Actually, no matter where or how that statue showed up I would be angry about it. Taken completely out of context, the thing is still horrificly misogynystic. It's a mutilated female torso that retains gravity defying perfect tits.
Ah internet, you have not disappointed me! And in record time, no less!
Here's the thing: I really don't think it's possible to make progress on this focusing on just single isolated incidents devoid of context. In the US specifically, people have the right to make signs and say "WOMEN ARE JUST PIECES OF MEAT", and there are people that will fight tooth and nail to make sure that this individual be allowed to say it. The individual instances of the problem devoid of context can be argued away as unimportant, or okay because of x, y, z or just one thing relax, or freedom of speech. Arguing the problem in the context of one incident is a) more difficult, and b) ignoring the larger problem.
It's the big picture that's important. Pretty much everybody is doing this to some extent in the games industry. A few titles are held up as the exception (over and over with the same titles), and THAT is where the problem lies- It's not just one little instance that's the real problem, it's the fact that the majority of people are doing little things to make it worse, or to perpetuate the problem.
I really believe that the solution for this problem isn't for one publisher to realize the error of their ways (though in this case it'd be fantastic, don't get me wrong)- the solution is for the industry as a whole to realize that they are contributing to something that is causing harm and to stop doing it.
Well sure, but the industry as a whole is made up of a multitude of developers, the idea is that each developer you get on board with this slowly DOES impact the industry as a whole.
It has to be done at a level you can actually influence, one employee at a time within a company, and one company at a time within that industry, until the overall mindset eventually changes.
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
"physical sex has nothing to do with what you want"
You used quotation marks but I don't see where anyone actually said this.
Sorry if the quotation marks added some confusion. It wasn't intended as a direct quote from someone's post (or I would have simply used quote tags). I do believe that there are people arguing for that viewpoint, though, even on this page. Take a look at what fearsomepirate said:
in the case of fighting games (which are usually the primo example of too many ridiculous boobs), you're talking about a game whose theme is kicking your enemies into unconsciousness in a quest for glory. That's going to appeal more to men than to women
Note the word usage here -- it says things like "appeal more". It doesn't say "men will like this and women won't" or anything of the sort. But then a lot of people took issue with this passage specifically! Maybe fearsomepirate has said some other things that are clearly wrong or hard to defend (I'm not interested in any of that), but when this passage is quoted and interpreted like this:
This? This cute idea that genitalia decides what you like? ... It's bullshit.
And then lots of people click Agree to this, then I start to feel like discussion isn't happening. In this passage, fearsomepirate simply suggested that physical sex was an influence in making things appeal more (or less, by inference). His statement was then recharacterized as being "physical sex decides what you like," which is not a correct reading. Scanning down the rest of this page, the best explanation for this would be that some people have fallen into the unfortunate trap of picking a viewpoint that's as far away from the evil one as is possible, and any suggestion that pushes things into the middle area gets rebranded as the evil extreme and blasted.
Why do this? We can acknowledge facts and data while still holding to enlightened moral and behavioral codes. We can recognize the physical and chemical differences between men and women while still endeavoring to make every activity as welcoming as possible to interested parties of both sexes. We can recognize common shared traits in "average" men/women without expecting that every man/woman will represent those traits.
This is the big one. I think that, in our efforts to be compassionate and understanding (laudable) people may go too far in that direction and start letting outliers dictate whole categories. It is important to recognize and respect trans people, but the existence of them in relatively small numbers (and gay people in larger numbers) does not invalidate all attempts to draw conclusions about the broad group of straight men whose biology matches their conception of their sex/gender.
So, I know this is a page back, but it touches on some important stuff (both @spacekungfuman and @The Sauce) so I thought I would respond.
Very few people think "nurture" is the literal, 100% winner in the "nature vs. nurture" debate. That is, almost nobody thinks that having a certain physical body has literally zero impact on the sorts of things you like. In fact, it would be impossible for the answer to be 100% nurture, because even if we all agree that society pushes men to like certain things and women to like certain other things, we would need to explain how society picks out who is male and who is female, and the answer to that, while not being 100% biologically based, is obviously going to be significantly impacted by biology. So I think it's a pretty bankrupt idea that your genitalia literally do not decide what you like. Your genitalia, and the rest of your body, decide all sorts of things (or, more accurately, they help decide - nothing happens in a vacuum).
But you have to ask yourself when this sort of thing is relevant. Why does it matter if men, on average, enjoy one kind of thing more than women, or if women on average enjoy some other kind of thing more? What do you want to do with this information?
This sub-discussion started when @fearsomepirate said that men have some sort of biological need to play misogynistic video games. That's obviously wrong. On the scale of human development, video games basically don't exist. We don't need to play any kind of video game. So we don't need to make any kind of video game. And we sure as flippity fuck don't need special collector's edition statues.
In fact, we don't need to do anything! The world is our oyster. It's up to us what kind of entertainment we create and consume. Even if we grant the premise that dudes like some stuff and ladies like some other stuff, there's no law that says "and therefore you must make that stuff." Maybe it's wrong to make that stuff. Maybe men evolved to fucking love rape fantasies (carefully cloaked, perhaps, to make it seem like women actually want it) and maybe that stuff would sell like crackerjacks (and in fact it does, as long as it's not overt enough) but if it turns out that rape fantasies, plus a whole wonderful cocktail of other stuff, creates rape culture and leads to horrific results, like women being afraid to report a sexual assault out of fear of being called a liar or castigated by society, then it turns out that we need to stop creating this culture. Men are just going to have to go without the rape fantasies they love so much. They can deal with it. If you take away our violent video games nothing bad is going to happen.
So just from the notion that men and women are predisposed to like something more, we cannot derive the fact that it's okay to pander to these unthinking desires. Some desires are wrong to indulge because they have bad results. This is why we make heroin illegal, it's why you can't drink alcohol until you're at an age where it won't fuck up your brain, and it's why people shouldn't sell their zombie video game with a dismembered oversexualized female torso (which is not to say the last thing should be illegal - what the law should be is a different question - I'm just talking about what is morally right or wrong to do).
I think that pretty much puts the whole issue to bed. But skfm said another thing that's worth responding to. I'll quote it again:
I think that, in our efforts to be compassionate and understanding (laudable) people may go too far in that direction and start letting outliers dictate whole categories. It is important to recognize and respect trans people, but the existence of them in relatively small numbers (and gay people in larger numbers) does not invalidate all attempts to draw conclusions about the broad group of straight men whose biology matches their conception of their sex/gender.
I like to think I'm super compassionate and understanding. Like, "parody of a bleeding heart liberal" compassionate. I care about everyone and everything, humans and animals, rich and poor, old and young, straight and gay, and everything. I think everybody should be nice to everyone, I think we all have our own struggles, I think life is hard enough without humans adding conflict to it, I think we should all be pacifists and socialists and share the wealth and hold hands and sign Kumbaya and be vegans. I'm not being ironic. I believe this stuff. This is the kind of person I like to think of myself as.
But I also like to think of myself as a realist. I know that this sort of thing is not going to happen. People are not going to get along. Everybody is not going to become a pacifist or a vegan. People think that their religion tells them to kill sometimes, or that the land belongs to them, or that it's okay to fight to protect their property, and they like bacon and BBQ wings. So when it comes to putting my beliefs into practice and talking about actual issues, I'm not the pie in the sky "let's all be friends" kind of person that I like to think I actually am. Instead, I focus on issues that I think are actually problematic and potentially solvable. I look at history and try to think about why bad things happen and what we can do to stop them. I look at people I admire, like Martin Luther King Jr. (who I've been thinking a lot about because his holiday was a week ago), and think about what they thought about and what they cared about and what they did.
And when I do this, I come to the conclusion that certain things are right. Specifically, focusing on the outliers is right. I don't know what you mean, skfm, when you say we shouldn't let trans people dictate whole categories, but here's a category that I think trans people should partially dictate - the category of people who face unrelenting violence, massive misunderstanding, constant oppression, marginalization, and so on. Now, is it true that only trans people face this sort of thing? Well, no. Obviously not. In addition to the people I'd add into the group (women, homosexuals, African Americans, homeless people, mentally ill people, you name it...), "normal" people face these issues too. Life shits on everyone, straight Christian white guys included. Like I said at the outset, I care about everyone. But like I also said, I'm a realist, and I realize that some people have to end up marginalized. We can't make everyone happy. We can't just say "let's all get along." We can't just have a perfect society.
