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?
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.
That is his point. There is no sexualization of women in the game, yet the men who play the game are still assholes. Less boob windows are good, but is not going to lead to men to stop being pigs. Weather or not you or I agree with his point is another story, but don't pretend its something else.
Edit: I'm a goose who needs to retake reading comprehension. Sorry.
A game where women are absent from the gameplay subtlety implies that women aren't equal to men. That they are somehow lesser in a similar way that portraying them as merely objects to gratify men does.
No to mention that, sur-fucking-prise! TF2 doesn't exist in a vacuum, and men can inhale plenty of misogyny from other games before offloading some of it in TF2.
Sterica on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I'm the one pretending? You guys think the idea of pointing out specific examples of sexism, like boob windows, is that those are the ONLY kinds of sexism games foster? Really? Are you really pretending that is anyone's argument?
Ok let me lay it out for you then. There are many, many, many forms of sexism fostered by video games. Boob windows are one! And just because boob windows are only one form, that doesn't mean that boob windows should just get a pass as being "good enough."
I mean jeepers, even in the stripper-nun example it's not just the sexualization that is the problem!
Also, that link doesn't really describe what constitutes a "gamer." Not to split hairs, but last time I read anything on consumer demographics, women were playing a lot of casual games like Bejeweled and, funny enough, avoiding games that tend to be populated with abusive assholes. It's great that video games aren't solely a boy's hobby, but if the genders are still segregating then everything isn't necessarily hunky-dory.
all I'm saying is that what fictional characters wear really doesn't have all that much to do with corporate sexism,
I'm trying to determine if this is the stupidest thing I've read today but then I have to consider that I did read the Wrestling thread in SE++ before coming here.
Also, that link doesn't really describe what constitutes a "gamer." Not to split hairs, but last time I read anything on consumer demographics, women were playing a lot of casual games like Bejeweled and, funny enough, avoiding games that tend to be populated with abusive assholes. It's great that video games aren't solely a boy's hobby, but if the genders are still segregating then everything isn't necessarily hunky-dory.
but are they avoiding those games because they are populated with abusive assholes (doesn't apply to singleplayer games), because they are populated with sexualized characters (some games aren't as bad as others, and I don't think all women are going to immediately dismiss a fun game just because of one or two sexualized characters), or because they are just unappealing gameplay-wise to the majority of women?
And if such games are unappealing gameplay to women, is it because women are inherently different, or because our "vidyagames are for boys" mentality starts too young to change in adulthood?
all I'm saying is that what fictional characters wear really doesn't have all that much to do with corporate sexism,
I'm trying to determine if this is the stupidest thing I've read today but then I have to consider that I did read the Wrestling thread in SE++ before coming here.
I mean, we have to decide at some point if this is a generic "sexism in video games" thread or if it's specifically a discussion about how to get women into the games industry. My point is that, if you're saying that making fewer sexualized characters is going to get more women into making games industry or get employees treated better, that's something that doesn't seem to be supported by the data. After all, we already know that lots of women are playing games (whether you want to call them 'gamers' or not) - they're just not deciding to make a career out of games. If it really is just a matter of interest and culture, shouldn't women be the majority of developers of social and casual games? They aren't.
In fact, for the most part women aren't going into computer-related fields at all, games or not. Less than 12% of CS degrees are awarded to women, and that number is going down every year. Granted this is a huge improvement over the dismal 5% female programmers in the games industry, but it still suggests that what we're dealing with here is as much a "computers" problem as a "video games" problem.
Squidget0 on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
A game where women are absent from the gameplay subtlety implies that women aren't equal to men. That they are somehow lesser in a similar way that portraying them as merely objects to gratify men does.
I'm not seeing how this is anything more than your opinion.
To be more specific, while androcentrism does most certainly exist, there's no implication that women are inferior.
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?
Yup, TF2 acts 'as if women don't actually exist', despite having a woman constantly mocking and disdaining the men in the game. As for "women=nothing", god only knows how you intend to justify that particular assertion.
This sort of logic entails that Portal 1 suggests men=nothing, given you only play as Chell and the only other person you meet in that game is GLaDOS, also female. Oh, and the turrets... also female. So I guess Portal 1 is pretty sexist by these standards.
P.S. Yes, it would be better for player choice if TF2 included female models and voicesets. Perhaps even also included different races, and voice sets for them too! No, neither of your arguments are doing a good job of demonstrating this point.
TF2 used male models because, and I quote from Valve: they didn't want to have to mess around with issues such as different hitboxes for different sexes that might encourage players to pick one sex for a particular class each time; they didn't want to put in the resources necessary to provide dialogue for both sexes of each class; and finally, the game historically was a fully male cast and it would raise more questions to have them switch sexes between games. Instead they tried to add some balance by putting in Ellen McLain in as the Announcer.
A game where women are absent from the gameplay subtlety implies that women aren't equal to men. That they are somehow lesser in a similar way that portraying them as merely objects to gratify men does.
I can see where this logic applies to some, but not all cases.
No, because the Announcer is largely background noise and not really a character.
I can see where this logic applies to some, but not all cases.
I'm not seeing how this is anything more than your opinion.
To be more specific, while androcentrism does most certainly exist, there's no implication that women are inferior.
It applies plenty in video games, where developers dedicate assets to male models but not females. Brink is another example of a game where they had all males for player avatars. Compare this to, say, Gotham City Posters, where they at least split body types by gender (though I think only ONE body type is female whereas the rest are male, at least they're present).
The second quote is baffling nonsense. It clearly isn't just my opinion, as these games have become toxic environments where women will intentionally pretend to be men in order to avoid harassment. When you see an environment dominated by one kind of person, what is one easy thing to pick up on? That said environment is best suited for that dominant person. I think there is a STRONG implication that women are inferior at shooters when you look at it that way. It doesn't matter if that was the developers' intent or not: the players certainly pick up on it.
+1
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The second quote is baffling nonsense. It clearly isn't just my opinion, as these games have become toxic environments where women will intentionally pretend to be men in order to avoid harassment. When you see an environment dominated by one kind of person, what is one easy thing to pick up on? That said environment is best suited for that dominant person. I think there is a STRONG implication that women are inferior at shooters when you look at it that way. It doesn't matter if that was the developers' intent or not: the players certainly pick up on it.
