It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
If you want to know what women find attractive look at Edward and Jacob from Twilight. All sex no substance. Now imagine if those guys were 98% of the male characters in games.
Sure as hell isn't the power fantasy for the player - I certainly don't want to be them. But a lot of ladies scream for these guys so it'd a pretty good analogue to the sex fantasy that most female characters are.
And if you take all the internet screaming about how Edward/Jacob are gaaaaaaaayyyyy as any indication, typical male consumers are pretty uncomfortable with them.
how do you think attitudes and spending habits are supposed to change, if not by making alternate viewpoints available and visible? Getting ladies and non-straight-white-males interested in the hobby is made that much harder AND won't affect shit if all they have to choose from is Straight White Male Fantasy X, Y, or Z.
Because the market dictates the product, not the other way around. You get Straight Male Fantasy X, Y, Z BECAUSE straight males who want that fantasy are playing games.
Also, MagicPink's and my point is just that we should do MORE things than just attracting more female designers. Increasing the playerbase of females as well as minorities is proportional to making the gaming industry a more attractive one for them. Also actually making their contributions count. And not just reduced back to *Straight Male Fantasy*.
Why do you both keep insisting that everyone else's solution is "More female designers and THAT'S ALL! EVERYTHING FIXED!"
how do you think attitudes and spending habits are supposed to change, if not by making alternate viewpoints available and visible? Getting ladies and non-straight-white-males interested in the hobby is made that much harder AND won't affect shit if all they have to choose from is Straight White Male Fantasy X, Y, or Z.
Because the market dictates the product, not the other way around. You get Straight Male Fantasy X, Y, Z BECAUSE straight males who want that fantasy are playing games.
Also, MagicPink's and my point is just that we should do MORE things than just attracting more female designers. Increasing the playerbase of females as well as minorities is proportional to making the gaming industry a more attractive one for them. Also actually making their contributions count. And not just reduced back to *Straight Male Fantasy*.
Why do you both keep insisting that everyone else's solution is "More female designers and THAT'S ALL! EVERYTHING FIXED!"
I'm not? Like at all?
I disagree with the ones that say consumers won't change and so on. The stuff I quoted to be precise. We need to change it since everythings connected.
Also, do you think I'm somewhat aggressive? Sensing some resentment here which I don't really understand since we have the same opinion, I'm just going further.
No one thinks women are inherently better at writing thoughtful and meaningful stories than men; bringing more women into the industry means a diversity of perspective, because up to this point the perspectives in both films and games have been one-sided.
Diversity in perspective is good. But I don't think making more crap is something that we should aspire to. It's a bandaid, not a solution.
IMO, it's the responsibility of a good writer (male or female) to do his reasearch on relevant subjects and take multiple viewpoints in account in the first place.
In bigger projects or projects who have a bigger focus on writing/multiple writers (Adventure, RPG's) companies should draw up some guidelines to approach these topics.
this whole discussion isn't really about making better games
it's about involving women in games
even with more diverse perspectives the industry will still make crap, that's never going to change
but even crap with fairly divided input is better than one-sided crap
and awesome games with fairly divided input will be even better than one-sided awesome games
I'm stupidly behind on this by now, I'm sure, but...
Having more women in games will lead to more female perspectives, which at the very least will get games caught up to the rest of society. Right now video games are more misogynistic than average media. If it's at least caught up to the average, strides toward better balance across society will hopefully impact it as well. It's seriously a boys' club that's completely shielded right now, though.
It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
Which is kind of deliciously ironic.
Well... Anders does have a sexuality of his own - if you're playing male Hawke he'll tell that he and Karl used to be close. Also, almost uniquely amongst Bioware romances, Anders hits on you first regardless of your Hawke's gender. So I can see why some gamers would like him and why insecure idiots would not.
But then some other stuff goes down and everybody ends up hating Anders anyway. But sexuality-wise, he's pretty OK, I think.
It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
Which is kind of deliciously ironic.
I really loved DA2 Anders. DA2 had awesome characters all around (some bad game design decisions, but I digress).
I played the "canon" straight Hawke. I felt genuinely weird when Anders showed interest in my Hawke and was genuinely saddend and sympathetic to his reaction when I turned him down. It was an unexpected bit of interaction, certainly an unexpected interaction in video gaming in general. The game, and its writers, surprised me and made me actually feel something genuine. Bioware made me uncomfortable, and they should be applauded for it.
And then of course I read haters' comments on the issue of flirty Anders...they also made me feel something (anger and a bit of schadenfreude in their discomfort).
DA2 is also, imo, a great example of a game where there are definitely some "sex appeal" women characters that also exist beyond that. Isabela, especially. Yes, she has great big boobs (but she also has a big ass, and thighs, and some muscle on her too so she's not even the typical T&A type) and wears very little, but she also has agency and, unlike most other scantily clad women in video games, the clothes suit her character. I can imagine Isabela waking up in the morning and thinking 'yes, today I will wear this' instead of the developers going "hmmm, we have a woman here, give her as few clothes as possible!"
