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[PATV] Monday, March 18, 2013 - CheckPoint Season 1, Ep. 40: Five Servings of Zombie
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
The folks behind DayZ just want you to be healthy.
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I still think Suda 51 is no longer relevant in the video game industry, though. And the fact that he clearly feels the need to outwardly act so "quirky" doesn't help his case. He reminds me of that one shock jock whose name I can't remember.
Blizzard still knows how to do that?
"We... thought it was funny that he said, "That makes me horny" actually."
It is not uncommon for technology related news to give me an erection. I thought that was a normal reaction.
When I took her to see The Avengers, she noted there was only one female hero (who was almost there as an after-thought).
I don't think we need to force minority quotas just because, and that we need to create more female heroes solely to create female heroes. Instead we should just focus on telling good stories, but at some point we need to question why when we tell stories that it is almost automatically a given that a hero must be male.
What? Too soon?
You know that Tomb Raider comic from a few days ago where Gabe was trying to come up with some crazy complicated solution, and Tycho said "maybe you should just jump up on that ledge"?
The joke was that he was way over thinking the issue as you are now. Look who writes the games, look who they think the games are targeting and you pretty much get your answer.
Ignoring that this is the kind of drivel that gives evolutionary psychology a bad name, what does it have to do with "There should be more games with female protagonists?"
Context.
Or because women have historically been a socially oppressed class, and acts of aggression toward them are viewed in that light.
Generally speaking, because they have historically been a socially oppressed class.
Good for you. But some of us don't consider oppression to be a zero-sum game, where we have to choose some amount of oppression that we're not allowed to complain about.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
How is any of that drivel? It's all fact. I assume you took biology, and have at least a passing understanding of human reproduction. Males are the more disposable of the two sexes. Historically, the ends of all great nation-states have always been heralded by a decline in population growth. Women are far too valuable to waste on war. As to your question, videogames (much like cinema) are a reflection of the culture in which they are created. In our Western culture, recent history is filled with male warriors and soldiers. This doesn't diminish the sacrifices of female soldiers. This only reflects that their contribution is more recent and comparatively small. So when developers head to the well for inspiration, they come back with legends and tales from a time and place when men fought the wars. You imply malicious persecution where none exists.
I will try to decipher your attempt at pithiness. If by "Context" you mean that there have been no conflicts where the majority of casualties were women, you would be right. You also happen to validate my "drivel" above. If you mean that tired cliche of "men make war and women make peace", and that women would not commit such violence (ignoring the many examples I could site to the contrary), let's assume you are correct. How could one create at tale of violent conflict without a dispenser of violence. I would ask you to elaborate on your "Context".
As far as I can tell, Patriarchy theory does not suggest that men shy away from doing violence to women. On the contrary, it suggests that men have historically used violence (or threat of violence) to control women. This is, of course, absurd if given more than a cursory inspection. Societies from all times in history and many disparate lands have striven to deliver women from violent conflict. This patriarchal conspiracy would seem to transcend time and space, considering how widely spread and isolated from one another are its practitioners. A more likely explanation is that our psychology has evolved alongside our physical evolution. Almost as if our genes know what is best for the survival of the species. If "social oppression" means not being forced by your king or country to die horribly in a foreign battlefield, then sign me up. The fact is, true social oppression is being forced to pay the ultimate price for no other reason than the genitals you were born with.
It seems feminism has only one nebulously ill defined cause of societies woes. They complain because acts that were once a brutal necessity of life have been romanticised by popular culture, and they want to imagine themselves in this rose colored world of heroics. Why do you think people re-enact medieval wars and the American civil war, but not any of the modern wars? We have film footage of the terrifying, brutal reality of modern warfare. No one wants to play "lets pretend I got napalmed", or "I lost my legs to a landmine". They seek participation in a fantasy that has never existed. That's fine, since "Gears of War" and "Halo" never really happened either. The inspiration for those stories, however, is a violent reality in which millions of men have lost their lives.
I never said it was a zero-sum game. I merely stated that, given a choice of one or the other, I'd rather be lusted after than shot at. Women can complain all they want. I just ask them to realize their own hypocritical entitled attitude. Consider that (in the USA) men purchased the right to vote with compulsory registration in the selective service (Draft). This means good old Uncle Sam can tell me to go fight and die for my country, and if I refuse, I do so at the peril of my freedom. Women are asked to pay no such price, yet I don't hear feminists clamoring for women's draft registration. I hear feminists complain about the "Glass Ceiling" that keeps women from the highest paid jobs, but not about the "Glass Basement" a shocking lack of gender parity when it comes to dirty and dangerous jobs. Here's a hint, they are all the jobs that still bear the suffix "-man": Garbage-man, Fisher-man, etc. This is because feminism isn't about equality. It's about securing extra provision and prerogatives for women at the expense of men. And what does feminism say about women? If women are not inferior to men, why do they require a "leg-up" from society? If women are so empowered, why did they not rise up and seize control long ago? It is only in this new cushioned society, insulated from the threats of the world, that women have been able to complain about the protection and provision they receive from men. Feminism is the true misogyny. It is the soft bigotry of low expectation.
You have
a) a terrible understanding of the goals of feminism and
b) a draconian understanding of human societal evolution.
Wanting there to be more female protagonists is primarily a desire to have fair representation in culture. No matter the initial reason for the cultural tendency for men to be heroes, the world works differently than our histories and legends. Our contemporary narratives should reflect the realities of modernity.
I feel like your byzantine arguments might've masked this particular bit of hilarity. Deputizing pop biology into an argument toward discrimination is an old tactic - in fact, it's been used to justify the oppression of virtually every suspect class since the notion of mechanistic evolution was first proposed. You don't get to have this card - rational people are revoking it.
@Bakessnakes you say I have a "terrible understanding of the goals of feminism". I would posit that it is feminists who have a terrible understanding of the goals of feminism. Their ideology is so transitory and indistinct that there are several dozen different branches of feminism: Radical Feminism, Separatist Feminism, Sex Positive, Cultural Feminism , Eco-Feminism, Amazon Feminism, etc. It seems there is a new type every week. When you argue against an asinine feminist viewpoint, there in -invariably- several dozen self-described "feminists" who say "Not all feminists are like that" (NAFALT for short). So then, who believes what? If every feminist has their own set of beliefs, how can "feminism" exist as an ideology? They intentionally make themselves a wisp of smoke, intangible and undefinable. So that you waste your time arguing while you get demagogued as a mysoginist, or a rapist, or rape apologist, or rape culture supporter, or some other piss-poor attempt at a gaslighting adhominem.
@The Good Doctor Tran My argument does not justify discrimination, and I made no attempt to do so. You are reading into my comments with your own bias. It is a fact that our brains and bodies have evolved together. It is also fact that there are beneficial/harmful character traits the same as there are beneficial/harmful physical traits. I find it interesting, the cognitive dissonance that must exist in the brain of an atheist feminist. They must insist that evolution does and does not exist at the same time. It's like Schrödinger's cat. They don't decide which until they look in the box, and then they pick whichever viewpoint backs up their arguments.
In general, because we don't have the time or the energy to wade through your shit.
And because it wouldn't make any difference anyway, since it seems that the only hypotheses you'll consider are the ones that don't require you to change your mind about anything.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are