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)
Off the top of my head: Quake 3, most if not all UTs, Goldeneye, HL2:DM, Timesplitters, and I want to say Tribes. Rorus also mentioned L4D if you want to move into co-op online shooters.
On the other end of the spectrum (no females), you have World War games: Medal of Honor, Battlefield, CoD, and then also Counterstrike, the TF series, and then a couple of games on the PS3 like Resistance, which iirc didn't have female options.
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?
I feel like this is one of those questions that is worth talking about yet never really gets a satisfying answer. Could fill up a whole thread on it's own.
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
The only real answer to that question is based on your opinion of whether the differences between men's and women's attitudes are natural, or nurtured. And since neither biological science nor sociological science can give us a definitive answer re: nature vs nurture, it's very much a matter of opinion.
In general, though, having seen a wide variety of personalities in both men and women, I rather feel that there isn't a difference.
That is mainly what I think, but I have been known to be wrong, beieve it or not, so I'd rather hear what other people think.
My opinion is that is somewhat contradictory to want female characters trated with respect in video games and at the same time saying that these kind of "gender neutral" characters such as Shepard or the Dovahkiin "don't count". From my point of view, those games are creating a history and a world where your role as a hero is only superficially influenced by your gender. You can do whatever needs to be done and the fact that you are a man or a woman is mostly irrelevant. And I don't know, it seems to me that that is exactly the kind of stuff we should try to do.
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?
This is a problematic question in several ways, but I would argue that Femshep is a legitimately female character.
What you're really trying to ask here is, "What is intrinsically female?" Nothing is intrinsically female except for being a woman, or a girl, and having a female voice. That's about it.
I think it was Atwood - I could be wrong, and I don't know where to look this up - who, when asked how to write a good female character, said "Well first, write a woman. That's it."
One of the problems in this discussion when it comes to writing rather than design is the assumption that there are qualities that are intrinsic to men or women, which leads us to assume that genders necessarily have predilections toward given roles. That's not an inherently valid perspective.
Femshep is a "genuine" female character in that Hale gives her a voice, and she relates to the people around her as a woman. She's a soldier first for some people, and a woman first for others. That's fine.
But again, she doesn't exist in a vacuum. Femshep is a step in the right direction but she's not enough on her own.
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.
This does not explain why the gaming culture is especially negative on women. Even though our culture in general has a problem with sexism, it is noticeably worse in the gaming community. Since gamers have the same upbringing as the rest of the society, the only explanation is that there is something specific in the gaming space itself that amplifies this problem by a fair degree.
ME3 doesn't really have any really sexist trolling on Xbox or Origin from what I've seen, but part of that is that players on these games don't tend to talk a lot, and I would hesitate to say that this is because of how the game treats women.
Mass Effect doesn't exactly have perfect gender equality - the writing, sure, I'll argue that the writing is there all damn day, but the character designs are problematic in a lot of places.
You do have to allow this, though: BioWare actually is aware of the female gaze, and several characters (Kaidan, Garrus, Thane, Traynor) are actually designed to appeal specifically to women instead of just being male power fantasies that male players hold up as an example of what should appeal to ladies. The male gaze is a lot more rampant in a lot of places, but ME3 is cheesy sexy funtimes for both genders even if the balance isn't all there.
Not that I'm saying ME3 is perfect in that regard, because it isn't, and it doesn't exist in a vacuum so its faults are intensified by that, but it's the only popular shooter-esque game I can think of that makes a legit attempt at some degree of equal representation between the genders
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
This does not explain why the gaming culture is especially negative on women. Even though our culture in general has a problem with sexism, it is noticeably worse in the gaming community. Since gamers have the same upbringing as the rest of the society, the only explanation is that there is something specific in the gaming space itself that amplifies this problem by a fair degree.
Anonymity, and the traditional lack of women in the same space as the men has led to a reinforcement effect.
Being called a sexist is a legitimate fear for many sexists in real life, because it sticks. On the much of the game-playing internet, it does not.
Note that similar effects have occurred in other historically "boys-only" clubs, like driving (women can't drive), sports (women can't throw/run) and warfare (women don't have the emotional resilience needed to be a soldier).
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.
Hold up the phone, here
There's a difference between a cast designed to appeal to moe-devouring otaku versus a cast that's meant to provide legit representation of female players. Touhou games are not what is being looked for here, and they spawned an almost entirely male-dominated subculture for a reason
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.
Art is not just a reflection of culture. Art feeds culture. It creates it. The first step in creating culture is in creating art, in using art to set expectations and the tone of a given dialogue. You cannot just say "Art merely reflects what is already there," because if it does then it is not art that should be cared about. Artists, creators, have responsibilities to the people that they're creating for.
You want ot know where early education, socialization, and role model presentation can get a really good supplement? Positive portrayals in video games
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.
This does not explain why the gaming culture is especially negative on women. Even though our culture in general has a problem with sexism, it is noticeably worse in the gaming community. Since gamers have the same upbringing as the rest of the society, the only explanation is that there is something specific in the gaming space itself that amplifies this problem by a fair degree.
The GIFT, probably, combined with the cultural gender bias towards males for competitive games (and shooting stuff).
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?
I feel like this is one of those questions that is worth talking about yet never really gets a satisfying answer. Could fill up a whole thread on it's own.
Either:
A) There isn't really such a thing as a "female character" or a "male character," except in how the may relate to specific plot points. Creating gender neutral characters and then affixing gender onto them later (Commander Shepard, the cast of Alien) is a valid way of looking to create strong characters of either gender. There are aspects and concerns of a "genuine" female character that go beyond socialization (or, socialization is an important factor that should not be dismissed in character creation), and creating gender neutral characters and affixing gender onto them later cannot create truly female characters.
There may also be:
C) Option B is true, but due to a myriad of factors (the socialization of people consuming the narrative, the editorial and commercial viability of a narrative containing a true female perspective, etc) creating narratives according to option A is an acceptable policy in the short term.
An interesting side effect of option A is that it can create more same-sex relationships in fiction.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
There's a difference between a cast designed to appeal to moe-devouring otaku versus a cast that's meant to provide legit representation of female players. Touhou games are not what is being looked for here, and they spawned an almost entirely male-dominated subculture for a reason
I don't think Touhou is an ideal; I bring it up solely because it's an example of single-sex casting where even when the opposite sex is invading the male space, it still has no effect.
