Poll: When was Duke Nukem actually sexist?

[Onyx Oblivion]

They're aren't the rule-makers on games. What they say isn't fact.

They say that games can be more than what they are at the moment. I agree with that.

But they seem under the impression that all games should be about the moving forward. That things like Duke Nukem are holding us back. They are no more holding us back than B-movies hold film back. They can co-exist.

 

[Zaik]

Well, it's not sexist because it doesn't portray every woman in the whole world as a stripper or porn star. The idea that strippers and porn movies exist doesn't oppress women in real life, why does it in a video game?

More or less, everything you are saying is reading into something with nothing to read into. Just like you can turn anything into a conspiracy theory if you scrutinize hard enough, you can make anything sexist if you're coming to it just trying to make it sexist.


Also that's likely Duke Nukem 3D.

Sigh. It doesn't really matter if even every single woman in the game is depicted as a stripper or porn star. The "shake it baby" example, even a singular instance of it, is sexist. Frequency does not define the nature of a product. I didn't say that sexism is something that inherently oppresses anyone. It does portray them in a servile, slutty light, which is by definition sexist (see dictionary definition, above).

"More or less," I'm defining things by their nature. There is no conspiracy theory. I played the game when I was 13 because I was hurting for another FPS, and even then I recognized that it was trying to compensate for horrible gameplay and graphics with seedy, pandering content.

And yes, it was Duke Nukem 3D. Thanks.

I'm just not seeing it. You can hand a stripper a $100 bill and get flashed. That's actually what they do, though they frequently take smaller amounts.

You can also(in the same level no less, not 30 seconds away) hand someone that looks suspiciously like Jill Valentine a $100 bill and say the same thing and get totally ignored.

You might have a point if there were just strippers everywhere and that was all you ever saw, and I'm willing to concede that the women captured by aliens are getting kind of borderline "objectifying"(i'd be more willing to consider it if they didn't beg you to kill them in an obviously agonized voice, and on top of that actually killing them spawns additional groups of enemies with no real benefit). But there's about 5 strippers on the second level of duke Nukem 3D and...that's it.

This was my entire point. It's difficult to make a clear judgment call on something if you've only played it 10 years ago for a few hours, which seems to be a lot of what people are doing.

 

[EmpressZombiKitty]

I think this [http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=4375] post makes a solid argument. It is worthwhile for the last three sections (viz. Randy Pitchford interviews; Isn't it ironic?; Teaching tool) alone.

That was a good article. I thought this made one of the best points:

?Capture the babe? mode

More information has recently come out about the multiplayer modes for this game. The one that has raised the most questions is titled ?Capture the Babe?. This mode is similar to a game of capture the flag but instead of flags, teams fight to capture women. When captured, these women may get upset and to calm them down the player will be required to slap their butts. I am surprised that articles have not called the captured women hysterical but I am unsure how the game refers to these captured ?babes?. This mode contains many problematic themes:

The use of women as objects to be captured by men
Women as unreasonably emotional creatures
Hitting a person as a method of calming them or controlling their behavior"

Though I'm not really offended by Duke Nukem (it is just a game after all, that clearly isn't meant to be taken seriously), but I'll admit that I don't really care for the "Capture the Babe" Mode.

 

[niktzv]

Duke Nukem is a legitamate portrayal of how all women actually are

 

[Sudenak]

I think the only reason it's considered as such is because of the negative stereotype. We like Duke because he's all about ass-kickin' and takin' what he wants. Now, imagine if Duke had the same type of stereotype that the women have:

He'd be rail thin, wearing a douche-y shirt from American Eagle, with an insufferably nasally voice while he ran around making semi-racist jokes. He'd have glasses, and would be terribly out of shape.

In this case, they gave Duke a positive stereotype, while they gave the women a negative one. Unfortunately, they're missing the point altogether. The point being that this is a satirical game mocking the very thing it personifies.

I'm not offended by Duke. I am, however, offended by pretty much every other video game that has women in it ever, because they aren't -trying- to make fun of these stereotypes. They seriously want you to look at a character like Ivy and feel empowered.

The closest that any game company ever got to making a female character that doesn't fit a stereotype was Samus. Which they quickly fucked up in Other M by going "wait, she doesn't need a MAN telling her what to do? Let's fix that, and make her mentally weak, too."

In conclusion: Yes, the women are stereotypes, but that's the point of Duke Nukem. Duke's not about making a fair and honest depiction of everyone, and if it were, it wouldn't be Duke. Can we -please- focus on fixing all of the other games that make men into giant angry boxes and women into helpless stick figures with watermelons on their chests and asses?

 

[Zaik]

They're aren't the rule-makers on games. What they say isn't fact.

They say that games can be more than what they are at the moment. I agree with that.

But they seem under the impression that all games should be about the moving forward. That things like Duke Nukem are holding us back. They are no more holding us back than B-movies hold film back. They can co-exist.

Duke Nukem is a big release that is likely to gather negative media attention. Once again, however wrongly gamers will be cast in a negative light and the video game industry will be less likely to gain mass appeal as a legitimate art form.

Sorry that was a bit too EC.

I for one am getting sick and tired of being portrayed as a juvenile teenager by the media and the older I get, the more I realise the game industry could do a whole lot more to stop the media making these assumptions about us.

