Tensei
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Posts posted by Tensei
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if it's not true then why would you make the video in the first place?
Because it's informative? Because people start talking about it and it generates awareness?
'i'm just going to point all this stuff out and leave it here. but if you disagree, it's not like i *explicitly said* it was bad. just that it exists.'
I don't understand your point. She's putting the material out there and allowing people to draw their own conclusions instead of explicitly telling them what to think. You know, like a typical documentary would. How is this so hard to grasp?
my wording is strong, but she's made this video to prove a point, and her point is that sexism in videogames is pervasive (mostly true) and BAD (not untrue) and the major issues that i have with this video is that she points out how developers had 'all these chances' to put strong feminine qualities on characters and didn't because SEXISM, or that a character *should have* been a woman but wasn't because SEXISM, as if these were all incorrect choices that should have been correctly made by using her recommended options. there's nothing in her descriptions that doesn't put the blame on someone's shoulders, even if that 'someone' is a vague 'the developers.'
how that's not saying 'this is bad and should be changed' i'm not seeing. i've already said it like 4 times but just because she didn't say it explicitly it doesn't mean it's not what she's saying.
I'm not even denying that she has a certain agenda behind the making of these videos. The problem is that neither you nor me know what it actually is, so until she explicitly comes out and says something along the lines of "Based on all these examples, I would like the videogame industry to do this and that", there is no point in arguing against it.
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yeah she's not. she's just saying 'if you do you're bad and you should feel bad.'
No she isn't. Maybe you should read the thread because people keep bringing this up, and it just isn't true.
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First sentence paradox... mathematics and physics were both invented using language and are both expressed by it. Clearly, when we try really, really hard, we can do a pretty good job of pinning things down, and usually such energies are well-spent. The problem with a capricious attitude towards accusations of sexism, racism, or any similar issue of bias that is difficult to pin down is that they at least have the potential to be exposed as whimsical, reductionist, dishonest, unfounded, prompted by ulterior motives, etc., all of which one would suppose would have SOME weakening effect on the perception of legitimate claims.
That's not a paradox. Mathematics and physics express universal concepts that are observed rather than invented. Gravity will exist whether we are aware of it or not. Language definitions on the other hand are never objective and vary by culture, time period and demographic.
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How would you describe the color burgundy to a person who has been blind all their life?
Language, being a human construct, has no objective/universal definitions of things, unlike mathematics or physics. It's purely consensus-based, that's why you can't objectively say that someone is right or wrong in calling something sexist. This actually came up earlier in the thread where The Coop maintained his own definition of sexism, and all I could really do was point out that most people who partake in these discussions typically use a different definition.
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You're forgetting games like Spec Ops: The Line, which took one of my most hated tropes in gaming and purposefully chose to base its game around it, so as to critically examine it and the mentality it spawns. Smart writers are more than capable of doing that, with as much subtlety - or even more so - as the writers for that game did.
Which is not to say that some writers are carelessly using these tropes because they're easy, btw.
You're right, I would totally be okay with a game that treats the DiD trope as cleverly as Spec Ops: The Line did with most modern shooters. I was admittedly mostly thinking of older games.
The word sexism IS being thrown around a little loosely. It's in the title of one of her own videos, albeit unreleased, and it's been used several times. The observation seems to be, this is all bad, this shouldn't have happened, look at how wrong this all is, look at this objectification, it's so disgusting and embarrassing, etc., etc. If you're saying that, you're saying things would be better without that. How you get from point A to point B is interesting and while no one's explicitly mentioned quotas or what not, that might occur to someone, somewhere... But see here, I'm agreeing there's a need for more variety and depth, but disagreeing that getting there involves demonizing what's come before, dismissing as "lazy writing" what at the time was probably afterthought in the process of focusing on the stuff they simply cared more about (time is finite), reading -isms where they need not be. I want a more EXPANSIVE idea of what games can be, not more restrictive. This path leads towards the latter.I think it's important to distinguish between the use of the trope in older games (where it's also about looking at the historical context and as you said, the fact that the plot was usually an afterthought) and in modern games. In the first case I really don't think pointing out the flaws in those games automatically means you're demonizing them, and I really am convinced that the prevalence of the trope is primarily because the plot was so unimportant and not because of any maliciousness on the parts of the writer. It's still important to examine those games because modern games are basically their direct descendants.