Art is not just a reflection of culture. Art feeds culture. It creates it. The first step in creating culture is in creating art, in using art to set expectations and the tone of a given dialogue. You cannot just say "Art merely reflects what is already there," because if it does then it is not art that should be cared about. Artists, creators, have responsibilities to the people that they're creating for.
The first step in creating culture is human action. Art can be one of those actions, but it is certainly not the only one. Art did not give rise to warfare, slavery, homes, relationships, and so on; it did reflect back on those aspects of culture, and yes, that reflection does then go on to inform those who can consume it effectively.
I don't even want to know how you made the value judgment about which art should and shouldn't be cared about.
You want ot know where early education, socialization, and role model presentation can get a really good supplement? Positive portrayals in video games
Which generally won't matter if people don't have the necessary interest or even capacity to recognise it, and that comes from those three factors first.
No matter how well-nuanced a portrayal might be, it doesn't mean anything if the player doesn't take it seriously.
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?
This is a problematic question in several ways, but I would argue that Femshep is a legitimately female character.
What you're really trying to ask here is, "What is intrinsically female?" Nothing is intrinsically female except for being a woman, or a girl, and having a female voice. That's about it.
I think it was Atwood - I could be wrong, and I don't know where to look this up - who, when asked how to write a good female character, said "Well first, write a woman. That's it."
One of the problems in this discussion when it comes to writing rather than design is the assumption that there are qualities that are intrinsic to men or women, which leads us to assume that genders necessarily have predilections toward given roles. That's not an inherently valid perspective.
Femshep is a "genuine" female character in that Hale gives her a voice, and she relates to the people around her as a woman. She's a soldier first for some people, and a woman first for others. That's fine.
But again, she doesn't exist in a vacuum. Femshep is a step in the right direction but she's not enough on her own.
I get the impression you treat the topic as if people who defend FemShep as a good female character was trying to weasel out of the problem by saying "hey, there you go, good women protagonists, done!".
Personally I am not. I am trying to understand what is considered a good female character and why some people seem to discard "gender neutral" characters as not really female characters, when it's my opinion that they are the model we should aspire to.
There's a difference between a cast designed to appeal to moe-devouring otaku versus a cast that's meant to provide legit representation of female players. Touhou games are not what is being looked for here, and they spawned an almost entirely male-dominated subculture for a reason
I don't think Touhou is an ideal; I bring it up solely because it's an example of single-sex casting where even when the opposite sex is invading the male space, it still has no effect.
That's just the thing, though. Guys drawing big-tittied underage girls (or small-tittied underage girls) with the express intent to appeal to the male gaze is not "the opposite sex invading the male space", it's adding to the background radiation that creates the understanding that this is a male-dominated space. A character nominally having a vagina is not "invading the male space" when the only function of her gender is to appeal directly to men. It's why the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue isn't about women invading the male-dominated space of SI Monthly.
Art is not just a reflection of culture. Art feeds culture. It creates it. The first step in creating culture is in creating art, in using art to set expectations and the tone of a given dialogue. You cannot just say "Art merely reflects what is already there," because if it does then it is not art that should be cared about. Artists, creators, have responsibilities to the people that they're creating for.
The first step in creating culture is human action. Art can be one of those actions, but it is certainly not the only one. Art did not give rise to warfare, slavery, homes, relationships, and so on; it did reflect back on those aspects of culture, and yes, that reflection does then go on to inform those who can consume it effectively.
Actually, interesting point of fact: art did give rise to relationships as we currently understand them, at least in the West.
Prior to about the eleventh century (or thereabouts) our understanding of the functional relationships between men and women was the security of familial lines and economic support gained by raising children. Love would blossom in pre-existing relationships, but it wasn't until the idea of Courtly Love was popularized by French poets that the idea of marriage from love became more widely accepted. The entire system of love that we think of as being intrinsic to the human condition? It's strictly cultural, and comes directly from poetry.
When we create art that empowers ideas, we give those ideas power, too. Show a girl all her life that she can only fulfill the role of a teacher, or a homemaker, or a princess, and she will grow up with that understanding. Show her that she can be anything, and she will grow up with the understanding that she can be anything, up to and including a bad-ass pirate or a space captain.
I don't even want to know how you made the value judgment about which art should and shouldn't be cared about.
Man I'm pretty explicit about this: art shapes culture. If it doesn't shape culture it doesn't matter, because it hasn't affected anyone.
You want ot know where early education, socialization, and role model presentation can get a really good supplement? Positive portrayals in video games
Which generally won't matter if people don't have the necessary interest or even capacity to recognise it, and that comes from those three factors first.
No matter how well-nuanced a portrayal might be, it doesn't mean anything if the player doesn't take it seriously.
This has nothing to do with nuance and everything to do with the understanding that one of the first steps to breaking down the barrier to girls playing video games, and girls making video games, and girls talking about video games and writing about and financing and dissecting and critiquing video games, is for there to be portrayals in games of women who are there to be women and not there to give men boners.
Is this necessarily the first step? No. Of course not. But it's one of the ones that would be the easiest to implement, and if you're going to change culture you might as well start at the spot where change can actually be made instead of throwing up your hands.
+1
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
This has nothing to do with nuance and everything to do with the understanding that one of the first steps to breaking down the barrier to girls playing video games, and girls making video games, and girls talking about video games and writing about and financing and dissecting and critiquing video games, is for there to be portrayals in games of women who are there to be women and not there to give men boners.
Is this necessarily the first step? No. Of course not. But it's one of the ones that would be the easiest to implement, and if you're going to change culture you might as well start at the spot where change can actually be made instead of throwing up your hands.
Hold up here. This is a premise jump.
I don't disagree with any of this, but it was not the focus of what I was discussing with Rorus et al. I understand that obviously, the topic is #1ReasonWhy, but most of my argument was related to how the the representation of women/men in art was not having a significant effect on the male attitude towards women in games.
I agree that having more games that appeal to women will draw more women into game design; I'm just making clear that what you quoted from me was not in respect to that, but rather the effect it's having or not having on these mens' attitudes to video games as a male space.