So who should we let dictate the categories of "oppressed," "in need of assistance," "these people get special treatment," etc? Should it be the white guys for whom things occasionally go bad, as they so often go bad for all of us in life? I've reached the conclusion that the answer is "no" (and the conclusion is a little regrettable because I'm a white dude). But it just seems like that if you look at human history, at social movements in the past and at h ow things have gone, straight white dudes are not the best group to focus on when we have these discussions. In this particular discussion I think it's hilarious that you think we're drawing categories based on too narrow of a group because women are actually the majority, but in the context of other discussions, I think we should focus on minorities.
Why? Well, if you have to ask that question I think we've reached a point where we disagree not about ideology but about the facts of the matter. I don't have many issues with conservatism as a philosophy. I could see myself as a conservative in certain situations and feel a lot more respect for it as an ideology than a lot of my colleagues do (I work in academia). But modern day Western society is really not the place for conservatism, I think, because shit's fucked up for people and it isn't going to get unfucked if people like you turn every conversation into "but let's talk about white dudes, let's focus on the majority, let's not lose sight of the numbers." Because we've tried that before and it's shit for everyone. It's what got us slavery and it's what got us Jim Crow and it's what gets us awful things right now. I just heard about two of my colleagues, fellow graduate students, who in separate issues were approached by the police because people reported that they were suspicious. One of them was driving around campus (the campus where he works, of course) and the other was walking around the apartment complex where he lives.
Now, everyone faces difficulty, oppression, blah blah blah etc (remember earlier in my post). But why did these two guys have to put up with this shit from the cops? Well, they're black. Go figure. It's 2013 and walking while black/driving while black are egregious enough crimes to get people to narc on you to the police.
This is, of course, not an isolated instance - it happens constantly and forever to people of marginalized groups all throughout our society. And looking at the sum total of all this shit, it just seems to me like the best way to fix it is not to come into a thread like this and say "I think we've lost sight of the white men." It's okay to lose sight of them. I know shit happens to them too, but this isn't a perfect world where we can fix everything. We need to be realistic and we need to pick our battles and I think the battle to pick here is about feminism and misogyny in the industry and the proper way to pick the battle is not to come into this thread and say "well I think that biologically men are primed to enjoy something so really this thread doesn't need to be 40+ pages." If you honestly think the thread doesn't need to be 40+ pages, for the same reason you think the Hitman trailer was fine, then you shouldn't be helping us bump it up to 42 pages.
But I think if you take an honest look at the problems society has faced in the past and the way these things were solved, the solution was never people like you coming in and reminding everyone not to lose sight of what straight white men care about.
TychoCelchuuu on
+19
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
0
El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
My basic point is that these realities shape our society and behavior, and you while you can identify and even change bad things that happen, you will never successfully create a society that demands these realities be defied and ignored. We mostly accept reality in the realm of sports, where no one seriously proposes erasing the achievements of female Olympians from the record books, or proposes a national championship pitting the WNBA and NBA champs against each other.
The thing is that all this talk is pretty much irrelevant. As is tastydonuts' look at the economic side of things (apologies to you both).
I am willing to concede that the marketing department thinks that tossing some scantily clad, barbie-like women into their games that add nothing except to get rescued, have sex or get killed will boost their sales in their target demographic of males between the years of 13-45. As such, since they want to make money, they think that this is a good long term sustainable solution.
The problem is that this causes documented harm among both the males and females who play the game, or see it played.
A very viable solution to this problem is for the consumers to apply pressure to the companies, because they do not like the fact that these practices are causing harm. This solution to this problem involves making the pressure of NOT doing this to outweigh the pressure of doing this.
That's one good reason to be on a message board debating this, and one reason why people really should be more onboard with it (in my opinion, anyway). If you are willing to do research and (with sufficient evidence) be convinced that there is harm being caused, then you will hopefully be willing to be part of the force pushing against this. To educate people and convince them to see for themselves. To add more pressure.
There will always be a market for misogyny, people who are willing to put up with it or who like and actively support it. Hopefully one day enough people will decide that they really don't support it, and are willing to speak with their wallets. And things like this statue are a great place to start showing people that this stuff is all around us, and that they have the ability to impact whether this problem continues to be endemic, or whether it maybe starts slowly decreasing.
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
Maybe they shouldn't have been sexist then???
"I'm sorry you got mad" is not a really great apology.
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
Fuck yes they take a second hit. They take a second hit for what they did. Do you even understand what an apology is? It's not this weird ritual you carry out where you minimize the amount of people you make mad and score as many PR points as you can. An apology is realizing that you have fucked up and admitting that you fucked up. If they do not apologize for the sexism then tjeu have not apologized for the wrong. Can they apologize for sexism without taking a hit for being sexist? Obviously not! Because they were sexist! The notion that you should be able to apologize for something awful you've done without admitting that you did that awful thing is ridiculous. At that point you're not apologizing, you're pretending to apologize. Which is what they did.
TychoCelchuuu on
+2
MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
Change is such a frustratingly slow thing. As an activist, especially one filled with more vim and vigor than I have, I can see how it must be infuriating that blatant "wrongs" aren't corrected on the spot.
Discussion, and a slow movement of the general population is what gets things done. Unfortunately, you have to deal with individuals like me. I am 100% on board, and I will definitely vote with my wallet by not picking up games from a developer that blatantly goes over the line. However, if you ask me to write letters, send mail, spread the word, do any other of the form of activism, I'm fairly useless. I simply am too caught up with my own life to be able to do things like that. I know that it makes me a part of the problem, and, with two girls, that problem will definitely rear its ugly face right in front of me some 10 years down the road. The small part that I can do is pretty infinitesimal, I mean I'm pretty sure that the developers are totally not going to care about my $60...in fact they would have never gotten it anyway, the only non-indie titles I've bought at full price in the past couple of years are Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. I am still waiting for Kingdom of Amalur and Dishonored to drop in price before I even CONSIDER buying them, even though I want to play both games SO BAD. Still, you more energetic guys are asking more of me than I can do. I will discuss, I will spread the word (all of my Facebook friends know my stance on misogyny and how fiercely I oppose it...all 30 of 'em), but day-to-day I'm too busy juggling my duties as an auditor, father, and husband to devote that much more time.
With that said, I am a man of infinite patience, I know these things will change. Women are recognized more and more as a workforce, as a political force, and as equals to men, things move slowly, yet they are moving. Discussions like this I am always happy to be a part of, even though I know that I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and have normal and respectable female avatars in all future releases. I know that women are still going to be belittled on the internet, but you know what I've noticed? I play Team Fortress 2 a lot when I need to blow off steam, I do not use the mic (due to being able to type very fast) but I do interact with other players quite a bit and I have noticed a lot more women playing that game with me. It has been months since I heard any comment along the lines of "hay, you gurl, show us ur boobz" whenever females are present. It is a darn good thing! It is moving and I see progress. You will always have the naysayers because people are fed up with the "political correctness" because it has been present for so long and with diversity comes a lot of new ways of offending a lot of new people. People generally don't like monitoring their thoughts, and when forced to do so, are reluctant and sometimes hostile. These things will blow over in time, when lack of misogynystic images are going to be the new normal. I guarantee nobody is going to come back from that time and say "man, I sure do miss gravity defying super-tits!"
TL;DR times a-changing, don't lose heart, and don't let naysayers shape your vision of the future.
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
+1
fearsomepirateI ate a pickle once.Registered Userregular
You guys keep speaking as though companies like Zynga, Rovio, and PopCap aren't some of the biggest games companies around. While you're complaining about games that glorify idealized female sexiness, don't make the mistake of repeating the objective falsehood that such games represent the majority or even the mainstream of the game industry. They simply don't. Dead Island is, compared to the actual size of the game market, a niche title. And buyers of Expanded Ultra Premium Collector's Editions are a tiny niche within that niche.
