You All Depress Me: Something We Need To Acknowledge.

[Angelblaze]

Posted in Gaming Discussion because its relevant to both the current gaming culture, this forum and well...nerd culture in general.

"Transphobic joke gets removed from Pillars of Eternity after complaints"

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/31e0uz/game_developer_mark_kern_wowdiablostarcraft_when/

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.873116-Obsidian-accused-of-transmisogyny-in-Pillars-of-Eternity?page=1

People say that the developers are spineless, shouldn't have backed down from these 'SJW' and that this was clearly some sort of attack on freedom of speech, even noting the quote of 'Je Suis Charlie'

People on this very forum saying 'screw you' to those who dare not agree with their comedic tastes.

"Batman Cover Debacle"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.872394-Why-is-the-Internet-Freaking-Out-Over-a-Batgirl-Cover-Second-Update?page=1

Again, this was an attack on free speech apparently, the internet had gone utterly mad, that this outrage was worth nothing and that the creators should not have changed their content.

(Overall thread relevant to the topic)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/663.873275-That-new-forum-smell-The-effect-of-censorship-on-the-games-industry?page=1


But oh, what's this?

"Final Fantasy Male character 'a little too sexy', changed"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/663.873613-Mobius-FF-character-designed-to-be-less-sexy?page=1

And on that day, no one really gave a fuck. Because after all, who cares about the free speech of things you don't like, right my fellow escapists? Very nice job, very nice double standard. Real proud of you all.

To quote someone from one of these very threads.

While the design was stupid, it's fucking Final Fantasy, they're supposed to embrace that stupid. I'm not too concerned about it, but I feel they should have kept it; at least it looked distinctive.

That said, why do I expect that if this was a female character there would be a great gnashing of teeth over PC feminazi censorship hindering innovation and free speech and taking our games away?

(Note: We could also count Valve's decision on paid mods to be the public 'repressing their freedom'....NAAAAAAH that's a decision we all disagree on right? So that doesn't matter right?)
(Wrong.)

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Actually from what I remember, no one was strongly calling for the FF character to change and more than a few were angry that he was.

And hypocrisy in the internet, especially in the portrayal of sexual characters is nothing new. For example, DoA Extreme Beach volleyball is wrong for bouncing women, but Bayonetta and Jack from Mass Effect are totally legit confident virtually topless strong women.

It happens, I'm sorry. Some people are passionate about a game/genre, others about another. You'll never get consensus on any issue, ever, ever.
Hell, take a poll here on the Escapist on what day it is. Guaranteed some jackass chooses Sunday/Friday or Wednesday.

 

[Saetha]

What? Tribalism and hypocrisy on the internet? Say it ain't so!

Yeah, trust me, this is plenty depressing but absolutely nothing new. Every side of this debate has proven themselves to be a bunch of hypocrites and liars - so color me unsurprised.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Ya they don't really care about free speech except when it's protecting speech they agree with. I can't really get too upset about that... I mean I should I guess, but I never took the blustering about free speech as anything but bluster.

Actually from what I remember, no one was strongly calling for the FF character to change and more than a few were angry that he was.

And hypocrisy in the internet, especially in the portrayal of sexual characters is nothing new. For example, DoA Extreme Beach volleyball is wrong for bouncing women, but Bayonetta and Jack from Mass Effect are totally legit confident virtually topless strong women.

It happens, I'm sorry. Some people are passionate about a game/genre, others about another. You'll never get consensus on any issue, ever, ever.
Hell, take a poll here on the Escapist on what day it is. Guaranteed some jackass chooses Sunday/Friday or Wednesday.

Well to be fair, there is a difference between beach volleyball and Bayonetta.

 

[Erttheking]

And hypocrisy in the internet, especially in the portrayal of sexual characters is nothing new. For example, DoA Extreme Beach volleyball is wrong for bouncing women, but Bayonetta and Jack from Mass Effect are totally legit confident virtually topless strong women.

So what? People have to hate all topless characters or less they're hypocrites? That's not how it works. Bayonetta and Jack are interesting characters because they exist to be more than eye candy. That and, despite the fact that they have a lot of skin shown off, they're not really sexualized. Jack's tattoos are so abundant that she doesn't really feel naked. That and for all of Bayonetta's sexy tropes and posing, there's a difference between being sexy for you, sexual empowerment, and being sexy simply for the sake of showing off for someone else. The two can overlap IRL, but in the realm of design, it tends to be one or the other. Dead or Alive volleyball was sexy not to add to the characters, but for the sake of pandering. Bayonetta and Jack's design complimented their character.

