Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

[DarkeSword]

This thread is about women in video games, not about feminist issues and gender relations. Stay on topic or you'll get your account banned for a few days. I've split a load of posts out into a new thread over in PPR. I haven't banned anyone in a long time and I don't really feel like having to do so again. Please don't make me go through the hassle of it.

[Monobrow]

Back to the trope. I never knew that's what happened with Krystal. Makes sense because I always saw her way super sexualized on the net for years. I also remember being pissed at Star Fox Adventures for not really feeling at all like a Star Fox game. It makes sense now.

[Vilecat]

Or they could've done it just like in Gemini Jet Force, or like the more commonly known Sonic Adventures serie, where different characters take their own path to work towards a common goal.

I'm not sure why it took Nintendo so long, but I'm glad they finally broke from the trope in Paper Mario TTYD. For those who don't remember or never played, while she's once again kidnapped, she actively tries to help Mario on his journey and attempts escaping by herself. She unfortunately falls into the trope in the end when she becomes possessed and has to rely on Mario to be saved. That was sadly just a single instance, they haven't shown much imagination since

[Dexie]

I'm not sure why it took Nintendo so long, but I'm glad they finally broke from the trope in Paper Mario TTYD. For those who don't remember or never played, while she's once again kidnapped, she actively tries to help Mario on his journey and attempts escaping by herself. She unfortunately falls into the trope in the end when she becomes possessed and has to rely on Mario to be saved. That was sadly just a single instance, they haven't shown much imagination since

Super Princess Peach, where she's trying to save Mario? Super Paper Mario, where she's the second party member you get?

[Vilecat]

Super Princess Peach? You're joking right? That game's even worse than just having a DiD trope.

SMRPG is, yes, about as much on the same page a TTYD, you have to save her first though, even though she can apparently kick quite some ass once she's in your party. She's still relegated to the support role if you look at her spells and ends up with a frying pan as one of her weapons (granted it's hilarious when you crit with it, but still).

Edited March 13, 2013 by Vilecat

[Tensei]

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...

[DarkeSword]

Super Princess Peach is a great game, but the general thrust of it is that women are overly emotional creatures, and that is essentially how Peach manifests her powers: by getting emotional.

[Tensei]

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.

[DarkeSword]

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 really is a very good game.

[Dexie]

I would agree with you, but then...most of the enemies, including Bowser himself are using the emotion based powers. Does it really count as sexist, if it's happening to every character in the game, including the main villian of the franchise?

Besides, it doesn't change the fact that it's still a game where she's saving Mario and Luigi instead of the other way around.

[Monobrow]

I would agree with you, but then...most of the enemies, including Bowser himself are using the emotion based powers. Does it really count as sexist, if it's happening to every character in the game, including the main villian of the franchise?

Yes because its still about her. Her powers denote her personality. The emotional instability of Peach is implied. Even if its harmless seemingly it still immerses itself in the "women are emotionally unstable" stereotype and plays it up.

[Vilecat]

The game is awfully sexist, as Peach's powers/skills in this game end up being a pitiful caricature of a woman PMSing (how one apparently goes from crying because the butter's too soft to yelling and throwing shit in a matter of seconds). It is degrading because it paints Peach as barely able to control her emotions and overwhelming anything around her with them...

I'd develop more but I apparently really have to go out for a while. I'll come back to this.

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

Sweet, thank you for splitting the thread, Darkesword.

Dexie: I think it would help if we didn't categorize thing as "definitely sexist" or "definitely not sexist," not to say anyone's necessarily doing that here. I don't believe we can always be clear-cut about it, but we can make the argument that some factors can make a game more or less problematic as far as sexism is concerned.

Here, I would say that the context of Super Princess Peach being the first real game to star a female character in this franchise, and having her abilities tied to her emotional state leans toward being more problematic. Being overly emotional or "hysterical" is often a trait negatively associated with women, so a casual observer might connect these dots together and infer that the developers are suggesting something inappropriate about women and their emotions. This is true whether or not the other characters use emotion-based powers.

Of course, none of that invalidates that Peach is saving Mario and Luigi in this game rather than the other way around. That is a positive element of the game for sure. However, I do think that initial emotion-based power factor leans more in favor of a problematic portrayal of women than not.

[Argle]

What do you guys think aboot RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, etc... the ones that let you play as male or female with no practical difference between the two. Do they move forward from the gender imbalance in games, or is it a bit of a cop out? Like, here's a world, make whatever character ya want, we don't care.

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

What do you guys think aboot RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, etc... the ones that let you play as male or female with no practical difference between the two. Do they move forward from the gender imbalance in games, or is it a bit of a cop out? Like, here's a world, make whatever character ya want, we don't care.

I think those games are fine and good to have. I haven't played those specific games so I'm not sure how story or character intensive they are. The more troublesome games are the ones where there is more of a narrative and the developers give the protagonist a lot more character. In those sorts of games, we should look at how women are being characterized in particular. It can be difficult to write, but I think it would help if female game characters were written to be actual people with motivations that didn't weren't implicitly tied into their gender. That is, a person who just happens to be a woman rather than a woman whose character is defined purely by her stereotypically feminine characteristics.

