Violence in games vs Sexism in games?

[WindKnight]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

So, does Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge and Beyond Good and Evil discourage men from playing their games? As a man, the gender of the character plays a very little role in the game when your objective becomes saving the world, your friends or yourself (something where your gender as nothing to do with the game).

In Gears of War 3 there is a chapter where you play as Anya, it was still the same game with the same purpose of saving the world.

As to your point, lets say you have ten men who will only play as a male character in a game, and ten women who will only play as a female character in a game. The ten men have a whole smorgasbord of games they can play as, while the women will have a very tightly restricted list of games they can play, and will often run into the same content that made the female gamers who don't care what gender they played as feel uncomfortable.

Its not the devs fault some gamers have tight restrictions, those gamers are missing out but its their own fault. With that then what about midgets? Are devs going to have to make now a shit ton of games to compensate for the lack of games that let you play as a midget?

PS: (also I dont really know what is the politically correct english word for midget so I am not using that word without any kind of hurtfull intent)

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

 

[Zhukov]

Kratos looks dead, his skin is gray and his muscles are over the top. Geralt is really pale too and his face is kinda busted up. Can' say much about Sam Fisher since I didn't find any shirtless pics of him.

How the fuck are Kratos and Geralt male power fantasies? Maybe I'm missing something, but honestly, my aspiration in life is not to become a creepy dude with dead looking skin and weird tattoos.

Really?

You honestly can't see it?

You're really not being just the tiniest bit disingenuous here?

Kratos and Geralt are tough badass guys who are able dominate their enemies and impose their will through strength and martial prowess (Kratos especially, since Geralt's world tends to be a bit more complicated than killing whoever looks at him funny). They have attractive and amorous women throwing themselves at them on a regular basis.

That has no appeal whatsoever to you? And I mean appeal as a fantasy, not as a real life aspiration since that would be unlikely and impractical.

You've never wished you were stronger, strong enough that nobody would mess with you? You never wanted to be sought after by attractive women?

Obviously I have no idea what you fantasise about, but I'd be rather surprised if something along those lines had never cropped up.

 

[josemlopes]

The actual problem with sexist games is that they actively discourage women from playing games, or entering the game industry. 50% of the population is literally being given every reason to want nothing to do with the industry on any level. That's bad.

So, does Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge and Beyond Good and Evil discourage men from playing their games? As a man, the gender of the character plays a very little role in the game when your objective becomes saving the world, your friends or yourself (something where your gender as nothing to do with the game).

In Gears of War 3 there is a chapter where you play as Anya, it was still the same game with the same purpose of saving the world.

As to your point, lets say you have ten men who will only play as a male character in a game, and ten women who will only play as a female character in a game. The ten men have a whole smorgasbord of games they can play as, while the women will have a very tightly restricted list of games they can play, and will often run into the same content that made the female gamers who don't care what gender they played as feel uncomfortable.

Its not the devs fault some gamers have tight restrictions, those gamers are missing out but its their own fault. With that then what about midgets? Are devs going to have to make now a shit ton of games to compensate for the lack of games that let you play as a midget?

PS: (also I dont really know what is the politically correct english word for midget so I am not using that word without any kind of hurtfull intent)

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Maybe if people didnt made a big deal out of the gender of the characters the publishers and devs wouldnt either, like you said, there are people that only play games with a characters of the same gender and since there are more male gamers then female then it makes sense the they would try to cater to the male audience with the gender choice. With that said no game excludes any gender out of it and it all falls down to the fact that some gamers arent open-minded enough to play something that isnt the same gender as theirs (or even sexuality).

Basicly if people played games for their gameplay and actual story merits rather then for some need of self inserting in stories that arent for self inserting, things would be much better.

 

[The Lunatic]

Apparently all men aspire to be stoic muscle bound murders whom only role in life to to gain power by killing people.

That's not sexist at all.

 

[WindKnight]

Basicly if people played games for their gameplay and actual story merits rather then for some need of self inserting in stories that arent for self inserting, things would be much better.

