Sexuality in gaming, your stance?

[Shadowstar38]

You used the example, not me. Your intention was to apparently show that it was giving critics what they wanted. I was just letting you know where you were wrong, and the poster above added more context.

It shows inclusiveness. People who want normal character designs and sexualized ones both got something.

 

[Trivun]

My game idea, that I probably won't be making if I can't find like-minded people with the skills I lack (art and programming mainly), has a female main character whose default outfit she wears in the first episode of the game is a pair of walking boots, jeans, and a t-shirt. She happens to be camping on a Scottish island, although it is July. In the second episode, when she's in her normal home town, she wears black shoes, stockings and a skirt and an oversized jumper. In both instances the character wears clothes that would suit the scenario, and are sensible and normal, yet at no point is she ever not considered to be attractive. She spends part of the game searching for her missing ex-boyfriend along with her other best friends, and a lesbian friend of hers is attracted to her throughout, and it's clear to the player she is meant to be an attractive young woman.

Yet at no point is my character overly sexualised or seen as anything but a strong, independent, and above all else, normal, person.

This is what I want to see more characters be like. You know who my favourite female character in video games is, of all time? April Ryan, of The Longest Journey. She's attractive but never sexualised, and although it's clear there are at least two male characters in the game who fancy her she's never treated as a sex object, but rather as, again, a strong and independent person in her own right. And there's a reason why characters like ALyx Vance, Heather Mason, Zoey (L4D) or Jade (Beyond Good and Evil) keep beating out characters like Lara Croft (pre-reboot), Cammy, Bayonetta and Chun-Li (equally famous, bearing in mind) in terms of who gamers see as strong and well-written/well-presented female characters. After all, women aren't sex objects in real life, why make them sex objects in video games, when we're trying to move towards a more mature and well-respected industry? If I want to see a video of sexy women I'll search for porn on Google, thanks. And on that note... xD (j/k)

 

[King Zeal]

Evolutionary psychology is problematic, though.

That's a vague response. How so? This is not to say the it isn't flawed in some ways (most of psychology is, as it is young), but dismissing the study with "evolutionary psychology is problematic" is...problematic .

Well, for one, there's the question of whether or not the data is prescriptive or descriptive. Most studies I've researched regarding sexuality, sexual preference, and titillation have indicated that a lot of what people consider to be "inherent" to both genders merely describes current trends, but it can't reliably pre--scribe what a gender will desire. In other words, nurture almost always beats out nature. At least when it comes to what people find attractive.

What are brains wired to do (or may be hardwired to do) has nothing to do the media's portrayal of women how? Who makes media? People. Who has brains wired to objectify women? People.

Media is, more accurately, made by a culture. A person is influenced by their individual experiences to create based on values their culture has taught them. For example, if I decide to have my heroine in fishnet stockings and high heels, I didn't formulate the idea that this was sexy on my own--society has already decided it is, and I'm just following along. If "sexy" were an aggregate, objective fact between genders, then people of completely different cultures would agree on what is sexy. But, that rarely is the case. Societies ebb and flow like tides on what sexiness is and means, and different cultures can look at what their neighbors think of as the pinnacle of sexiness and go "meh".

Oh we most certainly are. You cannot prevent hardwired reactions. Try not to smile when you are happy. People the world over have a universal, unbreakable reaction to smile when happy. We can certainly reteach ourselves many things, and consciousness makes us special, but retraining hardwired behavior is not promising work. Thankfully, this perspective on women might not be hardwired.

Smiling is a reaction, not a value. It's not the same as a "hardwired" assumption of what sexiness is. One problem with trying to determine whether or not people are "hardwired" to assume that certain things are sexy is the fact that many people develop sexual awareness at varying ages and from varying stimuli. And because people are not raised in vacuum, the values of parents and the adults around them trickles down. That doesn't mean people have the same tastes as the others around them (there would be no differences between hetero/bi/homosexuality if there were), but it means that as people build their lifetime checklist of what they find sexy, influences from the outside world will shape them in some form or fashion.

