@Undead Scotssman: "Just remember what the M.P.A.A. Says: horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words! That is what this war is all about!"
If Uwe Ball and Michael Bay movies can exist in the same medium as Ben-Hur, then COD can exist in the same medium as Braid.
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corganmurrayCape Breton, NSRegistered Usernew member
Good episode! Quick question, friends: does anyone else find the last few videos quieter than usual? I ask because I always watch them on my laptop, which is normally JUST loud enough if I crank it. Anyone else notice this?
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Okay, I need someone to explain to me the degree of acceptability here.
Hitman brutally slaughters a platoon of male assassins out to kill him - A-OK
Hitman brutally slaughters a platoon of male and female assains out to kill him - ?
Hitman brutally slaughters a platoon of all-female assassins out to kill him - Not OK?: Violance Against Women
Hitman brutally slaughters a platoon of scantially clad female assassins out to kill him - Not OK?: Morally Reprehensible Objectifation and Violance Against Women.
An all female team of assassins in fatigues would probably have raised very few voices in protest.
Yeah, as I noted in the first comic thread about this, an all-girl assault team in fatigues would have been fine. It would have removed the squick factor.
I, too, don't understand the controversy around this trailer. I mean it's only when you start picking it apart do you start to come up with all of these issues. It's obviously just pulling inspiration from things that have been done in cinema for ages now.
Besides, the women in this trailer were in the wrong. These ladies desecrated the sanctity of holy habits by parading around with whorish clothing underneath. I would understand the controversy if 47 just went around killing busloads of actual nuns but these bitches were planning on killing him while he was trying to recover in his hotel room AND wanted him to die with blue balls. What a bunch of inconsiderate cock-teases.
p.s.
People should stop taking shit so seriously. Would everyone be freaking out if this was the trailer to some new movie.
Before this I didn't really catch on to what was going on in the comic. This is why I liked the 4th panel in Penny Arcade TV, if a comic beforehand didn't make sense there is context here to make sense of it. Even so I personally thought the comic strip that day had a somewhat bland sense of humor, I still don't really find it funny though.
Also it seems that the media has a short memory, if these nuns are the enemies of the game, Metal Gear Solid 4 did the same exact thing.
Is anyone else having an issue with the video showing nothing but "Sorry, this episode is temporarily unavailable."? I thought it popping up on the last episode was just some random error that would be fixed but it's doing that with all of the episodes now, including past episodes that I've watched before. I tried wiping my cache and that didn't help either.
Help? I'm using Chrome.
Same problem here and it seems to be related to my origin address.
Using our US proxy everything works fine, so I assume that non-US IP requests are blocked (Germany here).
Need to correct myself on this one. It works without a proxy, using Firefox on my machine.
Chrome seems to have issues
I absolutely love the speed at which your collective creative process works. I'm sure there's a little bit of editing for time going on, but the transitions from Michael's thoughts to Jerry's and back again is such a good example of a finely tuned engine of enjoyment propulsion. Thanks again for another round of laughs!
Oh God, thank you so much for bringing up that Kotaku article. I'm just so glad that I wasn't the only one who read that and thought, "Well Jesus, it sounds like you're lumping the entirety of the industry into this one trailer - that wasn't even made by the developer!"
I have to say that I feel like this whole discussion in the video and the resulting comic are missing the point for a number of reasons.
1) The problem isn't that one particular game is sexist, or even that the occasional game is sexist. The problem is that sexism is extremely prevalent across the entire industry. Between the helpless damsels-in-distress and the slutty temptresses and the bikini-sized plate armor, sexism in general and the exploitation of sexuality in particular is pretty much the de facto representation of female characters the majority of the time. The sheer magnitude of it--the flippancy with which the tropes are applied time and time again--offends some people, and every time it crops up in a new place it offends them even more. I don't really see why this concern should be considered trite. It doesn't mean these kinds of games should be banned, but the fact that so many people choose to do participate in this culture of sexism through their games and so few choose to care speaks very ill of the social environment we live in. It's not something I can brush off so casually.
2) The Hitman series has never, historically, been anywhere near this over-the-top stupid in this regard. I wouldn't call it a paragon of virtue and artistry either, but apart from the occasional presence of prostitutes (which is in tone with the types of criminal underworld locations one would expect a hitman to end up in, and not exactly glorified when you consider that the proprietors of these establishments are usually his targets), catering to sex appeal was never something that was pushed by the games. The developers had to go far, far out of their way to ruin the game's presentation so thoroughly.
As a corollary to that, there are really not very many games like Hitman out there on the market. When you're talking about the generically hyper-masculine meat-headed space marines that populate Gears of War or the whole DoA thing, it's somewhat easier to say "screw it; just play something else", because nobody ever expected anything better out of those series and they never contributed anything especially unique to the medium that you couldn't have gotten in dozens of other places. Conversely, games based on the careful application of stealth and subterfuge aren't exactly flooding the market. Having a fairly unique and interesting series dragged down into the gutter due to crap like this--and so abruptly--hits harder than usual.
3) Quantum Conundrum isn't a very effective game to put up as a counterpoint to all of this. People aren't complaining about how the category of Games Which Are Not Tripe is empty. They're complaining how incredibly prolific the sexist portrayal of women is in the medium, and how the problem just seems to keep growing, and it almost looks like you're saying, "Not so, not so, because look! Some games don't have female characters!"
