Snugglesworth have you changed your mind or are you going to argue people's replies? Because you were saying basically the same thing in that thread two years ago to the month, right down to exampling Tifa's miniskirt as justified, and people were telling you the same things they are now and I'm curious if I'm going to be reading your defense of Tifa's miniskirt in 2014.
I'm not trying to argue with anyone's replies. Heck, I agree with practically every single thing said so far.
I'm also not trying to go out of my way to defend the miniskirt either. I vastly, vastly prefer the more conservative redesign in Advent Children. It was merely the closest example I could think of when the topic briefly touched up character designs in games.
But as @Squidget0 pointed out, that isn't the main issue here. Take what I said as just a small opinion on a small portion of the bigger problem at hand. One way or another, I do agree: things have to change.
Also note that very few of the tweets this thread is referencing mention sexualization of female characters. Most of them are about women who aren't taken seriously in their jobs, or receive different treatment based on their gender. That seems to be the primary problem that women in the industry are having here.
The problem they are having is caused by prevailing sexism, which is also the cause of all the other things we're talking about. You can't address a massive, complex problem that everyone innocently participates in without talking about the trees that fill the forest.
Snugglesworth have you changed your mind or are you going to argue people's replies? Because you were saying basically the same thing in that thread two years ago to the month, right down to exampling Tifa's miniskirt as justified, and people were telling you the same things they are now and I'm curious if I'm going to be reading your defense of Tifa's miniskirt in 2014.
I'm not trying to argue with anyone's replies. Heck, I agree with practically every single thing said so far.
I'm also not trying to go out of my way to defend the miniskirt either. I vastly, vastly prefer the more conservative redesign in Advent Children. It was merely the closest example I could think of when the topic briefly touched up character designs in games.
But as Squidget0 pointed out, that isn't the main issue here. Take what I said as just a small opinion on a small portion of the bigger problem at hand. One way or another, I do agree: things have to change.
There is no "main issue" in this cases, because when we change how people approach just one thing we change how they look at almost everything when it comes to creative endeavours. This is actually why I'm kind of disappointed you picked up only Lovecraft instead of Kay; Kay writes fantastic, powerful women who are still realistic in a historical context, and Lovecraft doesn't even really treat women as people.
But that is beside the point.
The larger point is that when we establish practices that are respectful and thoughtful in one aspect of creative endeavour, we necessarily create an environment where it's easier for women to become part of those endeavours and improve them with their own perspective. You kind of get this impression from BioWare writing blogs, at least some of them
Well, to add to my earlier statement, "justification" doesn't just mean "oh, this girl dresses like a stripper because she's actually undercover" or any other in-game excuse. It also means that their design doesn't clash with what everyone else is wearing in that same setting. Again, the nuns in Hitman stick out like a sore thumb because no one else dresses like that, male or female.
In Final Fantasy XII, one of your party members is an amazonian rabbit girl in a black thong. The reason she doesn't stick out is because all the other characters (despite not being rabbit people) are decked out in a similar manner. In fact, the character wearing the least clothing in that game is Vaan, the male protagonist.
That's what I meant by justification: if the designs don't draw attention away from the story or setting, then it's not a total embarrassment. Doesn't mean they can't be taken for what they are, which is sex appeal, but for me it's a bigger problem if said sex-appeal distracts you from everything else going on in the game.
Yes, but even with those mitigating factors, Squaresoft is still inherently complicit in perpetuating the "all women must be sexy" culture on a basic level due to the simple fact that its women are almost never not portrayed as sexy. Different people aproach making games in many ways, good and bad, but the creative potential of the medium is constrained such that virtually every approach must pass through the "sweet titties" region in some form or another. The broad perpetuation of that constraint is the essence of the problem.
Speaking purely by personal opinion here, but I find myself rarely bothered by the depiction of women in fantasy settings.
The idea of fantasy, to me, is to see a world that is strikingly different from our own, with all sorts of unique and exotic things to witness, be it people, places, creatures or magic.
Final Fantasy XII has sexy rabbit women. Lord of the Rings has sexy elves. Greek tragedies have sexy Gods (or human women so beautiful that entire wars are waged over them). It is basically one of the oldest literary traditions out there.
Is it because fantasy stories are typically written as male power stories? Usually, yes. But it doesn't feel like women in general are being demeaned as a result. Look at some of Disney's films: Ariel, Jasmine, Esmeralda...they're all hugely popular with girls and women of all ages, but there's no denying that they were initially designed to be as attractive and (as much as Disney would probably deny this) sexy. Yet despite that, they are still presented as respectable and beloved characters, even if one of them is wearing a clam-shell bra and nothing else.
There are, of course, extreme examples. Recently I watched Fire and Ice, an animated film with designs by Frank Frazetta. Make no mistake, the female "lead" spends the entirety of that film parading around in a loincloth while posing seductively in every frame, while also getting kidnapped by ape men every other minute.
But the film also has men running around in loincloths too. In fact, at least 75% of the movie is nothing but man-ass. Intricately detailed, rotoscoped man-ass.