To put it simply, the current cultural attitudes have left women with a much more open mind to try new things in video games, whereas for many of these men, their minds are pretty firmly closed, and no amount of fiddling with art right now is going to affect them, because they simply lack the context to take it seriously.
When we get to a point where most young boys growing up know (not necessarily personally) a woman who was a soldier, or a sportswoman, or a driver, and is well respected for that by both sexes, then they might, upon meeting the idea that women can't be anything of those things, be just a little bit more skeptical.
This has nothing to do with nuance and everything to do with the understanding that one of the first steps to breaking down the barrier to girls playing video games, and girls making video games, and girls talking about video games and writing about and financing and dissecting and critiquing video games, is for there to be portrayals in games of women who are there to be women and not there to give men boners.
Is this necessarily the first step? No. Of course not. But it's one of the ones that would be the easiest to implement, and if you're going to change culture you might as well start at the spot where change can actually be made instead of throwing up your hands.
Hold up here. This is a premise jump.
I don't disagree with any of this, but it was not the focus of what I was discussing with Rorus et al. I understand that obviously, the topic is #1ReasonWhy, but most of my argument was related to how the the representation of women/men in art was not having a significant effect on the male attitude towards women in games.
I agree that having more games that appeal to women will draw more women into game design; I'm just making clear that what you quoted from me was not in respect to that, but rather the effect it's having or not having on these mens' attitudes to video games as a male space.
To put it simply, the current cultural attitudes have left women with a much more open mind to try new things in video games, whereas for many of these men, their minds are pretty firmly closed, and no amount of fiddling with art right now is going to affect them, because they simply lack the context to take it seriously.
When we get to a point where most young boys growing up know (not necessarily personally) a woman who was a soldier, or a sportswoman, or a driver, and is well respected for that by both sexes, then they might, upon meeting the idea that women can't be anything of those things, be just a little bit more skeptical.
We have a fundamental disagreement on whether or not people's minds can be changed by the things they consume.
But the idea is that inundating culture with the idea that women can be empowered in the same ways as men will help to eliminate those attitudes regardless, and there's no point in not having a go at it by creating positive portrayals of women in games, in ways that women design women.
Wyborn on
+1
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
We have a fundamental disagreement on whether or not people's minds can be changed by the things they consume.
I don't think we do. I believe people's opinions can be changed by art. But to do so the art must be able to establish some sort of rapport with them; there has to be common ground for it to work with. And with the misogyny's reinforcement being pretty strong, it's very hard for any work of art to find common ground with these men.
But some game designers want to make games they think will be fun for people with tastes like them foremost, and worry rather less about compelling social change. And while I'm sure it would be nice if you could co-opt a lot of game designers into pushing what you consider to be a good social agenda, those who do not buy into that but at the same time aren't doing serious damage to that agenda really don't deserve to be vilified for not being 'part of the solution'.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
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?
This is a problematic question in several ways, but I would argue that Femshep is a legitimately female character.
What you're really trying to ask here is, "What is intrinsically female?" Nothing is intrinsically female except for being a woman, or a girl, and having a female voice. That's about it.
I think it was Atwood - I could be wrong, and I don't know where to look this up - who, when asked how to write a good female character, said "Well first, write a woman. That's it."
One of the problems in this discussion when it comes to writing rather than design is the assumption that there are qualities that are intrinsic to men or women, which leads us to assume that genders necessarily have predilections toward given roles. That's not an inherently valid perspective.
Femshep is a "genuine" female character in that Hale gives her a voice, and she relates to the people around her as a woman. She's a soldier first for some people, and a woman first for others. That's fine.
But again, she doesn't exist in a vacuum. Femshep is a step in the right direction but she's not enough on her own.
yeah. part of the entire point of the feminist movement is precisely that nobody should go "this character has not been written girly enough".
the "not a legitimate female character problem" is normally just a resurfacing of bad old ideas about gendered behaviour via the strange prism of believability, but there is a legitimate point buried in there - another major thrust of feminist activity is to legitimise the traditionally undervalued elements of femininity that had been rendered second class by hundreds of years of bad sexual politics. so if every female character is written identically to a modern male character, then we still have a problem - a large chunk of the human experience is missing. so really its about what parts of the sphere of human activity and thought are allowed to be packed into characters of each sex, where the ideal feminist response is actually "all of them without needing justification, divided up by character and not sex".
this is partly why you get a reaction to the Strong Female Characters thing, but also why so much of the backlash is almost comically incoherent with the stated goals of many parts of feminist thought
ME3 doesn't really have any really sexist trolling on Xbox or Origin from what I've seen, but part of that is that players on these games don't tend to talk a lot, and I would hesitate to say that this is because of how the game treats women.
Mass Effect doesn't exactly have perfect gender equality - the writing, sure, I'll argue that the writing is there all damn day, but the character designs are problematic in a lot of places.
You do have to allow this, though: BioWare actually is aware of the female gaze, and several characters (Kaidan, Garrus, Thane, Traynor) are actually designed to appeal specifically to women instead of just being male power fantasies that male players hold up as an example of what should appeal to ladies. The male gaze is a lot more rampant in a lot of places, but ME3 is cheesy sexy funtimes for both genders even if the balance isn't all there.
Not that I'm saying ME3 is perfect in that regard, because it isn't, and it doesn't exist in a vacuum so its faults are intensified by that, but it's the only popular shooter-esque game I can think of that makes a legit attempt at some degree of equal representation between the genders
I just want--while agreeing with most of your post--to note that I'm going to bet MONEY that I know a bunch of ladies who wouldn't look twice at anyone you just named, but would lose their shit (metaphorically speaking) over Vega. They also "appreciated" the last few Statham movies, and anything with Daniel Craig in it. (I know some guys who would feel the same, too...)
The ladies like different things just like dudes do, and some of them like thin, pretty and emo, and some of them like shoulders you could land a plane on and a pair of tickets to the gun show. "Appeal to women" isn't a static hardcoded thing you can just include. Want to make a character appeal to women? Make it AWESOME (and not bad) and it'll probably go over well.
I agree and was wrong for implying that there is a specific type that appeals to ladies.
If my wife could leave me for Daniel Craig, she would.
If she could leave me for Thane, she would have done it yesterday.
