djpretzel

Just following up - I don't disagree with any aspect of the above, and am also completely cool with how it's phrased. I especially like the word "might" because some of what rubs we the wrong way is the absolutism often expressed about things being de facto problematic, instead of potentialities. Yeah I don't know... if it comes from an honest place, who's to say? Also, one culture's/country's idea of social awareness is different from another, and you can't always predict who your audience is going to be. All things being equal, though, I'll agree that it's an important concept and would usually be preferable. A large part of what I'm objecting to is putting the DiD trope in the same category - or even in the same vicinity - as something like using blackface un-ironically and without awareness. I don't like the analogy/equivalence at all. The point I want to emphasize about DiD is that it's not problematic in isolation, but rather in its ubiquity - hence "trope". Even in a socially-aware context, every once in awhile, I could see DiD being employed and it being fine. I don't find the concept inherently offensive, because I understand that fiction is not trying to present every single character as a role model. The only potential issue is the overuse. With blackface, well... ANY use that didn't acknowledge the impropriety would be instantaneously controversial. It's the difference between "might be problematic" and "DEFINITELY PROBLEMATIC", and it's the difference between a problem of narrative overuse versus outright racial insensitivity. I find this difference extremely significant, personally. See above; again, I don't disagree, I just end up in a different place. I wasn't saying you don't need to look at the past at all, but rather that trying to ascertain w/ any degree of certitude the EFFECT a trope like DiD has is iffy. The narrative overuse alone should be reason to "employ with caution," if only for the sheer sake of creativity. Bringing in agendas and "speculating with authority" as to what's happening in the subconscious of gamers - male or female - is what I find unnecessary & troublesome. That's not contextualizing, that's projecting.

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. This isn't a bad time for me to mention that I agree with some of Camille Paglia's views on feminism. Sure. I'm saying it'd be preferable if she identified the trope and moved on to the next, without that last bit. It'd be more persuasive to me that way - the "here's why this is/was bad" ... is bad. "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? It's a good razor, but I guess I'm not seeing the need to make the assumption in the first place, either way, and I'm iffy on how problematic its usage - past and present - truly is.

I vastly prefer evolutionary psychology. -ologies with social agendas, well, it's less about the -ology and more about the -ism at that point, isn't it? "Worthless drivel" is rather harsh, but the answers are often not just imperfect, as you say - they are downright projected... Studying the world with a bias towards bias is almost guaranteed to result in biased findings of bias. Shocker. As for incremental progress, absolutely. That's part of why I was saying that focusing on corporate advertisers made little to no sense. 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. Of course, I can't argue that picking things apart & analyzing them can and does have value, and that awareness of this type can inform & transform art for the better. That's a no-brainer, and in chiming in I don't want for a minute to suggest that I feel otherwise. But doing that with an overt agenda, a reductionist rubric, and so many assumptions, and in many cases with so much misguided certitude... to me, for me, it often has the opposite effect from what's intended, and I recoil at what amounts to venting and animus, in the guise of critical analysis.

One, I'm not sure how prevalent this particular trope truly is, anymore. Two, you're dealing in the highly uncertain realm of the human psyche. I can't "rely" on people not having "relationships" with PINEAPPLES... The human brain is weird. Trying to anticipate & study its reaction to playing a (barely) male plumber saving an (incidental) princess from a giant turtle-dragon thing by stomping on mushrooms and what not, well... we're not there yet. We don't have the science, and may never. If you want to speak conclusively about the net effects of these things, you can't, you can only suppose. And I'm not saying that such supposition can't be beneficial, but it can (and does) go way overboard, and speaks from a position of nearly laughable certitude. Let's say for every single game out there, you offer a choice of a male or female protagonist, equally equipped in every way, shape, and form. Now what you're doing is forcing the choice of gender upon every gamer, which you could easily make arguments towards being equally destructive. Are two choices enough? Mario's Italian, and my Austrian-Welsh roots are offended by a lack of an option I can identify with. Or, you're contradicting (or exposing) my transgender inclinations, and indoctrinating me into your boolean-gendered artifice at a young age!! Great counter-examples have been there from very early on, by the way. Ms. Pac-Man - I'm sure she'll get picked apart by feminists for being too effeminate because THAT BOW... but her mechanics & capabilities are equal to that of her male predecessor. Hell, in the localized version of Doki Doki Panic - aka SMB2US - Peach is not only a protagonist, she kicks ASS with that hover jump. How much do we need? What's the quota? Who's keeping track? And how is picking apart obvious cliches making any sort of progress? When have we achieved "success"? It's not a zero-sum game. Princesses don't have to stop being saved for there to be alternatives. Game developers with stories to tell will be the ones to effect change, and I don't think their stories will be motivated by let's-change-the-world-by-talking-about-it-a-lot academics. Dys4ia is a fantastic, highly-creative example.