It may be an extreme example, but it's still adhering to the fantasy "tradition" that everything and everyone is beautiful and exotic. It isn't exactly progressive for the depiction of women in media, but I personally feel it isn't doing any additional harm, either.
Of course you have very obvious wank-fests like Queen's Blade and Record of Agharest War, but works of that type aren't exclusive to one genre. Final Fantasy may have beautiful people and occasionally takes a few missteps with its fanservice (Tifa's gelatin chest during FMV sequences, as well as an abundance of unfortunate outfits that happen to be included in any game directed by Toriyama), but the majority of its female characters are handled tastefully, often with character depth that surpasses the male leads of their respective games. It goes back to my earlier statement that yes, they're sexy, but their appearances don't detract from the narrative and themes of the story.
In short, it's an old-as-dirt tradition, but when handled correctly, I rarely feel that it puts a negative spin on women as a whole. The men are sexy, the women are sexy, even the animals are sexy (those slender Chocobo legs...). Everyone's sexy.
First, please don't take this as a personal insult. I mean this very seriously.
Congratulations, Professor Snugglesworth. In one post you have LITERALLY encapsulated the entire reason this thread exists. You have succinctly stated EXACTLY the mentality that most people were struggling to convey accurately as the very specific problem with the games industry right now. And you're a member of the gaming media, right? You are quite literally an example of someone participating in the industry and specifically causing this problem!
This needs to be on the new page.
Also, I just discovered and used the Awesome button for the first time.
And if you don't think that in the grand scheme of things sexual objectification of women is a problem, maybe you can hang out on a livestream someday when developers are talking and watch the chat when a female developer walks by. Or maybe hop onto XBOX Live and listen to the things people ask women to do.
Can you better explain the chain of logic that goes from "fewer boob windows" -> "women are no longer harassed on XBOX live?" Because that doesn't seem to fit with the prevailing understandings of internet harassment at all. For example, harassment is still incredibly common even in games with non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
If you haven't already, I'd suggest watching the harassment PAX panel if you want to get a better understanding of why harassment happens and how developers prevent it. It's not a sexualization problem, it's a community management problem stemming from a lack of strong consequences and community empowerment. Nobody on that panel seems to think that changing the outfits of female characters would affect harassment, or if they do they don't bring it up as a solution. If you think it would work as a solution, you should explain why. These two things (harassment and sexualization) are really not the same issue, just as sexism in the workplace and sexualization aren't the same issue.
I know it's not a sexualization problem. Nothing is a sexualization problem. Sexualize people as much as you want! Unless you're sexualizing them in an an inappropriate context, which is, when it comes to the gaming industry, pretty much any context, unless you have a really good reason for it, like (potentially) Bayonetta or Catherine or something.
Dressing women up in sexy clothes is not a problem. Creating an atmosphere in which games are created by, designed for, and marketed towards men, and creating that atmosphere by depicting all females with idealized bodies and overly sexualized clothing and makeup, is a problem, and it's a problem that leads gamers and game designers to dismiss women as non-gamers, as not having anything to add to gaming, as not understanding gaming, as not being hardcore gamers, and as being acceptable targets of dismissal and harassment for all of these issues and more.
Don't you see the link between "we dress our women up like supermodels because we only make games for men, men are the only ones who play games" and "you're a female? So you must work in marketing, like as a glorified booth babe! Oh, you're a game designer? Yeah right, women don't play games, how can they design games?" The link between "it's okay that our character designs for the women are all scantily clad and pandering to men, men are the ones we make games for" and "you're a woman, when you say this quest we're writing is creepy or smacks of rape you just don't understand how it appears to men, and since men are our audience this is how we're writing this quest." The link between an industry where no matter what a woman's ostensible role in the narrative, she's dressed up to suggest that what men think of her is crucial and what men want from her is sex, and a climate where men treat women like they're not good for anything other than sex appeal by way of being a booth babe or showing their bodies off for the camera when the developers are livestreaming?
This is all, of course, a subset of our generally sexist society, but the causes and effects of that are as much overly sexualized depictions of women as they are anything else. Sexualization is not the problem - the culture is. And they are inextricably linked. They cause each other and mutually reinforce each other.
Can you better explain the chain of logic that goes from "fewer boob windows" -> "women are no longer harassed on XBOX live?" Because that doesn't seem to fit with the prevailing understandings of internet harassment at all. For example, harassment is still incredibly common even in games with non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
no, it's not a direct cause->effect relationship. they are both symptoms of the same overall problem ("society objectifies women") and saying we shouldn't do something about one because it won't also prevent the other is a joke.
And I know this is kind of a sticking point for some people:
There's nothing inherently wrong with being catered to, and there's nothing wrong with liking sexy women characters, and there's nothing wrong with being pandered to and liking it even. You don't have to feel ashamed for being part of a culturally dominant group as long as you're aware of it.
But there's still a responsibility for creators to make sure that this isn't all they do, or the majority they do, or even an especially visible portion of what they do. Creative works can create culture as easily as they reflect it, and if we want to make things better this has to begin with the creation of good art. If what it takes to get that is for fans to demand it, then by Christ, so shall I do
And if you don't think that in the grand scheme of things sexual objectification of women is a problem, maybe you can hang out on a livestream someday when developers are talking and watch the chat when a female developer walks by. Or maybe hop onto XBOX Live and listen to the things people ask women to do.