I don't mean to say that Quantum Conundrum is somehow bad or offensive because of that, or that there's some quota that every single game ever is obligated to fill, but it would have made a lot more sense to point out a recent or upcoming game containing a major female character portrayed as an interesting human being and whose purpose in the narrative didn't consist largely of sex appeal and use that as the punchline instead. Except I'm not sure you could have found one. If I went back across the last five years I could probably come up with a handful of them, if I was being generous. Games Which Are Not Tripe might not be very hard to find, but Games With Decent Female Characters really are, and there's no reason why that should have to be true. That's what the problem really comes down to, and there doesn't seem to be even a cursory examination of it in the discussion. The solution may continue to be "more art", as you say, but where is it? Why is it so extremely rare that one of our artists is inspired to make it?
Is anyone else having an issue with the video showing nothing but "Sorry, this episode is temporarily unavailable."? I thought it popping up on the last episode was just some random error that would be fixed but it's doing that with all of the episodes now, including past episodes that I've watched before. I tried wiping my cache and that didn't help either.
Help? I'm using Chrome.
Try pausing AdBlock. I've not had a problem since enabling ads on Penny Arcade
Did the Hitman trailer have somewhat objectifying tones to it? Yes. Does is mean that the video game industry is sexist? No.
I agree 100% with Mike and Jerry's analogy regarding the movie industry. There are things, not just in the movie industry, that objectify women. Its our society. Is it right, no. Should we try and change it, yeah. But that doesn't mean we should throw labels around and generalize entire mediums.
As far as the video game industry goes I don't think its fair to use this trailer or even a few other games to try and bring down the industry as whole. It is such a widespread medium that it would be unfair to do that. Don't believe me, look at these names: "Alyx Vance" (Half-Life 2), "Big Boss" (MGS3), "Female Shepard" (ME1,2,3), "Samus Aran" (Metroid), "Faith" (Mirror's Edge), "Chell" (Portal), "Zelda" (Zelda, and most importantly in Ocarina of Time where she goes as "Tetra").
These are only the games that I have played (and can remember off the top of my head ATM) that have these really awesome female chars. This also doesn't count the many many games that I have played, that despite having a male lead, don't objectify women at all. Some of them date back quite a while so its unfair to call the industry as a whole sexist when you have people like Commander Shepard fighting for Earth's survival, or Samus Aran being one of video gaming’s first badasses.
I'm sure someone can list off games where Woman are objectified but that’s not the point. Like Mike and Jerry said just because games like that exist it shouldn't mean the industry as a whole gets brought down. The majority of the games out there support non-sexist and non-objectifying gaming and only proves their point. Honestly I'm with Jerry on it and I think stuff like this looks dumb and I don’t want to play it. Personally I'd love to see more great woman in games. In the absence of that I’ll play other games where women are not objectified and I don’t have enough time in my life to ever play them all.
I'm grateful for this 4th Panel's existence, because I was confused as all get out when I read the strip/post last week. The essence of the debate is there for all to grasp and grapple, at least peripherally; context was a thing left desired. A link - that is to say, the link - to the Kotaku article in question would have been a helpful addition within Jerry's post, particularly if the strip hinges on its particular (see: overreaching) assertions.
Also, to echo several other readers' comments it is fascinating to see the creation process at work here, the intellectual play revealed verbally between two minds. I'm typically more partial to the "event" or "themed" episodes, but this 4th Panel, for some reason, grabbed hold of me in a profound way.
Just to play the devils advocate a bit. While I actually agree with most everything that was said in their conversation, it isn't entirely accurate to say that the medium is not tarnished by one poor example.
Jerry used the paper metaphor, so I will use that as well to explain my point. If paper is the medium, and you use that paper to write the greatest poem ever written, but someone else takes that same piece of paper with your poem on it, and adds vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina to the end, can we honestly say that the poem is not diminished by this?
As long as there is a healthy mix of various games with different "grades" on the moral "scale", then overall the quality of the medium is fine. I think that that is where we find ourselves now. On the scales of smut and refinement, we are breaking even.
But that is just my opinion. Others may look at that scale and are incapable of seeing the refinement for the smut. Usually, these smut blinded folks are the masses of ignorant "non-gamers" who's only real exposure to the gaming industry is what is reported about on the 6 o'clock news.
My point though is that smut does bring down the quality of the medium, just as refinement raises the quality. I disagree with the implication that the medium does not share its quality amongst all things produced on it. If every game released in 2013 was an M-rated gore-soaked tittyparade, it would be hard to point back at Quantum Conundrum and say "but the medium is fine". A single example of smut DOES lower the quality of the medium, but only by a smidge and is easily countered by some non-smut. Too much of either is a bad thing.
As a sidebar... about sexism in video games. No, it is not an issue. Sexism is not prevalent in the video game industry, it is prevalent in humanity. This whole sexism debate has, like so many other hot-button social issues, raged on for far too long and become idiotic.
Lets be clear. Women are physically weaker than men.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Additionally, men are hard wired to be protective and doting towards women. And women are hard wired to want to be protected and doted upon.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Women want to be beautiful and alluring and intelligent. Men want to be strong and valiant and loved by women.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
These are not sexist comments. This is just truth. This is how we are made. Obviously you can not make blanket statements like this and expect it to be accurate 7 billion times, but when speaking for the majority, it is true.