As roughly half of all gamers are women, it should not surprise us that the vast majority of games have nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive.
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood...nobody.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
@MordaRazgrom I think your post is a great example of why @spacekungfuman is wrong to come into this thread and say "ah, but do you really need 40 pages about this?" It's threads like this that get people thinking about these sorts of issues and that inform them about what is going on. People as lazy as you can learn to boycott Dead Island, people slightly less lazy than you can maybe write a letter, etc. But this kind of discussion is important because otherwise it just slides under the radar, nobody gives a shit, and it's awful forever.
Everyone should read The Sauce's post. People have a hard time understanding what I said because when you talk about populations, truths can only be statistical, distributional truths. Men are taller than women...mostly. It doesn't mean 6' tall women are evil freaks. Or 5'4" men are cursed by God. This statistical reality has secondary and tertiary effects throughout our society. It's all well and good to think about those effects and the degree to which we can consciously shape them. But when you have a reality, it's going to have social and economic effects. Because that's what reality does.
My basic point is that these realities shape our society and behavior, and you while you can identify and even change bad things that happen, you will never successfully create a society that demands these realities be defied and ignored. We mostly accept reality in the realm of sports, where no one seriously proposes erasing the achievements of female Olympians from the record books, or proposes a national championship pitting the WNBA and NBA champs against each other.
Sorry, is your argument no longer that some games, e.g. fighting games, primally and fundamentally appeal to men more than women 'just as' romance novels appeal to women more than men, therefore it's okay for them to have a lot of oversexualized and inane female character design etc. and disapproving of this is "morally censuring male sexuality"? Because I thought that's what people have been arguing about, not overbroad statements about the relatively weak indicators of biological determinism measured by mass population.
I get what you're saying, but I also think that we have made huge strides in the industry. The trend towards sandbox games with a weaker narrative focus has been beneficial in that it has created a lot more parity in character choice (you can be a man or woman in almost all sandbox RPGs now), and there are even narrative based games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age allowing this choice. I would argue that is is actually a return to form more than anything (older games almost always allowed the choice, although they might have had differences between male and female character's stats and class choices). There are also plenty of strong, nonsexualized female NPCs that you can point to in games like Kreia, Ravel, Fall-From-Grace, and Jade from beyond good and evil.
Fall-From-Grace? The character who's literally a succubus? Just because her boobs aren't hanging out doesn't mean that sexuality isn't a major component of her character. And it's pretty telling that half those characters are always mentioned, without fail, every time someone wants to make a list of strong female video game characters who aren't sexualized; ideally, the list of reasonably-presented female characters would be long enough that Jade wouldn't show up on every single iteration of the list.
@MordaRazgrom I think your post is a great example of why @spacekungfuman is wrong to come into this thread and say "ah, but do you really need 40 pages about this?" It's threads like this that get people thinking about these sorts of issues and that inform them about what is going on. People as lazy as you can learn to boycott Dead Island, people slightly less lazy than you can maybe write a letter, etc. But this kind of discussion is important because otherwise it just slides under the radar, nobody gives a shit, and it's awful forever.
hey, we lazy people prefer the term "over-engaged" :P
I am 100% on board with having long drawn-out discussions. Hear the arguments from both sides, throw a few insults left and right, at least you know that you will all look at the title a little differently, and maybe notice things further on down the road. Discussions are what drive social change and, in my opinion, people are free to roll their eyes at people who have values and passions different from their own, but they should never try to shut a discussion down...that's called censorship. I come from a country that was REALLY big into censorship, as a descendant of multiple "unpeople" I can tell you censorship is NOT an acceptable course of action, regardless of whether it comes from government, religion, peers, superiors or subordinates. I think we don't always recognize all the forms that censorship can take. By far the most toxic is peer censorship, because neither we nor, oftentimes, they recognize it as a form of censorship. Maybe they don't realize that it is what they are trying to do. My advice is that if you see a topic that makes you think "jeez, why are they wasting so much precious internet infrastructure on this stupid thing" just don't go into the topic, don't waste your own precious time...I'm sure the internet will survive. Compared to cats, furries, hate-groups, there are PLENTY of other wasted internet infrastructure spots that take up a lot more space than the topic of statue-boobs.
Edit: no offense to cat-lovers, furries, or haters...well maybe to the haters :P
MordaRazgrom on
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
You guys keep speaking as though companies like Zynga, Rovio, and PopCap aren't some of the biggest games companies around. While you're complaining about games that glorify idealized female sexiness, don't make the mistake of repeating the objective falsehood that such games represent the majority or even the mainstream of the game industry. They simply don't. Dead Island is, compared to the actual size of the game market, a niche title. And buyers of Expanded Ultra Premium Collector's Editions are a tiny niche within that niche.
As roughly half of all gamers are women, it should not surprise us that the vast majority of games have nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive.
Dead Island, the game, also has nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive at its core. And yet, the statue exists.
And really, if Zynga saw a market for a game full of hypersexed women, they wouldn't hesitate for one second to rip one off create such a game.
You guys keep speaking as though companies like Zynga, Rovio, and PopCap aren't some of the biggest games companies around. While you're complaining about games that glorify idealized female sexiness, don't make the mistake of repeating the objective falsehood that such games represent the majority or even the mainstream of the game industry. They simply don't. Dead Island is, compared to the actual size of the game market, a niche title. And buyers of Expanded Ultra Premium Collector's Editions are a tiny niche within that niche.
As roughly half of all gamers are women, it should not surprise us that the vast majority of games have nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive.
1) if it makes you feel better, we can say that "the majority of the games that deal with female characters do it wrong", just so we can ignore games like farmville or plants versus zombies, since they are not relevant to this issue, having no female characters to mess up.
e- Unless you are arguing that only men get to have games where female characters exist...
2) The point is that the misogyny/sexism in games has a very real harmful effect on both males and females. In that context, why does it matter what audience the game is targetted at?
El Skid on
+1
MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
You guys keep speaking as though companies like Zynga, Rovio, and PopCap aren't some of the biggest games companies around. While you're complaining about games that glorify idealized female sexiness, don't make the mistake of repeating the objective falsehood that such games represent the majority or even the mainstream of the game industry. They simply don't. Dead Island is, compared to the actual size of the game market, a niche title. And buyers of Expanded Ultra Premium Collector's Editions are a tiny niche within that niche.
As roughly half of all gamers are women, it should not surprise us that the vast majority of games have nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive.
Dead Island, the game, also has nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive at its core. And yet, the statue exists.
And really, if Zynga saw a market for a game full of hypersexed women, they wouldn't hesitate for one second to rip one off create such a game.
Curse you for putting FarmVille: Nevada Edition into my head
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
0
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
Fuck yes they take a second hit. They take a second hit for what they did. Do you even understand what an apology is? It's not this weird ritual you carry out where you minimize the amount of people you make mad and score as many PR points as you can. An apology is realizing that you have fucked up and admitting that you fucked up. If they do not apologize for the sexism then tjeu have not apologized for the wrong. Can they apologize for sexism without taking a hit for being sexist? Obviously not! Because they were sexist! The notion that you should be able to apologize for something awful you've done without admitting that you did that awful thing is ridiculous. At that point you're not apologizing, you're pretending to apologize. Which is what they did.
This is a business. Their goal is to make as much money as possible by selling as many copies of this game as they can. The apology that they gave is perhaps the strongest that they can do without compromising that goal. To ask them to compromise the very purpose of their business by apologizing in a manner that would satisfy you strikes me as manifestly unreasonable.
On your earlier post, I thought that it was clear that I was saying that we can generalize about "men" despite there being people who fall into that category who are outliers.
W/R/T your point about whose concerns ought to drive change, it seems that you are coming to the same conclusion that MLK jr. did:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a `more convenient season.'