Can you better explain the chain of logic that goes from "fewer boob windows" -> "women are no longer harassed on XBOX live?" Because that doesn't seem to fit with the prevailing understandings of internet harassment at all. For example, harassment is still incredibly common even in games with non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
When the average female character is little more than A Thing To Hang Boob Windows On, it has a tendency to attract and legitimize a culture which does not take women very seriously as human beings (even when they are playing other games). If using female characters purely or primarily as a tool to deliver sex appeal was not the norm, then that attitude wouldn't be actively encouraged.
It's not the kind of thing that would change people's behavior overnight by any means, but it's one of many steps that would help repair the culture in the long run.
Don't you see the link between "we dress our women up like supermodels because we only make games for men, men are the only ones who play games" and "you're a female? So you must work in marketing, like as a glorified booth babe! Oh, you're a game designer? Yeah right, women don't play games, how can they design games?" The link between "it's okay that our character designs for the women are all scantily clad and pandering to men, men are the ones we make games for" and "you're a woman, when you say this quest we're writing is creepy or smacks of rape you just don't understand how it appears to men, and since men are our audience this is how we're writing this quest." The link between an industry where no matter what a woman's ostensible role in the narrative, she's dressed up to suggest that what men think of her is crucial and what men want from her is sex, and a climate where men treat women like they're not good for anything other than sex appeal by way of being a booth babe or showing their bodies off for the camera when the developers are livestreaming?
I don't think those issues are intrinsically linked, actually. For example, I can think of several game studios that are pretty awesome environments for female employees, while also producing some pretty sexualized characters. Often, the media a company produces doesn't reflect the culture of that company, it reflects the culture of the community at large.
non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
...?
Nobody on that panel seems to think that changing the outfits of female characters would affect harassment, or if they do they don't bring it up as a solution. If you think it would work as a solution, you should explain why. These two things (harassment and sexualization) are really not the same issue, just as sexism in the workplace and sexualization aren't the same issue.
Was Tycho talking about ending all harassment, or was he just talking about how women gamers get more abuse simply for their gender than men do, thus illustrating the larger problem which is also responsible for why women in the workplace are treated differently simply for their gender?
The response to "a whole bunch of problems that fall on gender lines" isn't "let's look at this in isolation and only discuss limited fixes" but "let's think about the larger problem that creates all these other problems."
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I literally do not know why I'm typing this because you either ignore, misunderstand, or instantly forget every one of my posts when you read them
I certainly am not ignoring what you are typing, and I'm sorry if it sounded like it was.
I also do understand what the main topic of this thread is about. I just merely felt like adding my 2 cents to one aspect of the conversation, which was about character designs. Obviously, what I said doesn't represent the entire spectrum of the topic, but I also felt like adding that there's really no way you can summarize everything that is wrong with the portrayal of women in media as well as the treatment of real life female developers and producers with what one game or genre is doing, or what another one isn't doing. It's a case-by-case basis.
There's no need to stress so much about getting your point across. You certainly don't need to drudge up a failed thread topic made long ago, either. I can't speak for the entirety of this topic, and I feel there are few who can, so I merely attempted to touch upon one portion of it.
I'm glad Snugglesworth is using progressive societies such as ancient Greece to look up to.
I did not in any way imply it was progressive. And I also wasn't trying to say that fantasy settings (or specifically the Final Fantasy games) get a "pass" because of how long writers have been using this perceived interpretation of women. I just feel that in the grand scheme of things, it's one of the smaller problems in comparison.
Using a historical society as an excuse to eliminate women or minorities as characters is bullshit, because if you're actually willing to do scholarly study about medieval Europe, for example, you will find that women were not completely absent from history, and neither were minorities, and simply taking the easy rode of "white men did everything important back then, so it's OK if all our important characters are white males" is not an acceptable excuse. If anything it's just further proof of ingrained sexism and racism that we need to overcome before we get the change we need.
Just as an example I heard the other day about how the assumption regarding ancient Roman religious practice was that blood sacrifice, only permitted by male religious, was more important than the rituals the female religious performed. But historians realized that the only reason they assumed blood sacrifice was more important was because it was exclusive to men. There were religious rites that were exclusive to women, as well. There is nothing in what we know that would offer proof that one type of exclusive rite were more important than another; from what we know, in fact, all were considered important.
Talking about gender problems as something that has to be attacked at the root seems fallacious. Changing culture can start from the outside and work its way inward. It's a problem that needs to be addressed brick by brick.
Not to say that I wouldn't be happy if we could just attack bad mindsets directly, that would be ideal
But as it is now we have to create the appropriate tone for a cultural shift, and that's going to start with things like male creators treating female subjects with respect, and then female creators getting equal respect to their peers
non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
...?
Nobody on that panel seems to think that changing the outfits of female characters would affect harassment, or if they do they don't bring it up as a solution. If you think it would work as a solution, you should explain why. These two things (harassment and sexualization) are really not the same issue, just as sexism in the workplace and sexualization aren't the same issue.