I disagree. People play games for various reasons, and should be free to do so, and more importantly, feel comfortable doing so.

Apparently all men aspire to be stoic muscle bound murders whom only role in life to to gain power by killing people.

That's not sexist at all.

Gee, you might want to tell that to the men selling that fantasy to other men.

 

[Saetha]

The discussion was about sexualization and sexualization and attraction are two different things. There are people who find older women sexy, that doesn't mean that doctor Chakwas in Mass Effect was a sexualized character. Some people find older guys hot, that doesn't mean that Admiral Hackett in ME was a sexualized character.

No, the discussion was on whether or not a woman would and could find the man in this picture attractive. I weighed in, saying that yes, a woman could and very much did. The discussion at large is about sexualization, yes, but I wasn't commenting on that, simply this one argument in it.

 

[The Lunatic]

Apparently all men aspire to be stoic muscle bound murders whom only role in life to to gain power by killing people.

That's not sexist at all.

Gee, you might want to tell that to the men selling that fantasy to other men.

Yeah, arguing who's more on fire whilst your house burns isn't exactly a good use of time.

 

[Saetha]

Basicly if people played games for their gameplay and actual story merits rather then for some need of self inserting in stories that arent for self inserting, things would be much better.

I disagree. People play games for various reasons, and should be free to do so, and more importantly, feel comfortable doing so.

What exactly are these games that are making women uncomfortable? Not attacking, I'm just simply curious. I can't remember ever being made to feel uncomfortable over the way a game treated a female character - the only games I can think of are either non-western games like Dead or Alive, or games that are generally regarded as awful, such as Ride to Hell. Isn't the biggest problem - and the biggest discussion - not that women are made to feel uncomfortable by the games, but that they are simply excluded from them?

I mean, the only time a game ever really made me uncomfortable as a woman was the Broodmother in Dragon Age, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any real misogyny in that game.

 

[generals3]

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Well since they're business partners who invest millions i think it's normal they can pressure the devs to make the more profitable choices? The publishers don't care about catering to all types of consumers equally, and thankfully otherwise they'd all be bankrupt, they care about the project actually making (a lot of) money.

And that's why i'm a great proponent of: voting with your wallet.

 

[Something Amyss]

Do people argue that? The "playing sexist games makes people mistreat women"?

Anita Sarkeesian. Or, rather, the strawman version of her that opponents quote, insists this all the time.

But, when sexism is discussed in games, many say it's not the same thing or "false equivalence".

Because it is. When you see behaviour in a video game that is within social norms (and sexism still largely is), it will have a different impact than one that we don't accept as normal. Arguably, there is no harm provided from violence because people know that shooting people is bad. To the contrary, people justify sexism and come up with all sorts of different ways to insist it's not sexism or somehow the woman's fault.

Arguably, anyway.

The problem is, you're still arguing two different things and trying to equate them.

What it boils down to is stylised female "beaty" vs Stylised Male "beauty" and the rights and wrongs of each.

Except that's trying to pretend all things are equal. Women in media tend to be marketed to men. Men in media, particularly the types given as counter-examples, tend to be marketed to....Men. The He-Man type, for example, is more a boy's fantasy than a girl's wet dream (speaking generally, because neither sex is a homogenous unit). There's little point in the pretense that "manservice" is done with women in mind. And when women do get actual consideration, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I played "Mount your friends" and "My ex boyfriend the Space Tyrant a gay adventure game" no really. You know what I discovered though (and no not a suppressed sexuality) that it's possible to get past that point and enjoy the game. What I found was if I looked for it then it annoyed me because I was seeing it however once I went "Ok I'm just going to play and enjoy this game" suddenly I wasn't seeing it in my face and I was able to simply enjoy the game.

A major foundational difference being it's absolutely your choice. That's like telling a starving person to shut up because you dieted once and it wasn't that bad.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, arguing who's more on fire whilst your house burns isn't exactly a good use of time.

