Native Jovian

So I guess you missed the part where I pointed out that there's no strict differentiation between terms like "remake" vs "remaster" vs "HD update" or whatever, and that it's all just marketing speak that means whatever the company wants it to mean? Whatever lets you feel superior, I guess. Apparently wanting a game called FFVII to play like that game called FFVII I remember from back in the day is just crazy of me. Y'know, like, how dare I have expectations that a new version of an old thing be somewhat similar to the original!

We might have to agree to disagree on this point. It seems self-evident to me that the experiences you undergo shape you as a person, and that the media you consume is part of your experiences. There's no magical barrier between seeing your friends and family make misogynistic jokes and internalizing that experience or watching a comedian on TV make misogynistic jokes and internalizing that experience. But if you flat-out reject the notion that media you consume affects you as a person, then there's really nothing else to discuss on the subject. I'm struggling to see what that has to do with the wider subject of sexism in games (or media in general) and the criticism thereof.

So, are you actually going to respond in any meaningful way, or just punctuate at me? I honestly have no idea what you're getting at with this post. Obviously you're having some sort of reaction to the quoted bit, but I have no idea what it is you're trying to convey. Stunned disbelief, I guess? At what? We can't have a conversation if you won't, you know, converse with me. You're basically saying "different people have different definitions of sexism, so anything you say about it is invalid!" and calling me disingenuous? Here's how discussions like this work. If there's any ambiguity over terms, the first thing you do is define your terms. If you don't define your terms, then no one knows what you're actually talking about, so meaningful conversation is impossible. I've defined my terms. I've made it clear what I mean when I use the term "sexism" or "sexist". Can we agree on that? Is anyone confused about what I mean when I say those words? Once terms are defined, you can go ahead with the actual discussion, since everyone knows what you're talking about now. What you're doing is saying "but other people have different definitions, so your definition is invalid!". This is bullshit. I don't care what other people's definitions are. I'm not using other people's definitions. I'm using my definitions, which I've spelled out so that everyone is on the same page. If you have a problem with my definitions, then we can talk about that, but saying "but sexism is poorly defined!" after I've just defined it for the purposes of the conversation we're having is an attempt to deflect the conversation. You can do that forever and we'll never actually get to the conversation because you keep insist that we talk about the definition instead. If that's the case, then it's literally impossible to talk to you about it. I've officially lost track of what your actual argument is at this point, so I'm going to pull things back and state my position in broad terms, and hopefully you can tell me where you disagree with what I'm saying. Sexism is a thing that happens when people treat other people a certain way based on their sex, rather than treating them as individuals. This is bad, because it paints people with stereotypes which are often inaccurate and usually unnecessarily limiting even if they aren't. (eg, "men are physically stronger than women" is true on average, but it's irrelevant in a situation where you're dealing with an individual woman who happens to be physically stronger than an individual man, so treating all women like they're physically weaker than all men -- a sexist behavior -- is bad.) Sexism continues to exist because of the way people internalize certain behaviors. If you see everyone acting in sexist ways as you grow up, you believe that this is normal, and you're likely to act in sexist ways yourself. This includes not just people that you encounter (friends, family, strangers, etc), but also media that you consume (books, TV, movies, video games, etc). People create media that is sexist because they themselves are sexist. This creates a vicious cycle -- sexist people create sexist media, which other people consume and thus internalize the idea that sexism is normal, which contributes toward making them sexist as well. People like Anita Sarkeesian et al are attempting to end this cycle by discouraging the creation of sexist media. If you point out sexism in media, then you get people to think about it instead of just blindly internalizing it, which helps prevent people from becoming sexist by consuming sexist media. Such criticism also (hopefully) helps reduce the among of sexist media being created in the first place, which also helps stop the spread of sexism. This isn't a cure-all -- it won't end sexism by itself -- but it will help contribute to that goal. Generally speaking, this is a good thing, because sexism is bad and it reduces sexism. It's possible to take it too far -- for example, calling for the banning of any media with sexist content. Sarkeesian et al generally haven't done this -- indeed, Sarkeesian, at least, is careful to point out that a work having sexist aspects doesn't mean that it's a bad work, or that you shouldn't enjoy that work. Only that you should be aware of the sexist aspects and understand why they're bad. tldr, people pointing out social issues in media is a good thing because it helps, even if just a little, in solving those social issues.