We as humans may have similar ideas of what is attractive, but a lot of it is still nurture rather than nature.

Isn't there? It depends on how you define "force." I don't think we have no other choice, but we do seem to be predisposed, or at least socialized to objectify women.

Not predisposed. Culturally incepted. Even if I agreed with you and assumed that men were predisposed, behavior can be modified. No one has to be perfect, but we are certainly sapient enough to change.

Agreed. Many if not most perceived differences in the sexes seems to be things internalized by individuals from society and upbringing. There is some speculation in evolutionary psychology that suggests that women are more naturally nurturing IN GENERAL and men are more competitive IN GENERAL, but yeah. Also, the aforementioned tendencies fall off with a more diverse gene pool vis-a-vis modern society.

Well, that may be true for outliers, but the majority are not that far apart from each other.

Video games are, on the other hand, no where near the issue, again, with exceptions from a radical portion of our communities.

Videogames, by becoming what is now the new pop culture, is very much a part of it, though. As I mentioned before, culture defines how we see everything, and if videogames are now a driving force of it, they are front and center in the gender and sexuality issues.

By extremes I mean people like Anita Sarkeesian and her supporters that, rather than addressing issues honestly or constructively, often choose misrepresentation and counterproductive exploitation to engender misguided support from people that typically don't appear to have the facts.

I have no problem with Sarkeesian. I think her arguments are sometimes flawed, but I largely agree with the spirit of what she says. I've been studying social justice in general and sex and sexuality in specific for a few years now, and she's usually pretty close to the mark. She just tends to flub an argument.

 

[King Zeal]

You used the example, not me. Your intention was to apparently show that it was giving critics what they wanted. I was just letting you know where you were wrong, and the poster above added more context.

It shows inclusiveness. People who want normal character designs and sexualized ones both got something.

But as myself and others have pointed out, it's hardly egalitarian.

 

[theproductofboredom]

The issue isn't with sexualization itself. Men and Women are both sexualized in gaming, and in all media. The problem is with how they are sexualized.

There are two types of sexualization, and it extends beyond physical appearance. Dominant Sexualization, characters who are sexy because they are strong, aggressive, and in control. Female characters that qualify include the likes of Bayonetta, Nikita (tv), and Lara Croft (pre-2013 reboot). Male characters include Dante (DmC), and every other example of male sexualization MRA members have pelted me with.

Then there is submissive sexualization, characters who are weak, reliant, and can't defend themselves. And this is what makes them sexy. Female characters that apply include the likes of thankless love interests, damsels, etc. Male examples of this include... well..that's awkward.

On their own, there's nothing inherently wrong with either, its the ratios between male and female sexualization that needs fixing. It goes deeper than a juvenile fixation on physical attributes, its about power.

 

[cikame]

As a man i like good looking women, if i'm going to play a game to relax and escape from real life i want beautiful people, not average boring/disappointing people i see every day.

 

[King Zeal]

It would you play a game where you play as Edward from Twilight?

 

[Angelblaze]

It would you play a game where you play as Edward from Twilight?

On a side note, I'd like to note that no I would not.

It sounds incredibly obnoxious.
Playing Loki from the Avengers or Sherlock from BBC's Sherlock whoever...

 

[00slash00]

I'm fine with sexuality in gaming. I'm not fine with a character's sexuality looking like it was designed by a 13 year old boy, between masturbation sessions. A well designed character can look sexy while still being fully clothed

 

[King Zeal]

It would you play a game where you play as Edward from Twilight?

On a side note, I'd like to note that no I would not.

It sounds incredibly obnoxious.
Playing Loki from the Avengers or Sherlock from BBC's Sherlock whoever...

More like dat iPhone.

 

[Shadowstar38]

You used the example, not me. Your intention was to apparently show that it was giving critics what they wanted. I was just letting you know where you were wrong, and the poster above added more context.

It shows inclusiveness. People who want normal character designs and sexualized ones both got something.