I just mean that those four in particular are specifically designed for female audiences, while ladies find Craig's Bond dreamy as a natural consequence of him being so god damn dreamy.
I agree and was wrong for implying that there is a specific type that appeals to ladies.
If my wife could leave me for Daniel Craig, she would.
If she could leave me for Thane, she would have done it yesterday
Actually, I was kinda surprised there wasn't a Vega romance option. (Also at how enjoyable the character was, particularly his hacking skills.)
Really though, I just see this here and there, "women don't like" or "women want" or "we need to do this because women will..." and while it's always well intentioned, and much of it comes from people (not here) who are trying to be feminist as fuck, it's just going back the other way from "well, the ladies like cooking and pink, right?" Hell, I've seen actual women do it, and occasionally in the same breath as decrying how the media keeps telling them women all want one thing. Not to go after you in particular or anything.
You know, catching up on this thread, everyone immediately goes to Tifa's design as proof of sexism in Final Fantasy VII but there's really a far, far more damning piece of Tifa evidence people should use.
After being locked in a gas chamber and struggling her way out Tifa, the trained martial artist, who has punched dragons in half, proceeds to go up to the woman who almost killed her and engage in a fucking slap fight.
You know, catching up on this thread, everyone immediately goes to Tifa's design as proof of sexism in Final Fantasy VII but there's really a far, far more damning piece of Tifa evidence people should use.
After being locked in a gas chamber and struggling her way out Tifa, the trained martial artist, who has punched dragons in half, proceeds to go up to the woman who almost killed her and engage in a fucking slap fight.
It's a metaphor for the deep conflict between their personalities.
Alternately, it was yet another of FF7's wacky comedic moments.
Alternately, Tifa was gassed and didn't feel up to it.
You know, catching up on this thread, everyone immediately goes to Tifa's design as proof of sexism in Final Fantasy VII but there's really a far, far more damning piece of Tifa evidence people should use.
After being locked in a gas chamber and struggling her way out Tifa, the trained martial artist, who has punched dragons in half, proceeds to go up to the woman who almost killed her and engage in a fucking slap fight.
It's a metaphor for the deep conflict between their personalities.
Alternately, it was yet another of FF7's wacky comedic moments.
Alternately, Tifa was gassed and didn't feel up to it.
Okay, it was pretty bad.
At least it wasn't FFX-2's lesbian massage.
I'd like to say that was the ultimate low point of that whole series, but I'm afraid someone may bring up something worse long blocked out from my memory.
But some game designers want to make games they think will be fun for people with tastes like them foremost, and worry rather less about compelling social change. And while I'm sure it would be nice if you could co-opt a lot of game designers into pushing what you consider to be a good social agenda, those who do not buy into that but at the same time aren't doing serious damage to that agenda really don't deserve to be vilified for not being 'part of the solution'.
The issue you seem to be getting caught up on is that most games are made by designers who want to make games for people with tastes like theirs. In an industry dominated by white males, that's going to result in... the current gaming industry. You can't absolve yourself of responsibility by choosing to focus on people like yourself, that's the entire basis of these larger societal problems. Somebody can be sexist without fully intending to subjugate women. It is, as has been said numerous times in this thread, primarily a matter of ignorance.
To that end, if you aren't making some effort to change the games industry to be more welcoming, you are in fact a part of the problem. That's fine for those people, I suppose, but it doesn't change the basic fact of what they're doing. It's not strictly a value judgment (though it is for me) to say that somebody is not helping. I feel they can be vilified.
If you don't allow the targeting of selfish designers, then who is a target? Only the most vile and blatant examples of sexism, and that is a ridiculous premise. No social change can be focused exclusively on the most blatant examples. Racism in the US is markedly less obvious than it was in the Jim Crow days, but if you look at any basic statistics then you know it's doing just fine. The same for sexism.
Where do we combat these inequalities? Every fucking level, in unison. You cannot isolate some aspect of the problem and claim it's not causative when it's a fucking ecosystem of inequality. Arts are a representation of possibility for everybody, whether you acknowledge it or not. Most people don't think to themselves when they see somebody that looks like themselves doing something, "I could do that," but it is well established that it has a tremendous impact on your view of the world. White guys especially have a really, really hard time buying this because they are so often the default.
With that in mind, you certainly can focus on women's representations in gaming, and you absolutely can target developers who play into the current trends. Anything that is even a potential source of off-putting male centrism is a target. It's a shotgun approach, not a surgical one, because culture is fucking messy.
Also, any attempt to quiet down people on the margins for demanding equal treatment and a broader diversity of views should put somebody in the position of asking, "Is this helping? Is what I am doing actually making any difference in this cause, or am I simply attempting to disprove allegations of people I don't agree with, while abdicating a large portion of those who are a part of the problem?"
The only real answer to that question is based on your opinion of whether the differences between men's and women's attitudes are natural, or nurtured. And since neither biological science nor sociological science can give us a definitive answer re: nature vs nurture, it's very much a matter of opinion.
In general, though, having seen a wide variety of personalities in both men and women, I rather feel that there isn't a difference.
Personality is not perspective, and there are absolutely more common traits among certain groups of people than others. An individual example of somebody shaking the norms doesn't mean the trends don't exist.
Groups. Not individuals. Times a thousand. In every possible context.
I was super confused for a moment because I thought this was the War Z thread and I was like "why are you even posting this here." But in any case, Porpentine is pretty awesome, and part of Nightmare Mode, which has been the source of some of the articles I've linked in this thread (I think) and which is generally one of the places to find great articles, often about topics related to the one this thread is about.
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.
How do you 'show this up'? How would you empirically demonstrate that women, somehow, are genetically disposed to disliking certain genres of video games? That seems like an awfully incredible claim to me.
The popularization of first person shooters started-out as a male power fantasy, and went from there. I mean, go figure that this wouldn't be of a lot of interest to women (and even this ignores the hugely misogynistic beginnings of places like Silicon Valley, the male-dominated image of computing / gaming at the time that video games were becoming popular in homes, etc). Ignoring all of that history & patriarchal influence and saying, "Meh, must be the woman genes," is pretty pathetic.
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.
As someone who 'sits down to create something' on a regular basis, I disagree with this statement. It's not terribly hard to say, "I have a cast of [x] characters. Is there any reason that half of them can't be women?"
