Sexism in the games industry [#1reasonwhy]

145791039

Posts

  • BrocksMulletBrocksMullet Into the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    BrocksMullet on
    I, for one, enjoyed the Mako.

    Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/


  • glithertglithert Registered User regular
    Now I have an excuse to only shave every 10 days. score!

  • Bliss 101Bliss 101 Registered User regular
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    MSL59.jpg
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    glithert wrote: »
    Now I have an excuse to only shave every 10 days. score!

    You need an excuse?

    You're muckin' with a G!

    Do not engage the Watermelons.
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    Bliss 101 wrote: »
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    One of the BioWare guys what posts on the forum (I think vsove) has said it was one of the - I think it was cutscene directors? Christ, I don't know. But whoever did that, it was actually one person!

    One person who didn't get called on it

    dN0T6ur.png
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    My girlfriend actually works as a sample-giver at Wal-Mart, and wants me to let you know that nobody liked that whole "ten calorie coke products for men" advertising line. That's why it disappeared into the same bin New Coke went into.

    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    (You also get to see them if she's defeated in the game- her armor disintegrates and you get a brief glimpse of her flinging her arms back and pushing her chest out.)

    The thing is, nobody's saying we can't have cheesecake. What people are saying is that there's room on the table for players who don't want that in their games. Not every character has to be a sorceress or an Ivy Valentine. The only ones who are actually saying that are some of the movement's most vocal opposition, I think.

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    Depends on what she's interested in, but I'll just go down my Steam list and pick some that don't have a lot of sexualization, bolding the ones I think might appeal the most to a non-gamer. This isn't at all a complete list, just the ones that come to mind from games I already own. You could probably find more if you looked.
    10,000
    1000 Amps
    Amnesia: The Dark Descent
    Antichamber
    Aquaria
    Audiosurf
    Bastion
    Beyond Good & Evil
    Braid
    Cart Life
    Castle Crashers
    Costume Quest
    Don't Starve
    Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
    Dungeons of Dredmor
    Dustforce
    FTL: Faster Than Light
    Half Life 2
    Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
    Left4Dead
    Legend of Grimrock
    Limbo
    Magicka
    Mass Effect
    Minecraft
    Monaco
    Plants vs. Zombies (!)
    Portal
    Portal 2
    Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Psychonauts
    Quantum Conundrum
    Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
    Realm of the Mad God
    Team Fortress 2
    Terraria
    Torchlight 2
    Trine
    Waking Mars
    World of Goo

    I'm sure one could find a lot more, that's just a random selection.

    Narrowing that list down, I've had a lot of success getting people into games with Plants vs. Zombies. Console games tend to not be as friendly due to controllers being hard to get the hang of, but if you want to get someone into consoles try Little Big Planet. It's pretty approachable.

  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Wyborn wrote: »
    Bliss 101 wrote: »
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    One of the BioWare guys what posts on the forum (I think vsove) has said it was one of the - I think it was cutscene directors? Christ, I don't know. But whoever did that, it was actually one person!

    One person who didn't get called on it

    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    Also, I fail to see how the camera placement lessened the character or story. And I'm fairly certain that these shots happened when Miranda was talking about how she was 'modified' for just that kind of appeal. Seems more like the argument can be made both that BioWare simply wants to show off the...ahem...detail they went into that part of the character and that they're also using her created sexuality on the player the same way she might on others.

    Considering that it happens so little (and frankly, the Yeoman Chambers 'reward' is far more objectionable...and the player can trigger it at any time) it's hard for me to find much fault in it. To me it's in the same vein as the full-frontal cutscene in The Lost and Damned. Sometimes 'Because we can!' is important, too. Even if it might contain otherwise objectionable content.

    And since this is the same game where people lost their shit when SuZe/Jack was premiered (THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO APPEAL TO TWELVE-YEAR OLD BOYS!!!!), I'm more apt to give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, this just skirts the premise that we are trying to prevent this sort of thing from *ever* appearing.

    Santa Claustrophobia on
    You're muckin' with a G!

    Do not engage the Watermelons.
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Wyborn wrote: »
    Bliss 101 wrote: »
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    One of the BioWare guys what posts on the forum (I think vsove) has said it was one of the - I think it was cutscene directors? Christ, I don't know. But whoever did that, it was actually one person!