The idea that FFVII's gameplay was bad is obviously a matter of opinion, so presenting it like it's an unambiguous fact is a bit silly. I like turn-based combat. I like the various permutations of the Active Time Battle system that Final Fantasy used. Saying "it's bad and now it's going to be good, what're you bitching about?" is dumb. Gameplay isn't the only thing in the game, no, but it's a pretty goddamn big part of it. If they're turning it into some sort of action RPG thing, then I don't think I'm off base in saying that that's a major change to the game -- a bigger one than I'd like. That's completely arbitrary and you know it. It's not like there's a strict agreed-upon definition of "remake" vs "remaster" vs "HD version" vs whatever. This appears to be less an update of FFVII so much as an entirely new game that happens to have FFVII's story. If you're satisfied with that, then great, I'm happy for you. But you can't blame people for expecting a version of FFVII when they're told that an updated version of FFVII is being released, or for being disappointed when that's not what they're getting.

I suppose my main issue with radically changing the battle system is why bother doing a remake if you're going to completely change how it plays? FFVII suffers significantly from the time when it was made, as the first foray into 3D. "FFVII, but with less painfully-shitty graphics" makes sense. But if you're going to change it to the point where it's unrecognizable in terms of gameplay, then what's the point? Minor tweaks are one thing, but it looks less like "minor tweaks" and more like "completely replacing it with something else entirely".

"Irresponsible"? How so? Making statements based on the definition I'm using rather than some arbitrary collection of definitions that other people use is some sort of reckless disregard for the truth? It's not like I've been shy about the definition I'm using -- basically all I've been doing is spelling out that definition (and its consequences). I'm really not sure what you mean by that. You can have all the sexist beliefs or attitudes you want, but if you don't act on them, then they don't matter, because they don't affect anyone else. (Note: speech is an action in these terms. If you go around making sexist statements, then obviously that does affect other people.) The basic point here is that sexism is bad because it harms people. We don't want to harm people, so we want to stop sexism. But only sexist actions (agan: including speech) cause harm, not sexist attitudes or beliefs (except inasmuch as sexist attitudes and beliefs contribute to sexist actions), so we don't really care about attitudes/beliefs, only actions.

You don't have to do something for its own sake in order to do a thing. If you do something sexist, then you're doing something sexist, regardless if you're doing it out of ignorance (because you didn't know it was sexist), out of malice (you think sexism is great and are deliberately being sexist), or for some other reason entirely (you don't give a damn about sexism, you just did something sexist because it was the easiest way to achieve an unrelated goal). Being sexist is still being sexist even if you're not doing it specifically for the purpose of being sexist because you agree with sexism. No one's saying that one action defines you for all time. But you're trying to draw a distinction between the actions a person takes and the character of that person, as if there's a difference between "this person does (or has done) sexist things" and "this person is (or was) a sexist". There's not. That's not what we're saying. We're saying that you can't completely divide a person's character from their actions. If a person does sexist things out of ignorance (not realizing that what they're doing is sexist), that doesn't make them not a sexist. It makes them a sexist, but only out of ignorance. If a person used to do sexist things, but has since stopped, it doesn't mean that they weren't a sexist then, it just means that they've since stopped being sexist. While that's not wrong (you can certainly take things out of context and interpret them differently), it's not really relevant to the conversation, either. If something isn't actually sexist, then the person doing them isn't sexist for doing that thing. No one's suggesting otherwise. Everything we've been talking about has been "if someone does a sexist thing". If the thing they do isn't actually sexist, then the rest of the statement doesn't apply.