I'm totally on board with creating diversity and expanding the spectrum of writing in video games rather than restricting it, but I don't think it necessarily clashes with my idea. Suppose that you're a modern day videogame writer and you're thinking about including the DiD trope in your story. Ideally I would like for the writer to take a step back and realize that it's A. kind of a lazy/ outdated plot point and B. that the way it treats the female character might be problematic. After that it's up to them! Maybe they simply don't care enough and play the trope completely straight (and catch negative criticism for it), or maybe they realize that they can do something way more interesting with it and put some subversive twist on it. In short, I want writers to be critical of their own material and hopefully build on old, flawed material in interesting ways rather than directly rehashing it.
"still not perfect"... interesting phrase. Don't you see how I mentally connect phrases like that with ideas about quotas and sanitizing? Thank GOD it's not perfect. There are still sexist people out there, and thus there should still be sexist games, de facto. I personally never want any medium of art to exclude anyone on the basis of their prejudices. Seems to me art should reflect people, flaws, vices, and all. In terms of being concrete, I'm gonna have to ask you - what do you think "social awareness" is, and why is it critical that all games have it? Fine, you don't want quotas, but you seem to think it would at least be preferable if ALL games were, as you say, socially aware. Not sure I even agree with that. Some of those bad apples are amazing, and open doors, and change minds, and at the very least allow the medium to paint a picture of who we are. If the argument is that games ON AVERAGE aren't socially aware ENOUGH... maybe I can see it. But then you get back to quantifying what "enough" is. And why look to the past?'Perfect' might have been an unfortunate choice of words on my part. But no, I don't think all games should be socially aware, I think the writers should be! What I mean by social awareness is that if your material is going to be reaching a wide audience, you should be aware of any controversies it might generate.
Which leads me to my next point. One of the best ways display this awareness is by 'playing' with the trope and doing something new with it. In one episode of the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one of the (white) characters wears blackface in a homemade movie. In and of itself pretty controversial and racist, but this is then mitigated by the fact that the blackface issue is commented on in-universe and the controversy is acknowledged. The joke at that point doesn't come from the fact that a white guy is acting out a racist stereotype, but because of the fact that this character is so unsympathetic and maladjusted that he thinks it's a good idea to do something as crazy as wearing blackface in this day and age. This adds a whole new layer to the trope, and has the necessary in-universe meta-commentary on the controversy that shows that the writers really *have* thought it through.
For this reason it's also CRUCIAL to look to the past. How can you truly understand a trope if you don't know how it historically gets contextualized? There was a recent incident where a football player in Greece made a nazi salute after scoring a goal, but subsequently claimed that he was just pointing to a fan, and didn't even know what a nazi salute looked like. I think that in many ways, videogame writers that lack social awareness are like that football player.
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^^ Can you please post actual content or not post at all?
anyway,
First, people are advocating all sorts of things and throwing all sorts of labels like "sexist" etc. around, so that's where my stuff comes from. Second, we've got a fair share of variety going on in gaming right now, the art form is blossoming, and that's a fantastic thing that doesn't seem to need babysitting, to me. Third, you're assuming complete lack of awareness to begin with, when implementing some of these tropes could actually be conscious decisions, and in making this assumption you are somewhat diminishing the creators. Fourth, if assumptions about lack of awareness and critical thinking are indeed accurate, you're replacing a supposed vacuum with a specific agenda that is too singularly articulated and too convinced of its own ultimate priority over other concerns.