    One person who didn't get called on it

    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    Also, I fail to see how the camera placement lessened the character or story. And I'm fairly certain that these shots happened when Miranda was talking about how she was 'modified' for just that kind of appeal. Seems more like the argument can be made both that BioWare simply wants to show off the...ahem...detail they went into that part of the character and that they're also using her created sexuality on the player the same way she might on others.

    Considering that it happens so little (and frankly, the Yeoman Chambers 'reward' is far more objectionable...and the player can trigger it at any time) it's hard for me to find much fault in it. To me it's in the same vein as the full-frontal cutscene in The Lost and Damned. Sometimes 'Because we can!' is important, too. Even if it might contain otherwise objectionable content.

    And since this is the same game where people lost their shit when SuZe/Jack was premiered (THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO APPEAL TO TWELVE-YEAR OLD BOYS!!!!), I'm more apt to give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, this just skirts the premise that we are trying to prevent this sort of thing from *ever* appearing.

    In principle I agree with you

    But said BioWare dude, as I remember, said something like

    "I know the guy responsible for those camera angles. Believe me, it had nothing to do with lampshading sexualization, or characterization emphasis, or anything like that."

    It was pure cheesecake

    Wyborn on
    dN0T6ur.png
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    I have yet to see anyone, especially in this thread, call Bioware perfect.

    Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
    On my sleeve, let the runway start
  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    Braid kind of has a gross attitude towards women, doesn't it? And Bastion is the game where the man's job is to save the world while the woman's job is to sit at home with the old man and the pot of soup singing a song? And Half-Life 2 is the one where the hot chick has a crush on you and gets adorably awkward whenever you're around but also she's a Strong Female Character who kicks ass except then you have to rescue her? And Mass Effect? The game where you can accidentally have sex with someone because the game assumes that every player wants to bang the hot blue bisexual alien? Or Monaco, the game with two women, one of whom has only one power, namely, seducing men with her good looks? As for not having a lot of sexualization, I'm not sure which women you payed attention to in Trine or Prince of Persia or Left 4 Dead or Beyond Good & Evil, but all the women in those games are hot (or zombies) - although I don't think sexualization is automatically going to turn women off because I don't think most people have any problem with looking at beautiful women (or men) in entertainment. It might turn people off if sex is used as a prize or something like in Metroid where beating the game rewards you with a bikini shot, though.

  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    I do want to interject on the Metroid line and say that Metroid Prime was irreproachable in that regard, even if the rest of the series wasn't.

    ....Also I don't think Farrah was sexualized as such, not in Sands of Time

    dN0T6ur.png
  • CygnusZCygnusZ Registered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    You know, this isn't necessarily true, women enjoy the artifacts of femininity (sexy bathing suits included). The much larger repelling factor of Metroid is the emphasis on violent resolution to problems. The Longest Journey is probably a much better fit for teenage girls.

  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    I never was 100% sure what was going on with Braid, because most of what the presented text is deliberately vague. But there was an interesting role reversal at the very last level: You think all this time you were Mario trying to rescue the princess, when the last level reframes things to suggest that you're a scary stalker that the "princess" is desperately trying to get away from.

    Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
    On my sleeve, let the runway start
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    CygnusZ wrote: »
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    You know, this isn't necessarily true, women enjoy the artifacts of femininity (sexy bathing suits included). The much larger repelling factor of Metroid is the emphasis on violent resolution to problems. The Longest Journey is probably a much better fit for teenage girls.

    At the risk of getting off-topic I'm not sure that violent resolution is necessarily repellant; ladies love the Legend of Zelda far more often than Metroid, and there are few conflicts in that series that don't involve you stabbing something in the face.

    dN0T6ur.png
  • MechMantisMechMantis Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    CygnusZ wrote: »
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    You know, this isn't necessarily true, women enjoy the artifacts of femininity (sexy bathing suits included). The much larger repelling factor of Metroid is the emphasis on violent resolution to problems. The Longest Journey is probably a much better fit for teenage girls.

    To be fair, Super Metroid is also a fairly good case study in why you shouldn't always blow everything up. Admittedly her saving the Metroid larva allows her to blow up even more things but still.