This is intellectual laziness. You've just picked a potential factor and a conclusion, and joined up the two. Women also pretend not to be women in a huge number of other games where they're more than capable of selecting female avatars.
The big problem is not TF2's 'male as neutral' casting (which is certainly not stellar, but is quite simply a drop in the ocean); there is a huge confounding variable here, and blundering past it to make an assertion of the damage TF2 deals to the sexual spectrum of gamers is not at all helpful.
While I don't disagree with anything you've written there, @Wyvern , it feels very far from a practical course of action. I mean I personally can raise any sons or daughters of mine to reject rigid gender roles, but I can't affect how other people raise their kids. And even if you decide to make this part of public schooling (assuming you could get anyone to agree to do that), any kids who had been raised in a severely patriarchal household would just roll their eyes and laugh at any teachers who tried to teach such things (I know; as I kid I hated feminism).
Therefore a more practical goal at the moment is to get more women working in games and technology, and to attempt to educate the men in those areas that they hostile attitude they're carrying towards women - even if it's subconscious - is driving women away. And that is a bad thing.
It's true that the sexism we're all socialized with is never really going to completely go away, that it's been ingrained in us from an early age and it's more or less set. But that doesn't stop us from intelectually understanding that it's wrong, and fighting against our own tendency to marginalize women while we make attempts to educate any young people we happen to have influence on.
I think there is power in this. The culture we grow up with is composed from the inputs of both the young and old.
I graduated this week and my commencement speaker was the one of the first women to become certified as an Apache helicopter pilot. She returned to my college to pursue a masters in computer science, a degree that sees about 90% male graduates. She was inspiring and heroic. She told us about the challenges she faced moving up in military. Her role model growing up? Uhara from Star Trek. (She's now actually pursuing becoming an Astronaut, which is pretty incredible)
What I've learned from reading this thread is that the problems that created #1ReasonWhy are far more systemic and numerous than I thought. I do think that the representation of women in games is a huge issue for bringing in more women into games and thus game development. Role models matter. My interest in the field has certainly been fueled by playing games that I loved at a young age. To this end, I wanted to bring up a Penny Arcade Report article that I found pretty depressing. There's quite a bit to that article but the part that stuck out to me was that a game with an exclusively female protagonist gets roughly half the marketing budget than one with an exclusively male. I don't find that surprising necessarily... but it did make me wonder if cultivating more games with female role models or leads could help bring more women in over time. Young girls growing up could be attracted to make games like the ones that they loved as a child. You don't really get into game development for the money. At least on the coding side it is generally more work and tougher hours for less pay. You get into game development because that's what you love. #1ReasonToBe shows that passion does exist. If we could cultivate more of that we'd be one step closer.
Of course, it's all a chicken and egg issue. To create those games with female role models... you might need female developers. In the very least, you'd need the conscious desire to break into that territory.
Whatever the case, I've found this thread very educational.
No, you are being lazy because you want to interpret everything as sweeping generalizations as opposed to components of the larger problem. So, stop being lazy, I guess? In games where women have the option of female avatars, we go back to the issue of those avatars being sexualized. Again, stop being lazy and think for a second. We've been over this.
To add on to the issue, the lack of a female presence gives men the idea that this is "their" game, and it's male-exclusive area. Women players can then appear to be intruding on what male players see as "their space." It's a problem, and...I never said it was a big problem or "the" problem. I was just responding to the issue of TF2 that came up. But it is a problem. This wouldn't have been a problem if you read my post more thoroughly.
TF2 used male models because, and I quote from Valve: they didn't want to have to mess around with issues such as different hitboxes for different sexes that might encourage players to pick one sex for a particular class each time; they didn't want to put in the resources necessary to provide dialogue for both sexes of each class; and finally, the game historically was a fully male cast and it would raise more questions to have them switch sexes between games. Instead they tried to add some balance by putting in Ellen McLain in as the Announcer.
From a technical standpoint, the hitbox argument seems a bit absurd. TF2's hitboxes aren't that accurate anyway, and the models are highly stylized. How it is somehow impossible to make a woman Heavy that doesn't have more or less the same hitbox as a guy Heavy?
The resource 'argument' is just an admission that Valve made a sexist choice to save money. "We don't have the money to include women & men, so we only included men, because everyone knows that men are the default choice."
'Historically' the game was a flavorless Counter-Strike mod. Sure, all of the models in that game were men - they also look nothing like the current incarnations, and in fact the better versions of TF gave the models rotating skin sets. It's hardly complicating any kind of 'lore' or 'canon' to include women in the cast, but Valve just opted not to. You can say, "But they only decided to be sexist when it came time to draft the game's budget!" if you like, but I don't see how that makes things better.
While this is possible (and I've seen it happen, especially in college classes), remember that a lot of my classes are aimed at middle-school kids. While there are certainly social factors across the genders, people being creepy and asking for BJs isn't something that 10-year-olds are (hopefully) having to deal with often. While I'm completely sympathetic to the creepiness and bullshit that can happen later on, it's interesting to me that the division actually seems to start a lot earlier. I think it's probably more connected to what Morda was saying, where we socialize young children to believe that certain traits and hobbies are for boys, while others are for girls.
I can honestly say that I haven't seen any creepy behavior in my classes, or any girls being singled out for being girls. Most middle-schoolers and high-schoolers are used to mixed-gender classes, and I'd crack down on that stuff very hard if I saw it. Obviously that kind of thing happens, but unfortunately the sample size of girls in my class has been so small that I can't even give an estimate of how significant the problem it is.
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Kids are very, very aware of what's "ok" for each gender. From what I remember from college psychology, for young kids it is part of the growing process to over-emphasize gender. Thus, girls on a certain age want to wear pink etc.
I don't know how things go in other countries, but in my country kids from age nine have to choose crafts classes for either wood/metalworks or handcrafts (i.e. making clothes etc.) You bet kids at that age know which one is "appropriate" to their gender. At that age I decided to take the wood/metalworks because that's where my best friend went, and we weren't the only girls there, but each year there were fewer and fewer girls. I don't remember any of the girls being less interested in the woodcrafts or less skilled, but even if one girl dropped out, the rest felt more and more that they were not in the "appropriate" category and had less and less friends in class. Finally at 11 I was the only one left, and I asked to be transferred. Not that I was interested in sewing, but the going can get tough with boys at that age. Not the kind of harassement than with adults, but boys do know they are "supposed" to be dominant and they are happy to show you back to your place. I can assure that not all teasing from boys is just a "cute" sign of affection.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
One of the basic things you need is to instill a desire to consume entertainment with diverse characterisation in it. This is actually a fairly major problem if you start to follow the chain here.