I think you're going to have to be more concrete with defining who the people are that advocate the things you are arguing against. I can't emphasize enough that I don't want quotas, censorship or 'mandatory' gender equality in videogame writing, and I think pretty much everyone in this thread is on the same page in that regard.
If we bring it back to the video for a second, it's mostly focusing on gaming a few decades ago. What Anita does is identify a particular trope, give a few examples, and explains why she thinks it is/was a bad thing. She's not explicitly advocating anything either.
Of course there is more social awareness in videogame writing nowadays, but it's still not perfect, and there are still quite a few bad apples. And again, nobody is advocating any kind of 'babysitting'. At most it's, as I said, an effort to make writers more conscious of what they are doing and consider the use of the trope from different perspectives.
And what is the alternative if you don't assume a lack of social awareness on the part of the writer? If a writer consciously includes an element in a story that he fully understands to be problematic, isn't that way worse? Us assuming a lack of awareness is basically cutting the writers some slack through the application of hanlon's razor ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained through stupidity/ignorance")
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Well, folks were saying Cosmopolitan was sexist, and the objection to the IGN page was that it was targeting men. My point is that it's okay for women to read Cosmo, for Cosmo to target them, & for IGN to target men (boys) - the goal you articulated there sounds great and lofty and what not, I'm all for generating awareness & self-examination, I just don't think hating on easy targets is the right path, and also there's a certain cross-section of the population for whom awareness and introspection usually won't play a persuasive factor, and demonizing their taste as being unaware/uninformed just ends up being condescending.
Is it really that offensive? In a vacuum? Really? You can slice and dice it a number of ways, but as you said, it's usually employed as a cliche, echoing fables of the past. There's certainly room for execution that is neither lazy or hackish. There is nothing inherently wrong with a male rescuing a female, it's just overused. The overuse in and of itself is what people find dangerous - any single example shouldn't be knee-jerk offensive, but the trend could be construed to have subconscious effects. That's the theory. If you want a glass half full version of this, let's see... in the DiD universe, the damsel is often depicted as flawless, worth saving, and "above" the physical combat that is nonetheless required to emancipate her. Men are either agents of antagonism - kidnappers - or agents of restoration - rescuers - and all of their myriad efforts at best result in a return to the status quo. None of it would have been necessary in the first place - no distress - had it not been for men. Players are persuaded that risking life and limb to rescue the "damsel" is a worthwhile venture - far more offensive if they just found themselves another princess - but probably more historically accurate! You CAN do worse. It's not great, but I'd temper my indignation. It's also usually employed in a clearly fantastic sense, clearly echoing fables from the past.
I think we're getting close. I see this trope being employed specifically to harken back to fables, and the past, and in a reductionist, clearly non-realistic context that doesn't focus on verisimilitude or grant characters - male OR female - much depth. That CAN be okay, provided the focus of the game doesn't revolve around your belief and relationship with those characters. In circumstances where it does, while there are still many instances of "male rescuing female," I think the helpless/distressed angle has greatly diminished and is seen as outdated.
Well, first of all, as Ash said, a lot of the minor examples that have recently been brought up (such as the IGN page) are indeed symptomatic rather than fundamental. They're obviously not as big of a problem as, say, the gender pay gap, but I think it's still worthwile to examine them, if only to hit home how pervasive sexism can be. So I don't think it really is 'hating on easy targets'.
It's honestly hard to gauge for me if the DiD trope is harmful in a complete vacuum (i.e. entirely discounting its history, origins and connotations), but really, outside of a theoretical example it's not gonna be within a vacuum. You're right that the frequency and the gender imbalance of the trope is arguably the most offending aspect, but even on a case by case basis I often find that the damsel is just used as an object to drive the plot rather than as a fully fleshed out character, which I think is problematic in and of itself.