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
Anders' problem wasn't his orientation or that he hits on Hawke/you first. It's that he's an emotionally crippled and increasingly depressing character, and it all culminates in a horrifically short-sighted act. Now, there are in-game reasons for that, but he's not exactly fun to hang out with.
I mean, if the choice is to mope with Anders in Old Town or hit the bars with Isabella, or, shit, be a bro squad with Varric and Aveline, the choice is clear.
To continue with Bioware games, I'm still conflicted about Ashley's change in ME3, and EDI. Both are great characters who feel legitimate, but there's definitely some blatant demographic targeting there.
It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
If you want to know what women find attractive look at Edward and Jacob from Twilight. All sex no substance. Now imagine if those guys were 98% of the male characters in games.
Sure as hell isn't the power fantasy for the player - I certainly don't want to be them. But a lot of ladies scream for these guys so it'd a pretty good analogue to the sex fantasy that most female characters are.
And if you take all the internet screaming about how Edward/Jacob are gaaaaaaaayyyyy as any indication, typical male consumers are pretty uncomfortable with them.
Well, associating whiny with gay can be your own thing there, I'm just gonna stay outta that one.
I don't mind gay characters though, I just don't get my char romantically involved, because that sort of direction holds no interest to me in the same way a straight relationship might not hold the interest of some people. It's like what's his name in ME3...uh, you know who I'm talking about, the guy who worked down in the hangar of the Normandy. I've had a gay friend complain that that was his only romance option in Mass Effect.
But what I didn't like was the dramatic personality shift from brash, sarcastic DA 1 Anders who loved to pull pranks and crack jokes, to whiny, piteous Anders who was one step away from joining PETA before I
shanked him in the side with a knife.
. I suppose you could chalk at least some of it up to Justice, but I wouldn't think that could be the entire reason. Why couldn't he DA1 Anders but also happen to be gay?
(Also don't get me started on Justice, that was just poorly handled all around.)
DA2 is also, imo, a great example of a game where there are definitely some "sex appeal" women characters that also exist beyond that. Isabela, especially. Yes, she has great big boobs (but she also has a big ass, and thighs, and some muscle on her too so she's not even the typical T&A type) and wears very little, but she also has agency and, unlike most other scantily clad women in video games, the clothes suit her character. I can imagine Isabela waking up in the morning and thinking 'yes, today I will wear this' instead of the developers going "hmmm, we have a woman here, give her as few clothes as possible!"
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
This is fine in isolation, but when the vast majority of female characters are either characters that just happen to have a personality that makes it perfectly sensible that they dress in sexy clothing designed to pander to men (Isabela), or they are inexplicably dressed so as to pander to men for no reason (Cortana) then we have a problem. It's not enough to just make games where your women have excuses for dressing like strippers. You also need female characters who have no excuse for dressing like a stripper and who don't dress like a stripper. There's nothing wrong with being scantily clad - there is something wrong with an industry where women are either scantily clad or largely absent.
DA2 is also, imo, a great example of a game where there are definitely some "sex appeal" women characters that also exist beyond that. Isabela, especially. Yes, she has great big boobs (but she also has a big ass, and thighs, and some muscle on her too so she's not even the typical T&A type) and wears very little, but she also has agency and, unlike most other scantily clad women in video games, the clothes suit her character. I can imagine Isabela waking up in the morning and thinking 'yes, today I will wear this' instead of the developers going "hmmm, we have a woman here, give her as few clothes as possible!"
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
This is fine in isolation, but when the vast majority of female characters are either characters that just happen to have a personality that makes it perfectly sensible that they dress in sexy clothing designed to pander to men (Isabela), or they are inexplicably dressed so as to pander to men for no reason (Cortana) then we have a problem. It's not enough to just make games where your women have excuses for dressing like strippers. You also need female characters who have no excuse for dressing like a stripper and who don't dress like a stripper. There's nothing wrong with being scantily clad - there is something wrong with an industry where women are either scantily clad or largely absent.
All very true. Fortunately, Isabela is kinda balanced out by Aveline, who is not a stripper and doesn't dress like one. So huzzah for DA2, I guess.
DA2 is also, imo, a great example of a game where there are definitely some "sex appeal" women characters that also exist beyond that. Isabela, especially. Yes, she has great big boobs (but she also has a big ass, and thighs, and some muscle on her too so she's not even the typical T&A type) and wears very little, but she also has agency and, unlike most other scantily clad women in video games, the clothes suit her character. I can imagine Isabela waking up in the morning and thinking 'yes, today I will wear this' instead of the developers going "hmmm, we have a woman here, give her as few clothes as possible!"
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
This is fine in isolation, but when the vast majority of female characters are either characters that just happen to have a personality that makes it perfectly sensible that they dress in sexy clothing designed to pander to men (Isabela), or they are inexplicably dressed so as to pander to men for no reason (Cortana) then we have a problem. It's not enough to just make games where your women have excuses for dressing like strippers. You also need female characters who have no excuse for dressing like a stripper and who don't dress like a stripper. There's nothing wrong with being scantily clad - there is something wrong with an industry where women are either scantily clad or largely absent.