But as myself and others have pointed out, it's hardly egalitarian.

Not everything in the creative process ends up on a 50/50 scale.

 

[King Zeal]

Then you can't use it as an example of fairness and inclusivity.

 

[gargantual]

As a man i like good looking women, if i'm going to play a game to relax and escape from real life i want beautiful people, not average boring/disappointing people i see every day.

Especially if they're disturbing, and getting-in-the-way NPCs.

 

[King Zeal]

I am arguing that your argument that "they don't need to have those skimpy outfits" is a worthless argument to make when "need" was never the reason they had it in the first place.

I don't know how to make that any simpler. I've tried to draw examples of other needless choices made in similar products in order to highlight that need is rarely the reason many decisions are made, but that seems to have only confused you so I will just keep it as cut and dry as i can.

No one was arguing games need skimpy outfits, not even the games made with them. Thus arguing against them on the basis of need is a pointless waste of effort.

I'm more confused that you thought those were legitimate examples when they weren't. Also, what are you using to define "need", because some marketing groups would tell you that you absolutely need a sexy character to sell a title properly. NNot that I agree with it, but the attitude exists.

And... I never said opinion couldn't be expressed, merely that you were wasting your time trying to express it in the way you have and then explaining why it was such a waste of time and effort to do so. I could go into how it can actively harm what you want for trying to express your opinion in the manner you have, but we never even got that far.

Then do so. Telling me I'm wasting my time isn't your concern. It's my time to spend how I wish to.

I could just as easily turn that around; why are YOU wasting YOUR time arguing?

Ah, was wondering when that word would pop up. No, I am afraid you are confusing how factors relate to gender with any product and how actual sexism works. Sexism, as I have always understood and heard it defined, is a discrimination or bias of gender because of gender itself.

Is this going to be one of those semantic debates over a term which has no strict definition in academia?

Agree or disagree about the morality of that all you like (I would probably agree with you), but the simple truth is that decisions are motivated by data that supports it.

Not always. Bias confirmation, self-fulfilling bias, and other fallacies can and often do play a part.

Them using a male on the cover is no more or less sexist then a company selling skirts using images of women. Both reflect a cultural expectation and a financial backed history, as well as do nothing to actually discriminate, bar, prevent or stop anyone buying it for how they advertise, merely reveal they know what traits sell well for each product and who is most likely to react favorably to that advertising. They will appeal more to one gender over the other, to be certain. That is because of how our culture promotes the dimorphus nature of our species which in turn influences how individuals purchase things which cycle back into what companies provide.

Again, that's not how marketing works. Marketing creates a dynamic and then convinces people to follow it. Marketing is not about finding out what people want and then finding ways to give it to them. It's about telling people what they want.

The game industry was not a gender binary industry inherently. It was marketed as one, starting in the 80s, and then continued in the 90s. They didn't make games for boys and then market them toward them. They TOLD boys that they wanted these games and then marketed it toward them specifically.

Now, assuming you follow with me that far,

Knock it off with the stealth insults.

snip

Sexism can be systemic. Meaning that an action by itself may not be sexist, but becomes sexist through systematic discrimination. For example, choosing to sexualize women because society accepts it, and you want to be accepted by society. You aren't sexualizing a woman because she's a woman yourself, but you're doing what society told you to do, and society is sexist.

Well, to me, and good ol webster, exclusion means shutting out all others, denying entry, preventing participation.

or as the first response google gave
1. deny (someone) access to or bar (someone) from a place, group, or privilege.

I'm not seeing the issue. We're talking participation being denied through presumed beliefs about a gender, and denial from privileges like having popular entertainment marketed en masse to your gender.

Then entire argument you are trying to make is just horribly flawed. As I used for an example before, a product not made to your taste no more excludes you then a hamburger joint excludes a vegetarian.

Again, we're not talking about a single joint. We're talking about an entire industry. So once again, this would be like every restaurant in an entire ethnic neighborhood selling meat products. Which is actually a real social justice issue Hindus and Buddhists face.