It's a great quote and makes an interesting point, but the way of the world is generally not to move in great leaps. Effecting change in the gaming industry in a manner that displeases the straight male gamer seems like a fools errand to me, for the same reason that a company would never apologize in a way that hurts them more. The best approach is to work within the system, by doing things like boycotting this game and telling the publisher why you did so. Of equal importance, you should buy games that get it right, and tell the publisher that their positive portrayal of women is part of why you bought their game.
0
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I get what you're saying, but I also think that we have made huge strides in the industry. The trend towards sandbox games with a weaker narrative focus has been beneficial in that it has created a lot more parity in character choice (you can be a man or woman in almost all sandbox RPGs now), and there are even narrative based games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age allowing this choice. I would argue that is is actually a return to form more than anything (older games almost always allowed the choice, although they might have had differences between male and female character's stats and class choices). There are also plenty of strong, nonsexualized female NPCs that you can point to in games like Kreia, Ravel, Fall-From-Grace, and Jade from beyond good and evil.
Fall-From-Grace? The character who's literally a succubus? Just because her boobs aren't hanging out doesn't mean that sexuality isn't a major component of her character. And it's pretty telling that half those characters are always mentioned, without fail, every time someone wants to make a list of strong female video game characters who aren't sexualized; ideally, the list of reasonably-presented female characters would be long enough that Jade wouldn't show up on every single iteration of the list.
I would argue that a succubus who goes that far against type is hardly defined by her sexuality. If anything, she is defined by hey physical chastity. But I agree that the list is small. I can think of others, but not nearly as many as I can think of strong male characters. But Kreia happens to be one of the greatest characters in all of gaming, so that helps. . .
0
MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
Edmund McMillen has all my money because I sincerely support the fact that his games are totally devoid of misogyny. They have female characters, but they are treated right, they are never weak or sexualized, they are free to be bad or good, villains or heroes. Equal treatment, without putting too much emphasis on one sex or the other will always put a smile on my face!
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Actually, no matter where or how that statue showed up I would be angry about it. Taken completely out of context, the thing is still horrificly misogynystic. It's a mutilated female torso that retains gravity defying perfect tits.
Ah internet, you have not disappointed me! And in record time, no less!
Here's the thing: I really don't think it's possible to make progress on this focusing on just single isolated incidents devoid of context. In the US specifically, people have the right to make signs and say "WOMEN ARE JUST PIECES OF MEAT", and there are people that will fight tooth and nail to make sure that this individual be allowed to say it. The individual instances of the problem devoid of context can be argued away as unimportant, or okay because of x, y, z or just one thing relax, or freedom of speech. Arguing the problem in the context of one incident is a) more difficult, and b) ignoring the larger problem.
It's the big picture that's important. Pretty much everybody is doing this to some extent in the games industry. A few titles are held up as the exception (over and over with the same titles), and THAT is where the problem lies- It's not just one little instance that's the real problem, it's the fact that the majority of people are doing little things to make it worse, or to perpetuate the problem.
I really believe that the solution for this problem isn't for one publisher to realize the error of their ways (though in this case it'd be fantastic, don't get me wrong)- the solution is for the industry as a whole to realize that they are contributing to something that is causing harm and to stop doing it.
I don't see how what I said is disagreeing with you at all here but how about you start by telling me an instance where this statue would be appropriate.
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
No, it was "Company apologizes to angry fans but does the stuff they're apologizing for anyway". I don't know why you're so hung up on the wording of the thing; it's the failure to act after it that's the problem.
0
fearsomepirateI ate a pickle once.Registered Userregular
Sorry, is your argument no longer that some games, e.g. fighting games, primally and fundamentally appeal to men more than women 'just as' romance novels appeal to women more than men, therefore it's okay for them to have a lot of oversexualized and inane female character design etc. and disapproving of this is "morally censuring male sexuality"? Because I thought that's what people have been arguing about, not overbroad statements about the relatively weak indicators of biological determinism measured by mass population.
My argument is that a lot of these criticisms are grounded in moral censure of the male sex in general. I'm not arguing that there's no reason to criticize it at all. I proffered my own criticism a few pages back, in fact. But I did it without condemning men for not being the same as women, and I think that's something people need to avoid.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
I also believe you can learn a lot about men and women by observing what they actually do.
And by the way, women's entertainment can be harmful. If you think those romcoms can't be harmful, you've never been in a relationship with a woman who literally expected everything to work like a Gere/Roberts movie.
fearsomepirate on
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood...nobody.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
0
MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
Expecting life to pan out like a Hollywood movie (ANY Hollywood movie) is a failure to properly mature on part of the individual, not the movie or genre.
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
since discussing it on a forum specifically designed around game discussion is apparently pointless. That's not very helpful.
Nope.
I just don't see this as something that really is deserving of a 40+ page discussion here
Then you clearly haven't actually read much of it at all. People have popped in, repeatedly, to claim it isn't sexist, that it's an important part of their culture, that women don't play games like this.
It is this long because people like you can't be bothered to read the last few pages.
since discussing it on a forum specifically designed around game discussion is apparently pointless. That's not very helpful.
Nope.
I just don't see this as something that really is deserving of a 40+ page discussion here
Then you clearly haven't actually read much of it at all. People have popped in, repeatedly, to claim it isn't sexist, that it's an important part of their culture, that women don't play games like this.
It is this long because people like you can't be bothered to read the last few pages.
Still waiting on that example.
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
Yes our outrage at blatant sexism by a tit statue, is totally about male censure, and we aren't discussing harmful female media because shockingly it has nothing to do with a tit statue being sold with a sub par barely expansion of a surprise b hit.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
This is a business. Their goal is to make as much money as possible by selling as many copies of this game as they can. The apology that they gave is perhaps the strongest that they can do without compromising that goal. To ask them to compromise the very purpose of their business by apologizing in a manner that would satisfy you strikes me as manifestly unreasonable.
Then they can suck up the bad press. Plenty of businesses manage to behave better than this. This one doesn't get a pass for both being sexist AND failing to plan better. Which means they can either eat the cost of of the sexist statues or the cost of being the company known for selling sexist statues.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
Where are the games that objectify men? Men are hardly sexualized at all in any games, let alone sexually objectified the way that women are in far too many games to even name. The sword won't cut both ways if there's nothing on the other side to cut.
Frankly, it's either irrelevant or disingenuous to try to switch the topic over to "men's fantasies" versus "women's fantasies" instead of keeping the focus on the topic at hand (sexual objectification in games marketing, specifically That Fucking Statue). Asking why women tend to play games that do X and men tend to play games that do Y might make for an interesting discussion, but it'd be a different topic entirely.
since discussing it on a forum specifically designed around game discussion is apparently pointless. That's not very helpful.
Nope.
I just don't see this as something that really is deserving of a 40+ page discussion here
Then you clearly haven't actually read much of it at all. People have popped in, repeatedly, to claim it isn't sexist, that it's an important part of their culture, that women don't play games like this.
It is this long because people like you can't be bothered to read the last few pages.
Still waiting on that example.
You're trying to read something in to my posts that isn there. I never called posting on the internet pointless, nor do i think it is irrelevant. You seem to believe I think that I do and it's simply not the case.
If you think making internet posts is a major deal I'm not stopping you. But the list of things I would consider a significant action against something like this starts well above posting on a forum. However that list also isn't the topic of this thread.
And that people would want something extremely sexist and in poor taste does not suddenly make it ok tasty. People purchase all kinds of things that are wrong, like Adam Sandler movies, doesn't mean we can't shake our heads and say they should know better.
Where in my post did I say that it was okay? Nowhere.
The fact of the matter is that people have preordered this item which is of questionable taste. As a result changing the preorder package that is being offered around isn't that simple, and I haven't found an official statement saying that they're going to change the product for that market. That's all.
It would be hella easy, again the game comes out in april, and the Dead Island dev had a better collectors edition for the americas. You just send a message saying "yeah this was a bad idea, do you want to be upgraded to this superior not so fucking retarded edition for free?"
I mean a real developer wouldn't have that issue, but having played Dead Island, lazy is being kind to the people behind Deep Silver.
I think your outrage is clouding your reasoning here because it really isn't not that easy to just make changes. Free of any judgement toward them, or the people that would want that product, there is the matter of money, contracts, production.//
Some of the people who are upset about the torso weren't going to buy either version, so their opinion from a business perspective is largely moot.