Was Tycho talking about ending all harassment, or was he just talking about how women gamers get more abuse simply for their gender than men do, thus illustrating the larger problem which is also responsible for why women in the workplace are treated differently simply for their gender?
The response to "a whole bunch of problems that fall on gender lines" isn't "let's look at this in isolation and only discuss limited fixes" but "let's think about the larger problem that creates all these other problems."
Sure, and cultural problems are very complex and tend to require focusing on causes rather than symptoms. Sexualization of female characters is a symptom, it's not the cause.
If you got rid of all the sexualized characters tomorrow, the industry would still be a pretty shitty place for women to work. It seems like we've co-opted the actual issues brought up in this thread (ie: female employees aren't taken seriously, girls aren't encouraged to learn math and sciences) with trivial stuff about which outfits are worn by which fictional characters. Does that seem to you like the right way to approach the problem?
Talking about gender problems as something that has to be attacked at the root seems fallacious. Changing culture can start from the outside and work its way inward. It's a problem that needs to be addressed brick by brick.
Yeah, let me be more specific. Sexism as a broad issue is hard to attack directly because it's so abstract, so you have to attack the ways it manifests itself. But pretending a given way it manifests itself is an isolated problem that doesn't connect to these other problems blinds you to why you have a problem in the first place.
Talking about gender problems as something that has to be attacked at the root seems fallacious. Changing culture can start from the outside and work its way inward. It's a problem that needs to be addressed brick by brick.
Yeah, let me be more specific. Sexism as a broad issue is hard to attack directly because it's so abstract, so you have to attack the ways it manifests itself. But pretending a given way it manifests itself is an isolated problem that doesn't connect to these other problems blinds you to why you have a problem in the first place.
Oh I agree absolutely, and I apologize if I came across in any other way.
These problems have to be viewed in the context of the larger cultural framework that marginalizes women as both creators and do-ers, even they create the majority of consumed art in a given field (you can find articles on how women produce the body of literature now but msot reviews focus on male-created works, for instance)
non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
...?
Nobody on that panel seems to think that changing the outfits of female characters would affect harassment, or if they do they don't bring it up as a solution. If you think it would work as a solution, you should explain why. These two things (harassment and sexualization) are really not the same issue, just as sexism in the workplace and sexualization aren't the same issue.
Was Tycho talking about ending all harassment, or was he just talking about how women gamers get more abuse simply for their gender than men do, thus illustrating the larger problem which is also responsible for why women in the workplace are treated differently simply for their gender?
The response to "a whole bunch of problems that fall on gender lines" isn't "let's look at this in isolation and only discuss limited fixes" but "let's think about the larger problem that creates all these other problems."
Sure, and cultural problems are very complex and tend to require focusing on causes rather than symptoms. Sexualization of female characters is a symptom, it's not the cause.
If you got rid of all the sexualized characters tomorrow, the industry would still be a pretty shitty place for women to work. It seems like we've co-opted the actual issues brought up in this thread (ie: female employees aren't taken seriously, girls aren't encouraged to learn math and sciences) with trivial stuff about which outfits are worn by which fictional characters. Does that seem to you like the right way to approach the problem?
You're approaching this with entirely the wrong mindset. It's not about magical instant fixes. I'm halfway through this PAX panel and none of it would make the industry a less shitty place for women to work - these are all suggestions for punishing the assholes who say mean things or just muting them so that nobody hears the mean things. How much of the #1reasonwhy tweetes complained about XBOX Live harassment? That's an issue obviously, but it's not the only issue. The real issue is that deep seated sexism in an industry that is convinced that it is by men and for men leads not just to oversexualized characters but to denigration of women developers that manifests itself in the form of ignoring them, dismissing them, etc.
The reason stopping oversexualization would help with this problem isn't because scanty women magically make men dismissive of women. It's because the attitudes that make people think "yeah it's totally OK to make Cortana naked and perfectly proportioned" are the exact same attitudes that make people think "yeah it's totally OK that I just assume women don't know about gaming, why would they? Games are made for men, by men!" An industry where people stop and tell themselves "no, we can't put this female warrior into a skimpy boob plate and expose her thighs, that's ridiculous. In our game, women aren't just for eye candy, that's alienating to our female players and to the women on our dev team because it suggests that no matter how good of a warrior or a mage or whatever a woman is, it's still important that they be sexy for the men" is an industry where women developers are treated like their opinions matter, like they can design games for hardcore gamers, like they understand what the consumers want, and so on.
If you got rid of all the sexualized characters tomorrow, the industry would still be a pretty shitty place for women to work.
You mention symptoms but they're both symptoms. I don't think treating the first symptom solves the second, no, but I don't think treating the second alone solves the illness, either, just like painkillers don't set a broken leg. Getting rid of the cultural reason behind the frequency of these character designs would also make the industry a better place for women to work, but you can't directly attack that so you have to attack it on the multiple fronts it shows itself in order to ameliorate it.
(I'm still curious what you were referring to about empowered TF2 characters?)
I was thinking of the Announcer, but in fairness she is only one character out of 10. Maybe Left4Dead is a better example?