But you not liking a game and deciding to not buy it is not you being excluded. Stop sounding like an entitled fool and please stop trying to sell that bullshit here, it is embarrassing to see someone who thinks they deserve a product so much that when it is not made to suit them or their demographic that it is somehow excluding them.

Not responding to insults, just to let you know.

Am I excluded because I want a game with a bright green quadripede animal man as the player character but it is not made?
Am I not allowed to play because I want a game without QTE and the products offered has them?
Am I being prevented participation in a game that has me playing as a female character dating pidgeons because I don't feel it appeals to me?

Yes, if the games are marketed specifically to ignore your tastes as a consumer. If you are a huge unused demographic (like, women) and it's absolutely important to you to have these features in a game, then you are indeed being excluded if marketers ignore you.

And you are very right, it was a short sighted and ill funded endeavor. But, since they have no requirement to give those endeavors the same treatment as the multi-billion dollar franchises, I can't fault them for going smaller there. After all, if all you do is sell SUV vehicles, you don't throw all you money into subcompacts and hope it has the same payout. You invest less and make a trial run and use the results of that to judge if you want to invest more. Games have had little success with what you want, and while that sucks, that effort made and made repeatedly every other year is more then we deserve even. When we don't support that stuff, it stops being made. That is not exclusion, that is a badly performing product being cut because it performed badly.

False argument. For one thing, it's not about getting the same "endeavors". It's about getting competent endeavors. If you agree that the game wasn't marketed well, then that ends any point to be made. Because if the marketing was incompetent or botched, then the product was not a fair attempt at inclusion.

Yeah, they have biased perspectives based on who bought their games last time. Not surprising they would get a test group of people in the demographic they want to sell to who would have likely bought games before and will again. That they didn't get a hugely diverse group is no more surprising then a clothing store not getting a highly varied group if they were doing market research on dresses and shirts for young girls. The have group they are marketing to, and much like how the shirts meant for young girls can still be sold to and worn by fat overweight adult men, neither are games excluding anyone from purchase or enjoyment.

Again, that isn't how marketing works. If you don't focus test a diverse group of people, you do not get accurate data from focus groups. While focus groups typically have people in a particular demographic, what Naughty Dog reported was that their publisher was flat out using bias confirmation to make assumptions that hadn't even been conclusively proven yet.

Informing people is great, and guys like Jim and EC do great for helping to spread information, but there is a limit to what they do. There is a reason they spread things out, talk about lots of topics instead of dwelling on one. People get sick of hearing about it. People are sick of people complaining about it. And while they may love a good righteous rage about things, it wears on people to hear it all the time and it starts to harm the cause for it.

[snip]

It is nothing knew. Beating that dead horse solely to reiterate that can drive people away or make them more apathetic.

Not really. If anything, people start talking about these issues. Like we are now. The longer you debate with me, the longer you disprove this whole argument. Even if you don't agree with it, you took the time to answer. You're anything but apathetic, and judging by the number of replies on subjects like this, a lot of people aren't either.

At this point, it doesn't matter if people, like you I suppose, are actively against talking about sexism in games. The fact that you're doing so right now means that me, and other people like me, can become more visible to each other. People are having discussion panels about the subject, creators are talking about it, and journalists are talking about it

So far, it's been pretty positive.

Secondly, it is that you are fighting a mountain here. They have their current huge success and lots of data supporting their actions, nothing you can say will change that sort of entrenched company culture at this point.

Even if that were true (which it isn't), that's none of your business, is it? If you think it's pointless, then what you're doing is equally pointless.


Everything else is redundant, so I'll end it here.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That's a vague response. How so? This is not to say the it isn't flawed in some ways (most of psychology is, as it is young), but dismissing the study with "evolutionary psychology is problematic" is...problematic .

Firstly, having learned from these debates, I think it's important to point out that not all evolutionary psychology is bad. If every premise put forward by evolutionary psychology was false, then this could not exist.