Knowing then that this is true, is it any surprise that many men in video games are muscular heroes trying to protect/save a woman? Or that most women are beautiful and sexy and in need of protecting?
Also, do you really think that this is a phenomenon that has just sprouted up in video games? Watch a movie sometime.. read a book... hell...go out and people watch. You will see examples of these stereotypes in every medium, and in our daily interactions with each other as well. It is simply how we are made. It is the basis for our interactions with the opposite sex. To try and change the way we interact is to try and turn away from our nature.
You can protect and dote upon a woman without demeaning her. You can be acquiescent and sheltered by a man without being demeaned. Sexism is only a problem when you stop doing things because it is the right thing to do, and start doing things because it is your right to do them.
As bumpersticker wisdom goes, that's pretty "meh", but the point is valid.
...This whole sexism debate has, like so many other hot-button social issues, raged on for far too long and become idiotic.
Lets be clear. Women are physically weaker than men.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Additionally, men are hard wired to be protective and doting towards women. And women are hard wired to want to be protected and doted upon.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Women want to be beautiful and alluring and intelligent. Men want to be strong and valiant and loved by women.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
These are not sexist comments. This is just truth. This is how we are made. Obviously you can not make blanket statements like this and expect it to be accurate 7 billion times, but when speaking for the majority, it is true.
Knowing then that this is true, is it any surprise that many men in video games are muscular heroes trying to protect/save a woman? Or that most women are beautiful and sexy and in need of protecting?...
I'd like to know what "statistics" we're talking about in these instances. Also, I don't believe that the longevity of the debate of sexism has somehow made it more or less legitimate or intelligent.
I have a lot of other feelings about your post but they are angry ones and I don't really want to bring them up, just wondering where we're getting our "facts" here.
I don't understand how genetics, statistics, or evolutionary psychology works, but i'm going to use them to justify sexism and pre-set gender roles and not back up anything i'm saying. for example:
Additionally, men are hard wired to be protective and doting towards women. And women are hard wired to want to be protected and doted upon. Women want to be beautiful and alluring and intelligent. Men want to be strong and valiant and loved by women.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
mind telling me which part of the brain the protect/be protected circuit is? the part of the Y chromosome that tells you that men "must be protective of women"? the neurochemical or hormone that triggers the hardwired PROTECT FEMALES instinct? perhaps you have looked at rat and bonobo studies that back up what you are saying and though you'd generalise this to humans? no, you're getting this from the top of your head, because actual statistics say that, statistically speaking, you are dead wrong.
1) Of women who reported being raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18, three quarters (76%) were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, date or boyfriend. (Prevalence Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, U.S. Department of Justice, November, 1998)
2) Women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence.
(Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003)
3) In 88% of all violent incidents males are identified as the suspects; half of all incidents involve a male perpetrator and a female victim (Johnson 1996)
4) 21% of women abused by a marital partner were assaulted during pregnancy; 40% of these women stated that the abuse began during their pregnancy. Women constitute 98% of spousal violence victims of kidnapping/hostage-taking and sexual assault. (Fitzgerald 1999)
5) Male spouses constitute 67% of family members who kill their female partners (Fitzgerald 1999)
6) Female victims are most frequently stalked by a current or former partner: 39% by an ex-husband; 2% by a current husband; and 17% by a current/former boyfriend (Kong 1996).
as a side note- "people watching" is what we call "anecdotal evidence" by the way, and it doesn't tell you where behaviour comes from, or even if it's prevalent, it only tells you that in that particular instance, that behaviour happened. you can't generalise it people watching at all, to say it applies to the majority. you are not a statistician. my stats lecturer would slap you.
I'll agree that there aren't a lot of games released that provide a good characterization of women, but in almost all of those cases they don't provide a good characterization of men either. They tend to just lack any sort of characterization at all and rely on tropes to fill gaps no matter what the gender is. That happens because most games aren't about a story, they're about a mechanic. The story is tacked on to cover the mechanic and give it context, but less thought process is put into characters than into the environment.
I support the kickstarter project. But, of the over-trope-d images on there, the male counter parts in their corresponding games are no less tropes, no less poorly characterized, and, in the end, no less sexist.
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." Mark Twain.
I'm in Australia. It's absurd that people don't realise adults play video games. We don't even have an R rating for games. They just get banned in Australia.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
Fair enough, I'll admit as a guy I probably don't have the best perspective on this. I just think we have some screwed up sense of priorities in this country where glorification of violence gets a free pass, but woe be if those ladies are wearing objectifying outfits.
Fair enough, I'll admit as a guy I probably don't have the best perspective on this. I just think we have some screwed up sense of priorities in this country where glorification of violence gets a free pass, but woe be if those ladies are wearing objectifying outfits.
you do realize that it can be both right
like sexualization of violence is an Actual Thing
Most violence in games is going to be desensitized in nature*, and hence only a characterization of violence and objectifying it in some way. While we can't do anything about that, we can do something about the perception of the characters within the game.
*Not in that it desensitizes the player, that's a load, but that the act is always going to be unrealistic and feel unrealistic. From Mortal Kombat's latest "X-Ray punches" to Zelda's "Shoot and poof" approach, the act in a game is nothing like the act in reality. Until there's a technology to force the player into a certain perspective, there's nothing you can really do to make violence in games seem like anything other than a cartoon. I'd say the Mass Effect series gets closer to making you feel bad about shooting on occasion, but only for the named characters, and it's still over-the-top even when you don't shoot.