Well-written, diverse characters tend to come from either exceptional individual writers, or, as TV is showing us, diverse, democratic writing teams.
But there's not a great desire to consume these sorts of stories; Mass Effect 3 is probably the closest we've got to this, but many RPGs or heavily story-based games have failed to achieve consumer success compared to story-light game-heavy games like shooters and brawlers.
Given the lack of profit incentive in therefore including strong stories, fewer studios are willing to invest heavily in their writing, instead letting their lead game designer do a rough outline, and then maybe having a writer come in to spruce it up later (see: Mirror's Edge, the Overlord games, and quite a few FPS games).
With little in the way of focus on good writing, you tend to get more and more stereotypes and tropes that are easier to write without much effort, and these tend towards physical men and sexual women.
If you want better written characters, you pretty much need to encourage people to engage in more diverse entertainment, and the market will steadily adapt.
As for role models, well, I think pretty much every CS graduate knows who Grace Hopper is, for example. Heck, aside from John Carmack and Alan Turing, I can't even really think of any men who I would really describe as male programming role models (and most people probably wouldn't even recognise John Carmack). I don't think the lack of role models is the problem with getting women into CS.
Giving them a goal that requires them getting into CS and then into game design might do.
Let's consider:
Fewer women play highly competitive games than men (shooters, brawlers, mobas, etc.)
Of the men that do play these games, only a small proportion have any interest in the game design side of things.
With fewer women, even if the proportion interested remains the same, the absolute number of women interested is still going to be much smaller.
We might never get more women involved in the design of games that they historically have not enjoyed (please don't try and make the "women would enjoy shooters if it weren't for the toxic environment" argument; it's really easy to show up, along with "women would really enjoy action movies if it weren't associated with men so much"), but if as we produce more and more videogames that women enjoy, there's a higher likelihood that down the line they might think to themselves, "you know what, I want to make awesome games like that one I used to love", in the same way men, who have been focused on and thus exposed to video games for much longer, now do.
To put it simply, make more games that women enjoy, and in the future, more women will have a reason to want to make games.
No, you are being lazy because you want to interpret everything as sweeping generalizations as opposed to components of the larger problem. So, stop being lazy, I guess? In games where women have the option of female avatars, we go back to the issue of those avatars being sexualized. Again, stop being lazy and think for a second. We've been over this.
There are plenty of non-sexualised avatars in WoW, and yet the game's community is notorious for being a cesspool of sexists. I can list more than a few other examples if you really want to draw this out. It has nothing to do with laziness of any sort on my part.
The confounding variable here is that there is an external prejudice against women instilled in these men beforehand, and games are an outlet for it. It doesn't matter if the women have male avatars or female avatars when we're talking about whether or not men will insult them; it's almost a complete non-factor.
To add on to the issue, the lack of a female presence gives men the idea that this is "their" game, and it's male-exclusive area. Women players can then appear to be intruding on what male players see as "their space." It's a problem, and...I never said it was a big problem or "the" problem. I was just responding to the issue of TF2 that came up. But it is a problem. This wouldn't have been a problem if you read my post more thoroughly.
Not only do I disagree with the above as, once again, it's based purely on choosing a cause to fit a consequence, but your previous post didn't have any secret depth to it that I have somehow missed. If you want to elucidate, do so; don't expect people to read possibilities into what you've written.
You disagree by saying "I disagree" and nothing else. You keep yelling "choosing a cause to fit a consquence!" and...that's it.
Anyone can waltz over to a WoW database site and see how many armor pieces show up a bikini models for women and just normal pants for men. Anyone can see bizarre sexual dimorphism in several of WoW's female races in an attempt to make them attractive. Blizzard even modified model in WoW's alpha to make them look less like their actual race and more like human women.
Leaving a mariginalized group out of something does not help the group in question. Visibility is a thing, and TF2 is not helping with a solely male cast. Why you are so desperate to get TF2 off the hook is really weird to me. Yes, TF2 is still part of the problem.
I swear that you better actually engage me instead of blowing me off like you have the past two times.
The lack of female avatars in games like TF2 or any shooter is money driven. Its an unfortunate side affect of have companies that care more about money than their fan base*. If x is money gained by including female avatars, and y is money spend on creating them, then as long as x<y in probably won't happen.
*Especially the women in their fan base
Edit: this happens to be my opinion on the topic, not to say others are not valid.
JusticeforPluto on
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
From a technical standpoint, the hitbox argument seems a bit absurd. TF2's hitboxes aren't that accurate anyway, and the models are highly stylized. How it is somehow impossible to make a woman Heavy that doesn't have more or less the same hitbox as a guy Heavy?
It's not impossible, but it is more than a little tedious. You don't just have to match the basic silhouette; you also have to match the animations so that, for example, bob and gait are similar. Even if you posed something on the same skeleton, that doesn't mean it'll look right.
ChemicalAlia, I think it was, talked a bit about this when creating the femScout and femSpy models.
Also, I think TF2's hitboxes are actually pretty accurate?
The resource 'argument' is just an admission that Valve made a sexist choice to save money. "We don't have the money to include women & men, so we only included men, because everyone knows that men are the default choice."
Yup. Also to save time.
They also made a racist decision for the same reason. How far down this rabbit hole would you like to go?
There is always an argument for greater diversity. Not just in sex, or race, but also in character, flavour, even disability. Why should an demure Indian woman have to play as a brash drunken Scottish Cyclopean man, after all?
'Historically' the game was a flavorless Counter-Strike mod. Sure, all of the models in that game were men - they also look nothing like the current incarnations, and in fact the better versions of TF gave the models rotating skin sets. It's hardly complicating any kind of 'lore' or 'canon' to include women in the cast, but Valve just opted not to. You can say, "But they only decided to be sexist when it came time to draft the game's budget!" if you like, but I don't see how that makes things better.