Of course, I don't mean to say that we need to strip female characters of their gender attributes completely. That wouldn't be helpful at all in creating better female characters. It's tricky business and I'm glad I'm not a writer.

[Monobrow]

What do you guys think aboot RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, etc... the ones that let you play as male or female with no practical difference between the two. Do they move forward from the gender imbalance in games, or is it a bit of a cop out? Like, here's a world, make whatever character ya want, we don't care.

I don't think they are a copout because their aim is USER experience. My only qualm is there has still been bias on male roles in more subtle ways. If done well gender neutrality is great and has vast possibilities. But IMO one large shortcoming in dated games like baldurs gate 2 were female romance options. They sucked. I edited the game to change to a male halfway through to get the more interesting romance.

As these games become more sophisticated so will the possibilities.

I don't think they exist to balance anything. If they did I could see your copout thing. But I don't think that should ever be the point. The point should be content and more interesting user experience in the fantasy.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Monobrow

[DarkeSword]

I would agree with you, but then...most of the enemies, including Bowser himself are using the emotion based powers. Does it really count as sexist, if it's happening to every character in the game, including the main villian of the franchise?

Besides, it doesn't change the fact that it's still a game where she's saving Mario and Luigi instead of the other way around.

The entire design of the game was based around Peach being an emotional woman. This was something they talked about in interviews with the developers. Like I've said before, it's a great game, but nobody can really deny that the whole thing is comically sexist.

[Cash]

I don't think they are a copout because their aim is USER experience. My only qualm is there has still been bias on male roles in more subtle ways. If done well gender neutrality is great and has vast possibilities.

Can you provide some examples of this bias on male roles? Also, what are considered "male roles?"

[Drachefly]

identifying a problem is meaningless without a proposed solution, as the existence of a solution is the most objective way to prove to the masses that the problem actually exists

No, this is entirely backwards. I know it's already been replied to, but this is really seriously absolutely backwards.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions/

[relyanCe]

No, this is entirely backwards. I know it's already been replied to, but this is really seriously absolutely backwards.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ka/hold_off_on_proposing_solutions/

Nope, not really. The article you bring up is simply a pragmatic attempt to solve the problems American social psychology brings to our discourse without attempting to address said problems at all. But that's for another time.

Ask anyone who actually engages in even remotely-philosophical discourse if just talking about a problem without proposing an answer to go with it constitutes anything more than useless, idle musing. The number of people who will tell you "yes" is zero.

In this particular case, the reason why people love to just "talk about the problem of sexism to generate discussion" is (usually, in my experience) not because they do not have a solution, but because they choose to avoid stating their solutions due to how ugly, sexist, and tyrannical their ideas actually are.

Feminism fancies itself a philosophy, so it should be discussed within the magic circle of Philosophy. And in Philosophy, even your questions should be answers; your critiques, doubly so.

EDIT: I'm kind of fuzzy on the thread split, was this an accidental necro of the leftovers of the PPR thread still in this one? I'll delete and repost it there if so.

Edited March 14, 2013 by relyanCe

[Vilecat]

You have to first talk about the subject to be able to come up with a solution; however, you eventually need to come up with potential solutions with said conversation.

I agree that presenting a solution before you even explain the problem is backwards. Continuously giving your PoV without offering alternatives isn't constructive though.

Edit: we can safely assume that part 2 of Sarkeesian's video on DiD will bring such thing to the table as part of the conclusion, if not being treated beforehand, while she gives examples of how to avoid/go beyond the trope.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Vilecat

[Tensei]

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.

[relyanCe]

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.

Perhaps because the actual answer is that "needing to be rescued" is only problematic if it is institutionally, universally applied to characters of one and only one gender on the sole basis of being that gender. Keep in mind that saying it "is" is different from saying it "was".

A trope should never ever be considered problematic in itself. It's application, however, should always be scrutinized. The last thing a fledgling narrative medium needs is to be treated with dogmatic moralizing.

EDIT: Wooo now a Belmont

[Ab56 v2 aka Ash]

Perhaps because the actual answer is that "needing to be rescued" is only problematic if it is institutionally, universally applied to characters of one and only one gender on the sole basis of being that gender. Keep in mind that saying it "is" is different from saying it "was".

Not that I necessarily agree with this overly narrow idea of yours, what you described is pretty much exactly what's happened in nearly all Mario games.

Here's a question I'm curious about: can anyone think of an example of a positively portrayed female video game protagonist who isn't mute (NPCs don't count)? 'Cause I can't.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Not that I necessarily agree with this overly narrow idea of yours, what you described is pretty much exactly what's happened in nearly all Mario games.

Here's a question I'm curious about: can anyone think of an example of a positively portrayed female video game protagonist who isn't mute (NPCs don't count)? 'Cause I can't.

Lightning in FF XIII? New Lara Croft? Shion in Xenosaga maybe?

Again, it just comes back to what is "positive" exactly.