However, when we're talking about complex aspects of human social or personal experience being wholesale "evolved" then we're well outside of the territory of good science. In fact, we've strayed into the dark, murky world of pop-science and at this point, yes, there are huge problems.

The single minded pursuit of unverifiable genetic determinants of human behaviour which cannot be evidenced but which must exist (despite the fact that there are often established explanations which impose infinitely fewer original assumptions) is just not good science. Making grandiose statements and engaging in fantastical storytelling about the social structuring of a period of time from which very little archaeological evidence has ever been recovered on the basis that they must resemble some kind of 1950s notion of socially ideal behaviour (which arguably doesn't even hold true today) is not good science either.

Let's take two fictional researchers. A social scientist goes out and does a study of men's attitudes to women in media. Their argument might be summarized by the following inductive inference.

Case: "The respondants to my study are men"
Observation: "The respondants to my study objectify women."
Rule: (It is therefore a reasonable probabilistic law to say that) "Men, at least within the society or stratum occupied by my respondents, objectify women."

An evolutionary psychologists then goes out and does the exact same study. But their logic is likely to be very different, it looks more like this.

Rule: "Social phenomena result from the expression of genes"
Case: "The men in my study objectify women"
Result: (It is therefore certain that) "The objectification of women is an expression of genes".

Notice that the "rule" for the social scientist is a result of the study. It's something which is determined through applying inductive reasoning to the observation. The rule is not a certainty, but it doesn't have to be certainty and isn't being represented as one. It is probabilistic likelihood.

Meanwhile, the rule for the evolutionary psychologist has absolutely nothing to do with the study at all. It is a pure certainty, and moreover is completely unfalsifiable because no outcome within the study will possibly make it untrue.

 

[Qtastic]

Most studies I've researched regarding sexuality, sexual preference, and titillation have indicated that a lot of what people consider to be "inherent" to both genders merely describes current trends, but it can't reliably pre--scribe what a gender will desire. In other words, nurture almost always beats out nature. At least when it comes to what people find attractive.[/quote}

Media is, more accurately, made by a culture. A person is influenced by their individual experiences to create based on values their culture has taught them. For example, if I decide to have my heroine in fishnet stockings and high heels, I didn't formulate the idea that this was sexy on my own--society has already decided it is, and I'm just following along. If "sexy" were an aggregate, objective fact between genders, then people of completely different cultures would agree on what is sexy. But, that rarely is the case. Societies ebb and flow like tides on what sexiness is and means, and different cultures can look at what their neighbors think of as the pinnacle of sexiness and go "meh".

Smiling is a reaction, not a value. It's not the same as a "hardwired" assumption of what sexiness is. One problem with trying to determine whether or not people are "hardwired" to assume that certain things are sexy is the fact that many people develop sexual awareness at varying ages and from varying stimuli. And because people are not raised in vacuum, the values of parents and the adults around them trickles down. That doesn't mean people have the same tastes as the others around them (there would be no differences between hetero/bi/homosexuality if there were), but it means that as people build their lifetime checklist of what they find sexy, influences from the outside world will shape them in some form or fashion.

We as humans may have similar ideas of what is attractive, but a lot of it is still nurture rather than nature.

One problem: I never said that a universal concept of sexiness existed, I said that people (men AND women) appear to OBJECTIFY women when given brain scans. That's it. Nowhere did I say that ATTRACTION was hardwired. In fact, I didn't even say that objectification was: I said it might be. I would fully agree that sexiness, in great part, is a product of nuture (things like facial symmetry tend to be more universal, though).

 

[DarthSka]

The problem with that is looking at video game consumers as one audience. Though there might be a 53/47 split overall, that number can vary for different genres or games. Just like with any media, there are specific audiences within that larger audience. I watch movies, but I don't watch romantic comedies or Saw-like horror movies. I read books, but I don't read autobiographies, romance, or mystery novels. I play video games, but I don't play puzzle, racing, sport, or RTS games. So if a game or genre has captured a specific audience, they're likely going to continue to make a product with that audience in mind.