All very true. Fortunately, Isabela is kinda balanced out by Aveline, who is not a stripper and doesn't dress like one. So huzzah for DA2, I guess.
DA2 is also, imo, a great example of a game where there are definitely some "sex appeal" women characters that also exist beyond that. Isabela, especially. Yes, she has great big boobs (but she also has a big ass, and thighs, and some muscle on her too so she's not even the typical T&A type) and wears very little, but she also has agency and, unlike most other scantily clad women in video games, the clothes suit her character. I can imagine Isabela waking up in the morning and thinking 'yes, today I will wear this' instead of the developers going "hmmm, we have a woman here, give her as few clothes as possible!"
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
This is fine in isolation, but when the vast majority of female characters are either characters that just happen to have a personality that makes it perfectly sensible that they dress in sexy clothing designed to pander to men (Isabela), or they are inexplicably dressed so as to pander to men for no reason (Cortana) then we have a problem. It's not enough to just make games where your women have excuses for dressing like strippers. You also need female characters who have no excuse for dressing like a stripper and who don't dress like a stripper. There's nothing wrong with being scantily clad - there is something wrong with an industry where women are either scantily clad or largely absent.
All very true. Fortunately, Isabela is kinda balanced out by Aveline, who is not a stripper and doesn't dress like one. So huzzah for DA2, I guess.
Other games... yeah, no excuse.
I'm not sure it's even a "huzzah for DA2" situation. I think games are pretty much full up with acceptable levels of "women who have 'legitimate' reasons to dress so as to pander to the male gaze" and if no video game has anyone like that for the next decade I'm not sure we'd miss out on anything. At the very least, when you have a limited number of interesting characters in your game, I don't really think one of those spots should be taken up with "the one with boobs that we can prominently show off when we need to sell the game." I mean, I'll give a pass to games like Bayonetta or Catherine that actually try to say something interesting about sexuality, maybe (I don't own a console so I've never played or even read about either of those games) but for a game like Dragon Age 2, which has AN ENTIRE FANTASY WORLD to draw from, I think we'd be fine if one of the few in-depth characters they had didn't have to be "scantily clad lady."
If you, as a male, can't look at 95% of video games and understand that you are being pandered to then... well... damn. And maybe not *you* specifically because *you* would never want muscles or a penis gun i thought that shit was for the ladies, then at least some marketers idea of *you*
I'm not sure it's even a "huzzah for DA2" situation. I think games are pretty much full up with acceptable levels of "women who have 'legitimate' reasons to dress so as to pander to the male gaze" and if no video game has anyone like that for the next decade I'm not sure we'd miss out on anything. At the very least, when you have a limited number of interesting characters in your game, I don't really think one of those spots should be taken up with "the one with boobs that we can prominently show off when we need to sell the game." I mean, I'll give a pass to games like Bayonetta or Catherine that actually try to say something interesting about sexuality, maybe (I don't own a console so I've never played or even read about either of those games) but for a game like Dragon Age 2, which has AN ENTIRE FANTASY WORLD to draw from, I think we'd be fine if one of the few in-depth characters they had didn't have to be "scantily clad lady."
On Isabella, I never really thought her design was much more than titillation and fan-service. They certainely did good work with the character, but her design could have stood to be a little more reasonable or measured than it was.
And I can't speak for Catherine, but Bayonetta is a very interesting display of sexy mixed with scary. It (both the game and character) take the idea of "sex as a weapon" and push it an almost comical extreme. Bayonetta's design is something that should be sexy, and is often presented as such, through her movements and motion - but at the same time the body, when looking at it in say a still image, ends up looking alien and creepy. The game's also aces and is worth playing if you have a chance.
Perhaps all that is required is for more public attention to be drawn to it. Revulsion fuels action.
The ESRB could add a warning for "sexism",
as the whole rating system exists to stop trash from reaching the people least likely to deign it so. (where trash is defined as anything that mucks up our nice society we've got going)
In some ways, sexism in a large project environment is a lot like sexism in the military.
In order to produce the best results, sometimes the individuals abilities are outweighed by their ability to cooperate with each other.
of the few ladies there are in the industry, they're largely invisible. there's no female Miyamoto or Reggie or Kaz or Molyneux or Bleszinski, no face of a company or franchise. the closest one was perhaps Jade Raymond but she's been behind the scenes since Assassin's Creed 1. dudes being the face of everything video games contributes greatly to the perception of video games being a "dude thing". ladies don't just need to be in positions of power, they need to be in visible positions of power to attract more ladies to the industry. #1reason is step one of this, hopefully.
Back when Adventure games were the hottest thing on PCs, there were a few high profile females in the industry like Roberta Williams. Not so much now.
I'm not sure it's even a "huzzah for DA2" situation. I think games are pretty much full up with acceptable levels of "women who have 'legitimate' reasons to dress so as to pander to the male gaze" and if no video game has anyone like that for the next decade I'm not sure we'd miss out on anything. At the very least, when you have a limited number of interesting characters in your game, I don't really think one of those spots should be taken up with "the one with boobs that we can prominently show off when we need to sell the game." I mean, I'll give a pass to games like Bayonetta or Catherine that actually try to say something interesting about sexuality, maybe (I don't own a console so I've never played or even read about either of those games) but for a game like Dragon Age 2, which has AN ENTIRE FANTASY WORLD to draw from, I think we'd be fine if one of the few in-depth characters they had didn't have to be "scantily clad lady."