Fair enough, I'll admit as a guy I probably don't have the best perspective on this. I just think we have some screwed up sense of priorities in this country where glorification of violence gets a free pass, but woe be if those ladies are wearing objectifying outfits.
you do realize that it can be both right
like sexualization of violence is an Actual Thing
Most violence in games is going to be desensitized in nature*, and hence only a characterization of violence and objectifying it in some way. While we can't do anything about that, we can do something about the perception of the characters within the game.
*Not in that it desensitizes the player, that's a load, but that the act is always going to be unrealistic and feel unrealistic. From Mortal Kombat's latest "X-Ray punches" to Zelda's "Shoot and poof" approach, the act in a game is nothing like the act in reality. Until there's a technology to force the player into a certain perspective, there's nothing you can really do to make violence in games seem like anything other than a cartoon. I'd say the Mass Effect series gets closer to making you feel bad about shooting on occasion, but only for the named characters, and it's still over-the-top even when you don't shoot.
This is a point well taken and I think it gets ignored too often. If protagonist characters in games had a more self-aware dialogue regarding the actions they take and the ramifications of their choices, particularly with regard to violence, it would be great. The same goes for over-sexualization. I'd like to see a lot more down-to-earth female protagonists looking askance at some of the 'fashion' choices of the other women in the game, although that might be a little meta for gamer culture.
i asked before but have to request again,these eps are great but the volume is so different from any other video,no matter how loud i go i can barely hear them
Nuzak, id quote your post but this comment section is unwieldy and does not give a "quote" button, and im not sure if common forum script language will work..so Im just going to reply to your BS.
First of all.. while I appreciate that you are a college student and are therefore hopped up on that college koolaid that makes you think your eyes are opened wider than everyone elses, I feel that you put WAY too much emphasis on the "statistics" and WAY too little emphasis on the "obvious".
Why do I state that a majority of women are wired to want certain things and the majority of men are wired to want other certain things? Because ive witnessed it first hand countless times in my own life. More importantly ive witnessed it second hand through books, video, music, and all other imaginable forms of documented human communication throughout the known history of our race. In a majority of societies all over the world for generations upon generations upon generations... certain things have remained true when it comes to interactions amongst the sexes.
However you are absolutely correct that I didnt hand out questionnaires in a controlled environment and document the results. Therefore it must not be true, amirite?
I am also pretty confused about your logic. Women do not want a strong man that protects them because statistics show that men rape and beat women a great deal more often than women rape and beat women? Is that the point you are trying to make? Or was your point that men are the main culprits in cases involving rape and violence, and therefore it must be true that the majority of men do not have protective instincts towards women? Whatever point you are trying to make is lost on me. Maybe its cause im so stupid. I took sociology and statistics in college too by the way, but unlike you I did not come away from those classes incapable of believing in anything that had not been proven in a controlled test.
You are having issues seeing the forest for the trees. Statistics are great... they are a powerful tool in sociology and our best chance for gaining a scientific understanding of the human condition, but when you are incapable of seeing the obvious patterns in the world around you because they have not been documented in controlled experiments, well ...I dont know what to tell you. I personally like a little philosophy in my science but thats just me.
Of course the other possibility is that you are a raging feminist and you think that thousands of years of successful male and female interaction is actually the product of a male dominated slave society where women have been forced to succumb to our devilish and
perverse desires. In which case I will just slowly step back and go on my merry way....
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Any time someone opines for the good old days of traditional values, when men were men and women were women, the first thing that comes to mind is always conjugal duels.
Take a look at that traditional married couple! Look at that wilting flower, and how she leans on her husband for protection!
Any time someone opines for the good old days of traditional values, when men were men and women were women, the first thing that comes to mind is always conjugal duels.
Take a look at that traditional married couple! Look at that wilting flower, and how she leans on her husband for protection!
Usually, fundamentalists and traditionalists pine for a return to a period that never really happened, or has been so heavily fictionalized and romanticized that it's nothing like the reality. This doesn't really apply to the context of video games though, as it's only recently, in both a historical and cultural sense (around WWI-WWII), that this kind of hyper-sexualized view of women, in terms of body type and image, started to show up in popular culture. We aren't so much arguing over the idea of gender roles being changeable as we are over the objectification of women by application of a cartooned version of current gender roles handed down by society.
@Nuzak
It's a social construct, not a genetic one. Though all psychological phenomena, like social constructs, take place within the brain. Which does indeed change itself when we receive new information and apply new biases. While I don't believe that it's normal for all men and women in all cultures, I do think it's conditioned into many western men in an almost Pavlovian manner through life experience and media. This can be broken though life experience and through new viewpoints provided by media, and sometimes is, that's just how life works. However, I believe that women, who (taking a guess here) might grow up being told the same thing as many men (that you can do anything you want) find that media and life experience provide a separate view, which means that they are not necessarily conditioned by it to believe the view of women provided by popular media. Gender roles as a psychological and social construct have been well studied for decades, as has sociological/psychological conditioning.