Some of the people who didn't care about/think it's okay/whatever also weren't going to buy either version, so again their opinion from a business perspective is largely moot.
If they were to recall or change it how many people who have already bought it expecting to—for whatever reason—get the torso in it now cancel their preorder? That's a real consideration from a business perspective. There are some people (we don't have the numbers for how many preorders have been made, or how many torsos were produced by now) who do want this for whatever reason, and have paid out money for it.
At the end of the day, they are (and have) lost money on this. And from a strictly business perspective would probably stand to lose more on changing the preorder. I mean seriously,
if they were to recall or change it how many people would now buy the collector's edition product that wouldn't have before? Not many.
A company was paid to mass produce these, and just like there's a landfill full of unsold Atari ET games, out there, there's probably going to be a large plot of mangled torsos with breasts mysteriously untouched.
Tough shit, they should have had the basic fucking decency and intelligence to not make it in the first place.
And, again, pre-ordered collector's sets like these change all the dang time, even up to the last minute.
Eh, I can only hope that you meet someone as uncompromisingly "forgiving" as you after you've done something to offend someone.
It's incredibly naive to somehow conclude that because pre-orders can change at the last minute that these changes are easy to make. That's is all that I am saying. I mean no disrespect, but if you would like to do another lap on this you'll be doing it by yourself.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
0
El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
Sorry, is your argument no longer that some games, e.g. fighting games, primally and fundamentally appeal to men more than women 'just as' romance novels appeal to women more than men, therefore it's okay for them to have a lot of oversexualized and inane female character design etc. and disapproving of this is "morally censuring male sexuality"? Because I thought that's what people have been arguing about, not overbroad statements about the relatively weak indicators of biological determinism measured by mass population.
My argument is that a lot of these criticisms are grounded in moral censure of the male sex in general. I'm not arguing that there's no reason to criticize it at all. I proffered my own criticism a few pages back, in fact. But I did it without condemning men for not being the same as women, and I think that's something people need to avoid.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
I also believe you can learn a lot about men and women by observing what they actually do.
And by the way, women's entertainment can be harmful. If you think those romcoms can't be harmful, you've never been in a relationship with a woman who literally expected everything to work like a Gere/Roberts movie.
Why are you bringing morality into this, at all? The characterization of women as sex objects is hurtful, not immoral. In 20 years if the gaming industry has had a massive shift and games have a broad depiction of females ranging from strong to weak, thin to fat, smart to stupid, then what you are saying is totally true- it's okay to have a few women who are air-headed bimbos with impossibly huge breasts who exist as nothing except sex objects. At that point it's not all that damaging, because men and women (and boys and girls) can see that women can be anything, just like men can be. It would not be immoral at all,
What we have now is everywhere you look (inside and outside the games industry), women are one-dimensional shells, skinny with huge breasts and not alot going on in their heads waiting for men to come along and save them. There are a few incidents where people have done a good job portraying women with multiple dimensions that keep getting pointed at, but it honestly feels like needles in a haystack when you look at the industry as a whole.
I don't know why we keep going back to "you people are advocating censorship", "this one case by itself is okay" and "you're saying that male sexuality is immoral".... . Stop, look at all the games you know and think about how females are being portrayed in these games, and by the industry at large. If you can see there's a problem there, maybe look into how it's a problem, and start thinking about ways to fix the problem.
If you can't see there's a problem... do some research and you can find people who have studied this exhaustively and come to that conclusion.
El Skid on
+1
fearsomepirateI ate a pickle once.Registered Userregular
And it's pretty telling that half those characters are always mentioned, without fail, every time someone wants to make a list of strong female video game characters who aren't sexualized; ideally, the list of reasonably-presented female characters would be long enough that Jade wouldn't show up on every single iteration of the list.
Jade isn't a reasonably-presented female character outside of cutscenes. In gameplay, she's a 95-pound woman who is magically able to take on and defeat multiple trained, armed men in hand-to-hand combat...men who, judging by their physiology, are around twice her weight and multiple times her strength. Despite looking like the most strenuous exercise she does is yoga, she's somehow faster in hand-to-hand combat than soldiers. Jade is a man's idea of what a "strong female character" should look like...basically, he took a strong, male character, i.e., a champion of physical combat (mechanized combat's a different story---a woman can be a hell of an aviator), and gave it a perfect midriff and boobs. The only reason it begins to work is that video game programmers can ignore bone density, muscle mass, height, and the propensity to injury all they like.
Basically every example people come up with of "strong female character" is a male fantasy where a woman has been swapped in.
fearsomepirate on
Nobody makes me bleed my own blood...nobody.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
0
MordaRazgromМорда РазгромRuling the Taffer KingdomRegistered Userregular
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
Where are the games that objectify men? Men are hardly sexualized at all in any games, let alone sexually objectified the way that women are in far too many games to even name. The sword won't cut both ways if there's nothing on the other side to cut.
Frankly, it's either irrelevant or disingenuous to try to switch the topic over to "men's fantasies" versus "women's fantasies" instead of keeping the focus on the topic at hand (sexual objectification in games marketing, specifically That Fucking Statue). Asking why women tend to play games that do X and men tend to play games that do Y might make for an interesting discussion, but it'd be a different topic entirely.
It's the ever-present tactic of "men have it bad too!" Also, it's a way of forcing hypocrisy, because, of course, if you're guilty of Thing A, then you cannot possibly ever think that Thing A is bad and must accept it or else you are hypocritical. The best defense is a good offense, don't you think?
Monster Hunter Tri code/username: 1MF42Z (Morda)
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
And that people would want something extremely sexist and in poor taste does not suddenly make it ok tasty. People purchase all kinds of things that are wrong, like Adam Sandler movies, doesn't mean we can't shake our heads and say they should know better.
Where in my post did I say that it was okay? Nowhere.
The fact of the matter is that people have preordered this item which is of questionable taste. As a result changing the preorder package that is being offered around isn't that simple, and I haven't found an official statement saying that they're going to change the product for that market. That's all.
It would be hella easy, again the game comes out in april, and the Dead Island dev had a better collectors edition for the americas. You just send a message saying "yeah this was a bad idea, do you want to be upgraded to this superior not so fucking retarded edition for free?"
I mean a real developer wouldn't have that issue, but having played Dead Island, lazy is being kind to the people behind Deep Silver.
I think your outrage is clouding your reasoning here because it really isn't not that easy to just make changes. Free of any judgement toward them, or the people that would want that product, there is the matter of money, contracts, production.//
Some of the people who are upset about the torso weren't going to buy either version, so their opinion from a business perspective is largely moot.
Some of the people who didn't care about/think it's okay/whatever also weren't going to buy either version, so again their opinion from a business perspective is largely moot.
If they were to recall or change it how many people who have already bought it expecting to—for whatever reason—get the torso in it now cancel their preorder? That's a real consideration from a business perspective. There are some people (we don't have the numbers for how many preorders have been made, or how many torsos were produced by now) who do want this for whatever reason, and have paid out money for it.
At the end of the day, they are (and have) lost money on this. And from a strictly business perspective would probably stand to lose more on changing the preorder. I mean seriously,
if they were to recall or change it how many people would now buy the collector's edition product that wouldn't have before? Not many.
A company was paid to mass produce these, and just like there's a landfill full of unsold Atari ET games, out there, there's probably going to be a large plot of mangled torsos with breasts mysteriously untouched.
Tough shit, they should have had the basic fucking decency and intelligence to not make it in the first place.
And, again, pre-ordered collector's sets like these change all the dang time, even up to the last minute.
Eh, I can only hope that you meet someone as uncompromisingly "forgiving" as you after you've done something to offend someone.
Do you seriously think that has fuck all to do with this discussion?
My argument is that a lot of these criticisms are grounded in moral censure of the male sex in general.
Your argument is facile.
I'm not arguing that there's no reason to criticize it at all. I proffered my own criticism a few pages back, in fact. But I did it without condemning men for not being the same as women, and I think that's something people need to avoid.