It's nothing to do with lore or canon; rather, the design process for TF2 started at TF, and they iterated on it. If you're trying to make a male engineer model look better for a new generation of graphics, one of the things you probably don't ask yourself is "should I make him a her?"
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.
Wait wait wait, that's what you were saying? I didn't even pick up on that the first time because that's so incredibly ridiculous. Do you honestly think that the argument was that a hypothetical perfectly egalitarian online game would be free of harassment because of it?
You realize sexism is cultural, right?
And that we grow up with it because it's in our culture?
And it's in our movies?
And our television?
And our politics?
And our parents?
And our role models?
And our video games?
Why, why in the world would anyone, anywhere, ever, think that people playing a game exclusively reflect the attitudes attributable to that one game? Even if that was the first and only video game they ever played, it's still everywhere else! You make the game, not the audience.
Between this fixation on a direct in-a-vacuum link you propose between [sexist designs and harassment] and [sexist designs and the specific workplace that created them], I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding every argument in this thread. Maybe that's because we wander hither and thither through such a broad topic or because people assume some familiarity with the things behind their arguments since they've been discussed ad nauseum throughout this thread and so a piece in isolation may be ripe for misreading, but whatever it is, it's miscommunication.
I could also ask why four or five or TWO classes couldn't have been female. You're designing hitboxes from the ground up with a cartoony style that gives you plenty of wiggle room. Sorry, it's a lame excuse.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
You disagree by saying "I disagree" and nothing else. You keep yelling "choosing a cause to fit a consquence!" and...that's it.
Anyone can waltz over to a WoW database site and see how many armor pieces show up a bikini models for women and just normal pants for men. Anyone can see bizarre sexual dimorphism in several of WoW's female races in an attempt to make them attractive. Blizzard even modified model in WoW's alpha to make them look less like their actual race and more like human women.
Leaving a mariginalized group out of something does not help the group in question. Visibility is a thing, and TF2 is not helping with a solely male cast. Why you are so desperate to get TF2 off the hook is really weird to me. Yes, TF2 is still part of the problem.
I swear that you better actually engage me instead of blowing me off like you have the past two times.
I've made points that directly contradict your assertions. Every single time.
You asserted that it's TF2's specifically male cast that causes its players to insult the women. I countered that there are examples of dual-sex casts with the same insulting atmosphere.
You asserted that those casts only caused that because of the sexualisation. I pointed out that, in fact, no, it has bugger all to do with the sexualisation, as you can see in WoW.
If you are seriously going to try and cherry pick individual bits of armour in WoW as being sexualised and argue from there, we're done here. It's completely and utterly intellectually dishonest. Yes, there certainly are individual bits of armour like chainmail bikinis and thongs. But it turns out that most of these don't feature whatsoever in the armour most of the players wear.
Look at all that sexualised armour!
Wow, that femOrc sure is really flaunting it.
Oh. Wait. No.
If you want another example, let's take DayZ. Remember they added a female model? It wasn't even remotely sexualised; go on, YouTube it. Turns out, the people who were roleplaying in that game decided that a bit of post-apocalyptic bandit rape was what they wanted, and so would mug people using the female character and then try and force them to simulate sex acts.
Character sexualisation or sex is not a factor in whether people will insult women on the internet. The fact is that these men would have made these insults whether or not the woman in question was male, female, or even human. I've seen guys insult women who were playing RTSes and racing games, where you don't even have an avatar.
It is a massive red herring.
Likewise, this assertion that having an all-male cast asserts TF2 as a specifically male space. Well, once again, we have counter-examples; every game with a dual-sex cast which these men still consider a male space.
The problem of the male space is not defined by the contents of the game, but far more simply in that society is conditioning men to think of themselves as soldiers, fighters, and drivers, and they then direct that self-image onto the games that focus on those roles. Yes, of course companies latch onto that fact and then design either with it in mind, or just vaguely 'around' it, but that isn't affecting the core reasons why men consider these spaces male.
The presence of entirely non-sexualised women in Unreal Tournament 2k did not make it any less of a 'male space'.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
I could also ask why four or five or TWO classes couldn't have been female. You're designing hitboxes from the ground up with a cartoony style that gives you plenty of wiggle room. Sorry, it's a lame excuse.
Sure, and it's a reasonable question.
Though I suspect if they had done, it would've been the Spy and the Medic who would've been female, which is probably more indicative of sexism than an all-male cast, but hey.
You asserted that it's TF2's specifically male cast that causes its players to insult the women.
Where?
This bit?
When you see an environment dominated by one kind of person, what is one easy thing to pick up on? That said environment is best suited for that dominant person. I think there is a STRONG implication that women are inferior at shooters when you look at it that way.
You vehemently refuse to face the reality that there is not one source of shit that causes this, such as little things like making male the default in games such as TF2. These games do not exist in a bubble: they attitudes they foster carry over into other games that may have little to object to.
I have shot down your counterpoints: Unreal Tournament? Seriously? Where you can switch the announcer voice to "Sexy?" You are grasping at straws.
There ARE games that DO have legit sex equality and women still don't want to go there. That is BECAUSE the game shares a space with all these other games where woman, if they exist, only do so as sex objects. TF2 contributes to that. It's called overlap. If most shooters treat women like shit, and one doesn't, well it still attracts shooter fans that have been told subtly by games to treat women like shit.
I don't how else to explain to you why TF2 is, in its own small way, a part of the problem.
You asserted that it's TF2's specifically male cast that causes its players to insult the women.
Where?
This bit?
When you see an environment dominated by one kind of person, what is one easy thing to pick up on? That said environment is best suited for that dominant person. I think there is a STRONG implication that women are inferior at shooters when you look at it that way.
Does anyone have any examples of games that don't have the issues we have talked about? Maybe it would be easier to show some examples and then discuss what they did right and how other games can follow their example?
I am trying to think of a shooter with women in it that isn't degrading to women too. That people also played a noteworthy amount. I mean, everything will have issues, but not as galling as "forgot to include diverse cast."
Left 4 Dead? Not...exactly what I was thinking for shooter, but far better than most.
You vehemently refuse to face the reality that there is not one source of shit that causes this, such as little things like making male the default in games such as TF2. These games do not exist in a bubble: they attitudes they foster carry over into other games that may have little to object to.