Also, you're improperly applying statistics to a problem that it hasn't been found to be consistently connected to. Also, physical abuse, rape, and emotional abuse statistics are what you call outliers and breaks from societal norms. You cannot apply the statistical outliers to the entire set of data, and you cannont apply the statistics that cover a break from societal norms to the entirety of society. Put more simply, not all men rape, not all women experience rape. While it is true that the man in the situation is more often the aggressor, that the number of women who suffer from it is fairly high, and the man who does it is more likely to do it serially, the study of why is on-going and has been for some time. We're only just scratching the surface of the issue, and throwing those statistics around does not prove your point and can only serve to harm popular opinion of the issue.
Any time someone opines for the good old days of traditional values, when men were men and women were women, the first thing that comes to mind is always conjugal duels.
Take a look at that traditional married couple! Look at that wilting flower, and how she leans on her husband for protection!
Usually, fundamentalists and traditionalists pine for a return to a period that never really happened, or has been so heavily fictionalized and romanticized that it's nothing like the reality. This doesn't really apply to the context of video games though, as it's only recently, in both a historical and cultural sense (around WWI-WWII), that this kind of hyper-sexualized view of women, in terms of body type and image, started to show up in popular culture. We aren't so much arguing over the idea of gender roles being changeable as we are over the objectification of women by application of a cartooned version of current gender roles handed down by society.
Well, yes, I thought I was arguing the same thing.
The above post was my reply to Damoklese, and his certainty that the way things are now are the way things have always been (and the way they, presumably, are supposed to be).
Have any of the people complaining actually played these games? This could have been much worse.
At least he didn't brutally murder an actual, harmless nun, and then kill the orphans for witnessing the deed, and then strip her naked.
The disguise worked really well, btw, and that disgusting pedophile had it coming.
That particular level was rife with commentary on the ills of modern society and the collateral damage of well-intended social action.
Like I said, violence in video games is probably always going to be far removed from actual violent action, and it's always going to be a cartoonized version of any action, no matter how despicable. Doesn't make it right, but having it doesn't really do the same socio-psychological harm that objectifying a specific group has.
Unless they just walked through a fabric eating cloud, or they're really streetwalkers that got hit with a black and white paint bomb, there's not much context the game can add to the trailer to make it anything other than objectification.
It does bring to mind a pet peeve of mine though (and I'm not saying you are doing this just by linking a clip), but I really dislike when people act as though a comedian's bit is some profound philosophy that should be applied to real world problems. I did it when I was younger re: George Carlin, and I just cringe at the thought of it. Christ what an insufferable little prick I must have been.
I hate it even worse when the comedians do that themselves. Whenever a comedian ends a show or gets siderailed during a show by going off on some rant/sermon about how laughter will solve the world's problems and if we all just learn to laugh at ourselves, all our troubles will be over, etc etc etc, I audibly groan.
I just hate how smarmy it feels. It feels like when you meet a really funny, likeable person at the airport or on the train, and then suddenly they try to sell you insurance or religion.
This being episode 30, I'm guessing the season finale is on-deck or very close. Bummer, but hey, the DVDs will follow. Love the extras.
Any chance of S4 not happening? In my opinion, the series is still fresh and fun, and this latest 4th Panel shows they can still capture some pretty interesting conversations.
I hate it even worse when the comedians do that themselves. Whenever a comedian ends a show or gets siderailed during a show by going off on some rant/sermon about how laughter will solve the world's problems and if we all just learn to laugh at ourselves, all our troubles will be over, etc etc etc, I audibly groan.
I just hate how smarmy it feels. It feels like when you meet a really funny, likeable person at the airport or on the train, and then suddenly they try to sell you insurance or religion.
So then I says to him... I says "hey! get your own monkey!"
I know right?
but seriously, WordLust, have you accepted our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into your life? If not, you might want to look at some of our affordable life insurance plans. The cold cash will give your family some much needed comfort while you burn in hell for all eternity.
I liked the "Grindhouse" comment by Mike. I hadn't seen the trailer, but watching it afterward with that style in mind I enjoyed it. Whether or not it's the developers intention, I think one's perspective can make less of a fuss out of things like that (like how the Extra Credits guys can enjoy the recent CoD games when viewing them through a satirical lens).
It's not just the nuns/sexy leather outfits. It's over-sexualizing women's bodies and then violently and gratuitously massacring them. And it matters because that shit happens to us EVERY DAY irl. I mean, not the Gun Nun Gang obviously, but violence against women. Could we, oh I don't know, NOT glorify sexualized violence in our games too?
There's a lingering bias... that says "cartoons are for kids" or "video games are for kids" That hasn't been true for a long time... Yet there are still people who think both things and are shocked when they see any one of the thousands of things that aren't made for kids.
Posts
If Uwe Ball and Michael Bay movies can exist in the same medium as Ben-Hur, then COD can exist in the same medium as Braid.
Yeah, as I noted in the first comic thread about this, an all-girl assault team in fatigues would have been fine. It would have removed the squick factor.
Besides, the women in this trailer were in the wrong. These ladies desecrated the sanctity of holy habits by parading around with whorish clothing underneath. I would understand the controversy if 47 just went around killing busloads of actual nuns but these bitches were planning on killing him while he was trying to recover in his hotel room AND wanted him to die with blue balls. What a bunch of inconsiderate cock-teases.
p.s.
People should stop taking shit so seriously. Would everyone be freaking out if this was the trailer to some new movie.
Also it seems that the media has a short memory, if these nuns are the enemies of the game, Metal Gear Solid 4 did the same exact thing.
Need to correct myself on this one. It works without a proxy, using Firefox on my machine.