Dealing with the one who's lighting the house on fire probably is a good use of time, however, and that's part of the analogy. Men are the ones with the gasoline and matches in this analogy. So when a guy burns down his own house, is he equally the victim as someone whose house was burned down by someone else?

 

[The Lunatic]

Yeah, arguing who's more on fire whilst your house burns isn't exactly a good use of time.

Dealing with the one who's lighting the house on fire probably is a good use of time, however, and that's part of the analogy. Men are the ones with the gasoline and matches in this analogy. So when a guy burns down his own house, is he equally the victim as someone whose house was burned down by someone else?

Yes, because there are absolutely no women in the game industry.

Entirely male profession, no females are ever involved in any of these games people are talking about.

All the fault of men.

 

[Uhura]

How the fuck are Kratos and Geralt male power fantasies? Maybe I'm missing something, but honestly, my aspiration in life is not to become a creepy dude with dead looking skin and weird tattoos. Geralt is basically just some guy who gets manipulated and pushed around all the time - he's a good fighter but the majority of the time he's just a pawn, something you'd know if you spent more than a few hours playing it. I'm sure lots of men love to play The Witcher and fill his shoes but its certainly not a power thing.

The point of power fantasy is not necessarily to be something you aspire to be in your everyday life. James Bond is another character who is commonly referred to as a power fantasy. While people fantasize about being suave, smart and attractive agents, I don't know many who would like to IRL have a career where they constantly murder other people, have 50% of their girlfriends/sex partners kidnapped and/or murdered (dipped in gold or shot dead for example), have their wife murdered and being therefore unable to have anything that resembles a normal life or relationships. The fantasy is about power, being powerful enough to defeat your foes and have hot women desire you.

Similarly, there isn't just one power fantasy all men subscribe to. There are several different variations of the power fantasy (like Kratos, Bond, super heroes etc.) and not all of them are grunting brutes. Similarly most people are able to recognize that the 'perky cheerleader' is a common sex fantasy even if they are not attracted to that type of fantasy themselves. Because there is also variation in sex fantasies. Those sex fantasies also sometimes feature women who guys wouldn't really want to be in a relationship with IRL (just like power fantasies can be characters guys wouldn't want to be IRL).

And its not that no men have "power fantasies" about being Kratos (because some men do). Not anywhere near all of them though, just like SOME women find him attractive, but not all of them. Your argument works both ways.

So to to you those are equally rare phenomenons? Media that is aimed predominantly to women (romantic comedies, romance books etc.) has very few men in them who look like Kratos.
Whereas a considerable amount of male oriented media stars men who look like similar to Kratos (muscle wise, or because they too look enraged/scowling).

Spoiler

Big muscly dudes doing shit and blowing things up is a pretty common thing in male oriented entertainment.

 

[WindKnight]

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Well since they're business partners who invest millions i think it's normal they can pressure the devs to make the more profitable choices? The publishers don't care about catering to all types of consumers equally, and thankfully otherwise they'd all be bankrupt, they care about the project actually making (a lot of) money.

And that's why i'm a great proponent of: voting with your wallet.

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

Remember, when the decision is all about maintaining the status quo and antiquated gender roles/representation it is sound business practice and a sign of wise leadership and strong focus on the consumer. When the issue is DRM, always-online or "dumbing down" of games it is shitty business practice perpetuated by publishers that lack leadership and are out of touch with reality.

Because it can't just be a case of publishers being equally inept in both cases... Not when it is us emotional, pushy women wanting more representation.

 

[WindKnight]

Basicly if people played games for their gameplay and actual story merits rather then for some need of self inserting in stories that arent for self inserting, things would be much better.

I disagree. People play games for various reasons, and should be free to do so, and more importantly, feel comfortable doing so.

What exactly are these games that are making women uncomfortable? Not attacking, I'm just simply curious. I can't remember ever being made to feel uncomfortable over the way a game treated a female character - the only games I can think of are either non-western games like Dead or Alive, or games that are generally regarded as awful, such as Ride to Hell. Isn't the biggest problem - and the biggest discussion - not that women are made to feel uncomfortable by the games, but that they are simply excluded from them?

