It's an alien! :O" once little green marshians becomes the real deal and visit, so long as they keep within the tiny numbers of one or two spaceships at a time and not a massive invasion.

You know what we need? A great transfer of females emerging with the gaming community; make it less odd. Turn the minority to a moderate community.
Either that, or a huge sex-change bonanza.

 

[MasochisticAvenger]

I do tend to agree with people who say video games tend to over-sexualize women, I don't think anyone can really argue they don't (whether or not it's a problem is another issue, and I'm still deciding on that).

What I don't get is when someone looks at a game like Mass Effect, sees a character like Miranda, and assumes the whole game is nothing but a hot girl for guys to drool over. It's kind of like looking at an attractive girl and automatically assuming she just must be some dumb bimbo.

Still I'm all for bringing on more over-sexualized guys in video games. There is no reason not to aside from twelve year old boys complaining that they feel gay because they're controlling a sexy man.

 

[Vault101]

-snip-

Notice how every non-videogame example you posted probably has sexy men in advertising their products. Old Spice dude for deodorant, athletes for shoes, hot guys shirtless in jeans ads (I tend to notice Levi does that quite often). If I took the time to look I probably could find an attractive guy eat fries or posing for a picture.

So how are any of videogame characters you posted exploited for fanservice? Not that many people oppose sexy women in games, just the way they act. Oh and I'll clarify fanservice as fanservice directed towards the female gamers. If you sexualize men for other men that doesn't help female gamers at all. I find it worse since it's just outright ignoring them.

People like fanservice. I'll admit I like fanservice. I'm not saying we should get rid of it, but we should level the paying field a bit and have fanservice for all!

Well that was pretty much my point, you'll see as many "hot guys" in commercials/movies/tv series/games as you see "hot gals", and I don't really see any kind of exploitation either way, as they aren't being forced to pose or participate in any of it against their free will or against their beliefs, it's a job like many others and it is based on basic biological primal urges to find certain physical traits more attractive than others. I don't see any problem with that, but the people that do seem to often be rather one-sided in comparisons and there's always the ingenious argument that women apparently don't like sexualized/muscular men, but that that is apparently a "male fantasy" or something (I don't want to look like either The Hulk or some girly man-boy prevalent in most JRPGs either), in which case a lot of the commercials you talked about at first would apparently miss their mark xD

Also, more often than not the people complaining actually *do* oppose "sexy" people in games, if it would be only about the characterization, then more often than not it's barely existant in a lot of video games and it isn't restricted to a certain type of character, it's just bad writing in general (or no writing at all, as it's more about the shooting of things).

All that said, I don't really judge how good a game is on either how many "good looking people" there are or usually characterization in general much at all... let's break down my favourite games of this year:

Witcher 2 - it has some erotic scenes and attractive characters but mostly excels through the telling of its story and showing of ambiguous morals supported by some of the best visuals in any video game
L.A. Noire - great character story, although it has its faults in the gameplay department it made that up to me by reminding me of TV series with HBO/Showtime type of quality
Space Pirates and Zombies - surprise of the year, great gameplay as a space sim/shooter and only a bunch of cutscenes with a few still images and text for characterization
Portal 2 - great story and funny characters
Battlefield 3 (Multiplayer) - just military men shooting each other, fun stems from gunplay and using the right tactics at the right time to be able to turn around and win a match
Terraria - no characterization to speak of, fun stems from gameplay
Magicka (CoOp) - barely any characterization at all, more of a parody and fun stems from gameplay
Saint's Row: The Third (CoOp) - the first game that has both exaggerated and sexualized female and male characters with jiggly physics and pokes some good fun out of both, the fun stems mostly from the similarly exaggerated gameplay and activities though

Basically, looking at it I don't much care either way, as long as a game is fun I could aswell play as a representation of a 10 year old (Costume Quest), some sort of weird ant-like creature (Psychonauts) or any sort of critter or individual, but I also don't see a problem with any of them being attractive or having "assets" (Mass Effect 2 for instance), in some cases I even prefer it or it might raise my interest to start with and I've never seen a game be bad or good because of that as an isolated singular reason.

sexualisation aside how many of those games have female player charachters?

my point? not much...but somtimes I want to play as a chick, rather than a brown haired white male...(yes the demp graphic is guys) but Im just saying

because my probelm is not with skimpyly clothed females

 

[lunam-kardas]

Yeah it's messed up. I mean hell, in Mass effect 2 they used the shadow broker dlc to explain that Thane's armor had a window to prevent his kepler syndrome from acting up. But when a chick has a similar feature in her armor, it's so you can see cleavage.

I know that's not a really big thing to notice but there's nothing about this topic that I can really add that hasn't already been said by much smarter people.

 

[TonkaBix]

I'm (obviously) a chick and have been gaming all my life. Over the years you can see there have been strides by certain developers to make games more gender neutral and less degrading to women, but we have a long way to go yet.

That being said, it's really not that big a deal. Some games portray women as sex objects and some don't. Many movies, songs, art pieces do it. So honestly if you have a problem with the way anything is being portrayed in a game.... play a different one.

It's that simple!