You know, catching up on this thread, everyone immediately goes to Tifa's design as proof of sexism in Final Fantasy VII but there's really a far, far more damning piece of Tifa evidence people should use.
After being locked in a gas chamber and struggling her way out Tifa, the trained martial artist, who has punched dragons in half, proceeds to go up to the woman who almost killed her and engage in a fucking slap fight.
I guess I've always just seen that as one more wacky-ass moment in a game that is surprisingly full of them. I can get the complaint about it, though.
Either way I think overall Tifa works out fine. A couple questionable flaws in the game here or there but mostly a good example of a sexy female character.
On some level I guess I don't tend to consciously think "a female character should have different experiences informing her worldview" when enunciating these things, but that's only because that should be really fucking obvious. Reflexive, even.
I guess the point is this:
1. Ladies are excluded from making games by cultural predispositions surrounding gamer culture. The ones who do make games are often marginalized. That's horse shit. It needs to change, because more perspectives in design means a more complete and nuanced set of understandings that can go into making a game work, especially in terms of writing and characterization and all that shit I play RPGs for.
2. Male-dominated game development culture means that women aren't represented in games, which creates the impression that games are a space for boys. THat's also horse shit.
3. One of the ways to change this perspective is to make it so that women have relatable avatars to use in games. It creates an expectation that this is a space in which women can participate on equal footing, gives women players something to relate to, and contributes ot the shifting of the culture toward something that isn't so wildly exclusionary.
I guess what this really makes me think of is this little project:
The one where a father hacked Wind Waker to make all the pronouns referring to Link into female equivalents. It's a neat little mod, allows his daughter to roleplay much more effectively, and requires no other changes to the game whatsoever. It's actually kind of stunning, isn't it? It makes you realize that Nintendo could super easily do the same thing and not effectively change a thing about the games themselves. Hell, Link's double perfect for this, since (s)he's effectively voiceless anyway!
What brings that to mind is the reactions by some of the commenters, who insist that he is corrupting Zelda by changing Link to a girl, or creating false expectations of absolute equality in his daughter, or failing to prepare her for the harsh realities of a much more gendered world.
But you know what? Piss on that. Piss on the idea that a girl shouldn't be catered to when she's going on an adventure to save her sister. Video games are about living out fantasies, and there's no good reason that people should balk at something like this. It doesn't affect them! It doesn't affect them even a little. But the encroachment of femininity on their sacred cow still elicited a highly defensive, overblown reaction completely out of scale with the change made, and appalling in light of how much the guy's daughter enjoys it.
That's the shit that can be fought, actively and hard, by making sure women have more representation on one level of gaming. From there it's just a matter of moving up.
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.
As someone who 'sits down to create something' on a regular basis, I disagree with this statement. It's not terribly hard to say, "I have a cast of [x] characters. Is there any reason that half of them can't be women?"
Ditto. I often attempt to create things too, and I sometimes catch myself operating off of assumptions that don't come from a place I'm comfortable with. It's an act of discipline, but it's also necessary if you want to make something legitimately good
I keep coming back to this thread but it just makes my brain hurt.
Changing things might be possible but in the first place no one can even agree on what exactly needs to change. Are you trying to get more women into game development? More female characters in games? Less exploitative female characters in games? Not only is there not a single direction to head in but people advocating one direction are attacked by those advocating another.
Beyond that, if change is to happen how do you drive it? Appealing to developers' sense of social justice to effect change is going to be as effective as asking Walmart to increase wages on the same grounds. Making games is, ultimately, a business. If you want change to happen you have to somehow convince the people with the money that they can make more money by changing. There are probably lots of ways to accomplish this depending on what the end goal is, but without this step nothing will ever change.
How things got to be this way is probably not relevant going forward. Most of the pressures keeping things this way which have been brought up are straws in the wind to this: In the end things stay the way they are because people are making money that way. The only way they will be convinced to change is if they see that changing will make them more money than business as usual.
I keep coming back to this thread but it just makes my brain hurt.
Changing things might be possible but in the first place no one can even agree on what exactly needs to change. Are you trying to get more women into game development? More female characters in games? Less exploitative female characters in games? Not only is there not a single direction to head in but people advocating one direction are attacked by those advocating another.
"My brain can't comprehend the idea that more than one thing needs to be done." Like holy shit dude, lots of things need to change. You can't just ask for the single solution. You don't fix society-wide sexism with one thing. And if generally reasonable discussion is a bunch of people attacking each other I'd hate to see what you think about what sorts of shit feminists get from the rest of society.
How things got to be this way is probably not relevant going forward. Most of the pressures keeping things this way which have been brought up are straws in the wind to this: In the end things stay the way they are because people are making money that way. The only way they will be convinced to change is if they see that changing will make them more money than business as usual.
"Nobody has ever done anything that is not the most profitable thing in a given situation" is a silly sentiment but even if it's true, women are 50% of the video game market that lots of developers are missing out on by sidelining the concerns of their female employees and female consumers.
Changing things might be possible but in the first place no one can even agree on what exactly needs to change. Are you trying to get more women into game development? More female characters in games? Less exploitative female characters in games? Not only is there not a single direction to head in but people advocating one direction are attacked by those advocating another.
It is not like all this stuff occurs in a vacuum:
Women's concerns are marginalized/ignored in development -> Ridiculous bullshit gets put into game -> Women are turned off and ignore game -> "Well I know you have a problem with this but according to our research, 90% of our core audience is male...." -> Repeat.
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.
As someone who 'sits down to create something' on a regular basis, I disagree with this statement. It's not terribly hard to say, "I have a cast of [x] characters. Is there any reason that half of them can't be women?"
It's really not so much that every individual piece needs to fulfill a quota of diversification. However, if you step back and look at the industry in its entirety, you realize that people aren't thinking about it at all, which results in a systemic problem that's harder to fix. Often times the easiest step to take to correct something like this is to take a deliberate diversification mentality (easiest, not necessarily best. Best would be to come from a less skewed mindset in the first place, but that takes some serious correcting first.)
The whole "why can't some figures be sexualized" argument is in the same space. Sure, if a minority of games had sexually objectified characters, that would just be a sub-genre of the space. However, the majority of the industry sexually objectifies, and almost the entirety panders to the male gaze. In that context, sexually objectifying is wrong at an individual level, because there is an existing problem that you're refusing to account for.