But really, all I'm saying is that what fictional characters wear really doesn't have all that much to do with corporate sexism, unless you're speaking in extremely general terms. I can think of a few companies off the top of my head that feature sexualized characters in their games while still making a significant effort to make their workplace a safe environment for women. I can also think of companies that produce gender-neutral games while still being sexist as a corporate environment.
And that's really what we should be talking about, sexism in a corporate environment is the problem here, not whether fictional characters are too slutty for your tastes.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
And that's really what we should be talking about, sexism in a corporate environment is the problem here, not whether fictional characters are too slutty for your tastes.
This was an ignorant thing to say and you should feel ashamed for having vomited it forth.
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
This thread has mostly been pretty good and not filled with wanton idiocy, which is unusual for threads like this. Please don't embarass yourself and us by saying things like that. You're better than that.
@Squidget0, the point of the Female Characters tangent was examining ways to make games themselves more appealing to female players, more of whom might decide to go work in the industry. Having more female workers will not insta-solve problems, but as they make up more and more of the creative staff, attitudes will slowly shift and become more respectful as a result of familiarity and mutual respect.
It'll take far, far more than just that, but it's just another aspect of how it's wrong on every single side.
Because no matter how many times I say that sexuality is not a problem and that it's even fine for characters like Bayonetta/Catherine when it's crucial to the game, there will always be someone who's convinced that I have a problem with fictional characters being too slutty. Yes, I'm up at night worrying about whether video game characters have a predilection for lots of sex, not about actual problems that stem from an industry where you can be working on a multimillion dollar game that is the 5th in a popular series and that is working on bringing Hitman to the masses and see nothing wrong with not only creating a sexy team of stripper nuns for your player to fight against, but with creating what is basically a snuff film with those sexy stripper nuns to use as a trailer for your game and as a cutscene in the game. IO Interactive isn't a bunch of creepy shitheads hiding in a basement turning out vile shit - they are creating a mainstream game that wants to sell as many copies as possible. And it's obviously not just them - everyone from Blizzard to Valve makes sure that any woman who makes it into their game is the epitome of beauty and dressed to make sure you won't forget it.
And just because you can't see that an environment where an artist can spend all day every day lovingly animating 47 as he strangles a stripper nun assassin to death is an environment where developers have a very specific person in mind as the target of their games, and an environment where women are going to inevitably seen as completely tangential to the business of making games for the people who ostensibly play games, doesn't mean that my entire argument boils down to "fuck video game sluts."
I can't believe I can type "strangles a stripper nun assassin" in 2012 and have it be anything other than a description of a parody/homage to grindhouse films or something. When Quentin Tarantino does it at least he's self-conscious about it. IO Interactive just... fucking... decided to make stripper nun assassins.
+2
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
This thread is about women in the games industry, so if your thesis is that the sexualization of female characters is a primary factor that keeps women out of the games industry that's something you should probably try to support with data. For example, the fashion industry sexualizes women constantly, and it seems to have no problem employing women. Remember, the point of this thread isn't how the game industry can make better characters or do more good deeds, it's about how it can make things better for female game developers. I don't see how "fewer boob windows" accomplishes that goal at all, except in a very nebulous and abstract way.
Also note that very few of the tweets this thread is referencing mention sexualization of female characters. Most of them are about women who aren't taken seriously in their jobs, or receive different treatment based on their gender. That seems to be the primary problem that women in the industry are having here.
From what I remember from the tweets, there are plenty where women talk about feeling uncomfortable with a character design, only to have the artist say that there's nothing wrong with boobs for whatever stupid reason they share with Prof. Snugglesworth. Fewer boob windows would go a long way towards establishing a culture in the industry that treats women as people, not as objects.
I can see how more women game developers would reduce boob windows, but I do not see how reduced boob windows would increase female game developers.
There is not a single woman out there who is playing videogames and thinking "god, if Lara Croft just put some clothes on I would design games in a heartbeat."
In fact, in your exact example, a male artist drawing boobs for a character and then shouting down the woman who objects would not be possible in an environment where more women were in charge.
What needs to be done is the same thing that needs to be done in plenty of other industries - make the game development environment more friendly to women and the game changes will come with it.
It wouldn't increase the number of female game developers, it would decrease the amount to which men would ignore them. When the assumption is that you are making video games for men, and that men just want to see tits on their female video game characters, and that any women who expresses reservations about whether your female princess should be wearing less than a bikini is misguided and a slave to political correctness at the expense of good sense and profits, and so on...
I don't think I ever said "let's work on what female characters look like instead of getting more women game developers." I've just been trying to point out that when the starting assumption for video games is "every woman must be sexy," this has consequences beyond making every female character sexy. It legitimates the dismissal of womens' opinions, especially when they speak out against stupid character design but also any time they say something other than what a man would say in the same situation, because making every female character an explicit target of the male gaze is the same as saying you're making games for men, not for women.
See the fact that there are no women in TF2 is how they respect them! Or something? I don't know I've never played it.
I'll give you an idea, they took the time to create whole new models for robot versions of the cast in an all-new game mode, but never bother with female counterparts for the nine.