Above and beyond your misunderstanding of the George Zimmerman case (the Stand Your Ground law was not used as part of his legal defense), you're missing the point. You can't be put on trial for "being a huge douchebag", and "but I'm a good person" isn't a valid legal defense for committing a crime. The point is that the justice system doesn't care about your moral character, it cares about your actions. Of course, using lethal force to defend yourself is a different action than committing murder. The whole point of the trial was to determine which Zimmerman had done. No one disputes the fact that Zimmerman shot and killed Treyvon Martin, but the prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was murder rather than self defense, so he was acquitted. He wasn't found not guilty by reason of being a really stand-up guy. He was found not guilty because they couldn't prove that the actions that he took constituted murder. Anyway, the entire justice system thing is a derail. Timaeus, you originally made the argument that what someone does doesn't define what they are. Here's the original quote: This is incredibly silly. If you do sexist things, then you're sexist. That's what "being sexist" means. You can't say "sure, I do sexist things, but I'm not a sexist". It's nonsensical. A sexist is someone who does sexist things. It's like saying "yeah, I stole something, but that doesn't make me a thief." Yes, it does make you a thief. That's what "thief" means. What you think about your actions doesn't matter. Doing sexist things makes you sexist, regardless of what you thought you were doing. No, that may mean you're only accidentally sexist and someone just needs to educate you along the lines of "hey man, don't do that, that's sexist". Which is great and all, but it doesn't make what you're doing not sexist.

Where do you think people get sexist tendencies from? By absorbing the attitudes of the society around them -- the people in their lives and the media they consume. It's a chicken-egg problem. Sexist cultures produce sexist media, sexist media reinforces sexist attitudes, and sexist attitudes contribute to sexist culture. If you can short-circuit the process at any point, then the cycle ends. Since you can't very well keep media from influencing attitudes or attitudes from contributing to culture, you try to stop it at the "producing sexist media" point. It won't solve the problem by itself, certainly, but it will help.

For the record, Cash was exactly right regarding my thought process of DJP's posts. Even going back and re-reading them with his clarifications after the fact, I still can't see how to read the original posts any other way than the way that I did, but I can accept that what I took out of it isn't what he meant to say. Fair enough; misunderstandings happen. Regarding scientific support for Sarkeesian (et al)'s claims, that's a fair point. You can certainly argue that they're overstating the evidence for their conclusions. That doesn't make them wrong, but it does make them guilty of sloppy thinking at the very least, which is not a point in their favor. The science is mixed on the issue, so the argument that sexist depictions are bad because they have negative social consequences is a weak one. It doesn't affect the other arguments they make (that it's in poor taste, that it's limiting the medium as an art form, etc), but it does curtail the effectiveness of the idea that "you shouldn't do this because doing this actually hurts actual people". The "therefore censorship" argument is purely guilt by association, though. DJP has repeatedly said that Sarkeesian et al use similar arguments as people like Jack Thompson who have advocated for censorship. This is entirely irrelevant. The fact is that Sarkeesian et al are not advocating for censorship. The fact that they're similar to censorship advocates in other respects is a red herring, an attempt to discredit their arguments by linking them with something bad (ie, censorship) despite the fact that that's not actually their position.

Maybe try reading the entire paragraph instead of cherrypicking quotes? "Depicting people in works of art" is completely tangential to objectification. You can objectify people in real life, with art not entering into the equation at all. You can depict people in works of art without it being objectifying. You can also objectify people by depicting them a certain way in works of art. The issue with objectification is how you treat people, not the medium with which you do so. My response to Anorax was about the general point that people like Sarkeesian are trying to make, not the specific subject of objectification. I said that objectifying people (with the context being objectifying people because of their race, gender, etc) was inherently bigoted. Your response was to express shock that I thought depicting people in art was bigoted. The implication is that you think that the definition of objectification is "depicting people in art". This is wrong. Completely, utterly, absolutely wrong. That's not what objectification means. That's why I called your criticism laughably off-base. Was I wrong? Is that not what you think objectification means? I've tried to explain what it does mean -- the way people like Sarkeesian use the term. Maybe I haven't done a great job, but I've at least tried to explain where I'm coming from. If you don't understand what I've said, or disagree with my assessment, then that's one thing. But I don't see how what we've been doing can be called "talking in circles".