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.

Just because something caters to a specific demographic at the exclusion of other demographics doesn't make it inherently problematic. Otherwise Tyler Perry's everything is all sorts of wrong. It's more problematic when there's a vacuum - when one group is being catered to, and another is simply not. Or when a demographic centered around an activity - like video games - is assumed to be 100% male when in fact it's a little more diverse than that. It's not a LOT more diverse than that - YET - or I'm relatively convinced they'd be marketing differently. Capitalism. It's a little axiomatic, but this boils down to a "things will change when they've actually changed" argument. You're talking about an underlying shift in the medium that's going to take longer than it should, but will almost certainly occur to some meaningful extent as games become more and more pervasive. It's also worth noting that equilibrium may not be - probably is not - a 50/50 split in the gamer demographic. You have to allow that, for any given interest, or metric, in any given demographic, there can be meaningful, innate differences. It's plain-old unscientific to assume that any given activity or predilection would, in the absence of "evil cultural pressures", still end up being equally appealing to either sex. Then again, you also can't sabotage yourself into thinking that the status quo can't be improved - or, let's say, manipulated - to be more inclusive. There will probably always be games that cater to stereotypical male/female interests. I'd argue that's a good thing. 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. The newsflash here is that we're animals. We're biological. We're not equal, or perfect, or consistent, or born free of ingrained attitudes about a lot of fundamental aspects of social interaction. We're often at our best when we learn to overcome these realities not by ignoring them, or pretending they don't exist, or pretending they're part of a huge conspiracy by THE MAN, but rather when we play to our strengths AND our weaknesses and learn to adapt. That doesn't mean sanitizing video games, or boycotting ads targeting men, it means doing more to bring women into the fold, employing sensibilities appropriate to the era. It's far more additive than subtractive, and it doesn't start with advertisers.

Right well... who knows. Might be legit, permanent change of heart and campaign for public good, might be an attempt to get out ahead of an issue and appeal to a new demographic, might be both. They're still a single advertiser, though, and the IGN page caters to numerous advertisers. I think they could have taken a higher road, if not THE high road, but I also imagine that many of their potential advertisers are inquiring - repeatedly - about the young male demographic, and so they've created a page that caters to what they perceive - based on their actual interactions with advertisers - is the topic of greatest interest. No one's immune, no one gets a free pass, but if you want to change the world, it's one of the absolute worst places to start. Your own statement almost contradicts itself - the lowest common denominator is what it is because it is common, i.e. ubiquitous. If everyone somehow makes catering to it unprofitable, you've already accomplished the sea change, and the LCD isn't even the LCD anymore, and so you've won the game. Mentioning things like this IGN page betrays the vagaries and nebulous targets causes like this end up latching on to, rather than anything constructive. Build your solution, or contribute directly to those building it... deconstructing & demonizing easy, relatively meaningless targets like this never got anyone anywhere. Well, it probably generated a lot of BS thesis papers, I take that back.

You do need to understand what you're looking at, and who it's geared to. The audience for that page, at http://corp.ign.com/, isn't customers or even visitors, it's advertisers. IGN has determined that advertisers interested in advertising on their site want to reach a young male demographic, and so they are catering to that audience, specifically. Because they want to make money. It's really not THAT much more complicated. You've got a chicken-and-egg problem, and overanalyzing it is counter-productive. Will advertisers start wanting to target females more when there are more statistics to back up that's who they will actually be reaching? Yes. If you can count on one thing, it's that these folks want to make money. That's almost your only given. They like money. They don't care about agendas, rights, dreams, hopes, wishes, or hurt feelings. They aren't the ones you're going to persuade, or who will even take the time to care. Don't expect advertisers to turn the sway or effect social change; they follow the money, they are reactionary, and they deal in cold metrics and hard numbers. To expect advertisers in the video game industry to exhibit behavior in any way different from advertisers in other industries to me is to misunderstand the nature of the beast. I don't disagree with most aspects of the overall argument, and I want to see some sort of change effected, but it would never start with advertisers, and misinterpreting content like this weakens more legitimate arguments.

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