No, I'm well aware of sexism being an emergent reality from a variety of reinforcing factors. I'm just a lot more judicious in how I join dots and how thick I make the lines between those dots.
TF2 is a very, very small dot, and a very, very thin line.
I have shot down your counterpoints: Unreal Tournament? Seriously? Where you can switch the announcer voice to "Sexy?" You are grasping at straws.
Moving the goalposts isn't shooting down, and you've done it once again, from what the characters look like, to something else (that wasn't even present in the game I referred to). How many jumps would you like to take on this wild adventure, Rorus? I expect I can contradict every one you throw out because there are a wide variety of games, with few common factors between them, in which men act like shit to women.
There ARE games that DO have legit sex equality and women still don't want to go there. That is BECAUSE the game shares a space with all these other games where woman, if they exist, only do so as sex objects. TF2 contributes to that. It's called overlap. If most shooters treat women like shit, and one doesn't, well it still attracts shooter fans that have been told subtly by games to treat women like shit.
I don't how else to explain to you why TF2 is, in its own small way, a part of the problem.
The reason you don't know why is because you've incorrectly identified the problem; that's all.
Notice that all of the games with female models, even non-sexualised ones, have not done a thing to deter the belief of these men that this is a male space. Plenty of guys play things like Touhou, which has an all-female cast, and they still think of gaming as male.
They have a huge confirmation bias, and will ignore any contradictory evidence in the video game while seizing on anything that supports it.
The content of video-games is a reflection of the attitude of gamers; it's not the root cause, and its effect - even if you view it as an amplifying factor - is frankly marginal compared to the far greater effect that early education and socialisation and role model presentation is having.
The idea that a piece of media is sexist/racist because it lacks characters of a certain gender/race is one of those ideas that kind of makes sense until you actually sit down and try to create something, and then you immediately realize how ridiculous it is.
@SoundsPlush - From what I can tell, we agree that the sexualization of characters in a game doesn't affect the level of player harassment in that game. In fact, we even seem to agree that how sexualized video game characters are, at best, only a tiny part of the cultural attitudes that contribute to sexism. It seems like we're on the same page. It's not clear to me what you're arguing for or against, beyond that.
I think the confusion may be that I am talking about a fairly specific problem (how to get more women into the games industry) and you are talking about a very general problem (society is sexist and assigns gender roles.) The first problem is a subset of the second problem, but not everything related to sexism in society is directly related to getting more women into games. For example, I believe that de-sexualizing female characters would do very little to get more women working in games. After all, women are already playing games, the problem is that they aren't largely interested in developing them. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but it would take an argument that's supported by data - for example, someone showing that games with non-sexualized female characters attract a much greater number of female gamers, or data showing that women are turned away from games by the female character designs rather than other themes or mechanics.
Now, not having sexualized female characters might have other positives - it's certainly something that I think developers could stand to do a lot more often. But that doesn't make it a solution to the problem of there not being enough women who want to make video games.
Does anyone have any examples of games that don't have the issues we have talked about? Maybe it would be easier to show some examples and then discuss what they did right and how other games can follow their example?
I haven't played it yet and so can't explain, but I believe The Longest Journey is generally praised for its protagonist. Depending on the point of discussion I'd add femshep, though others may differ on whether writing a 95% nominally gender-neutral character and then flavoring the last 5% counts as writing a female character.
Well, outside of those couple of CG scenes where her tits flop around in comically disturbing fashion.
But I don't think her design/outfit is a problem. Is she sexy? Sure. It's okay that she is.
And a huge part of the reason why it's okay is because Final Fantasy 7 doesn't make everyone Tifa. Aerith is a modestly dressed woman with an average figure. Yuffie shows some skin, but nothing particularly scandalous and has a realistic body. Scarlet is a businesswoman in a dress. Elena is clad in the same suit as the other Turks. There is variety in the portrayal of the female characters visually, with a range of body type and outfit choices. Even Tifa herself has a look that mostly makes sense. She is a barmaid and a martial artist and her design IMO does a good job mixing both into a unified look.
Tifa has a great body and dresses to show it off. And that's okay! It's okay to have female characters who look and dress sexy. The core problem has always been that it is all we get and FF7 dodges that problem.
Not to mention, Tifa herself is not simply eye candy. She's arguably the most human, well-written character in the game. She isn't treated like just a pair of tits, she's a fully realized character. And the events of the game itself don't really focus on her sex appeal, even the Wall Market chapter treats her pretty respectfully.
If anything Tifa is the example of what sexy characters should be.
Again, outside those couple of CG scenes. Those were dumb and strange missteps in an otherwise very positive portrayal of a sexy female character. It's a shame those exist because I feel they are the only things in the game itself that are really problematic when it comes to Tifa's portrayal, it damages her as a character and damages the narrative power of the plot at that point in time.
The only shooters I can think of off the top of my head with female avatars are Halo (option, minimum difference in looks) and most F2P games on pc (usually with bikini armor)
For a while, I was thinking about how you would justify female characters in a modern shooter. I now think this is the wrong approach. The males don't have to justify their presence, they just are. So the females should play by the same rules. Historical is a bit different, but it could be done. There's a lot of issues with attempting to rewrite history, but unless your going super authentic (like Red Orchestra 2, but even they could have female Russians), there's no reason not to include women.
I have an honest question. What is the difference between writing a gender-neutral character and slapping female physical characteristics on it and writing an actual female character. I mean, what characteristics should a "specifically female" (or male!) that would distinguish it from a gender-neutral character?
In summary, how would you turn femshep into a "genuine" female character?
Posts
That is his point. There is no sexualization of women in the game, yet the men who play the game are still assholes. Less boob windows are good, but is not going to lead to men to stop being pigs. Weather or not you or I agree with his point is another story, but don't pretend its something else.
Edit: I'm a goose who needs to retake reading comprehension. Sorry.
A game where women are absent from the gameplay subtlety implies that women aren't equal to men. That they are somehow lesser in a similar way that portraying them as merely objects to gratify men does.
No to mention that, sur-fucking-prise! TF2 doesn't exist in a vacuum, and men can inhale plenty of misogyny from other games before offloading some of it in TF2.