On Isabella, I never really thought her design was much more than titillation and fan-service. They certainely did good work with the character, but her design could have stood to be a little more reasonable or measured than it was.
I think her design was just fine given the context. While I see where you're coming from, it's good to have women of all body types and personalities in media, especially when they're fleshed out like she was.
And if we want women of all body types in games, using up one of our character slots by filling it with "sexy lady who doesn't wear a lot of clothes" isn't really helping. I think we've got enough of them.
And if we want women of all body types in games, using up one of our character slots by filling it with "sexy lady who doesn't wear a lot of clothes" isn't really helping. I think we've got enough of them.
The game has a lot of female characters of importance, most of them with distinctive looks. Condemning one of them because she's very curvy and likes to dress a certain way is overkill and sounds pretty similar to the shaming that leads to curvy women having self-image issues.
Look, if Dragon Age 2 isn't a game we can hold up and be like, "Ehh, close enough." Maybe we just need to burn video games to the ground and start over with Pong, Asteroids, and see if we've learned anything by the time we work our way up to being able to render characters who look like people again.
Has anybody talked about
yet? Is this what a good female protagonist looks like?
Isn't dragon age the series where you give 10 of something shiny to anyone and they'll instantly jump you with the best mo-cap sex the industry has to offer?
I guess in that respect, gender really is no barrier.
Isn't dragon age the series where you give 10 of something shiny to anyone and they'll instantly jump you with the best mo-cap sex the industry has to offer?
I guess in that respect, gender really is no barrier.
I think DA2 has gifts for Rivalry/Respect, and the romance options are just embedded in certain conversations like, "CHOOSE HEART TO FLIRT NOW."
And if you keep flirting with a romantic interest things will always work out for you, because you're the protagonist (unless you flirt with too many people, at which point you end up with a weird conversation, or if you forget to pick up some book somewhere and Isabela leaves your party forever, or if you flirt with Aveline and she's totally not interested in you).
And if we want women of all body types in games, using up one of our character slots by filling it with "sexy lady who doesn't wear a lot of clothes" isn't really helping. I think we've got enough of them.
The game has a lot of female characters of importance, most of them with distinctive looks. Condemning one of them because she's very curvy and likes to dress a certain way is overkill and sounds pretty similar to the shaming that leads to curvy women having self-image issues.
Trust me: I would never willingly shame a curvy lady - cause you know, :winky:
My thinking was more along the lines of, "She's a pirate and she likes to steal stuff, she'd probably wear something that can haul more than just her erogenous zones."
I just went and looked up some images and her outfit isn't quite as bad as I had it in my head. Though she still might want to consider cargo pants or something to hold thieving acquisitions.
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited December 2012
bayonetta is an interesting one and actually ripe for some very strange deconstructions if people want to read too much into it (consider, for example, the only females who fight for god are faceless female angels who are destroyed by orgasms - not even joking).
on the other hand, the developers pretty clearly just made bayonetta stupidly over the top because they thought it was funny - the project director even notes that they kept upping the stupid sex stuff until they collectively decided it had gone too far. its also interesting to note that her character designer was a woman.
what this does mean is that bayonetta wears its bad sexual politics on its outside - it is full of male gaze and crotch shots. however, what they dont do is do any of the slightly weird stuff with female characters where they pretend they are powerful then put them in situations where they have to be rescued, or undercut them by presenting them as emotionally weak, etc. bayonetta is unique in being, in effect, a demigod (who finishes the game by punching the (female) god into the sun by constructing the (female) queen of hell out of her own hair - the punch is measured in infinitons... obviously) and never seems to be in the slightest bit of danger. the pseudo love interest is set up as an object of mockery who she never even touches. the almost entirely male angel protagonists monologue at her and she laughs at them and then destroys them. it is also interesting that her violence is very feminised - she has ice skates, butterfly wings, summons high heels to smash things and so on. it is interesting how many girls i have talked to who managed to enjoy it despite the ostensibly terrible presentation simply because they liked the way it made them feel like being female was pretty awesome. its also worth noting that they take the conventional game structure of the forces of light versus dark and put you on the feminine, lunar side of the things.
on the other hand, i suspect virtually none of this was done that deliberately. there seems to have been a fair element of them just making the silly game they wanted to make and stuffing it full of the usual semiotic soup that japanese developers love and getting slightly lucky that they didnt run straight off the cliff of terrible sexual politics.
Look, if Dragon Age 2 isn't a game we can hold up and be like, "Ehh, close enough." Maybe we just need to burn video games to the ground and start over with Pong, Asteroids, and see if we've learned anything by the time we work our way up to being able to render characters who look like people again.
We should never be happy with "close enough" in art. We should always be pushing to make better art.