The Administrator is a good character (especially for an elderly "crone" type character, she's actually not even evil, really), but literally all of her characterization is done outside the game in comics. In game she's a stern, you know, announcer.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
See the fact that there are no women in TF2 is how they respect them! Or something? I don't know I've never played it.
I'll give you an idea, they took the time to create whole new models for robot versions of the cast in an all-new game mode, but never bother with female counterparts for the nine.
The Administrator is a good character (especially for an elderly "crone" type character, she's actually not even evil, really), but literally all of her characterization is done outside the game in comics. In game she's a stern, you know, announcer.
Female characters in TF2 would be a garry's mod horror show
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited December 2012
So Squidget names a game with no female characters as an earnest example of a game that respects female characters.
Actually, I cited TF2 as an example of a game where sexual harassment of female players still happens, despite the fact that there is no sexualization of women in the game and you're constantly taking orders from a non-sexualized female character significantly more powerful than yourself. The whole point of the example was to illustrate that a lack of sexualization does nothing to stop harassment of female players. But whatever you guys want to read it as is fine.
Also, not really related, but if you want to play female versions of the classes in TF2 you should check out the mods available here. They're quite good. And yes, the female heavy does indeed have a huge gut.
@Squidget0, the point of the Female Characters tangent was examining ways to make games themselves more appealing to female players, more of whom might decide to go work in the industry. Having more female workers will not insta-solve problems, but as they make up more and more of the creative staff, attitudes will slowly shift and become more respectful as a result of familiarity and mutual respect.
It'll take far, far more than just that, but it's just another aspect of how it's wrong on every single side.
But female players are interested in games. According to the ESA, 47% of gamers are female, up from 40% in 2009. Games are appealing to women on a massive scale. The problem we're having is that female players aren't choosing to turn their interest in games into a career. So why is that?
If we're talking specifically about triple-A games, what makes you think that it's the outfits or character designs that keep women from being interested in games? As a counterexample, sexy outfits are featured prominently in games like The Sims, a massively successful game that enjoys a majority-female playerbase. So how does that happen if female players won't tolerate sexualized women in their games?
I think it's absolutely worth examining character design in games and finding ways we can improve on it (there are a lot of ways), it just doesn't seem particularly related to the topic of this thread. Women weren't turned away from Halo because they didn't like Cortana's outfit, they were turned away from it because it's a game about shooting aliens with big guns, and they've been told since birth that shooting and guns are "guy things." That's a much deeper problem with a very different set of solutions, but it's also the problem that's actually worth solving.
+1
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Squidge, do you really think a game that acts as if women don't actually exist is somehow an improvement over objectifying them? You think an environment where women=nothing will be one that fosters respect towards female players?
A more likely environment, if you want to talk about how maybe a game's respect for women might bleed into the fanbase, would be ME3 multiplayer. But I have no idea how prevalent sexual harassment is there, I only know I've not yet been sexually harassed any of the times I've played it. But I don't play it on xbawks, I play it on PC.
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I'm not trying to argue with anyone's replies. Heck, I agree with practically every single thing said so far.
I'm also not trying to go out of my way to defend the miniskirt either. I vastly, vastly prefer the more conservative redesign in Advent Children. It was merely the closest example I could think of when the topic briefly touched up character designs in games.
But as @Squidget0 pointed out, that isn't the main issue here. Take what I said as just a small opinion on a small portion of the bigger problem at hand. One way or another, I do agree: things have to change.
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The problem they are having is caused by prevailing sexism, which is also the cause of all the other things we're talking about. You can't address a massive, complex problem that everyone innocently participates in without talking about the trees that fill the forest.
There is no "main issue" in this cases, because when we change how people approach just one thing we change how they look at almost everything when it comes to creative endeavours. This is actually why I'm kind of disappointed you picked up only Lovecraft instead of Kay; Kay writes fantastic, powerful women who are still realistic in a historical context, and Lovecraft doesn't even really treat women as people.
But that is beside the point.
The larger point is that when we establish practices that are respectful and thoughtful in one aspect of creative endeavour, we necessarily create an environment where it's easier for women to become part of those endeavours and improve them with their own perspective. You kind of get this impression from BioWare writing blogs, at least some of them
This needs to be on the new page.
Also, I just discovered and used the Awesome button for the first time.
Can you better explain the chain of logic that goes from "fewer boob windows" -> "women are no longer harassed on XBOX live?" Because that doesn't seem to fit with the prevailing understandings of internet harassment at all. For example, harassment is still incredibly common even in games with non-sexualized and empowered female characters like Team Fortress 2.
If you haven't already, I'd suggest watching the harassment PAX panel if you want to get a better understanding of why harassment happens and how developers prevent it. It's not a sexualization problem, it's a community management problem stemming from a lack of strong consequences and community empowerment. Nobody on that panel seems to think that changing the outfits of female characters would affect harassment, or if they do they don't bring it up as a solution. If you think it would work as a solution, you should explain why. These two things (harassment and sexualization) are really not the same issue, just as sexism in the workplace and sexualization aren't the same issue.