What you describe is another problematic thing in the various media--industry: a reinforced gender binary. There's no reason a particular genre can be said to inherently be "for" a certain gender or sexuality. Girls like power fantasy as much as everyone else, but there's not much pure girl power fantasy in the industry. Even stuff like Bayonetta or Lollipop Chainsaw are more about a particular fetish than it is being a female power fantasy.

The issue with that is that gender binary isn't forced upon consumers, consumers choose to make it so. Products may be made with a characteristic in mind, like a group's sex, but they do not force anyone to not partake. That's why I disagree with your recent discussions on the definition of exclusion. It is not the "social justice" definition of not taking one's preferences into account. Exclusion would be preventing someone from partaking in the game, which they do not. The consumer is still free to play the game, but they themselves are the ones excluding themselves from the game. Your restaurant analogy doesn't hold up. The vegetarian is free to come to the meat filled establishment, but they choose not to partake.

 

[Drejer43]

My stance?
I don't really care that is my stance.
Though I do agree that your last two images look hideous, but I think that's just sexualization gone wrong.

 

[Therumancer]

Sexuality has it's place in games directed at adults, whether presented maturely or an immature letting down of the hair. Of course it depends on the game in question and whether it's been shoehorned in or not. In some cases I feel games fall into the Hollywood trope nowadays of just about everything trying to tell a story needing to have some romance thrown in, oftentimes leading to a love interest tacked on in a story that really doesn't need one.

I tend to more or less ignore arguments about what women are wearing in video games, because it's pure nonsense, typically guys trying to sound enlightened and forward thinking, without really "getting it". At the end of the day female characters created by female writers and artists tend to wear the same stuff, and honestly when looking at anime and the like you'd be surprised at how many women are actually involved in a lot of those character designs. "CLAMP" for example is an all female team, and especially if you look at some of their art books, they are hardly prudish. That's before you get into artists like "Julie Bell", or simply reading the descriptions of what characters look like or wear in various fantasy novels written by and largely for women.

To put things into perspective, when I look at say "Ivy Valentine" I see nothing wrong with the artwork at all, or her outfit, given that we're dealing with a work of fantasy. Sure, she's not wearing heavy armor, but then again neither are most other characters, and those that are get exactly zero benefit from it. What's more since guns are apparently around out there (according to the Mitsurugi storylines in particular) that's when people stopped using heavy armor, and it actually makes some of the characters like Siegfried running around in platemail seem like the biggest idiots, especially seeing as they are allegedly meeting other wanderers cross country as opposed to entering into some kind of organized 'melee weapons only' arena. She seems to be a "go to" example for overdone character artwork, but is oddly one of the easier ones to defend, especially considering that almost every character in this game is freakish in some way.

Truthfully, I'm surprised this topic recurs so often. Given that pretty much every time a story based RPG comes out one of the first questions is whether or not there will be "romance" and "payoff scenes", and people get irate if the answer is "no", I think the answer to the basic question is obvious, that few, if any people have a problem with it, and as I pointed out, it even gets to the point of popping up in games where it really doesn't add much to it, something which I believe "Saints Row IV" parodied rather cleverly.

 

[Azkar Almsivi]

More hard gay strippers and gruff unshaven female space marines! More of everything! Why complain and fight and try and control each other? More of everything!
If you want to change an industry built entirely and only around MONEY (warning: money is everything), you need to accept common truths. Supply and demand. Demand more games with equality, show interest and desire in that product and someone will make it.

The reality of it all is that males and females do usually view things as sexy differently. But if you want to leap over that little hiccup, talk with your wallet. If there are no chances to talk with your wallet, vocalize what you'd like until a dev' says "Hmmm, maybe Jessica the Electrician saving Prince Jeremy from the Dragon Queen would sell!"

Remember the cold truth/nightmare fuel or words of wisdom: The world does not and never will owe you anything.

You want it, make it worth providing. Capitalism ho!