I know you're not talking to me here, but I feel the need to butt in and say that the media portrays anything they don't like or agree with as juvenile. It's just what they do. It's their entire job and they've had an unreasonable number of years to perfect it.

If you wanted to take stock of everything any media ever labeled as childish, you'd be looking at...well...everything.

I think the only reason it's considered as such is because of the negative stereotype. We like Duke because he's all about ass-kickin' and takin' what he wants. Now, imagine if Duke had the same type of stereotype that the women have:

He'd be rail thin, wearing a douche-y shirt from American Eagle, with an insufferably nasally voice while he ran around making semi-racist jokes. He'd have glasses, and would be terribly out of shape.

In this case, they gave Duke a positive stereotype, while they gave the women a negative one. Unfortunately, they're missing the point altogether. The point being that this is a satirical game mocking the very thing it personifies.

I'm not offended by Duke. I am, however, offended by pretty much every other video game that has women in it ever, because they aren't -trying- to make fun of these stereotypes. They seriously want you to look at a character like Ivy and feel empowered.

The closest that any game company ever got to making a female character that doesn't fit a stereotype was Samus. Which they quickly fucked up in Other M by going "wait, she doesn't need a MAN telling her what to do? Let's fix that, and make her mentally weak, too."

In conclusion: Yes, the women are stereotypes, but that's the point of Duke Nukem. Duke's not about making a fair and honest depiction of everyone, and if it were, it wouldn't be Duke. Can we -please- focus on fixing all of the other games that make men into giant angry boxes and women into helpless stick figures with watermelons on their chests and asses?

Just thinking off the top of my head, Joanna Dark isn't really any particular stereotype. I don't even remember her being that overly attractive, although we're talking about N64 graphics so it's fuzzy even before I try to remember an old memory.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

They're aren't the rule-makers on games. What they say isn't fact.

They say that games can be more than what they are at the moment. I agree with that.

But they seem under the impression that all games should be about the moving forward. That things like Duke Nukem are holding us back. They are no more holding us back than B-movies hold film back. They can co-exist.

Duke Nukem is a big release that is likely to gather negative media attention. Once again, however wrongly gamers will be cast in a negative light and the video game industry will be less likely to gain mass appeal as a legitimate art form.

Sorry that was a bit too EC.

I for one am getting sick and tired of being portrayed as a juvenile teenager by the media and the older I get, the more I realise the game industry could do a whole lot more to stop the media making these assumptions about us.

It'll go away naturally over time, I think. As our generation seeps into the places of the current, etc.

 

[joebthegreat]

Duke Nukem has always been hilarious, and a lot of the jokes are sexist jokes. I think the people who have a problem with that need to grow thicker skin, and tolerate that which they don't agree with. The reactionary viewpoint that there's nothing to be offended about is wrong though. Stop being reactionaries people.

 

[Zaik]

I know you're not talking to me here, but I feel the need to butt in and say that the media portrays anything they don't like or agree with as juvenile.

Just like many gamers view feminists as nazi bitches and jocks as retarded idiots?

Now seriously, I agree that on many occasions, the media has made a controversy out of nothing in the past. But there are times, when I have to agree with the non-gamer's complaints. This is one of them.

The former is actually just an issue of semantics, primarily as to whether we should redefine the word feminism now that the civil rights movement has already more or less done everything it set out to do, and most of the louder clinger-ons actually want flat out superiority over men. The word "feminazi" is doing a stand-in until one side argues the other into submission.

The latter is just people coloring the present in with past regrets, which is much less an issue with "gamers", and more so an issue with the human mind in general which is likely to get worse rather than better, as numbers of people, money ideas, time, etc. exponentially increase while the mind works mostly the same as it did thousands of years ago.

I'm not really against people wanting that until you're running into the issue where you are trying to speak for me, as if you knew what was best for me without asking. That is when it becomes a problem.

 

[Dogstile]

It's satire. Apparently the most impossible form of humor to grasp for people on the internet.

Except satire involves pointing out what's wrong with the offending behaviour, ideology or lifestyle. The series used to be able to manage that... somewhat. But DNF is a straight up glorification of his character.

I think the satire comes with it being so ridiculously over the top it points out the flaws using its own ridiculousness.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

I'd say it's more sexist towards us men than woman.

Because he's the ultimate male sterotype.

 

[Lenin211]

Since the point of Duke Nukem is to be a "Manly Man" and that was the joke, I don't think it is sexist.

 

[Zaik]

The former is actually just an issue of semantics, primarily as to whether we should redefine the word feminism now that the civil rights movement has already more or less done everything it set out to do, and most of the louder clinger-ons actually want flat out superiority over men. The word "feminazi" is doing a stand-in until one side argues the other into submission.

That really only happens in the fevered imaginations of Rush Limbaugh and FOX News commentators. I will never understand why "feminist" is a dirty word for some gamers.

Neglecting to acknowledge the illness among your own ranks makes you just as guilty as people who mindlessly bash the concept without even knowing what it has represented in the past.

Not that it would have a huge effect on the situation overall, of course. But you would be viewed as less hypocritical from those of us in the middle ground.