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On the other end of the spectrum (no females), you have World War games: Medal of Honor, Battlefield, CoD, and then also Counterstrike, the TF series, and then a couple of games on the PS3 like Resistance, which iirc didn't have female options.
I feel like this is one of those questions that is worth talking about yet never really gets a satisfying answer. Could fill up a whole thread on it's own.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
In general, though, having seen a wide variety of personalities in both men and women, I rather feel that there isn't a difference.
My opinion is that is somewhat contradictory to want female characters trated with respect in video games and at the same time saying that these kind of "gender neutral" characters such as Shepard or the Dovahkiin "don't count". From my point of view, those games are creating a history and a world where your role as a hero is only superficially influenced by your gender. You can do whatever needs to be done and the fact that you are a man or a woman is mostly irrelevant. And I don't know, it seems to me that that is exactly the kind of stuff we should try to do.
This is a problematic question in several ways, but I would argue that Femshep is a legitimately female character.
What you're really trying to ask here is, "What is intrinsically female?" Nothing is intrinsically female except for being a woman, or a girl, and having a female voice. That's about it.
I think it was Atwood - I could be wrong, and I don't know where to look this up - who, when asked how to write a good female character, said "Well first, write a woman. That's it."
One of the problems in this discussion when it comes to writing rather than design is the assumption that there are qualities that are intrinsic to men or women, which leads us to assume that genders necessarily have predilections toward given roles. That's not an inherently valid perspective.
Femshep is a "genuine" female character in that Hale gives her a voice, and she relates to the people around her as a woman. She's a soldier first for some people, and a woman first for others. That's fine.
But again, she doesn't exist in a vacuum. Femshep is a step in the right direction but she's not enough on her own.
This does not explain why the gaming culture is especially negative on women. Even though our culture in general has a problem with sexism, it is noticeably worse in the gaming community. Since gamers have the same upbringing as the rest of the society, the only explanation is that there is something specific in the gaming space itself that amplifies this problem by a fair degree.
ME3 doesn't really have any really sexist trolling on Xbox or Origin from what I've seen, but part of that is that players on these games don't tend to talk a lot, and I would hesitate to say that this is because of how the game treats women.
Mass Effect doesn't exactly have perfect gender equality - the writing, sure, I'll argue that the writing is there all damn day, but the character designs are problematic in a lot of places.
You do have to allow this, though: BioWare actually is aware of the female gaze, and several characters (Kaidan, Garrus, Thane, Traynor) are actually designed to appeal specifically to women instead of just being male power fantasies that male players hold up as an example of what should appeal to ladies. The male gaze is a lot more rampant in a lot of places, but ME3 is cheesy sexy funtimes for both genders even if the balance isn't all there.
Not that I'm saying ME3 is perfect in that regard, because it isn't, and it doesn't exist in a vacuum so its faults are intensified by that, but it's the only popular shooter-esque game I can think of that makes a legit attempt at some degree of equal representation between the genders
Being called a sexist is a legitimate fear for many sexists in real life, because it sticks. On the much of the game-playing internet, it does not.
Note that similar effects have occurred in other historically "boys-only" clubs, like driving (women can't drive), sports (women can't throw/run) and warfare (women don't have the emotional resilience needed to be a soldier).
Hold up the phone, here
There's a difference between a cast designed to appeal to moe-devouring otaku versus a cast that's meant to provide legit representation of female players. Touhou games are not what is being looked for here, and they spawned an almost entirely male-dominated subculture for a reason
Art is not just a reflection of culture. Art feeds culture. It creates it. The first step in creating culture is in creating art, in using art to set expectations and the tone of a given dialogue. You cannot just say "Art merely reflects what is already there," because if it does then it is not art that should be cared about. Artists, creators, have responsibilities to the people that they're creating for.
You want ot know where early education, socialization, and role model presentation can get a really good supplement? Positive portrayals in video games
Either:
A) There isn't really such a thing as a "female character" or a "male character," except in how the may relate to specific plot points. Creating gender neutral characters and then affixing gender onto them later (Commander Shepard, the cast of Alien) is a valid way of looking to create strong characters of either gender.
There may also be:
C) Option B is true, but due to a myriad of factors (the socialization of people consuming the narrative, the editorial and commercial viability of a narrative containing a true female perspective, etc) creating narratives according to option A is an acceptable policy in the short term.
An interesting side effect of option A is that it can create more same-sex relationships in fiction.
The first step in creating culture is human action. Art can be one of those actions, but it is certainly not the only one. Art did not give rise to warfare, slavery, homes, relationships, and so on; it did reflect back on those aspects of culture, and yes, that reflection does then go on to inform those who can consume it effectively.
I don't even want to know how you made the value judgment about which art should and shouldn't be cared about.
Which generally won't matter if people don't have the necessary interest or even capacity to recognise it, and that comes from those three factors first.
No matter how well-nuanced a portrayal might be, it doesn't mean anything if the player doesn't take it seriously.
I get the impression you treat the topic as if people who defend FemShep as a good female character was trying to weasel out of the problem by saying "hey, there you go, good women protagonists, done!".
Personally I am not. I am trying to understand what is considered a good female character and why some people seem to discard "gender neutral" characters as not really female characters, when it's my opinion that they are the model we should aspire to.
That's just the thing, though. Guys drawing big-tittied underage girls (or small-tittied underage girls) with the express intent to appeal to the male gaze is not "the opposite sex invading the male space", it's adding to the background radiation that creates the understanding that this is a male-dominated space. A character nominally having a vagina is not "invading the male space" when the only function of her gender is to appeal directly to men. It's why the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue isn't about women invading the male-dominated space of SI Monthly.
Actually, interesting point of fact: art did give rise to relationships as we currently understand them, at least in the West.
Prior to about the eleventh century (or thereabouts) our understanding of the functional relationships between men and women was the security of familial lines and economic support gained by raising children. Love would blossom in pre-existing relationships, but it wasn't until the idea of Courtly Love was popularized by French poets that the idea of marriage from love became more widely accepted. The entire system of love that we think of as being intrinsic to the human condition? It's strictly cultural, and comes directly from poetry.