That's why I find it hard to look at it the way you proposed: even if the male characters in your example fall within those archetypes, they're usually still actual characters rather than objects of desire. You know? They *do* things. The damsel just exists to give the protagonist and the antagonist the incentive to move the plot along. Though of course you're right, we're talking 10-20 years ago with these examples and we *have* come a long way since. I'm interested in seeing how the next video turns out for that reason.
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Oh well, guess that's it. Wrap it up people, thread is dumb.
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The endgame some folks seem to have in mind is a world where everyone is identical, treated identically not only by the law but by all art and media, all games are certified politically correct, and we've achieved some state of equilibrium where no one is ever offended or even potentially offended by anything. I'm a liberal, I believe in equal rights under the law, but in the world of entertainment, that sounds like a sanitized, soulless wasteland of good intentions and shitty art.
I really haven't seen anyone in this thread argue for equality quotas and censorship as you seem to imply though, which kinda makes this part of your post a strawman. In fact, different people in this thread have repeatedly stated that the goal should be to generate awareness throughout the community and hopefully nurture self-examination among both creator and consumer.
I'll speak for myself here, but the DiD trope to me isn't just offensive from a gender equality perspective. It's also a huge sign that the writer is either lazy or a hack.
I want to have a gaming culture where if a writer wants to include a DiD archetype in a story, they are at least *conscious* of the social implications of the trope, and preferably take it in some interesting new direction rather than playing it straight (again, see Prince of Persia 2008 ). That is my 'endgame'.
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cosmo once had a sex tip that involved telling a woman to grab the genitals of her man and, in so many words, beat the shit out of it, including "vigorous twisting of the shaft."
I don't think cosmo advertises to females so much as it advertises to psychopaths
Bit of a derail, but I heard this amusing theory about the sex tips in the cosmo. Since its primary target demographic is single women who are looking for a partner, the cosmo has a vested interest in keeping as many women single as possible so they keep reading the cosmo for new tips. That's why the sex tips are so awful, they are intended to actually be turn-offs!
BTW the cosmo and other women's magazines do tend to be pretty sexist.
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I don't understand why the "it's for profit!" argument keeps being brought up as an excuse. Most people are aware that pretty much anything a company does will be related to making money somehow, so it's sort of irrelevant to bring it up.
If a company dumps toxic waste into the ocean it's probably to save money on waste disposal costs, but it's still a very shitty thing to do!
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It is strongly related to the video that's in the title of the thread. But yea, this place has pretty much turned out to be a playground for people who're protecting Anita from evil sexist men who even attempt to question her flawless videos and actions, to the point where every comment that isn't appraisal for her is getting WTF'd and bullshit'd on. That's really all I need to see. Turns out Anita herself wasn't the one with the thinnest skin after all.
Things like the kickstarter money are irrelevant with regards to the content of the video, which is what is being discussed in this thread. Also, you're probably looking for the word 'praise', not 'appraisal'.
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4% isn't anywhere near equal compared to 51% exclusive male characters.
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I see. Not gonna argue that. She surely accomplishes the goal of achieving nothing, just being sort of informative. And not even bringing anything brand new to the table. Truly a noble and ambitious goal.
I don't really see how sarcasm is warranted. Aside from maybe an episode of Extra Credits there really hasn't been that much high profile material on this subject.
I found the video pretty informative and useful. Are you actually attacking her now for *not* being vitriolic enough?
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Then what weight does her video have? And what does it accomplish? I guess it's neat that someone dedicates so much time&money to point out some silly shit in games, but it's sort of... pointless. But as I said earlier, at least she got some money. So she definitely serves a market, as thunderf00t mentioned in his video. So it can't be totally garbage.
?
This is from the kickstarter:
I love playing video games but I’m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented. This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games. The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders. I’m going to need your help to make it happen!I don't really know what you were expecting otherwise, as far as I can see the video delivers on what she set out to do.