 

[Silvanus]

Are you making the point that creative freedom (against public criticism) is only usually invoked in certain instances, those that suit the speaker's own wants?

If so, I agree entirely.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

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I've been over this a hundred times, so I'll be brief. Writing that an imaginary character is okay with taking off her clothes and grinding an enemy's face to death and calling it sexual empowerment is dumb. Bayonetta is not sexually empowered, she's imaginary. Someone, a human, a real one, wrote all those things for her and we accept that Bayonetta is okay with that because we're told, by the self-same writers, she's okay with that.
You've never asked her and I haven't.
Bayonetta isn't sexually confident, she's sexual. That's literally what she was designed to be! She's not a person with a life; she doesn't do laundry, order pizza, call her dad on his birthday, binge watch Netflix, complain about the price of Pumpkin Spice Lattes. She's a literally stripping and grinding machine(well program...), designed fully to be overly sexual and the only reason its okay is the writers told us "No, no! We meant to do that! See, if we write that she winks at the camera after making a jizz joke, its okay! Because we wrote she's okay with what we're writing!"

We can't say a fake character has agency enough to have sexual opinions if we don't apply that across the board. Bayonetta smothers enemies to death with her boobs. Good, great! I'm glad she chooses to do that!
The girls of DoA went on vacation and passed the time playing volleyball and other beach games. Good, great! I'm glad they choose to do that!
If Bayonetta gets a pass at pole-dancing because...well shit, you want her to have one then I get to say the girls of DoA get a pole-dancing pass to because I want them to have one too. And our opinions are equally valid because they're all imaginary! It's a double-edged sword, you know?

P.S. I know the main writer was a woman. That doesn't make Bayonett any less dumb.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Well I'm calling Bayoneta sexually empowered, so I guess I'm dumb.

I would like to point out that literally no character in the history of fiction has ever done that. You know, there's more to it than that. Bayonetta's character comes from the way that she acts, which is very different from the majority of sexualized characters. She doesn't just giggle and thrust her butt towards the camera. She is arrogant as all hell, she's a tough cruel ***** who kicks the shit out of everything she comes across with a cocky smile on her face. She makes a sexy pose not for the camera, but which her hair is spinning around her and summons a massive monster to rip her enemy apart in a way that would make Alucard from Hellsing shit his pants. She is in charge, she has agency, she does more than just smile and look pretty for the camera and her sexuality is for her and not others.

Fake character...as opposed to all those characters that aren't fictional? No, she doesn't, she summons giant monsters to rip them limb from limb. In beach volleyball, I can sumurize the way the characters act with this. Fuck-toy. Did I miss anything in describing them in that game (THAT game, I don't care how they act in the main games if it didn't make the transition), or do they have interesting and unique personalities. I doubt it, they seem more like masturbation fodder and NOTHING else. No stories to tell, no agency, just there for jerking off. And I've got the internet for that, I don't need a sixty dollar interactive porno. That's why bayonetta gets away with it and beach volleyball doesn't. You can say that our opinions should equally carry over, but that only works if they're formed in a vacuum. Saying we need to hate or accept all sexy characters is a very inflexible mindset that just doesn't work.

And I have reasoning behind my logic. I don't just say "Because I want to". Give me a little more respect than that please.

I don't care what gender the writer is. The writing was just good.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I said this before, but in my opinion Mobius wasn't redesigned "to look less sexy", he was redesigned "to look less stupid".

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

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I'll put it this way. DoA Beach Volleyball is liking watching porn. Any porn of any girl having sex. Good? Great!
Bayonetta is like watching porn with a plot. Yes, she may fight a monster or two, but she's still going to take a dick up the butt and no one is here to watch her fight monsters. And the only difference is that a writer wrote Bayonetta verbally says she's okay with it, rather than simply assuming she is by the fact she's in a porno.
Draw a line in the sand if you want, call it erotica if you want.
Its still porn! And no amount of monster fighting is going to change the unfortunate fact that without the sex, there's no game.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

SNIP

I'll put it this way. DoA Beach Volleyball is liking watching porn. Any porn of any girl having sex. Good? Great!
Bayonetta is like watching porn with a plot. Yes, she may fight a monster or two, but she's still going to take a dick up the butt and no one is here to watch her fight monsters. And the only difference is that a writer wrote Bayonetta verbally says she's okay with it, rather than simply assuming she is by the fact she's in a porno.
Draw a line in the sand if you want, call it erotica if you want.
Its still porn! And no amount of monster fighting is going to change the unfortunate fact that without the sex, there's no game.