This might be a symptom of my perspective, but
I don't think how females look is the demeaning part, so much as how they behave?
The demeaning part is how they are portrayed as dependent on males.
bayonetta is an interesting one and actually ripe for some very strange deconstructions if people want to read too much into it .
on the other hand, i suspect virtually none of this was done that deliberately. there seems to have been a fair element of them just making the silly game they wanted to make and stuffing it full of the usual semiotic soup that japanese developers love and getting slightly lucky that they didn't run straight off the cliff of terrible sexual politics.
Yeah, as much as I love the game and the possible deconstructions of its art, I've no reason to think it's (potential) artistic statements are anything but a happy accident.
Yeah, as much as I love the game and the possible deconstructions of its art, I've no reason to think it's (potential) artistic statements are anything but a happy accident.
i am pretty sure i could deliver a 30 minute monologue on the sexual politics of bayonetta and pretend it is the most progressive game of all time but the whole time i would know that actually they just liked art deco and butterflies and flowers and glasses.
So, any thoughts on the campaign, possible next steps? Is this a mark of the death of these kind of attitudes or the next big reason to be a dick to a group of people? Will this have any effect at all, or is it just another brief Twitter explosion that we'll all forget in the next week?
#1ReasonToBe was awesome, and more needs to be done like that. To be perfectly honest the #1ReasonWhy taught me two things:
1) If I wanted to be a sexist douchebag, gaming is the place to be. A significant portion of the tweets I read were outright take legal action stuff and it turns out all you face by doing it is someone mentioning the incident with you being completely anonymous. There isn't a whole lot, legally, to be done about the worst on the internet at large, but #1ReasonWhy wasn't showing random anonymous internet troll hate, was it? Yeah there may be dozens of reasons why it doesn't get reported and specifically called out, but how many are legitimate excuses?
2) Apparently the gaming industry, or at least the executive level, is full of sexist douchebags. Anonymous examples of sexism only tied to a specific industry, maybe the occasional game company, sure makes non-sexists douchebags who'd like to help fix the problem really want to work in said industry/company. How are you supposed to fix the problem if you make people feel part of it just by being associated?
What would have been great, instead of #1ReasonWhy and #1ReasonToBe, is #1ReasonToBe and #1WayToMakeADifference.
This might be a symptom of my perspective, but
I don't think how females look is the demeaning part, so much as how they behave?
The demeaning part is how they are portrayed as dependent on males.
Being sexy is not demeaning. I don't think I ever said that and if I did, it was a mistake, I apologize, and I take it back. The problem is not that some female characters in games are sexy. The problem is that females in games are sexually objectified for no reason. Artificial intelligence constructs that manifest as holograms, centuries old asari Justicars, Alliance military personnel, asari archaeologists, English heiress tomb raiders, a squad of Catholic assassins, idols of Columbia with magic time-bending powers... there are two things all these characters have in common. 1) Their roles say nothing about how provocatively we would expect them to dress, and in fact often suggest that they would dress fairly conservatively/in a utilitarian fashion. 2) They are all idealized female forms wearing about as little clothing and as much makeup as you can put in a video game without making it into a porn game.
The problem with how women are portrayed in games is that it doesn't match their behavior, not that how they behave is bad. I mean, if women were just objects to be rescued or cardboard cutout characters that fellate the player's ego or something, then we would have a problem (and in fact that's where a lot of female characters are at, so we do have a problem, but it's not as bad as the other problem, which is...) but the big problem we have right now isn't that women are stupid characters (because frankly the men are stupid characters) but that the women in video games are constantly and thoughtlessly dressed up in a sexually objectifying manner solely to pander directly to the male gaze.
This might be a symptom of the problem but,
I don't think how females look is the demeaning part, so much as how they behave?
The demeaning part is how much of their portrayal is defined by their relations to males.
How characters look is definitely part of the problem. Again, Mass Effect. Well written characters, horribly designed. Why does a millenia-old mystical ascetic whose approach to criminals involve blunt trauma wear a strawberry catsuit with a huge cleavage window and gigantic heels? It doesn't make any sense for the character, but time and time again female characters get characteristics designed solely to make them visually appealing to male gaze. Look, they want a character wearing a catsuit like Miranda where they justify it because she says she uses everything she has to distract or gain or edge or whatever, alright. It's fine to have a character like that. Every character being like that, regardless of reason (no reason, in this cases)? That's something else.
Or take Samus in Other M. Now at some point in the franchise they decided that Samus needed to have a catsuit under her armor and needed to run around in a catsuit, which would be like Halo 5 featuring Master Chief deciding to wear a speedo for awhile instead of MJOLNIR, but in Other M they decided that in addition to having a vacuum-sealed suit (which looks pretty uncomfortable, seriously), she needed to have gigantic wedge platforms, which makes a lot of sense for an acrobatic, active combatant in a setting that is more or less trying to be serious.
And again, I'm okay with, say, Catwoman's design, because her alter-ego is based on being alluring. But everyone being like that all the time is a joke.