I mean, the only time a game ever really made me uncomfortable as a woman was the Broodmother in Dragon Age, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any real misogyny in that game.

It varies from person to person, but generally we're talking things like character design that pushes sexualisation before function (especially if, say, we're getting 'veteran warriors' put side by side where the woman is a smoking sexpot in a few scraps of chainmail, and the man is a grizzled, scarred slab in full platemail), female supporting characters being weak and lacking in agency as well as the tendency of female characters to be victims or dead to give motivation to the male.

Ultimately though in more its not these aspects individually, its often a mixture of them, and the fact their very much overwhelmingly present. One damsel in distress may make you roll your eyes, but ten in a row from ten games (with a few of them being killed off to be 'gritty and edgy') is probably going to put you on edge.

 

[generals3]

Yeah, I mean Electronic Arts has been making such great business decisions of late, and making the best decisions ever with the directions they've given their studios for their IP. And Activision? Their so canny and on the ball with what the market wants they did their best to kill the Modern Warfare franchise before it even began because all the big games at the time were world war 2 shooters, and drove the guitar hero franchise into the ground with over-saturation.

And yet they're huge companies. Whatever you may think they're still doing something right, business wise at least. Their shares have after all been rising over the last year and for activision their shares have reached an all time top this year.

Not to say companies always make the right choices, but, their decisions are, in their eyes, based on their expected profitability. It's up to you to prove them wrong. And how you do that is with your wallet.

You can tell them they're being dicks for "excluding" women all you want but as long as no evidence suggests that means they're losing money they're not going to give a shyte. It may sound harsh but such is business. As long as you're not infringing upon rights or harming people it's all about money.

 

[WindKnight]

And what about the publishers who have no problem excluding female gamers with such a tight restriction, but bend over backwards to cater for male gamers with such restrictions? We've had devs being told they cant have a female main character and actively forced into making it male, and again, Remember Me had a very hard time finding a publisher because they wouldn't lose the female main character.

Tampon Makers are sexist, how dare they not cater to a male audience with no interest in the product or use for it. Point being not all games need to hit all demographics. The core problem being the lack of games that appropriately hit the female demographic. The issue should not be that some games target a male demographic but those refusing the cater in some form to a female one possibly and more likely with other titles.

Should a developer be forced to change their artistic vision ? No
Is attacking any game that dares to not offer a female lead as an option potentially as bad ? Well yes if that's damaging the artistic vision, and this pressure has happened and been targeted at some developers.

There's been some criticism of games with multiple protagonists (or offering huge customization of your protagonist/avatar) for not including female options. some questions have been asked pointedly ('hey, if you can have 60 differant t-shirts for guys, why not just make it 30 t-shirts for guys and 30 for women?' for example) but I've seen little advocacy for all out forcing female characters into something. An artist is free to make his or work how they like. Likewise, the audience is free to criticize the artists work how they like, and if the criticism causes them to rethink their art and make it better, is that really a bad thing?

I have not seen female characters forced into a game where they were not wanted. I have, however, seen cases where devs wanted a female character and were banned from doing so, or struggled to find a publisher because they wouldn't give their female character up. I see a lot of complaints about a potential curtailing of an artists vision that simply hasn't happened and may never happen, but plenty of defense for situations where an artists vision HAS ALREADY BEEN CURTAILED.

Not to say companies always make the right choices, but, their decisions are, in their eyes, based on their expected profitability. It's up to you to prove them wrong. And how you do that is with your wallet.

Except honestly they seem to be succeeding (when they are - the last few years have been very bad for EA) in spite of their decisions, not because of them. What success they have at the moment is due to milking of yearly franchises, one of the biggest of which I must point out again would not exist if its publisher had gotten their way.

These are not people to trust they know best about the profitability angle of gender representation. You know what did gangbusters at the cinema last year? Frozen and The Hunger Games, female led films in a market producers still point at Catwoman and Elektra as proof audiences don't want female led movies.