Chrome seems to have issues
Glad to know I'm still sane.
1) The problem isn't that one particular game is sexist, or even that the occasional game is sexist. The problem is that sexism is extremely prevalent across the entire industry. Between the helpless damsels-in-distress and the slutty temptresses and the bikini-sized plate armor, sexism in general and the exploitation of sexuality in particular is pretty much the de facto representation of female characters the majority of the time. The sheer magnitude of it--the flippancy with which the tropes are applied time and time again--offends some people, and every time it crops up in a new place it offends them even more. I don't really see why this concern should be considered trite. It doesn't mean these kinds of games should be banned, but the fact that so many people choose to do participate in this culture of sexism through their games and so few choose to care speaks very ill of the social environment we live in. It's not something I can brush off so casually.
2) The Hitman series has never, historically, been anywhere near this over-the-top stupid in this regard. I wouldn't call it a paragon of virtue and artistry either, but apart from the occasional presence of prostitutes (which is in tone with the types of criminal underworld locations one would expect a hitman to end up in, and not exactly glorified when you consider that the proprietors of these establishments are usually his targets), catering to sex appeal was never something that was pushed by the games. The developers had to go far, far out of their way to ruin the game's presentation so thoroughly.
As a corollary to that, there are really not very many games like Hitman out there on the market. When you're talking about the generically hyper-masculine meat-headed space marines that populate Gears of War or the whole DoA thing, it's somewhat easier to say "screw it; just play something else", because nobody ever expected anything better out of those series and they never contributed anything especially unique to the medium that you couldn't have gotten in dozens of other places. Conversely, games based on the careful application of stealth and subterfuge aren't exactly flooding the market. Having a fairly unique and interesting series dragged down into the gutter due to crap like this--and so abruptly--hits harder than usual.
3) Quantum Conundrum isn't a very effective game to put up as a counterpoint to all of this. People aren't complaining about how the category of Games Which Are Not Tripe is empty. They're complaining how incredibly prolific the sexist portrayal of women is in the medium, and how the problem just seems to keep growing, and it almost looks like you're saying, "Not so, not so, because look! Some games don't have female characters!"
I don't mean to say that Quantum Conundrum is somehow bad or offensive because of that, or that there's some quota that every single game ever is obligated to fill, but it would have made a lot more sense to point out a recent or upcoming game containing a major female character portrayed as an interesting human being and whose purpose in the narrative didn't consist largely of sex appeal and use that as the punchline instead. Except I'm not sure you could have found one. If I went back across the last five years I could probably come up with a handful of them, if I was being generous. Games Which Are Not Tripe might not be very hard to find, but Games With Decent Female Characters really are, and there's no reason why that should have to be true. That's what the problem really comes down to, and there doesn't seem to be even a cursory examination of it in the discussion. The solution may continue to be "more art", as you say, but where is it? Why is it so extremely rare that one of our artists is inspired to make it?
I agree 100% with Mike and Jerry's analogy regarding the movie industry. There are things, not just in the movie industry, that objectify women. Its our society. Is it right, no. Should we try and change it, yeah. But that doesn't mean we should throw labels around and generalize entire mediums.
As far as the video game industry goes I don't think its fair to use this trailer or even a few other games to try and bring down the industry as whole. It is such a widespread medium that it would be unfair to do that. Don't believe me, look at these names: "Alyx Vance" (Half-Life 2), "Big Boss" (MGS3), "Female Shepard" (ME1,2,3), "Samus Aran" (Metroid), "Faith" (Mirror's Edge), "Chell" (Portal), "Zelda" (Zelda, and most importantly in Ocarina of Time where she goes as "Tetra").
These are only the games that I have played (and can remember off the top of my head ATM) that have these really awesome female chars. This also doesn't count the many many games that I have played, that despite having a male lead, don't objectify women at all. Some of them date back quite a while so its unfair to call the industry as a whole sexist when you have people like Commander Shepard fighting for Earth's survival, or Samus Aran being one of video gaming’s first badasses.
I'm sure someone can list off games where Woman are objectified but that’s not the point. Like Mike and Jerry said just because games like that exist it shouldn't mean the industry as a whole gets brought down. The majority of the games out there support non-sexist and non-objectifying gaming and only proves their point. Honestly I'm with Jerry on it and I think stuff like this looks dumb and I don’t want to play it. Personally I'd love to see more great woman in games. In the absence of that I’ll play other games where women are not objectified and I don’t have enough time in my life to ever play them all.
Also, to echo several other readers' comments it is fascinating to see the creation process at work here, the intellectual play revealed verbally between two minds. I'm typically more partial to the "event" or "themed" episodes, but this 4th Panel, for some reason, grabbed hold of me in a profound way.
Jerry used the paper metaphor, so I will use that as well to explain my point. If paper is the medium, and you use that paper to write the greatest poem ever written, but someone else takes that same piece of paper with your poem on it, and adds vagina vagina vagina vagina vagina to the end, can we honestly say that the poem is not diminished by this?
As long as there is a healthy mix of various games with different "grades" on the moral "scale", then overall the quality of the medium is fine. I think that that is where we find ourselves now. On the scales of smut and refinement, we are breaking even.
But that is just my opinion. Others may look at that scale and are incapable of seeing the refinement for the smut. Usually, these smut blinded folks are the masses of ignorant "non-gamers" who's only real exposure to the gaming industry is what is reported about on the 6 o'clock news.