SoundsPlush's focus on the shoes is the best example. Nothing shows more overtly that female characters in games are made sexier at the expense of logical character design than sticking them in high heels. It's as ridiculous as if every male character in a video game ran around in the tightest possible jorts that outlined their junk perfectly, even if they were a space marine or a police officer or Indiana Jones.
After the sensible armors in ME1 I keep wondering what the hell got into their head in ME2. High heels, exposure to the void with nothing but tatoos and an airplane oxygen mask (Jack) and butt shots of Jacob and Miranda on every damn conversation.
It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
If you want to know what women find attractive look at Edward and Jacob from Twilight. All sex no substance. Now imagine if those guys were 98% of the male characters in games.
Sure as hell isn't the power fantasy for the player - I certainly don't want to be them. But a lot of ladies scream for these guys so it'd a pretty good analogue to the sex fantasy that most female characters are.
And if you take all the internet screaming about how Edward/Jacob are gaaaaaaaayyyyy as any indication, typical male consumers are pretty uncomfortable with them.
Well, associating whiny with gay can be your own thing there, I'm just gonna stay outta that one.
I don't mind gay characters though, I just don't get my char romantically involved, because that sort of direction holds no interest to me in the same way a straight relationship might not hold the interest of some people. It's like what's his name in ME3...uh, you know who I'm talking about, the guy who worked down in the hangar of the Normandy. I've had a gay friend complain that that was his only romance option in Mass Effect.
But what I didn't like was the dramatic personality shift from brash, sarcastic DA 1 Anders who loved to pull pranks and crack jokes, to whiny, piteous Anders who was one step away from joining PETA before I
shanked him in the side with a knife.
. I suppose you could chalk at least some of it up to Justice, but I wouldn't think that could be the entire reason. Why couldn't he DA1 Anders but also happen to be gay?
(Also don't get me started on Justice, that was just poorly handled all around.)
Sorry, wasn't trying to imply that directly- I just see a lot of complaining about his character that is non-specific (he is whiny, he is blah blah blah) and thought it was a nice jump into the post.
I think you have missed some of the nuance of Anders as a character in DA2, but that is a discussion for a DA2 thread and not this one! I was mainly using him as an example of how even remotely moving away from characters who pander to the "typical" male consumer become targets of non-specific dislike, generally stemming from a level of discomfort most don't realize is even happening.
bayonetta is an interesting one and actually ripe for some very strange deconstructions if people want to read too much into it (consider, for example, the only females who fight for god are faceless female angels who are destroyed by orgasms - not even joking).
on the other hand, the developers pretty clearly just made bayonetta stupidly over the top because they thought it was funny - the project director even notes that they kept upping the stupid sex stuff until they collectively decided it had gone too far. its also interesting to note that her character designer was a woman.
what this does mean is that bayonetta wears its bad sexual politics on its outside - it is full of male gaze and crotch shots. however, what they dont do is do any of the slightly weird stuff with female characters where they pretend they are powerful then put them in situations where they have to be rescued, or undercut them by presenting them as emotionally weak, etc. bayonetta is unique in being, in effect, a demigod (who finishes the game by punching the (female) god into the sun by constructing the (female) queen of hell out of her own hair - the punch is measured in infinitons... obviously) and never seems to be in the slightest bit of danger. the pseudo love interest is set up as an object of mockery who she never even touches. the almost entirely male angel protagonists monologue at her and she laughs at them and then destroys them. it is also interesting that her violence is very feminised - she has ice skates, butterfly wings, summons high heels to smash things and so on. it is interesting how many girls i have talked to who managed to enjoy it despite the ostensibly terrible presentation simply because they liked the way it made them feel like being female was pretty awesome. its also worth noting that they take the conventional game structure of the forces of light versus dark and put you on the feminine, lunar side of the things.
on the other hand, i suspect virtually none of this was done that deliberately. there seems to have been a fair element of them just making the silly game they wanted to make and stuffing it full of the usual semiotic soup that japanese developers love and getting slightly lucky that they didnt run straight off the cliff of terrible sexual politics.
There is not a single deliberate misspelling in this post
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It is funny that you say this, because DA2 Anders is kind of a bit of a big deal when it comes to the gay gamer community, at least from what I have seen. If we go by "canon", (i.e. male, mage Hawke) Anders is portrayed as a gay man who has feelings for Hawke. If you remember the debacle when someone went on multi-thread rants on the Bioware forums because Anders hits on his straight character, it seems that a lot of the negative feelings towards Anders have to do with the quoted post below- that the typical male consumer is uncomfortable with him.
Which is kind of deliciously ironic.
Why do you both keep insisting that everyone else's solution is "More female designers and THAT'S ALL! EVERYTHING FIXED!"
Listen pops, AC1 was back when only white people could be president. That was basically a million years ago.
I'm not? Like at all?
I disagree with the ones that say consumers won't change and so on. The stuff I quoted to be precise. We need to change it since everythings connected.
Also, do you think I'm somewhat aggressive? Sensing some resentment here which I don't really understand since we have the same opinion, I'm just going further.
I'm stupidly behind on this by now, I'm sure, but...