Ok let me lay it out for you then. There are many, many, many forms of sexism fostered by video games. Boob windows are one! And just because boob windows are only one form, that doesn't mean that boob windows should just get a pass as being "good enough."
I mean jeepers, even in the stripper-nun example it's not just the sexualization that is the problem!
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I'm trying to determine if this is the stupidest thing I've read today but then I have to consider that I did read the Wrestling thread in SE++ before coming here.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
but are they avoiding those games because they are populated with abusive assholes (doesn't apply to singleplayer games), because they are populated with sexualized characters (some games aren't as bad as others, and I don't think all women are going to immediately dismiss a fun game just because of one or two sexualized characters), or because they are just unappealing gameplay-wise to the majority of women?
And if such games are unappealing gameplay to women, is it because women are inherently different, or because our "vidyagames are for boys" mentality starts too young to change in adulthood?
In fact, for the most part women aren't going into computer-related fields at all, games or not. Less than 12% of CS degrees are awarded to women, and that number is going down every year. Granted this is a huge improvement over the dismal 5% female programmers in the games industry, but it still suggests that what we're dealing with here is as much a "computers" problem as a "video games" problem.
To be more specific, while androcentrism does most certainly exist, there's no implication that women are inferior.
Yup, TF2 acts 'as if women don't actually exist', despite having a woman constantly mocking and disdaining the men in the game. As for "women=nothing", god only knows how you intend to justify that particular assertion.
This sort of logic entails that Portal 1 suggests men=nothing, given you only play as Chell and the only other person you meet in that game is GLaDOS, also female. Oh, and the turrets... also female. So I guess Portal 1 is pretty sexist by these standards.
P.S. Yes, it would be better for player choice if TF2 included female models and voicesets. Perhaps even also included different races, and voice sets for them too! No, neither of your arguments are doing a good job of demonstrating this point.
TF2 used male models because, and I quote from Valve: they didn't want to have to mess around with issues such as different hitboxes for different sexes that might encourage players to pick one sex for a particular class each time; they didn't want to put in the resources necessary to provide dialogue for both sexes of each class; and finally, the game historically was a fully male cast and it would raise more questions to have them switch sexes between games. Instead they tried to add some balance by putting in Ellen McLain in as the Announcer.
I can see where this logic applies to some, but not all cases.
It applies plenty in video games, where developers dedicate assets to male models but not females. Brink is another example of a game where they had all males for player avatars. Compare this to, say, Gotham City Posters, where they at least split body types by gender (though I think only ONE body type is female whereas the rest are male, at least they're present).
The second quote is baffling nonsense. It clearly isn't just my opinion, as these games have become toxic environments where women will intentionally pretend to be men in order to avoid harassment. When you see an environment dominated by one kind of person, what is one easy thing to pick up on? That said environment is best suited for that dominant person. I think there is a STRONG implication that women are inferior at shooters when you look at it that way. It doesn't matter if that was the developers' intent or not: the players certainly pick up on it.
The big problem is not TF2's 'male as neutral' casting (which is certainly not stellar, but is quite simply a drop in the ocean); there is a huge confounding variable here, and blundering past it to make an assertion of the damage TF2 deals to the sexual spectrum of gamers is not at all helpful.
I think there is power in this. The culture we grow up with is composed from the inputs of both the young and old.
I graduated this week and my commencement speaker was the one of the first women to become certified as an Apache helicopter pilot. She returned to my college to pursue a masters in computer science, a degree that sees about 90% male graduates. She was inspiring and heroic. She told us about the challenges she faced moving up in military. Her role model growing up? Uhara from Star Trek. (She's now actually pursuing becoming an Astronaut, which is pretty incredible)
What I've learned from reading this thread is that the problems that created #1ReasonWhy are far more systemic and numerous than I thought. I do think that the representation of women in games is a huge issue for bringing in more women into games and thus game development. Role models matter. My interest in the field has certainly been fueled by playing games that I loved at a young age. To this end, I wanted to bring up a Penny Arcade Report article that I found pretty depressing. There's quite a bit to that article but the part that stuck out to me was that a game with an exclusively female protagonist gets roughly half the marketing budget than one with an exclusively male. I don't find that surprising necessarily... but it did make me wonder if cultivating more games with female role models or leads could help bring more women in over time. Young girls growing up could be attracted to make games like the ones that they loved as a child. You don't really get into game development for the money. At least on the coding side it is generally more work and tougher hours for less pay. You get into game development because that's what you love. #1ReasonToBe shows that passion does exist. If we could cultivate more of that we'd be one step closer.
Of course, it's all a chicken and egg issue. To create those games with female role models... you might need female developers. In the very least, you'd need the conscious desire to break into that territory.
Whatever the case, I've found this thread very educational.
To add on to the issue, the lack of a female presence gives men the idea that this is "their" game, and it's male-exclusive area. Women players can then appear to be intruding on what male players see as "their space." It's a problem, and...I never said it was a big problem or "the" problem. I was just responding to the issue of TF2 that came up. But it is a problem. This wouldn't have been a problem if you read my post more thoroughly.
From a technical standpoint, the hitbox argument seems a bit absurd. TF2's hitboxes aren't that accurate anyway, and the models are highly stylized. How it is somehow impossible to make a woman Heavy that doesn't have more or less the same hitbox as a guy Heavy?
The resource 'argument' is just an admission that Valve made a sexist choice to save money. "We don't have the money to include women & men, so we only included men, because everyone knows that men are the default choice."
'Historically' the game was a flavorless Counter-Strike mod. Sure, all of the models in that game were men - they also look nothing like the current incarnations, and in fact the better versions of TF gave the models rotating skin sets. It's hardly complicating any kind of 'lore' or 'canon' to include women in the cast, but Valve just opted not to. You can say, "But they only decided to be sexist when it came time to draft the game's budget!" if you like, but I don't see how that makes things better.
Kids are very, very aware of what's "ok" for each gender. From what I remember from college psychology, for young kids it is part of the growing process to over-emphasize gender. Thus, girls on a certain age want to wear pink etc.