When we create art that empowers ideas, we give those ideas power, too. Show a girl all her life that she can only fulfill the role of a teacher, or a homemaker, or a princess, and she will grow up with that understanding. Show her that she can be anything, and she will grow up with the understanding that she can be anything, up to and including a bad-ass pirate or a space captain.
Man I'm pretty explicit about this: art shapes culture. If it doesn't shape culture it doesn't matter, because it hasn't affected anyone.
This has nothing to do with nuance and everything to do with the understanding that one of the first steps to breaking down the barrier to girls playing video games, and girls making video games, and girls talking about video games and writing about and financing and dissecting and critiquing video games, is for there to be portrayals in games of women who are there to be women and not there to give men boners.
Is this necessarily the first step? No. Of course not. But it's one of the ones that would be the easiest to implement, and if you're going to change culture you might as well start at the spot where change can actually be made instead of throwing up your hands.
I don't disagree with any of this, but it was not the focus of what I was discussing with Rorus et al. I understand that obviously, the topic is #1ReasonWhy, but most of my argument was related to how the the representation of women/men in art was not having a significant effect on the male attitude towards women in games.
I agree that having more games that appeal to women will draw more women into game design; I'm just making clear that what you quoted from me was not in respect to that, but rather the effect it's having or not having on these mens' attitudes to video games as a male space.
To put it simply, the current cultural attitudes have left women with a much more open mind to try new things in video games, whereas for many of these men, their minds are pretty firmly closed, and no amount of fiddling with art right now is going to affect them, because they simply lack the context to take it seriously.
When we get to a point where most young boys growing up know (not necessarily personally) a woman who was a soldier, or a sportswoman, or a driver, and is well respected for that by both sexes, then they might, upon meeting the idea that women can't be anything of those things, be just a little bit more skeptical.
We have a fundamental disagreement on whether or not people's minds can be changed by the things they consume.
But the idea is that inundating culture with the idea that women can be empowered in the same ways as men will help to eliminate those attitudes regardless, and there's no point in not having a go at it by creating positive portrayals of women in games, in ways that women design women.
But some game designers want to make games they think will be fun for people with tastes like them foremost, and worry rather less about compelling social change. And while I'm sure it would be nice if you could co-opt a lot of game designers into pushing what you consider to be a good social agenda, those who do not buy into that but at the same time aren't doing serious damage to that agenda really don't deserve to be vilified for not being 'part of the solution'.
yeah. part of the entire point of the feminist movement is precisely that nobody should go "this character has not been written girly enough".
the "not a legitimate female character problem" is normally just a resurfacing of bad old ideas about gendered behaviour via the strange prism of believability, but there is a legitimate point buried in there - another major thrust of feminist activity is to legitimise the traditionally undervalued elements of femininity that had been rendered second class by hundreds of years of bad sexual politics. so if every female character is written identically to a modern male character, then we still have a problem - a large chunk of the human experience is missing. so really its about what parts of the sphere of human activity and thought are allowed to be packed into characters of each sex, where the ideal feminist response is actually "all of them without needing justification, divided up by character and not sex".
this is partly why you get a reaction to the Strong Female Characters thing, but also why so much of the backlash is almost comically incoherent with the stated goals of many parts of feminist thought
I just want--while agreeing with most of your post--to note that I'm going to bet MONEY that I know a bunch of ladies who wouldn't look twice at anyone you just named, but would lose their shit (metaphorically speaking) over Vega. They also "appreciated" the last few Statham movies, and anything with Daniel Craig in it. (I know some guys who would feel the same, too...)
The ladies like different things just like dudes do, and some of them like thin, pretty and emo, and some of them like shoulders you could land a plane on and a pair of tickets to the gun show. "Appeal to women" isn't a static hardcoded thing you can just include. Want to make a character appeal to women? Make it AWESOME (and not bad) and it'll probably go over well.
If my wife could leave me for Daniel Craig, she would.
If she could leave me for Thane, she would have done it yesterday.
I just mean that those four in particular are specifically designed for female audiences, while ladies find Craig's Bond dreamy as a natural consequence of him being so god damn dreamy.
Actually, I was kinda surprised there wasn't a Vega romance option. (Also at how enjoyable the character was, particularly his hacking skills.)
Really though, I just see this here and there, "women don't like" or "women want" or "we need to do this because women will..." and while it's always well intentioned, and much of it comes from people (not here) who are trying to be feminist as fuck, it's just going back the other way from "well, the ladies like cooking and pink, right?" Hell, I've seen actual women do it, and occasionally in the same breath as decrying how the media keeps telling them women all want one thing. Not to go after you in particular or anything.
After being locked in a gas chamber and struggling her way out Tifa, the trained martial artist, who has punched dragons in half, proceeds to go up to the woman who almost killed her and engage in a fucking slap fight.
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Alternately, it was yet another of FF7's wacky comedic moments.
Alternately, Tifa was gassed and didn't feel up to it.
Okay, it was pretty bad.
At least it wasn't FFX-2's lesbian massage.
I'd like to say that was the ultimate low point of that whole series, but I'm afraid someone may bring up something worse long blocked out from my memory.
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The issue you seem to be getting caught up on is that most games are made by designers who want to make games for people with tastes like theirs. In an industry dominated by white males, that's going to result in... the current gaming industry. You can't absolve yourself of responsibility by choosing to focus on people like yourself, that's the entire basis of these larger societal problems. Somebody can be sexist without fully intending to subjugate women. It is, as has been said numerous times in this thread, primarily a matter of ignorance.
To that end, if you aren't making some effort to change the games industry to be more welcoming, you are in fact a part of the problem. That's fine for those people, I suppose, but it doesn't change the basic fact of what they're doing. It's not strictly a value judgment (though it is for me) to say that somebody is not helping. I feel they can be vilified.
If you don't allow the targeting of selfish designers, then who is a target? Only the most vile and blatant examples of sexism, and that is a ridiculous premise. No social change can be focused exclusively on the most blatant examples. Racism in the US is markedly less obvious than it was in the Jim Crow days, but if you look at any basic statistics then you know it's doing just fine. The same for sexism.