My point though is that smut does bring down the quality of the medium, just as refinement raises the quality. I disagree with the implication that the medium does not share its quality amongst all things produced on it. If every game released in 2013 was an M-rated gore-soaked tittyparade, it would be hard to point back at Quantum Conundrum and say "but the medium is fine". A single example of smut DOES lower the quality of the medium, but only by a smidge and is easily countered by some non-smut. Too much of either is a bad thing.
As a sidebar... about sexism in video games. No, it is not an issue. Sexism is not prevalent in the video game industry, it is prevalent in humanity. This whole sexism debate has, like so many other hot-button social issues, raged on for far too long and become idiotic.
Lets be clear. Women are physically weaker than men.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Additionally, men are hard wired to be protective and doting towards women. And women are hard wired to want to be protected and doted upon.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
Women want to be beautiful and alluring and intelligent. Men want to be strong and valiant and loved by women.
Not all women.. and not all men.. but statistically speaking this is an accurate statement.
These are not sexist comments. This is just truth. This is how we are made. Obviously you can not make blanket statements like this and expect it to be accurate 7 billion times, but when speaking for the majority, it is true.
Knowing then that this is true, is it any surprise that many men in video games are muscular heroes trying to protect/save a woman? Or that most women are beautiful and sexy and in need of protecting?
Also, do you really think that this is a phenomenon that has just sprouted up in video games? Watch a movie sometime.. read a book... hell...go out and people watch. You will see examples of these stereotypes in every medium, and in our daily interactions with each other as well. It is simply how we are made. It is the basis for our interactions with the opposite sex. To try and change the way we interact is to try and turn away from our nature.
You can protect and dote upon a woman without demeaning her. You can be acquiescent and sheltered by a man without being demeaned. Sexism is only a problem when you stop doing things because it is the right thing to do, and start doing things because it is your right to do them.
As bumpersticker wisdom goes, that's pretty "meh", but the point is valid.
I'd like to know what "statistics" we're talking about in these instances. Also, I don't believe that the longevity of the debate of sexism has somehow made it more or less legitimate or intelligent.
I have a lot of other feelings about your post but they are angry ones and I don't really want to bring them up, just wondering where we're getting our "facts" here.
mind telling me which part of the brain the protect/be protected circuit is? the part of the Y chromosome that tells you that men "must be protective of women"? the neurochemical or hormone that triggers the hardwired PROTECT FEMALES instinct? perhaps you have looked at rat and bonobo studies that back up what you are saying and though you'd generalise this to humans? no, you're getting this from the top of your head, because actual statistics say that, statistically speaking, you are dead wrong.
1) Of women who reported being raped and/or physically assaulted since the age of 18, three quarters (76%) were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, date or boyfriend. (Prevalence Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, U.S. Department of Justice, November, 1998)
2) Women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence.
(Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003)
3) In 88% of all violent incidents males are identified as the suspects; half of all incidents involve a male perpetrator and a female victim (Johnson 1996)
4) 21% of women abused by a marital partner were assaulted during pregnancy; 40% of these women stated that the abuse began during their pregnancy. Women constitute 98% of spousal violence victims of kidnapping/hostage-taking and sexual assault. (Fitzgerald 1999)
5) Male spouses constitute 67% of family members who kill their female partners (Fitzgerald 1999)
6) Female victims are most frequently stalked by a current or former partner: 39% by an ex-husband; 2% by a current husband; and 17% by a current/former boyfriend (Kong 1996).
as a side note- "people watching" is what we call "anecdotal evidence" by the way, and it doesn't tell you where behaviour comes from, or even if it's prevalent, it only tells you that in that particular instance, that behaviour happened. you can't generalise it people watching at all, to say it applies to the majority. you are not a statistician. my stats lecturer would slap you.
I support the kickstarter project. But, of the over-trope-d images on there, the male counter parts in their corresponding games are no less tropes, no less poorly characterized, and, in the end, no less sexist.
I'm in Australia. It's absurd that people don't realise adults play video games. We don't even have an R rating for games. They just get banned in Australia.
you do realize that it can be both right
like sexualization of violence is an Actual Thing
Most violence in games is going to be desensitized in nature*, and hence only a characterization of violence and objectifying it in some way. While we can't do anything about that, we can do something about the perception of the characters within the game.
*Not in that it desensitizes the player, that's a load, but that the act is always going to be unrealistic and feel unrealistic. From Mortal Kombat's latest "X-Ray punches" to Zelda's "Shoot and poof" approach, the act in a game is nothing like the act in reality. Until there's a technology to force the player into a certain perspective, there's nothing you can really do to make violence in games seem like anything other than a cartoon. I'd say the Mass Effect series gets closer to making you feel bad about shooting on occasion, but only for the named characters, and it's still over-the-top even when you don't shoot.
This is a point well taken and I think it gets ignored too often. If protagonist characters in games had a more self-aware dialogue regarding the actions they take and the ramifications of their choices, particularly with regard to violence, it would be great. The same goes for over-sexualization. I'd like to see a lot more down-to-earth female protagonists looking askance at some of the 'fashion' choices of the other women in the game, although that might be a little meta for gamer culture.
First of all.. while I appreciate that you are a college student and are therefore hopped up on that college koolaid that makes you think your eyes are opened wider than everyone elses, I feel that you put WAY too much emphasis on the "statistics" and WAY too little emphasis on the "obvious".