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so then she's making a video that says 'even though this is not the majority of games, this isn't necessarily bad, and shouldn't necessarily be changed. just saying.'
nobody buys that. also, there are only two conclusions that you can draw from this video, and that is that she's right in every way and games are sexist and must be changed, or she's full of bullshit.
also, all of this demographic change is 150% moot because these people started playing the currently available games, and enjoyed those. nobody became a gamer while not liking currently available games. so either there are so many games that women don't find offensive that the number of women who play games grew to such a large percentage, or just about all of them really couldn't care less about said 'misogynistic portrayal of women.'
And here's the biggest thing. Nobody except the people who truly, truly don't matter are disputing the point that women deserve to be respectable within video games. The question in point is whether or not ANYone except the most hard of the core of feminists actually thinks that things like princess peach getting captured in Mario games are degrading towards women. If you ask me, the shameless marketing of romance movies and novels to women shows a lot less respect to women than getting captured in a video game.
There are so many conversations that are infinitely more important to the positive portrayal of women than a simple 'woman gets captured' story. If they were all like Knight's Tale, I'd see your point. But pretty much none of them are, especially not within the past 10 years.
Like I really truly am interested to hear where people draw the line of 'hey that's degrading/disrespectful/i don't like it.'
Why are you trying to read so much into it? All that I get from the video is that she's talking about examples of a particular trope that appeared in older videogames, and in what ways it could be considered problematic for its treatment of female characters.
I don't really understand the rest of your arguments either. So what if romance movies and novels are problematic too? That's outside the scope of the video and this thread, and I actually know for a fact that Feminist Frequency has a bunch of videos on those subjects already.
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Thanks for being civil, Bleck. If you have a specific example to make that proves me wrong, then make it rather than calling me stupid for disagreeing with you. I personally thought Ash made some good points but missed the main arguments in the video.
The point is that you're not actually showing WHY Ash is incorrect in your opinion. If you just dismiss a pretty sound analysis with no real justification, it makes you look close-minded.
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This is going offtopic again. To bring it back to video games, you can't really talk about a solution to 'fixing' the DiD trope if you don't have everyone on board acknowledging that it's problematic in the first place.
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The gimmick is fun and original and it looks like a solid platformer. It's just a bit unfortunate that the first time Nintendo makes a Mario game with a female protagonist, they make 'being emotional' her special power.
It's possible that "women are more emotional" isn't as much of a stereotype in Japan as it is in the West, so it might not even be intentional, but still, kinda unfortunate.
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Super Princess Peach, where she's trying to save Mario? Super Paper Mario, where she's the second party member you get?
Isn't Super Princess Peach the game where the main gimmick is that she can change her mood at will to acquire different powers, such as crying on plants to make them grow? Yeah...
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It's a possibility, but here's the thing. To me, sexism is discriminatory by its very definition and nature. It suggests that the one being treated differently is inferior based on their gender. It's not an "oops" moment, like grabbing unsweetened iced-tea instead of sweetened, it's a purposeful action. But these days, the term's getting broader in unwarranted directions IMO, which brings me to...
That bolded part right there, is something I've encountered. I held a door open for a women who was walking behind me, and she called me a pig, saying she didn't need a man to hold the door for her. Somehow, my being polite became sexist, even though I hold the door for anyone who's close by when I go in or out one. At that moment, I discovered that the term "sexism" had jumped the proverbial fence. This eventually got me wondering, How can something be sexist, when there's no sexist intent within it?, as I realized that the term was now encompassing some things that had no reason to be included under its banner.
Perhaps what I've written is too black and white a stance to take on it to some. Maybe I'm just not being sensitive enough. But when coupled with the idea of looking into the details of something before calling it sexist (like what I did regarding Mario/Peach), I don't think either of those is an issue for me. And in the case of the "damsel" trope... well, I've already explained my stance on that.
I agree that sexism is discriminatory by definition, but I strongly disagree that it always has be intentional. I gave an example earlier of a job interviewer who hires men over equally qualified women. I can't describe this in any other way than sexism: he is rejecting people based on their gender. The problem is that this can, and does happen without the job interviewer even realizing it. So there's no intent, but it's still sexist.