Dressing women up in sexy clothes is not a problem. Creating an atmosphere in which games are created by, designed for, and marketed towards men, and creating that atmosphere by depicting all females with idealized bodies and overly sexualized clothing and makeup, is a problem, and it's a problem that leads gamers and game designers to dismiss women as non-gamers, as not having anything to add to gaming, as not understanding gaming, as not being hardcore gamers, and as being acceptable targets of dismissal and harassment for all of these issues and more.
Don't you see the link between "we dress our women up like supermodels because we only make games for men, men are the only ones who play games" and "you're a female? So you must work in marketing, like as a glorified booth babe! Oh, you're a game designer? Yeah right, women don't play games, how can they design games?" The link between "it's okay that our character designs for the women are all scantily clad and pandering to men, men are the ones we make games for" and "you're a woman, when you say this quest we're writing is creepy or smacks of rape you just don't understand how it appears to men, and since men are our audience this is how we're writing this quest." The link between an industry where no matter what a woman's ostensible role in the narrative, she's dressed up to suggest that what men think of her is crucial and what men want from her is sex, and a climate where men treat women like they're not good for anything other than sex appeal by way of being a booth babe or showing their bodies off for the camera when the developers are livestreaming?
This is all, of course, a subset of our generally sexist society, but the causes and effects of that are as much overly sexualized depictions of women as they are anything else. Sexualization is not the problem - the culture is. And they are inextricably linked. They cause each other and mutually reinforce each other.
There's nothing inherently wrong with being catered to, and there's nothing wrong with liking sexy women characters, and there's nothing wrong with being pandered to and liking it even. You don't have to feel ashamed for being part of a culturally dominant group as long as you're aware of it.
But there's still a responsibility for creators to make sure that this isn't all they do, or the majority they do, or even an especially visible portion of what they do. Creative works can create culture as easily as they reflect it, and if we want to make things better this has to begin with the creation of good art. If what it takes to get that is for fans to demand it, then by Christ, so shall I do
It's not the kind of thing that would change people's behavior overnight by any means, but it's one of many steps that would help repair the culture in the long run.
I don't think those issues are intrinsically linked, actually. For example, I can think of several game studios that are pretty awesome environments for female employees, while also producing some pretty sexualized characters. Often, the media a company produces doesn't reflect the culture of that company, it reflects the culture of the community at large.
...?
Was Tycho talking about ending all harassment, or was he just talking about how women gamers get more abuse simply for their gender than men do, thus illustrating the larger problem which is also responsible for why women in the workplace are treated differently simply for their gender?
The response to "a whole bunch of problems that fall on gender lines" isn't "let's look at this in isolation and only discuss limited fixes" but "let's think about the larger problem that creates all these other problems."
Using a historical society as an excuse to eliminate women or minorities as characters is bullshit, because if you're actually willing to do scholarly study about medieval Europe, for example, you will find that women were not completely absent from history, and neither were minorities, and simply taking the easy rode of "white men did everything important back then, so it's OK if all our important characters are white males" is not an acceptable excuse. If anything it's just further proof of ingrained sexism and racism that we need to overcome before we get the change we need.
Just as an example I heard the other day about how the assumption regarding ancient Roman religious practice was that blood sacrifice, only permitted by male religious, was more important than the rituals the female religious performed. But historians realized that the only reason they assumed blood sacrifice was more important was because it was exclusive to men. There were religious rites that were exclusive to women, as well. There is nothing in what we know that would offer proof that one type of exclusive rite were more important than another; from what we know, in fact, all were considered important.
Not to say that I wouldn't be happy if we could just attack bad mindsets directly, that would be ideal
But as it is now we have to create the appropriate tone for a cultural shift, and that's going to start with things like male creators treating female subjects with respect, and then female creators getting equal respect to their peers
Sure, and cultural problems are very complex and tend to require focusing on causes rather than symptoms. Sexualization of female characters is a symptom, it's not the cause.
If you got rid of all the sexualized characters tomorrow, the industry would still be a pretty shitty place for women to work. It seems like we've co-opted the actual issues brought up in this thread (ie: female employees aren't taken seriously, girls aren't encouraged to learn math and sciences) with trivial stuff about which outfits are worn by which fictional characters. Does that seem to you like the right way to approach the problem?
Yeah, let me be more specific. Sexism as a broad issue is hard to attack directly because it's so abstract, so you have to attack the ways it manifests itself. But pretending a given way it manifests itself is an isolated problem that doesn't connect to these other problems blinds you to why you have a problem in the first place.
Oh I agree absolutely, and I apologize if I came across in any other way.
These problems have to be viewed in the context of the larger cultural framework that marginalizes women as both creators and do-ers, even they create the majority of consumed art in a given field (you can find articles on how women produce the body of literature now but msot reviews focus on male-created works, for instance)
The reason stopping oversexualization would help with this problem isn't because scanty women magically make men dismissive of women. It's because the attitudes that make people think "yeah it's totally OK to make Cortana naked and perfectly proportioned" are the exact same attitudes that make people think "yeah it's totally OK that I just assume women don't know about gaming, why would they? Games are made for men, by men!" An industry where people stop and tell themselves "no, we can't put this female warrior into a skimpy boob plate and expose her thighs, that's ridiculous. In our game, women aren't just for eye candy, that's alienating to our female players and to the women on our dev team because it suggests that no matter how good of a warrior or a mage or whatever a woman is, it's still important that they be sexy for the men" is an industry where women developers are treated like their opinions matter, like they can design games for hardcore gamers, like they understand what the consumers want, and so on.