I don't know how things go in other countries, but in my country kids from age nine have to choose crafts classes for either wood/metalworks or handcrafts (i.e. making clothes etc.) You bet kids at that age know which one is "appropriate" to their gender. At that age I decided to take the wood/metalworks because that's where my best friend went, and we weren't the only girls there, but each year there were fewer and fewer girls. I don't remember any of the girls being less interested in the woodcrafts or less skilled, but even if one girl dropped out, the rest felt more and more that they were not in the "appropriate" category and had less and less friends in class. Finally at 11 I was the only one left, and I asked to be transferred. Not that I was interested in sewing, but the going can get tough with boys at that age. Not the kind of harassement than with adults, but boys do know they are "supposed" to be dominant and they are happy to show you back to your place. I can assure that not all teasing from boys is just a "cute" sign of affection.
Well-written, diverse characters tend to come from either exceptional individual writers, or, as TV is showing us, diverse, democratic writing teams.
But there's not a great desire to consume these sorts of stories; Mass Effect 3 is probably the closest we've got to this, but many RPGs or heavily story-based games have failed to achieve consumer success compared to story-light game-heavy games like shooters and brawlers.
Given the lack of profit incentive in therefore including strong stories, fewer studios are willing to invest heavily in their writing, instead letting their lead game designer do a rough outline, and then maybe having a writer come in to spruce it up later (see: Mirror's Edge, the Overlord games, and quite a few FPS games).
With little in the way of focus on good writing, you tend to get more and more stereotypes and tropes that are easier to write without much effort, and these tend towards physical men and sexual women.
If you want better written characters, you pretty much need to encourage people to engage in more diverse entertainment, and the market will steadily adapt.
As for role models, well, I think pretty much every CS graduate knows who Grace Hopper is, for example. Heck, aside from John Carmack and Alan Turing, I can't even really think of any men who I would really describe as male programming role models (and most people probably wouldn't even recognise John Carmack). I don't think the lack of role models is the problem with getting women into CS.
Giving them a goal that requires them getting into CS and then into game design might do.
Let's consider:
Fewer women play highly competitive games than men (shooters, brawlers, mobas, etc.)
Of the men that do play these games, only a small proportion have any interest in the game design side of things.
With fewer women, even if the proportion interested remains the same, the absolute number of women interested is still going to be much smaller.
We might never get more women involved in the design of games that they historically have not enjoyed (please don't try and make the "women would enjoy shooters if it weren't for the toxic environment" argument; it's really easy to show up, along with "women would really enjoy action movies if it weren't associated with men so much"), but if as we produce more and more videogames that women enjoy, there's a higher likelihood that down the line they might think to themselves, "you know what, I want to make awesome games like that one I used to love", in the same way men, who have been focused on and thus exposed to video games for much longer, now do.
To put it simply, make more games that women enjoy, and in the future, more women will have a reason to want to make games.
There are plenty of non-sexualised avatars in WoW, and yet the game's community is notorious for being a cesspool of sexists. I can list more than a few other examples if you really want to draw this out. It has nothing to do with laziness of any sort on my part.
The confounding variable here is that there is an external prejudice against women instilled in these men beforehand, and games are an outlet for it. It doesn't matter if the women have male avatars or female avatars when we're talking about whether or not men will insult them; it's almost a complete non-factor.
You've only "been over this" with an echo pool.
Not only do I disagree with the above as, once again, it's based purely on choosing a cause to fit a consequence, but your previous post didn't have any secret depth to it that I have somehow missed. If you want to elucidate, do so; don't expect people to read possibilities into what you've written.
Anyone can waltz over to a WoW database site and see how many armor pieces show up a bikini models for women and just normal pants for men. Anyone can see bizarre sexual dimorphism in several of WoW's female races in an attempt to make them attractive. Blizzard even modified model in WoW's alpha to make them look less like their actual race and more like human women.
Leaving a mariginalized group out of something does not help the group in question. Visibility is a thing, and TF2 is not helping with a solely male cast. Why you are so desperate to get TF2 off the hook is really weird to me. Yes, TF2 is still part of the problem.
I swear that you better actually engage me instead of blowing me off like you have the past two times.
*Especially the women in their fan base
Edit: this happens to be my opinion on the topic, not to say others are not valid.
ChemicalAlia, I think it was, talked a bit about this when creating the femScout and femSpy models.
Also, I think TF2's hitboxes are actually pretty accurate?
Yup. Also to save time.
They also made a racist decision for the same reason. How far down this rabbit hole would you like to go?
There is always an argument for greater diversity. Not just in sex, or race, but also in character, flavour, even disability. Why should an demure Indian woman have to play as a brash drunken Scottish Cyclopean man, after all?
It's nothing to do with lore or canon; rather, the design process for TF2 started at TF, and they iterated on it. If you're trying to make a male engineer model look better for a new generation of graphics, one of the things you probably don't ask yourself is "should I make him a her?"
Wait wait wait, that's what you were saying? I didn't even pick up on that the first time because that's so incredibly ridiculous. Do you honestly think that the argument was that a hypothetical perfectly egalitarian online game would be free of harassment because of it?
You realize sexism is cultural, right?
And that we grow up with it because it's in our culture?
And it's in our movies?
And our television?
And our politics?
And our parents?
And our role models?
And our video games?
Why, why in the world would anyone, anywhere, ever, think that people playing a game exclusively reflect the attitudes attributable to that one game? Even if that was the first and only video game they ever played, it's still everywhere else! You make the game, not the audience.
Between this fixation on a direct in-a-vacuum link you propose between [sexist designs and harassment] and [sexist designs and the specific workplace that created them], I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding every argument in this thread. Maybe that's because we wander hither and thither through such a broad topic or because people assume some familiarity with the things behind their arguments since they've been discussed ad nauseum throughout this thread and so a piece in isolation may be ripe for misreading, but whatever it is, it's miscommunication.
A game that took over ten years to make.
You're uh, pushing it here, Bethryn.
You asserted that it's TF2's specifically male cast that causes its players to insult the women. I countered that there are examples of dual-sex casts with the same insulting atmosphere.
You asserted that those casts only caused that because of the sexualisation. I pointed out that, in fact, no, it has bugger all to do with the sexualisation, as you can see in WoW.
Look at all that sexualised armour!
Wow, that femOrc sure is really flaunting it.
Oh. Wait. No.