Having more women in games will lead to more female perspectives, which at the very least will get games caught up to the rest of society. Right now video games are more misogynistic than average media. If it's at least caught up to the average, strides toward better balance across society will hopefully impact it as well. It's seriously a boys' club that's completely shielded right now, though.
Well... Anders does have a sexuality of his own - if you're playing male Hawke he'll tell that he and Karl used to be close. Also, almost uniquely amongst Bioware romances, Anders hits on you first regardless of your Hawke's gender. So I can see why some gamers would like him and why insecure idiots would not.
But then some other stuff goes down and everybody ends up hating Anders anyway. But sexuality-wise, he's pretty OK, I think.
I really loved DA2 Anders. DA2 had awesome characters all around (some bad game design decisions, but I digress).
I played the "canon" straight Hawke. I felt genuinely weird when Anders showed interest in my Hawke and was genuinely saddend and sympathetic to his reaction when I turned him down. It was an unexpected bit of interaction, certainly an unexpected interaction in video gaming in general. The game, and its writers, surprised me and made me actually feel something genuine. Bioware made me uncomfortable, and they should be applauded for it.
And then of course I read haters' comments on the issue of flirty Anders...they also made me feel something (anger and a bit of schadenfreude in their discomfort).
And yes, I credit that, at least in part, to women being involved in the game creation.
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I mean, if the choice is to mope with Anders in Old Town or hit the bars with Isabella, or, shit, be a bro squad with Varric and Aveline, the choice is clear.
To continue with Bioware games, I'm still conflicted about Ashley's change in ME3, and EDI. Both are great characters who feel legitimate, but there's definitely some blatant demographic targeting there.
Well, associating whiny with gay can be your own thing there, I'm just gonna stay outta that one.
I don't mind gay characters though, I just don't get my char romantically involved, because that sort of direction holds no interest to me in the same way a straight relationship might not hold the interest of some people. It's like what's his name in ME3...uh, you know who I'm talking about, the guy who worked down in the hangar of the Normandy. I've had a gay friend complain that that was his only romance option in Mass Effect.
But what I didn't like was the dramatic personality shift from brash, sarcastic DA 1 Anders who loved to pull pranks and crack jokes, to whiny, piteous Anders who was one step away from joining PETA before I
(Also don't get me started on Justice, that was just poorly handled all around.)
Topic was just on DA2 so I continued it.
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All very true. Fortunately, Isabela is kinda balanced out by Aveline, who is not a stripper and doesn't dress like one. So huzzah for DA2, I guess.
Other games... yeah, no excuse.
And also Merrill!
.........
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On Isabella, I never really thought her design was much more than titillation and fan-service. They certainely did good work with the character, but her design could have stood to be a little more reasonable or measured than it was.
And I can't speak for Catherine, but Bayonetta is a very interesting display of sexy mixed with scary. It (both the game and character) take the idea of "sex as a weapon" and push it an almost comical extreme. Bayonetta's design is something that should be sexy, and is often presented as such, through her movements and motion - but at the same time the body, when looking at it in say a still image, ends up looking alien and creepy. The game's also aces and is worth playing if you have a chance.
The ESRB could add a warning for "sexism",
as the whole rating system exists to stop trash from reaching the people least likely to deign it so. (where trash is defined as anything that mucks up our nice society we've got going)
In some ways, sexism in a large project environment is a lot like sexism in the military.
In order to produce the best results, sometimes the individuals abilities are outweighed by their ability to cooperate with each other.
Back when Adventure games were the hottest thing on PCs, there were a few high profile females in the industry like Roberta Williams. Not so much now.
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I think her design was just fine given the context. While I see where you're coming from, it's good to have women of all body types and personalities in media, especially when they're fleshed out like she was.
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(someone correct me please)
Also do you recall that hilariously bad jace hall show segment about dante's inferno?
http://www.songtoday.com/bERzMBTy77c_the-jace-hall-show-katee-sackhoff-and-dante-s-inferno.html
The game has a lot of female characters of importance, most of them with distinctive looks. Condemning one of them because she's very curvy and likes to dress a certain way is overkill and sounds pretty similar to the shaming that leads to curvy women having self-image issues.
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Has anybody talked about
yet? Is this what a good female protagonist looks like?
I guess in that respect, gender really is no barrier.
And if you keep flirting with a romantic interest things will always work out for you, because you're the protagonist (unless you flirt with too many people, at which point you end up with a weird conversation, or if you forget to pick up some book somewhere and Isabela leaves your party forever, or if you flirt with Aveline and she's totally not interested in you).
Trust me: I would never willingly shame a curvy lady - cause you know, :winky:
My thinking was more along the lines of, "She's a pirate and she likes to steal stuff, she'd probably wear something that can haul more than just her erogenous zones."