Why do I state that a majority of women are wired to want certain things and the majority of men are wired to want other certain things? Because ive witnessed it first hand countless times in my own life. More importantly ive witnessed it second hand through books, video, music, and all other imaginable forms of documented human communication throughout the known history of our race. In a majority of societies all over the world for generations upon generations upon generations... certain things have remained true when it comes to interactions amongst the sexes.
However you are absolutely correct that I didnt hand out questionnaires in a controlled environment and document the results. Therefore it must not be true, amirite?
I am also pretty confused about your logic. Women do not want a strong man that protects them because statistics show that men rape and beat women a great deal more often than women rape and beat women? Is that the point you are trying to make? Or was your point that men are the main culprits in cases involving rape and violence, and therefore it must be true that the majority of men do not have protective instincts towards women? Whatever point you are trying to make is lost on me. Maybe its cause im so stupid. I took sociology and statistics in college too by the way, but unlike you I did not come away from those classes incapable of believing in anything that had not been proven in a controlled test.
You are having issues seeing the forest for the trees. Statistics are great... they are a powerful tool in sociology and our best chance for gaining a scientific understanding of the human condition, but when you are incapable of seeing the obvious patterns in the world around you because they have not been documented in controlled experiments, well ...I dont know what to tell you. I personally like a little philosophy in my science but thats just me.
Of course the other possibility is that you are a raging feminist and you think that thousands of years of successful male and female interaction is actually the product of a male dominated slave society where women have been forced to succumb to our devilish and
perverse desires. In which case I will just slowly step back and go on my merry way....
Take a look at that traditional married couple! Look at that wilting flower, and how she leans on her husband for protection!
Turns out, "women's roles" and "men's roles" are considerably more changeable than people suspect.
Usually, fundamentalists and traditionalists pine for a return to a period that never really happened, or has been so heavily fictionalized and romanticized that it's nothing like the reality. This doesn't really apply to the context of video games though, as it's only recently, in both a historical and cultural sense (around WWI-WWII), that this kind of hyper-sexualized view of women, in terms of body type and image, started to show up in popular culture. We aren't so much arguing over the idea of gender roles being changeable as we are over the objectification of women by application of a cartooned version of current gender roles handed down by society.
@Nuzak
It's a social construct, not a genetic one. Though all psychological phenomena, like social constructs, take place within the brain. Which does indeed change itself when we receive new information and apply new biases. While I don't believe that it's normal for all men and women in all cultures, I do think it's conditioned into many western men in an almost Pavlovian manner through life experience and media. This can be broken though life experience and through new viewpoints provided by media, and sometimes is, that's just how life works. However, I believe that women, who (taking a guess here) might grow up being told the same thing as many men (that you can do anything you want) find that media and life experience provide a separate view, which means that they are not necessarily conditioned by it to believe the view of women provided by popular media. Gender roles as a psychological and social construct have been well studied for decades, as has sociological/psychological conditioning.
Also, you're improperly applying statistics to a problem that it hasn't been found to be consistently connected to. Also, physical abuse, rape, and emotional abuse statistics are what you call outliers and breaks from societal norms. You cannot apply the statistical outliers to the entire set of data, and you cannont apply the statistics that cover a break from societal norms to the entirety of society. Put more simply, not all men rape, not all women experience rape. While it is true that the man in the situation is more often the aggressor, that the number of women who suffer from it is fairly high, and the man who does it is more likely to do it serially, the study of why is on-going and has been for some time. We're only just scratching the surface of the issue, and throwing those statistics around does not prove your point and can only serve to harm popular opinion of the issue.
At least he didn't brutally murder an actual, harmless nun, and then kill the orphans for witnessing the deed, and then strip her naked.
The disguise worked really well, btw, and that disgusting pedophile had it coming.
Well, yes, I thought I was arguing the same thing.
The above post was my reply to Damoklese, and his certainty that the way things are now are the way things have always been (and the way they, presumably, are supposed to be).
We're not talking about the games, though, we're talking about a specific trailer.
Like I said, violence in video games is probably always going to be far removed from actual violent action, and it's always going to be a cartoonized version of any action, no matter how despicable. Doesn't make it right, but having it doesn't really do the same socio-psychological harm that objectifying a specific group has.
Unless they just walked through a fabric eating cloud, or they're really streetwalkers that got hit with a black and white paint bomb, there's not much context the game can add to the trailer to make it anything other than objectification.
It does bring to mind a pet peeve of mine though (and I'm not saying you are doing this just by linking a clip), but I really dislike when people act as though a comedian's bit is some profound philosophy that should be applied to real world problems. I did it when I was younger re: George Carlin, and I just cringe at the thought of it. Christ what an insufferable little prick I must have been.
I just hate how smarmy it feels. It feels like when you meet a really funny, likeable person at the airport or on the train, and then suddenly they try to sell you insurance or religion.
Any chance of S4 not happening? In my opinion, the series is still fresh and fun, and this latest 4th Panel shows they can still capture some pretty interesting conversations.
So then I says to him... I says "hey! get your own monkey!"
I know right?
but seriously, WordLust, have you accepted our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into your life? If not, you might want to look at some of our affordable life insurance plans. The cold cash will give your family some much needed comfort while you burn in hell for all eternity.
Its a pretty common conversation if you go anywhere on the internet