If you want another example, let's take DayZ. Remember they added a female model? It wasn't even remotely sexualised; go on, YouTube it. Turns out, the people who were roleplaying in that game decided that a bit of post-apocalyptic bandit rape was what they wanted, and so would mug people using the female character and then try and force them to simulate sex acts.
Character sexualisation or sex is not a factor in whether people will insult women on the internet. The fact is that these men would have made these insults whether or not the woman in question was male, female, or even human. I've seen guys insult women who were playing RTSes and racing games, where you don't even have an avatar.
It is a massive red herring.
Likewise, this assertion that having an all-male cast asserts TF2 as a specifically male space. Well, once again, we have counter-examples; every game with a dual-sex cast which these men still consider a male space.
The problem of the male space is not defined by the contents of the game, but far more simply in that society is conditioning men to think of themselves as soldiers, fighters, and drivers, and they then direct that self-image onto the games that focus on those roles. Yes, of course companies latch onto that fact and then design either with it in mind, or just vaguely 'around' it, but that isn't affecting the core reasons why men consider these spaces male.
The presence of entirely non-sexualised women in Unreal Tournament 2k did not make it any less of a 'male space'.
Sure, and it's a reasonable question.
Though I suspect if they had done, it would've been the Spy and the Medic who would've been female, which is probably more indicative of sexism than an all-male cast, but hey.
Where?
I have shot down your counterpoints: Unreal Tournament? Seriously? Where you can switch the announcer voice to "Sexy?" You are grasping at straws.
There ARE games that DO have legit sex equality and women still don't want to go there. That is BECAUSE the game shares a space with all these other games where woman, if they exist, only do so as sex objects. TF2 contributes to that. It's called overlap. If most shooters treat women like shit, and one doesn't, well it still attracts shooter fans that have been told subtly by games to treat women like shit.
I don't how else to explain to you why TF2 is, in its own small way, a part of the problem.
I'm not seeing your assertion there?
Left 4 Dead? Not...exactly what I was thinking for shooter, but far better than most.
TF2 is a very, very small dot, and a very, very thin line.
Moving the goalposts isn't shooting down, and you've done it once again, from what the characters look like, to something else (that wasn't even present in the game I referred to). How many jumps would you like to take on this wild adventure, Rorus? I expect I can contradict every one you throw out because there are a wide variety of games, with few common factors between them, in which men act like shit to women.
The reason you don't know why is because you've incorrectly identified the problem; that's all.
Notice that all of the games with female models, even non-sexualised ones, have not done a thing to deter the belief of these men that this is a male space. Plenty of guys play things like Touhou, which has an all-female cast, and they still think of gaming as male.
They have a huge confirmation bias, and will ignore any contradictory evidence in the video game while seizing on anything that supports it.
The content of video-games is a reflection of the attitude of gamers; it's not the root cause, and its effect - even if you view it as an amplifying factor - is frankly marginal compared to the far greater effect that early education and socialisation and role model presentation is having.
@SoundsPlush - From what I can tell, we agree that the sexualization of characters in a game doesn't affect the level of player harassment in that game. In fact, we even seem to agree that how sexualized video game characters are, at best, only a tiny part of the cultural attitudes that contribute to sexism. It seems like we're on the same page. It's not clear to me what you're arguing for or against, beyond that.
I think the confusion may be that I am talking about a fairly specific problem (how to get more women into the games industry) and you are talking about a very general problem (society is sexist and assigns gender roles.) The first problem is a subset of the second problem, but not everything related to sexism in society is directly related to getting more women into games. For example, I believe that de-sexualizing female characters would do very little to get more women working in games. After all, women are already playing games, the problem is that they aren't largely interested in developing them. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but it would take an argument that's supported by data - for example, someone showing that games with non-sexualized female characters attract a much greater number of female gamers, or data showing that women are turned away from games by the female character designs rather than other themes or mechanics.
Now, not having sexualized female characters might have other positives - it's certainly something that I think developers could stand to do a lot more often. But that doesn't make it a solution to the problem of there not being enough women who want to make video games.
I haven't played it yet and so can't explain, but I believe The Longest Journey is generally praised for its protagonist. Depending on the point of discussion I'd add femshep, though others may differ on whether writing a 95% nominally gender-neutral character and then flavoring the last 5% counts as writing a female character.
it was a fucking travesty that you couldn't make women characters...the art style was goddamn amazing.
i just wish every game licensed the character creator from the Saints Row series.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Well, outside of those couple of CG scenes where her tits flop around in comically disturbing fashion.
But I don't think her design/outfit is a problem. Is she sexy? Sure. It's okay that she is.
And a huge part of the reason why it's okay is because Final Fantasy 7 doesn't make everyone Tifa. Aerith is a modestly dressed woman with an average figure. Yuffie shows some skin, but nothing particularly scandalous and has a realistic body. Scarlet is a businesswoman in a dress. Elena is clad in the same suit as the other Turks. There is variety in the portrayal of the female characters visually, with a range of body type and outfit choices. Even Tifa herself has a look that mostly makes sense. She is a barmaid and a martial artist and her design IMO does a good job mixing both into a unified look.
Tifa has a great body and dresses to show it off. And that's okay! It's okay to have female characters who look and dress sexy. The core problem has always been that it is all we get and FF7 dodges that problem.
Not to mention, Tifa herself is not simply eye candy. She's arguably the most human, well-written character in the game. She isn't treated like just a pair of tits, she's a fully realized character. And the events of the game itself don't really focus on her sex appeal, even the Wall Market chapter treats her pretty respectfully.
If anything Tifa is the example of what sexy characters should be.
Again, outside those couple of CG scenes. Those were dumb and strange missteps in an otherwise very positive portrayal of a sexy female character. It's a shame those exist because I feel they are the only things in the game itself that are really problematic when it comes to Tifa's portrayal, it damages her as a character and damages the narrative power of the plot at that point in time.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
For a while, I was thinking about how you would justify female characters in a modern shooter. I now think this is the wrong approach. The males don't have to justify their presence, they just are. So the females should play by the same rules. Historical is a bit different, but it could be done. There's a lot of issues with attempting to rewrite history, but unless your going super authentic (like Red Orchestra 2, but even they could have female Russians), there's no reason not to include women.
In summary, how would you turn femshep into a "genuine" female character?