You mention symptoms but they're both symptoms. I don't think treating the first symptom solves the second, no, but I don't think treating the second alone solves the illness, either, just like painkillers don't set a broken leg. Getting rid of the cultural reason behind the frequency of these character designs would also make the industry a better place for women to work, but you can't directly attack that so you have to attack it on the multiple fronts it shows itself in order to ameliorate it.
(I'm still curious what you were referring to about empowered TF2 characters?)
The announcer I'll give you (though she falls into the "Bitchy Old Hag" stereotype), but the Pyro is genderless.
But really, all I'm saying is that what fictional characters wear really doesn't have all that much to do with corporate sexism, unless you're speaking in extremely general terms. I can think of a few companies off the top of my head that feature sexualized characters in their games while still making a significant effort to make their workplace a safe environment for women. I can also think of companies that produce gender-neutral games while still being sexist as a corporate environment.
And that's really what we should be talking about, sexism in a corporate environment is the problem here, not whether fictional characters are too slutty for your tastes.
This was an ignorant thing to say and you should feel ashamed for having vomited it forth.
It'll take far, far more than just that, but it's just another aspect of how it's wrong on every single side.
And just because you can't see that an environment where an artist can spend all day every day lovingly animating 47 as he strangles a stripper nun assassin to death is an environment where developers have a very specific person in mind as the target of their games, and an environment where women are going to inevitably seen as completely tangential to the business of making games for the people who ostensibly play games, doesn't mean that my entire argument boils down to "fuck video game sluts."
I can't believe I can type "strangles a stripper nun assassin" in 2012 and have it be anything other than a description of a parody/homage to grindhouse films or something. When Quentin Tarantino does it at least he's self-conscious about it. IO Interactive just... fucking... decided to make stripper nun assassins.
I can see how more women game developers would reduce boob windows, but I do not see how reduced boob windows would increase female game developers.
There is not a single woman out there who is playing videogames and thinking "god, if Lara Croft just put some clothes on I would design games in a heartbeat."
In fact, in your exact example, a male artist drawing boobs for a character and then shouting down the woman who objects would not be possible in an environment where more women were in charge.
What needs to be done is the same thing that needs to be done in plenty of other industries - make the game development environment more friendly to women and the game changes will come with it.
I don't think I ever said "let's work on what female characters look like instead of getting more women game developers." I've just been trying to point out that when the starting assumption for video games is "every woman must be sexy," this has consequences beyond making every female character sexy. It legitimates the dismissal of womens' opinions, especially when they speak out against stupid character design but also any time they say something other than what a man would say in the same situation, because making every female character an explicit target of the male gaze is the same as saying you're making games for men, not for women.
The Administrator is a good character (especially for an elderly "crone" type character, she's actually not even evil, really), but literally all of her characterization is done outside the game in comics. In game she's a stern, you know, announcer.
Female characters in TF2 would be a garry's mod horror show
Is this the punchline of a joke?
Did you ever end up playing past the 1st level? 'Cause, I know you were having problems with that. Shortest game review ever, amirite?
Well, it certainly lacks overly-sexualized female characters.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
TF2's lack of women hasn't stopped other people from dreaming up their own ridiculously sexy versions in various combinations, some of which are slightly less ridiculous and some slightly more ridiculous, although it has also inspired some neat fan art like this and this and this. And maybe this. Everyone is afraid to make the heavy actually fat, though, even thought the dude version has a huuuuuuuge beer gut. Or vodka gut I guess.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Also, not really related, but if you want to play female versions of the classes in TF2 you should check out the mods available here. They're quite good. And yes, the female heavy does indeed have a huge gut.
Anyway, on topic:
But female players are interested in games. According to the ESA, 47% of gamers are female, up from 40% in 2009. Games are appealing to women on a massive scale. The problem we're having is that female players aren't choosing to turn their interest in games into a career. So why is that?
If we're talking specifically about triple-A games, what makes you think that it's the outfits or character designs that keep women from being interested in games? As a counterexample, sexy outfits are featured prominently in games like The Sims, a massively successful game that enjoys a majority-female playerbase. So how does that happen if female players won't tolerate sexualized women in their games?
I think it's absolutely worth examining character design in games and finding ways we can improve on it (there are a lot of ways), it just doesn't seem particularly related to the topic of this thread. Women weren't turned away from Halo because they didn't like Cortana's outfit, they were turned away from it because it's a game about shooting aliens with big guns, and they've been told since birth that shooting and guns are "guy things." That's a much deeper problem with a very different set of solutions, but it's also the problem that's actually worth solving.
A more likely environment, if you want to talk about how maybe a game's respect for women might bleed into the fanbase, would be ME3 multiplayer. But I have no idea how prevalent sexual harassment is there, I only know I've not yet been sexually harassed any of the times I've played it. But I don't play it on xbawks, I play it on PC.