It's a good thing no one has done that then.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
No they didn't. No it isn't.
I also believe you can learn a lot about men and women by observing what they actually do.
Good for you!
And by the way, women's entertainment can be harmful. If you think those romcoms can't be harmful, you've never been in a relationship with a woman who literally expected everything to work like a Gere/Roberts movie.
No one has said that "women's entertainment" isn't harmful. No one talked about "women's entertainment" at all, because it's not what this thread is about and is completely irrelevant. Stop making up new arguments because you can't manage the one you're actually in.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
Where are the games that objectify men? Men are hardly sexualized at all in any games, let alone sexually objectified the way that women are in far too many games to even name. The sword won't cut both ways if there's nothing on the other side to cut.
Frankly, it's either irrelevant or disingenuous to try to switch the topic over to "men's fantasies" versus "women's fantasies" instead of keeping the focus on the topic at hand (sexual objectification in games marketing, specifically That Fucking Statue). Asking why women tend to play games that do X and men tend to play games that do Y might make for an interesting discussion, but it'd be a different topic entirely.
I wait with baited breath for a game that objectifies men. I will buy the hell out of that thing.
I have no problem with sexualization, I have a problem with one sided sexualization.
And it's pretty telling that half those characters are always mentioned, without fail, every time someone wants to make a list of strong female video game characters who aren't sexualized; ideally, the list of reasonably-presented female characters would be long enough that Jade wouldn't show up on every single iteration of the list.
Jade isn't a reasonably-presented female character outside of cutscenes. In gameplay, she's a 95-pound woman who is magically able to take on and defeat multiple trained, armed men in hand-to-hand combat...men who, judging by their physiology, are around twice her weight and multiple times her strength. Despite looking like the most strenuous exercise she does is yoga, she's somehow faster in hand-to-hand combat than soldiers. Jade is a man's idea of what a "strong female character" should look like...basically, he took a strong, male character, i.e., a champion of physical combat (mechanized combat's a different story---a woman can be a hell of an aviator), and gave it a perfect midriff and boobs. The only reason it begins to work is that video game programmers can ignore bone density, muscle mass, height, and the propensity to injury all they like.
Basically every example people come up with of "strong female character" is a male fantasy where a woman has been swapped in.
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
No, it was "Company apologizes to angry fans but does the stuff they're apologizing for anyway". I don't know why you're so hung up on the wording of the thing; it's the failure to act after it that's the problem.
How are you so sure that they are still shipping it? I haven't seen anything that goes one way or the other. If they are, buy it or don't. Either way, they apologized explicitly and said they will work to avoid this in the future. They won't do more because doing more would compound, instead of ameliorating, the hurt.
They made the only type of apology that they could. If they said "We're sorry we were sexists" then the headline is "Company apologizes for sexism." With the more generic apology that they went with, the impression is "Company apologizes to angry fans." They can't admit to sexism in their apology, because then they take a second hit.
Fuck yes they take a second hit. They take a second hit for what they did. Do you even understand what an apology is? It's not this weird ritual you carry out where you minimize the amount of people you make mad and score as many PR points as you can. An apology is realizing that you have fucked up and admitting that you fucked up. If they do not apologize for the sexism then tjeu have not apologized for the wrong. Can they apologize for sexism without taking a hit for being sexist? Obviously not! Because they were sexist! The notion that you should be able to apologize for something awful you've done without admitting that you did that awful thing is ridiculous. At that point you're not apologizing, you're pretending to apologize. Which is what they did.
This is a business. Their goal is to make as much money as possible by selling as many copies of this game as they can. The apology that they gave is perhaps the strongest that they can do without compromising that goal. To ask them to compromise the very purpose of their business by apologizing in a manner that would satisfy you strikes me as manifestly unreasonable.
Like, I understand the realities of business, but I'm not really inclined to much sympathy here because they, as a business, put this statue out there and promoted it to get people to buy the special edition of their game. They didn't get it foisted upon them by an outside company. They didn't come to work one day and discover a warehouse full of headless torso dolls. They thought about what would be a great thing to put in the special edition and this is what they came up with.
Then they went "oh, sorry you got mad about that I guess" after the outcry.
Posts
I made it maybe four comments in before I had to close the page.
Well done, internet.
Well sure, but the industry as a whole is made up of a multitude of developers, the idea is that each developer you get on board with this slowly DOES impact the industry as a whole.
It has to be done at a level you can actually influence, one employee at a time within a company, and one company at a time within that industry, until the overall mindset eventually changes.
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
Very few people think "nurture" is the literal, 100% winner in the "nature vs. nurture" debate. That is, almost nobody thinks that having a certain physical body has literally zero impact on the sorts of things you like. In fact, it would be impossible for the answer to be 100% nurture, because even if we all agree that society pushes men to like certain things and women to like certain other things, we would need to explain how society picks out who is male and who is female, and the answer to that, while not being 100% biologically based, is obviously going to be significantly impacted by biology. So I think it's a pretty bankrupt idea that your genitalia literally do not decide what you like. Your genitalia, and the rest of your body, decide all sorts of things (or, more accurately, they help decide - nothing happens in a vacuum).
But you have to ask yourself when this sort of thing is relevant. Why does it matter if men, on average, enjoy one kind of thing more than women, or if women on average enjoy some other kind of thing more? What do you want to do with this information?
This sub-discussion started when @fearsomepirate said that men have some sort of biological need to play misogynistic video games. That's obviously wrong. On the scale of human development, video games basically don't exist. We don't need to play any kind of video game. So we don't need to make any kind of video game. And we sure as flippity fuck don't need special collector's edition statues.
In fact, we don't need to do anything! The world is our oyster. It's up to us what kind of entertainment we create and consume. Even if we grant the premise that dudes like some stuff and ladies like some other stuff, there's no law that says "and therefore you must make that stuff." Maybe it's wrong to make that stuff. Maybe men evolved to fucking love rape fantasies (carefully cloaked, perhaps, to make it seem like women actually want it) and maybe that stuff would sell like crackerjacks (and in fact it does, as long as it's not overt enough) but if it turns out that rape fantasies, plus a whole wonderful cocktail of other stuff, creates rape culture and leads to horrific results, like women being afraid to report a sexual assault out of fear of being called a liar or castigated by society, then it turns out that we need to stop creating this culture. Men are just going to have to go without the rape fantasies they love so much. They can deal with it. If you take away our violent video games nothing bad is going to happen.
So just from the notion that men and women are predisposed to like something more, we cannot derive the fact that it's okay to pander to these unthinking desires. Some desires are wrong to indulge because they have bad results. This is why we make heroin illegal, it's why you can't drink alcohol until you're at an age where it won't fuck up your brain, and it's why people shouldn't sell their zombie video game with a dismembered oversexualized female torso (which is not to say the last thing should be illegal - what the law should be is a different question - I'm just talking about what is morally right or wrong to do).
I think that pretty much puts the whole issue to bed. But skfm said another thing that's worth responding to. I'll quote it again: I like to think I'm super compassionate and understanding. Like, "parody of a bleeding heart liberal" compassionate. I care about everyone and everything, humans and animals, rich and poor, old and young, straight and gay, and everything. I think everybody should be nice to everyone, I think we all have our own struggles, I think life is hard enough without humans adding conflict to it, I think we should all be pacifists and socialists and share the wealth and hold hands and sign Kumbaya and be vegans. I'm not being ironic. I believe this stuff. This is the kind of person I like to think of myself as.
But I also like to think of myself as a realist. I know that this sort of thing is not going to happen. People are not going to get along. Everybody is not going to become a pacifist or a vegan. People think that their religion tells them to kill sometimes, or that the land belongs to them, or that it's okay to fight to protect their property, and they like bacon and BBQ wings. So when it comes to putting my beliefs into practice and talking about actual issues, I'm not the pie in the sky "let's all be friends" kind of person that I like to think I actually am. Instead, I focus on issues that I think are actually problematic and potentially solvable. I look at history and try to think about why bad things happen and what we can do to stop them. I look at people I admire, like Martin Luther King Jr. (who I've been thinking a lot about because his holiday was a week ago), and think about what they thought about and what they cared about and what they did.