That's pretty much exactly it.

She is talking about the depictions of women in art, but that's not what objectification means. You realize that objectification is a well-defined term with a well-defined meaning in the context of the issues we're discussing, right? Here's Wikipedia's take on it (and on sexual objectification specifically, which more what Sarkeesian is on about, usually). The tldr version is... what I already said in my previous post. A person is being objectified if they are treated as a thing instead of a person. Treating women as a something to have sex with is objectification (and leads to the term "sex object", which also gets used a lot in these kinds of conversations). You're ignoring their existence as a human being -- their emotions, their motivations, their fears, etc -- and focusing purely on the utility they provide you. You don't care about them, you only care about what they provide you, whether it's something attractive to look at or something to have sex with or whatever. I'm honestly surprised that you haven't heard it before. It's not a particularly obscure or complex concept.

You're taking the term "objectification" way too literally. Painting a picture or carving a sculpture of someone is not objectification. Yes, you're creating an object that depicts that person, but you're not reducing that person to an object. What objectification means is that you're considering people as things that you can use to fulfill your desires (or threaten them) rather than as people with thoughts and feelings of their own. If you treat women as "a thing I can have sex with" and nothing more, then you're objectifying women. If you treat black people as "a thing that might rob me" and nothing more, then you're objectifying black people. If you treat Muslims as "a thing that might target me with a terrorist attack" and nothing more, then you're objectifying Muslims. All of that is bigoted. Granted, not all objectification is inherently bigoted. If you buy something from a store and treat the cashier as nothing but "a thing that allows me to complete my purchase", then you're objectifying the cashier. (This is the phenomenon that allows people to treat service industry workers like complete shit and not feel bad about it.) That sort of objectification isn't bigoted (because it's not based on their gender, race, religion, etc), but it's still a pretty dick move. But that's completely outside the context of the conversation we've been having, so I didn't think it was worth making that distinction. Maybe I was wrong. In any case, defining objectification as depicting people in works of art is pretty laughably off base. Going back and rereading the posts you've made over the last few pages of this thread, I see nothing to indicate that you welcome criticism of a cultural nature. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, or maybe what you wrote wasn't as clear as you think. Either way, if we can agree that "hey, you know, this game is actually really bigoted in a lot of ways, which is to its detriment" is a valid criticism that one can make, then we don't actually have any disagreement on this point. She's not saying "playing a sexist game will make you a sexist", she's saying that sexist media contributes to sexist culture, and sexist culture contributes to sexist attitudes. I find it somewhat amusing that you include the paragraph addressed directly at the argument you're making (that people are not affected by the media they consume) but make no argument to refute it, you simply seem to take it on faith that it's ridiculous and dismiss it without actually analyzing it. The mistake you're making is the difference between a direct, immediate causal effect and a contribution to a larger, more general attitude. She's not saying "if you play sexist games, they will make you sexist". She's saying "sexist games contribute to sexist culture, which contributes to sexist attitudes". If you're a dedicated supporter of gender equality, then playing a sexist game isn't going to suddenly make you into a misogynist. But if you're constantly bombarded from all sides with the message that "women are things that hang around so that The Hero can prove his manliness and have sex with them", you don't think that that's going to affect your attitudes, if only unconsciously? How do you think people learn cultural attitudes? From the culture around them. And if that culture is telling them that women are sex objects, then, well, people are going to absorb that attitude. Again: that doesn't mean that people mindlessly believe whatever they see on TV/in movies/from games/etc. But it contributes to the problem. The best way to stop it from doing that is to get those games/movies/TV shows/etc to stop sending that message. That's what Sarkeesian is arguing for.