I just went and looked up some images and her outfit isn't quite as bad as I had it in my head. Though she still might want to consider cargo pants or something to hold thieving acquisitions.
on the other hand, the developers pretty clearly just made bayonetta stupidly over the top because they thought it was funny - the project director even notes that they kept upping the stupid sex stuff until they collectively decided it had gone too far. its also interesting to note that her character designer was a woman.
what this does mean is that bayonetta wears its bad sexual politics on its outside - it is full of male gaze and crotch shots. however, what they dont do is do any of the slightly weird stuff with female characters where they pretend they are powerful then put them in situations where they have to be rescued, or undercut them by presenting them as emotionally weak, etc. bayonetta is unique in being, in effect, a demigod (who finishes the game by punching the (female) god into the sun by constructing the (female) queen of hell out of her own hair - the punch is measured in infinitons... obviously) and never seems to be in the slightest bit of danger. the pseudo love interest is set up as an object of mockery who she never even touches. the almost entirely male angel protagonists monologue at her and she laughs at them and then destroys them. it is also interesting that her violence is very feminised - she has ice skates, butterfly wings, summons high heels to smash things and so on. it is interesting how many girls i have talked to who managed to enjoy it despite the ostensibly terrible presentation simply because they liked the way it made them feel like being female was pretty awesome. its also worth noting that they take the conventional game structure of the forces of light versus dark and put you on the feminine, lunar side of the things.
on the other hand, i suspect virtually none of this was done that deliberately. there seems to have been a fair element of them just making the silly game they wanted to make and stuffing it full of the usual semiotic soup that japanese developers love and getting slightly lucky that they didnt run straight off the cliff of terrible sexual politics.
We should never be happy with "close enough" in art. We should always be pushing to make better art.
I don't think how females look is the demeaning part, so much as how they behave?
The demeaning part is how they are portrayed as dependent on males.
Yeah, as much as I love the game and the possible deconstructions of its art, I've no reason to think it's (potential) artistic statements are anything but a happy accident.
i am pretty sure i could deliver a 30 minute monologue on the sexual politics of bayonetta and pretend it is the most progressive game of all time but the whole time i would know that actually they just liked art deco and butterflies and flowers and glasses.
#1ReasonToBe was awesome, and more needs to be done like that. To be perfectly honest the #1ReasonWhy taught me two things:
1) If I wanted to be a sexist douchebag, gaming is the place to be. A significant portion of the tweets I read were outright take legal action stuff and it turns out all you face by doing it is someone mentioning the incident with you being completely anonymous. There isn't a whole lot, legally, to be done about the worst on the internet at large, but #1ReasonWhy wasn't showing random anonymous internet troll hate, was it? Yeah there may be dozens of reasons why it doesn't get reported and specifically called out, but how many are legitimate excuses?
2) Apparently the gaming industry, or at least the executive level, is full of sexist douchebags. Anonymous examples of sexism only tied to a specific industry, maybe the occasional game company, sure makes non-sexists douchebags who'd like to help fix the problem really want to work in said industry/company. How are you supposed to fix the problem if you make people feel part of it just by being associated?
What would have been great, instead of #1ReasonWhy and #1ReasonToBe, is #1ReasonToBe and #1WayToMakeADifference.
The problem with how women are portrayed in games is that it doesn't match their behavior, not that how they behave is bad. I mean, if women were just objects to be rescued or cardboard cutout characters that fellate the player's ego or something, then we would have a problem (and in fact that's where a lot of female characters are at, so we do have a problem, but it's not as bad as the other problem, which is...) but the big problem we have right now isn't that women are stupid characters (because frankly the men are stupid characters) but that the women in video games are constantly and thoughtlessly dressed up in a sexually objectifying manner solely to pander directly to the male gaze.
How characters look is definitely part of the problem. Again, Mass Effect. Well written characters, horribly designed. Why does a millenia-old mystical ascetic whose approach to criminals involve blunt trauma wear a strawberry catsuit with a huge cleavage window and gigantic heels? It doesn't make any sense for the character, but time and time again female characters get characteristics designed solely to make them visually appealing to male gaze. Look, they want a character wearing a catsuit like Miranda where they justify it because she says she uses everything she has to distract or gain or edge or whatever, alright. It's fine to have a character like that. Every character being like that, regardless of reason (no reason, in this cases)? That's something else.
Or take Samus in Other M. Now at some point in the franchise they decided that Samus needed to have a catsuit under her armor and needed to run around in a catsuit, which would be like Halo 5 featuring Master Chief deciding to wear a speedo for awhile instead of MJOLNIR, but in Other M they decided that in addition to having a vacuum-sealed suit (which looks pretty uncomfortable, seriously), she needed to have gigantic wedge platforms, which makes a lot of sense for an acrobatic, active combatant in a setting that is more or less trying to be serious.
And again, I'm okay with, say, Catwoman's design, because her alter-ego is based on being alluring. But everyone being like that all the time is a joke.
Sorry, wasn't trying to imply that directly- I just see a lot of complaining about his character that is non-specific (he is whiny, he is blah blah blah) and thought it was a nice jump into the post.
I think you have missed some of the nuance of Anders as a character in DA2, but that is a discussion for a DA2 thread and not this one! I was mainly using him as an example of how even remotely moving away from characters who pander to the "typical" male consumer become targets of non-specific dislike, generally stemming from a level of discomfort most don't realize is even happening.
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