Where do we combat these inequalities? Every fucking level, in unison. You cannot isolate some aspect of the problem and claim it's not causative when it's a fucking ecosystem of inequality. Arts are a representation of possibility for everybody, whether you acknowledge it or not. Most people don't think to themselves when they see somebody that looks like themselves doing something, "I could do that," but it is well established that it has a tremendous impact on your view of the world. White guys especially have a really, really hard time buying this because they are so often the default.
With that in mind, you certainly can focus on women's representations in gaming, and you absolutely can target developers who play into the current trends. Anything that is even a potential source of off-putting male centrism is a target. It's a shotgun approach, not a surgical one, because culture is fucking messy.
Also, any attempt to quiet down people on the margins for demanding equal treatment and a broader diversity of views should put somebody in the position of asking, "Is this helping? Is what I am doing actually making any difference in this cause, or am I simply attempting to disprove allegations of people I don't agree with, while abdicating a large portion of those who are a part of the problem?"
Personality is not perspective, and there are absolutely more common traits among certain groups of people than others. An individual example of somebody shaking the norms doesn't mean the trends don't exist.
Groups. Not individuals. Times a thousand. In every possible context.
How do you 'show this up'? How would you empirically demonstrate that women, somehow, are genetically disposed to disliking certain genres of video games? That seems like an awfully incredible claim to me.
The popularization of first person shooters started-out as a male power fantasy, and went from there. I mean, go figure that this wouldn't be of a lot of interest to women (and even this ignores the hugely misogynistic beginnings of places like Silicon Valley, the male-dominated image of computing / gaming at the time that video games were becoming popular in homes, etc). Ignoring all of that history & patriarchal influence and saying, "Meh, must be the woman genes," is pretty pathetic.
As someone who 'sits down to create something' on a regular basis, I disagree with this statement. It's not terribly hard to say, "I have a cast of [x] characters. Is there any reason that half of them can't be women?"
I guess I've always just seen that as one more wacky-ass moment in a game that is surprisingly full of them. I can get the complaint about it, though.
Either way I think overall Tifa works out fine. A couple questionable flaws in the game here or there but mostly a good example of a sexy female character.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
I guess the point is this:
1. Ladies are excluded from making games by cultural predispositions surrounding gamer culture. The ones who do make games are often marginalized. That's horse shit. It needs to change, because more perspectives in design means a more complete and nuanced set of understandings that can go into making a game work, especially in terms of writing and characterization and all that shit I play RPGs for.
2. Male-dominated game development culture means that women aren't represented in games, which creates the impression that games are a space for boys. THat's also horse shit.
3. One of the ways to change this perspective is to make it so that women have relatable avatars to use in games. It creates an expectation that this is a space in which women can participate on equal footing, gives women players something to relate to, and contributes ot the shifting of the culture toward something that isn't so wildly exclusionary.
I guess what this really makes me think of is this little project:
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2012/11/07/flip-all-the-pronouns/
The one where a father hacked Wind Waker to make all the pronouns referring to Link into female equivalents. It's a neat little mod, allows his daughter to roleplay much more effectively, and requires no other changes to the game whatsoever. It's actually kind of stunning, isn't it? It makes you realize that Nintendo could super easily do the same thing and not effectively change a thing about the games themselves. Hell, Link's double perfect for this, since (s)he's effectively voiceless anyway!
What brings that to mind is the reactions by some of the commenters, who insist that he is corrupting Zelda by changing Link to a girl, or creating false expectations of absolute equality in his daughter, or failing to prepare her for the harsh realities of a much more gendered world.
But you know what? Piss on that. Piss on the idea that a girl shouldn't be catered to when she's going on an adventure to save her sister. Video games are about living out fantasies, and there's no good reason that people should balk at something like this. It doesn't affect them! It doesn't affect them even a little. But the encroachment of femininity on their sacred cow still elicited a highly defensive, overblown reaction completely out of scale with the change made, and appalling in light of how much the guy's daughter enjoys it.
That's the shit that can be fought, actively and hard, by making sure women have more representation on one level of gaming. From there it's just a matter of moving up.
Ditto. I often attempt to create things too, and I sometimes catch myself operating off of assumptions that don't come from a place I'm comfortable with. It's an act of discipline, but it's also necessary if you want to make something legitimately good
Just cause Zelda is pretty cool and deserves top billing for once.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Changing things might be possible but in the first place no one can even agree on what exactly needs to change. Are you trying to get more women into game development? More female characters in games? Less exploitative female characters in games? Not only is there not a single direction to head in but people advocating one direction are attacked by those advocating another.
Beyond that, if change is to happen how do you drive it? Appealing to developers' sense of social justice to effect change is going to be as effective as asking Walmart to increase wages on the same grounds. Making games is, ultimately, a business. If you want change to happen you have to somehow convince the people with the money that they can make more money by changing. There are probably lots of ways to accomplish this depending on what the end goal is, but without this step nothing will ever change.
How things got to be this way is probably not relevant going forward. Most of the pressures keeping things this way which have been brought up are straws in the wind to this: In the end things stay the way they are because people are making money that way. The only way they will be convinced to change is if they see that changing will make them more money than business as usual.
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"Nobody has ever done anything that is not the most profitable thing in a given situation" is a silly sentiment but even if it's true, women are 50% of the video game market that lots of developers are missing out on by sidelining the concerns of their female employees and female consumers.
Turns out developers aren't soulless money vacuums, and are often moved by hearing about or experiencing discrimination
Women's concerns are marginalized/ignored in development -> Ridiculous bullshit gets put into game -> Women are turned off and ignore game -> "Well I know you have a problem with this but according to our research, 90% of our core audience is male...." -> Repeat.
It's really not so much that every individual piece needs to fulfill a quota of diversification. However, if you step back and look at the industry in its entirety, you realize that people aren't thinking about it at all, which results in a systemic problem that's harder to fix. Often times the easiest step to take to correct something like this is to take a deliberate diversification mentality (easiest, not necessarily best. Best would be to come from a less skewed mindset in the first place, but that takes some serious correcting first.)
The whole "why can't some figures be sexualized" argument is in the same space. Sure, if a minority of games had sexually objectified characters, that would just be a sub-genre of the space. However, the majority of the industry sexually objectifies, and almost the entirety panders to the male gaze. In that context, sexually objectifying is wrong at an individual level, because there is an existing problem that you're refusing to account for.