Whoof. Been sort of a hectic week, so I haven't been able to keep up with this thread. So, apologies for reaching back a few days to reply to posts from a few pages ago. I'm not saying that large breasts has to be a plot point to be legitimate -- I'm just saying that there's a significant difference between "this character has large breasts" and "this character is used for fanservice". If anyone's complaining about the former instead of the latter, I'd disagree with them. "Having large breasts" is not a bad thing and should not be treated like it is. I'm in no way suggesting that characters with large breasts should be avoided. What I'm saying is that characters used solely for the purpose of fanservice is a bad thing and should be avoided. Said fanservice characters often have large breasts, true, but it's not the large breasts that are the problem, it's the fact that they're used solely for fanservice. Strawman much, dude? No one's saying that lacking diversity is the same as slavery or that portraying a non-white character with a white actor is as bad as the Holocaust. We're just not saying that they're okay, either. Diversity is a good thing. It should be encouraged. Generally speaking, that means making an effort to get more non-white and non-male presence in media, since white and/or male people are already pretty well represented. You can question over how much of an effort is appropriate -- and such discussions are good things! -- but saying "we're not talking about genocide here man, just calm down" isn't a discussion, it's an attempt to prevent discussion by trivializing the subject matter. The hell it can't. Art is one of a variety of things that make up culture, and culture absolutely has an effect on people's attitudes. It's not as simple as "this TV show I watched had some racist attitudes, therefore I now believe that black people are subhuman scum", no, but that doesn't mean that it has no effect whatsoever. I wasn't giving objectification an out as not inherently sexist -- it is, the word "objectification" literally means that you're reducing somebody to an object instead of a person, which is inherently bigoted. I was saying that a female character having large breasts isn't inherently objectifying. You can certainly objectify someone with large breasts -- and arguably people with large breasts are objectified more often -- but the problem is still the objectification, not the large breasts. This seems to presuppose that a work's cultural impact isn't something that can be considered to its benefit or detriment. Movies like The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are films that are known for two things: being legitimately revolutionary works in the medium of motion pictures, and being racist as all hell. Is it unfair to point out both of these things when discussing these movies? Should we be required to ignore the racism and focus purely on the cinematography? Is the content of the work somehow less relevant than the technical aspects of it? I don't think anyone's actually doing that. Claiming that watching a movie or playing a game made you a bigot is patently absurd. Insisting that you're not responsible for your own actions, but the artist behind the media you consumed is instead, is equally ridiculous. People criticizing media on cultural grounds aren't saying that that media is responsible for bigotry. They're saying that that media contributes to a bigoted culture, which doesn't absolve members of that culture of responsibility for their actions, but does contribute to the problem.

While "this character has big boobs" isn't sexist in and of itself, creating female characters that are nothing but fanservice generating machines is, and large breasts are frequently a part of that. And "whitewashing" roles by casting white actors as non-white characters is a habit that contributes to a lack of minority representation in media, which arguably contributes to a racist system and racist attitudes. The standards for those criticisms are "female characters shouldn't exist solely as something for guys to oogle" and "the industry should encourage diversity in both its cast and characters". Where's the double standard?