And when I do this, I come to the conclusion that certain things are right. Specifically, focusing on the outliers is right. I don't know what you mean, skfm, when you say we shouldn't let trans people dictate whole categories, but here's a category that I think trans people should partially dictate - the category of people who face unrelenting violence, massive misunderstanding, constant oppression, marginalization, and so on. Now, is it true that only trans people face this sort of thing? Well, no. Obviously not. In addition to the people I'd add into the group (women, homosexuals, African Americans, homeless people, mentally ill people, you name it...), "normal" people face these issues too. Life shits on everyone, straight Christian white guys included. Like I said at the outset, I care about everyone. But like I also said, I'm a realist, and I realize that some people have to end up marginalized. We can't make everyone happy. We can't just say "let's all get along." We can't just have a perfect society.
So who should we let dictate the categories of "oppressed," "in need of assistance," "these people get special treatment," etc? Should it be the white guys for whom things occasionally go bad, as they so often go bad for all of us in life? I've reached the conclusion that the answer is "no" (and the conclusion is a little regrettable because I'm a white dude). But it just seems like that if you look at human history, at social movements in the past and at h ow things have gone, straight white dudes are not the best group to focus on when we have these discussions. In this particular discussion I think it's hilarious that you think we're drawing categories based on too narrow of a group because women are actually the majority, but in the context of other discussions, I think we should focus on minorities.
Why? Well, if you have to ask that question I think we've reached a point where we disagree not about ideology but about the facts of the matter. I don't have many issues with conservatism as a philosophy. I could see myself as a conservative in certain situations and feel a lot more respect for it as an ideology than a lot of my colleagues do (I work in academia). But modern day Western society is really not the place for conservatism, I think, because shit's fucked up for people and it isn't going to get unfucked if people like you turn every conversation into "but let's talk about white dudes, let's focus on the majority, let's not lose sight of the numbers." Because we've tried that before and it's shit for everyone. It's what got us slavery and it's what got us Jim Crow and it's what gets us awful things right now. I just heard about two of my colleagues, fellow graduate students, who in separate issues were approached by the police because people reported that they were suspicious. One of them was driving around campus (the campus where he works, of course) and the other was walking around the apartment complex where he lives.
Now, everyone faces difficulty, oppression, blah blah blah etc (remember earlier in my post). But why did these two guys have to put up with this shit from the cops? Well, they're black. Go figure. It's 2013 and walking while black/driving while black are egregious enough crimes to get people to narc on you to the police.
This is, of course, not an isolated instance - it happens constantly and forever to people of marginalized groups all throughout our society. And looking at the sum total of all this shit, it just seems to me like the best way to fix it is not to come into a thread like this and say "I think we've lost sight of the white men." It's okay to lose sight of them. I know shit happens to them too, but this isn't a perfect world where we can fix everything. We need to be realistic and we need to pick our battles and I think the battle to pick here is about feminism and misogyny in the industry and the proper way to pick the battle is not to come into this thread and say "well I think that biologically men are primed to enjoy something so really this thread doesn't need to be 40+ pages." If you honestly think the thread doesn't need to be 40+ pages, for the same reason you think the Hitman trailer was fine, then you shouldn't be helping us bump it up to 42 pages.
But I think if you take an honest look at the problems society has faced in the past and the way these things were solved, the solution was never people like you coming in and reminding everyone not to lose sight of what straight white men care about.
The thing is that all this talk is pretty much irrelevant. As is tastydonuts' look at the economic side of things (apologies to you both).
I am willing to concede that the marketing department thinks that tossing some scantily clad, barbie-like women into their games that add nothing except to get rescued, have sex or get killed will boost their sales in their target demographic of males between the years of 13-45. As such, since they want to make money, they think that this is a good long term sustainable solution.
The problem is that this causes documented harm among both the males and females who play the game, or see it played.
A very viable solution to this problem is for the consumers to apply pressure to the companies, because they do not like the fact that these practices are causing harm. This solution to this problem involves making the pressure of NOT doing this to outweigh the pressure of doing this.
That's one good reason to be on a message board debating this, and one reason why people really should be more onboard with it (in my opinion, anyway). If you are willing to do research and (with sufficient evidence) be convinced that there is harm being caused, then you will hopefully be willing to be part of the force pushing against this. To educate people and convince them to see for themselves. To add more pressure.
There will always be a market for misogyny, people who are willing to put up with it or who like and actively support it. Hopefully one day enough people will decide that they really don't support it, and are willing to speak with their wallets. And things like this statue are a great place to start showing people that this stuff is all around us, and that they have the ability to impact whether this problem continues to be endemic, or whether it maybe starts slowly decreasing.
"I'm sorry you got mad" is not a really great apology.
Discussion, and a slow movement of the general population is what gets things done. Unfortunately, you have to deal with individuals like me. I am 100% on board, and I will definitely vote with my wallet by not picking up games from a developer that blatantly goes over the line. However, if you ask me to write letters, send mail, spread the word, do any other of the form of activism, I'm fairly useless. I simply am too caught up with my own life to be able to do things like that. I know that it makes me a part of the problem, and, with two girls, that problem will definitely rear its ugly face right in front of me some 10 years down the road. The small part that I can do is pretty infinitesimal, I mean I'm pretty sure that the developers are totally not going to care about my $60...in fact they would have never gotten it anyway, the only non-indie titles I've bought at full price in the past couple of years are Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. I am still waiting for Kingdom of Amalur and Dishonored to drop in price before I even CONSIDER buying them, even though I want to play both games SO BAD. Still, you more energetic guys are asking more of me than I can do. I will discuss, I will spread the word (all of my Facebook friends know my stance on misogyny and how fiercely I oppose it...all 30 of 'em), but day-to-day I'm too busy juggling my duties as an auditor, father, and husband to devote that much more time.
With that said, I am a man of infinite patience, I know these things will change. Women are recognized more and more as a workforce, as a political force, and as equals to men, things move slowly, yet they are moving. Discussions like this I am always happy to be a part of, even though I know that I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and have normal and respectable female avatars in all future releases. I know that women are still going to be belittled on the internet, but you know what I've noticed? I play Team Fortress 2 a lot when I need to blow off steam, I do not use the mic (due to being able to type very fast) but I do interact with other players quite a bit and I have noticed a lot more women playing that game with me. It has been months since I heard any comment along the lines of "hay, you gurl, show us ur boobz" whenever females are present. It is a darn good thing! It is moving and I see progress. You will always have the naysayers because people are fed up with the "political correctness" because it has been present for so long and with diversity comes a lot of new ways of offending a lot of new people. People generally don't like monitoring their thoughts, and when forced to do so, are reluctant and sometimes hostile. These things will blow over in time, when lack of misogynystic images are going to be the new normal. I guarantee nobody is going to come back from that time and say "man, I sure do miss gravity defying super-tits!"
TL;DR times a-changing, don't lose heart, and don't let naysayers shape your vision of the future.
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
As roughly half of all gamers are women, it should not surprise us that the vast majority of games have nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
Sorry, is your argument no longer that some games, e.g. fighting games, primally and fundamentally appeal to men more than women 'just as' romance novels appeal to women more than men, therefore it's okay for them to have a lot of oversexualized and inane female character design etc. and disapproving of this is "morally censuring male sexuality"? Because I thought that's what people have been arguing about, not overbroad statements about the relatively weak indicators of biological determinism measured by mass population.