Of course, the lady in your example was wrong. She didn't know that you hold open doors for anyone regardless of gender out of politeness, and jumped to her own conclusions.
You're probably right that sexism is starting to become something of a loaded term due to misuse, and tends to put people on the defensive very quickly (as demonstrated in this thread), but going by the dictionary definition I think it's still accurate to refer to situations such as the job interviewer or the DiD trope as sexist.
Maybe it's easier to think of sexism as a spectrum rather than a binary thing. A coach yelling sexist insults at a female contestant in a fighting game tourney is obviously pretty far up the scale, but I think that (over)use of the DiD trope, though obviously pretty minor on a case by case basis, still counts as well.
Really, the lesson here that I keep forgetting until topics like this re-surface is to remember that you are always wrong and therefore arguing is pointless.It's best to fall into the muted group. The group that feels they're dominant never shut the hell up and don't stop bombarding people with their opinions on the matter at hand. Opinions which they have convinced themselves are objective truths.
Since you'll never convince them of the contrary anyway, it's best to just sit back and watch them fight among themselves. It's fun.
Ah yes, posting-about-posting metadiscussion, my favorite. Maybe you should hold on to your convictions and actually just sit back and lurk if you're not going to contribute anyway.
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As someone who has actually played God of War from the first game and is familiar with the character, no.
What, a classical-era Spartan soldier is unlikely to be a rapist? He would probably at least be a pederast (which would be considered rape in todays society). Are you familiar with how messed up classical Greece was, both in reality and in mythology? Cause I had classical greek as a HS subject and there was a LOT of that. Let's end this tangent though.
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...when has Kratos ever raped someone?
I meant that he's like the archetype of a completely amoral character. I don't think that there ever actually would be a full-on rape scene in any of the games because that would generate a whole lot of controversy, but I could see it fitting his character, don't you agree? Derail aside though.
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So, Kratos, let's break this down... you can crush her face, that's cool, but you can't stab her. DO NOT STAB HER. Or do any kinds of grabs or throws, no-go on that either. People might get the wrong idea. Just crush her face okay? No one will think you have unsavory intentions if you do that.
Also, seriously, people, GENETIC FALLACY.
And you're committing a strawman fallacy by arguing against things that haven't been said. Again, I don't think anybody in this thread wants to impose censorship on videogame writers, so "you can't do x or y" is a pretty huge exaggeration of what has been said.
MC Final Sigma offered an explanation for why the scene in question was/is considered controversial, and I have given my own thoughts on it a few posts up as well. I think a lot of it has to do with the way in which the scene is portrayed: it's nowhere near as blatantly over the top as some of the other execution scenes, he's not ripping off her arm and using it to stab out her eyes or anything like that, but he basically just grabs her by the face/throat and slams her into the wall repeatedly, and the camera specifically zooms in quite closely on her face.
It's disturbing to me exactly because it's relatively subdued and realistic, so it calls to mind associations with real life analogues such as domestic violence, and yeah, I think there definitely is a sexual element in there too. This is obviously very subjective, but hopefully it can show some insight in why the scene generates controversy.
That said, I don't think the scene itself is that problematic, even if it were explicitly made to be disturbing. After all, we already know Kratos basically is a raping, pillaging mass murderer, so a disturbing scene like that is relatively in-character for him. I take more issue with the achievement name than the associated scene.
Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Tensei
This is the 'mission statement' from her kickstarter. Based on this and on the first video, I would say that her primary purpose is to be informative/educational. So really, I think all that stuff about advocating censorship and the like is conjecture and maybe a small degree of persecution complex.
We can *theorize* about Anita's agenda, but I think that's sort of pointless until she explicitly states her purpose (if she ever does). I think it's important to realize that criticizing something does not equal advocating censorship. If a critic slams a movie, that doesn't mean that they want the director to be banned from creating movies. They just want to see better movies!