I picked up old copies of Persona 3 FES and vanilla Persona 4 for the PS2 about a year ago (on the advice of someone on the #OCRemix IRC channel, actually) and I've been slowly playing through them. Finished Persona 3 and thought it was fantastic, playing through Persona 4 right now (but I'm not very far in yet). I sort of have a love-hate relationship with the games. The story, the characters, the setting, the visual design, the music (the music!) -- all of that is fantastic. Even coming into it nearly 10 years after the fact, I'd still call it one of the best games I've ever played in terms of all of that. The time management aspect adds a twist that is pretty much unique as far as JRPGs that I'm aware of The actual combat though...? Urgh. It's grindy and irritating. Either the enemy has a weakness you can exploit, in which case you knock them down and then annihilate them with an all-out attack, or else they don't and even random battles turn into a boring slugfest where an unlucky crit or just getting targeted a few times in a row can kill your main character and cause a game over without there being a damn thing you can do about it. Persona 4 is better in that regard than Persona 3 is, because you can manually control your allies and they'll save you from one would-be-fatal blow apiece (assuming it's a single-target attack, they're not dead, knocked down, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated, etc), but still. And for boss battles? Even looking up strategies and stuff online, it's still not uncommon for me to have to fight a boss 5 or 10 times before I find a strategy that works and/or get a lucky break that allows me to beat it. I'm not the sort of guy who enjoys challenge for challenge's sake, so Persona's combat tests my patience. A lot. Also! As I mentioned, I'm only partway through Persona 4 at the moment. Given that the whole thing is a murder mystery and I've managed to avoid getting spoiler'd on it so far, PLEASE don't ruin that for me now. We have spoiler tags! I know they're old games, but please use them!

I played for a few hours the other day. Entertaining enough, but not something I'd spend $60 on.

They've authorized the strike but that doesn't mean the strike is going to happen. The union is going back to the negotiating table with the authority to call a strike if they want to, which gives them additional leverage. That by itself may be enough to get the deal they're happy with without actually needing to strike. (Source)

That's... sort of exactly how unions work. If companies can mix-and-match union labor and non-union labor whenever they want, then the union has no bargaining power, because they can get the big-name union members they want and still hire non-union for the bulk of their casting. This works the other way around, too -- if union members can take non-union jobs, that has the exact same effect. The only way for the union to effectively bargain with companies is if it's an all-or-nothing deal -- the company agrees to take only union members or no union members, while the union members agree to work only for companies that hire union members exclusively. I don't actually know if this is already the case or not. I suspect it is, though -- I've heard of voice actors being credited under pseudonyms in order to avoid union rules. Really, I tend to side with the union on this one. According to the article, their contract is like 20 years old, so it's due for a renegotiation anyway, and nothing they're asking for sounds all that unreasonable to me.

They're redoing the soundtrack too, right? Because they've totally got to redo the soundtrack if they're remaking it. And they're totally bringing Uematsu in for that, right? Because goddamnit Squenix don't toy with me on this.

Ace Combat 04, Prelude Hellsing, Mercy in the Cathedral (It's literally the same fucking song.)

I used to work at Disney World. I live 20 minutes from there still. And I'm totally with Angel City Outlaw. Disney already owns the rights to (or just flat-out owns) a shitload of media properties. The last thing we need is to see Nintendo added to that list.

I can't remember if I've posted in this thread before or not, but the origin of my username is pretty simple. I'm from Jupiter.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is significantly easier than previous titles in the series in that it does away with permadeath as long as you play on Casual mode. Units defeated in combat are simply out for the rest of the battle, and return for the next fight none the worse for wear. (With the exceptions of the main characters, who still trigger an immediate game over if they die.) There's also some limited grinding possible, so you can level your units without having to progress the story if you find that you need to. Other than FE:A and Bravely Default (which I haven't played myself, but I've heard almost universally good things about if you like classic JRPGs), I'd also recommend Fantasy Life. It's an action RPG with about a dozen different classes, which you can switch between as you please. Only four of them are combat classes, with the remainder being either crafters (smith, alchemist, etc) or gatherers (miner, fisherman, etc). The plot is pretty basic (solve the mystery, save the world, etc) but the characters are entertaining and the writing is amusing as hell. It's all very tongue in cheek, poking fun at its own silliness while still taking itself seriously. Other stuff off the top of my head that the 3DS has for RPGs: Shin Megami Tensei IV, Pokemon X/Y and Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby, and the port of Xenoblade Chronicles for the New 3DS.