Bayonetta is only porn if you have a fetish involving a woman's hair being able to make giants monsters that kill other monsters in graphic fashion, because that's the only time she gets naked. Volleyball is porn because the sexy girls is all it has. Bayonetta has plot, characters, interactions, dynamtics, funny momment, emotional moments, cool moments, yet you just keep defining it by the tits. I define volleyball by the tits because that's all it freaking has! The two are NOT equal. NNnnnnnnno. If Bayonetta was conservatively dressed, her fun personality still would've carried the game, along with the plot of her being half witch and an angel and with the mythos the story has going on. And that's the thing. Bayonetta is styled around her sexuality, it's given actually depth, and that's what makes it interesting, it's more than cheap pandering. Something can become a lot more if intelligent thought and hard work is put into it. Bayonetta's creator is perfectly fine with porn of Bayoentta. Not porn where she's the sub though, because that betrays her character. Even porn with a bit of intellignet thought can be something good and thought provoking.

None of that in volleyball though.

EDIT: We're just shouting our viewpoints at each other without listening to what the other person has to say aren't we?

 

[Fox12]

Are you trying to imply that gamers are hypocrites? Is that what you're saying?

You'd probably be right ; )

The culture of games are changing in many positive ways. However, this means that a sub demographic that is used to having developers cater to their tastes and desires is now becoming horribly insignificant. They don't like it. So when culture critics come along they throw a fit and pretend that criticism is censorship. They then use the same tactics to try and silence those they disagree with, excusing their own poor behavior by arguing that the other side is worse. Some of these individuals would make fine politicians, I think.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

EDIT: We're just shouting our viewpoints at each other without listening to what the other person has to say aren't we?

Yeah, but we're not being mean about it I don't think? I mean we're debating, right? Not arguing? This hasn't gotten personal. I haven't insulted you mom and you haven't called me fat, so its all good right?

 

[Erttheking]

EDIT: We're just shouting our viewpoints at each other without listening to what the other person has to say aren't we?

Yeah, but we're not being mean about it I don't think? I mean we're debating, right? Not arguing? This hasn't gotten personal. I haven't insulted you mom and you haven't called me fat, so its all good right?

I know, it just feels like we're not going anywhere. I shout "BLUE!" you shout "NO GREEN!" I shout "BLUE!" again. Just feels like debating is something we could be doing better.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Yeah, well I disappoint myself everyday

One more disappoint added to the pile won't kill me

It's like that everywhere though, it's not unique to here so...

 

[Angelblaze]

Are you making the point that creative freedom (against public criticism) is only usually invoked in certain instances, those that suit the speaker's own wants?

If so, I agree entirely.

That and, the backlash to changes made by artists within the range of that creative freedom is also only invoked in certain instances.

I said this before, but in my opinion Mobius wasn't redesigned "to look less sexy", he was redesigned "to look less stupid".

Isn't it Mevius?

 

[Silvanus]

I said this before, but in my opinion Mobius wasn't redesigned "to look less sexy", he was redesigned "to look less stupid".

Well, the "sexiness" was the official reason given. If it were just the unwieldiness of the design, that would have come up for a thousand different outfits already in the past-- it's a pretty big coincidence it's the most revealing playable male costume there's been.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I said this before, but in my opinion Mobius wasn't redesigned "to look less sexy", he was redesigned "to look less stupid".

Lots of sexy designs are stupid, but they don't get fixes.

 

[Arkliem]

"Final Fantasy Male character 'a little too sexy', changed"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/663.873613-Mobius-FF-character-designed-to-be-less-sexy?page=1

And on that day, no one really gave a fuck. Because after all, who cares about the free speech of things you don't like, right my fellow escapists? Very nice job, very nice double standard. Real proud of you all.

Really? I see several people there saying they didn't like the change. Some there talking about how aesthetics should match a theme. A lot of people unsure as to why the change happened as they don't understand Japanese and don't know what the discussion was like over there (Usually with the caveat that if it was a vocal minority complaining about it, they should've ignored them)

 

[Alma Mare]

Snip

SNIP

I'll put it this way. DoA Beach Volleyball is liking watching porn. Any porn of any girl having sex. Good? Great!
Bayonetta is like watching porn with a plot. Yes, she may fight a monster or two, but she's still going to take a dick up the butt and no one is here to watch her fight monsters. And the only difference is that a writer wrote Bayonetta verbally says she's okay with it, rather than simply assuming she is by the fact she's in a porno.
Draw a line in the sand if you want, call it erotica if you want.
Its still porn! And no amount of monster fighting is going to change the unfortunate fact that without the sex, there's no game.

What the flying fuck? Never mind playing, have you actually even seen an actual Bayonetta game?