Fall-From-Grace? The character who's literally a succubus? Just because her boobs aren't hanging out doesn't mean that sexuality isn't a major component of her character. And it's pretty telling that half those characters are always mentioned, without fail, every time someone wants to make a list of strong female video game characters who aren't sexualized; ideally, the list of reasonably-presented female characters would be long enough that Jade wouldn't show up on every single iteration of the list.
hey, we lazy people prefer the term "over-engaged" :P
I am 100% on board with having long drawn-out discussions. Hear the arguments from both sides, throw a few insults left and right, at least you know that you will all look at the title a little differently, and maybe notice things further on down the road. Discussions are what drive social change and, in my opinion, people are free to roll their eyes at people who have values and passions different from their own, but they should never try to shut a discussion down...that's called censorship. I come from a country that was REALLY big into censorship, as a descendant of multiple "unpeople" I can tell you censorship is NOT an acceptable course of action, regardless of whether it comes from government, religion, peers, superiors or subordinates. I think we don't always recognize all the forms that censorship can take. By far the most toxic is peer censorship, because neither we nor, oftentimes, they recognize it as a form of censorship. Maybe they don't realize that it is what they are trying to do. My advice is that if you see a topic that makes you think "jeez, why are they wasting so much precious internet infrastructure on this stupid thing" just don't go into the topic, don't waste your own precious time...I'm sure the internet will survive. Compared to cats, furries, hate-groups, there are PLENTY of other wasted internet infrastructure spots that take up a lot more space than the topic of statue-boobs.
Edit: no offense to cat-lovers, furries, or haters...well maybe to the haters :P
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Dead Island, the game, also has nothing whatsoever to do with the male sex drive at its core. And yet, the statue exists.
And really, if Zynga saw a market for a game full of hypersexed women, they wouldn't hesitate for one second to rip one off create such a game.
@fearsomepirate
Two things:
1) if it makes you feel better, we can say that "the majority of the games that deal with female characters do it wrong", just so we can ignore games like farmville or plants versus zombies, since they are not relevant to this issue, having no female characters to mess up.
e- Unless you are arguing that only men get to have games where female characters exist...
2) The point is that the misogyny/sexism in games has a very real harmful effect on both males and females. In that context, why does it matter what audience the game is targetted at?
Curse you for putting FarmVille: Nevada Edition into my head
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
This is a business. Their goal is to make as much money as possible by selling as many copies of this game as they can. The apology that they gave is perhaps the strongest that they can do without compromising that goal. To ask them to compromise the very purpose of their business by apologizing in a manner that would satisfy you strikes me as manifestly unreasonable.
On your earlier post, I thought that it was clear that I was saying that we can generalize about "men" despite there being people who fall into that category who are outliers.
W/R/T your point about whose concerns ought to drive change, it seems that you are coming to the same conclusion that MLK jr. did:
It's a great quote and makes an interesting point, but the way of the world is generally not to move in great leaps. Effecting change in the gaming industry in a manner that displeases the straight male gamer seems like a fools errand to me, for the same reason that a company would never apologize in a way that hurts them more. The best approach is to work within the system, by doing things like boycotting this game and telling the publisher why you did so. Of equal importance, you should buy games that get it right, and tell the publisher that their positive portrayal of women is part of why you bought their game.
I would argue that a succubus who goes that far against type is hardly defined by her sexuality. If anything, she is defined by hey physical chastity. But I agree that the list is small. I can think of others, but not nearly as many as I can think of strong male characters. But Kreia happens to be one of the greatest characters in all of gaming, so that helps. . .
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
I don't see how what I said is disagreeing with you at all here but how about you start by telling me an instance where this statue would be appropriate.
No, it was "Company apologizes to angry fans but does the stuff they're apologizing for anyway". I don't know why you're so hung up on the wording of the thing; it's the failure to act after it that's the problem.
I'm also saying that the sword many of you are wielding cuts both ways. If entertainment that mostly appeals to men's sexuality via male-oriented, idealized fantasies is immoral, that holds true for female-oriented fantasies and women's sexuality. When I brought this up, a few people engaged in special pleading to exempt women, which pretty much confirms that their problem isn't "misogyny," it's "men."
I also believe you can learn a lot about men and women by observing what they actually do.
And by the way, women's entertainment can be harmful. If you think those romcoms can't be harmful, you've never been in a relationship with a woman who literally expected everything to work like a Gere/Roberts movie.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Nope.
Then you clearly haven't actually read much of it at all. People have popped in, repeatedly, to claim it isn't sexist, that it's an important part of their culture, that women don't play games like this.
It is this long because people like you can't be bothered to read the last few pages.
Still waiting on that example.
Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Then they can suck up the bad press. Plenty of businesses manage to behave better than this. This one doesn't get a pass for both being sexist AND failing to plan better. Which means they can either eat the cost of of the sexist statues or the cost of being the company known for selling sexist statues.
Where are the games that objectify men? Men are hardly sexualized at all in any games, let alone sexually objectified the way that women are in far too many games to even name. The sword won't cut both ways if there's nothing on the other side to cut.
Frankly, it's either irrelevant or disingenuous to try to switch the topic over to "men's fantasies" versus "women's fantasies" instead of keeping the focus on the topic at hand (sexual objectification in games marketing, specifically That Fucking Statue). Asking why women tend to play games that do X and men tend to play games that do Y might make for an interesting discussion, but it'd be a different topic entirely.
You're trying to read something in to my posts that isn there. I never called posting on the internet pointless, nor do i think it is irrelevant. You seem to believe I think that I do and it's simply not the case.
If you think making internet posts is a major deal I'm not stopping you. But the list of things I would consider a significant action against something like this starts well above posting on a forum. However that list also isn't the topic of this thread.
Eh, I can only hope that you meet someone as uncompromisingly "forgiving" as you after you've done something to offend someone.
It's incredibly naive to somehow conclude that because pre-orders can change at the last minute that these changes are easy to make. That's is all that I am saying. I mean no disrespect, but if you would like to do another lap on this you'll be doing it by yourself.
Why are you bringing morality into this, at all? The characterization of women as sex objects is hurtful, not immoral. In 20 years if the gaming industry has had a massive shift and games have a broad depiction of females ranging from strong to weak, thin to fat, smart to stupid, then what you are saying is totally true- it's okay to have a few women who are air-headed bimbos with impossibly huge breasts who exist as nothing except sex objects. At that point it's not all that damaging, because men and women (and boys and girls) can see that women can be anything, just like men can be. It would not be immoral at all,
What we have now is everywhere you look (inside and outside the games industry), women are one-dimensional shells, skinny with huge breasts and not alot going on in their heads waiting for men to come along and save them. There are a few incidents where people have done a good job portraying women with multiple dimensions that keep getting pointed at, but it honestly feels like needles in a haystack when you look at the industry as a whole.
I don't know why we keep going back to "you people are advocating censorship", "this one case by itself is okay" and "you're saying that male sexuality is immoral".... . Stop, look at all the games you know and think about how females are being portrayed in these games, and by the industry at large. If you can see there's a problem there, maybe look into how it's a problem, and start thinking about ways to fix the problem.
If you can't see there's a problem... do some research and you can find people who have studied this exhaustively and come to that conclusion.
Basically every example people come up with of "strong female character" is a male fantasy where a woman has been swapped in.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
It's the ever-present tactic of "men have it bad too!" Also, it's a way of forcing hypocrisy, because, of course, if you're guilty of Thing A, then you cannot possibly ever think that Thing A is bad and must accept it or else you are hypocritical. The best defense is a good offense, don't you think?
WiiU Username: MordaRazgrom
Steam Username: MordaRazgrom
WoW/Diablo 3 Battlenet Battletag: MordaRazgrom#1755
Me and my wife have a gamer YouTube page if interested www.youtube.com/TeamMarriage
Do you seriously think that has fuck all to do with this discussion?
Your argument is facile.
It's a good thing no one has done that then.
No they didn't. No it isn't.
Good for you!
No one has said that "women's entertainment" isn't harmful. No one talked about "women's entertainment" at all, because it's not what this thread is about and is completely irrelevant. Stop making up new arguments because you can't manage the one you're actually in.
I wait with baited breath for a game that objectifies men. I will buy the hell out of that thing.
I have no problem with sexualization, I have a problem with one sided sexualization.
Because only men fantasize about fighting things bigger than them?
Kreia says hello.
How are you so sure that they are still shipping it? I haven't seen anything that goes one way or the other. If they are, buy it or don't. Either way, they apologized explicitly and said they will work to avoid this in the future. They won't do more because doing more would compound, instead of ameliorating, the hurt.
My god all those dreams about killing gigantic dicks... IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Then they went "oh, sorry you got mad about that I guess" after the outcry.