    I'm also really, REALLY hesitant to say "It's part of the problem re: sexism in the video games industry", considering you could make a case for it touching on themes of motherhood. Maybe a flimsy one. But a case nonetheless.

    EDIT: I will however say that past Prime 1, Nintendo has really messed up with how they approach Samus.

    MechMantis on
  • LilnoobsLilnoobs Alpha Queue Registered User regular
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    Depends on what she's interested in, but I'll just go down my Steam list and pick some that don't have a lot of sexualization, bolding the ones I think might appeal the most to a non-gamer. This isn't at all a complete list, just the ones that come to mind from games I already own. You could probably find more if you looked.
    10,000
    1000 Amps
    Amnesia: The Dark Descent
    Antichamber
    Aquaria
    Audiosurf
    Bastion
    Beyond Good & Evil
    Braid
    Cart Life
    Castle Crashers
    Costume Quest
    Don't Starve
    Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
    Dungeons of Dredmor
    Dustforce
    FTL: Faster Than Light
    Half Life 2
    Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

    Left4Dead
    Legend of Grimrock
    Limbo
    Magicka

    Mass Effect
    Minecraft
    Monaco
    Plants vs. Zombies (!)
    Portal
    Portal 2
    Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    Psychonauts
    Quantum Conundrum
    Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
    Realm of the Mad God
    Team Fortress 2
    Terraria
    Torchlight 2
    Trine
    Waking Mars
    World of Goo

    I'm sure one could find a lot more, that's just a random selection.

    Narrowing that list down, I've had a lot of success getting people into games with Plants vs. Zombies. Console games tend to not be as friendly due to controllers being hard to get the hang of, but if you want to get someone into consoles try Little Big Planet. It's pretty approachable.

    Well, considering more than half that list, strike that nearly the whole list, can't be found on the Walmart shelf...

    Besides that, I love how you repackaged the question from
    imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game.
    to
    bolding the ones I think might appeal the most to a non-gamer.

    Interesting assumption that wasn't in the original quotation.

  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    Prime 3 did Samus okay as I remember

    Not great, but okay. Been a long time since I saw the 100% ending but I remember it treating the Zero Suit with as much respect as was possible. I may have papered over that in my mind.

    dN0T6ur.png
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    This comes up from time to time for me

    The appropriate answer is almost always "Well what do you like to play"

    If that doesn't yield any results (though that's becoming increasingly rare) I tend to try to figure out based on other interests they have. If all else fails I recommend Zelda.

    Wyborn on
    dN0T6ur.png
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    I would have thought that since the theoretical girl was asking a question, wouldn't that mean that she already plays games?

    Then again, that also just illustrates that people still don't believe that girls can actually be interested in or play video games.

    Hey, if I could ask an opinion of the thread... what about something like the Frag Dolls? More "reaching out to female gamers to show them they aren't alone online" or "gratuitous eye candy that can play video games so we can appear to be sensitive to female players"?

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Why do people always think that any exploration of parenthood is naturally going to be interesting to women? It'll only be interesting if it's done well, and if it is done well then it'll be interesting to everyone.

    Want to know a game that actually did a good exploration of parenthood? The Walking Dead.

    Cambiata on
    Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
    On my sleeve, let the runway start
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    I would have thought that since the theoretical girl was asking a question, wouldn't that mean that she already plays games?

    Then again, that also just illustrates that people still don't believe that girls can actually be interested in or play video games.

    Hey, if I could ask an opinion of the thread... what about something like the Frag Dolls? More "reaching out to female gamers to show them they aren't alone online" or "gratuitous eye candy that can play video games so we can appear to be sensitive to female players"?

    I'm uncomfortable with something like Frag Dolls because it just seems like yet another product for dudes to fetishize. It's not really about girls in gaming. It's about girls in gaming as a consumable for guys.

    Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
    On my sleeve, let the runway start
  • Santa ClaustrophobiaSanta Claustrophobia Ho Ho Ho Disconnecting from Xbox LIVERegistered User regular
    Cambiata wrote: »
    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    I have yet to see anyone, especially in this thread, call Bioware perfect.

    I think you're reading that a bit too literally. But plenty of people here (this board) are quick to point out how great they think BioWare is. But whether or not BioWare has a good track record overall, they're still capable of making bad choices on any number of things.

    Even so, I just don't think Miranda's Ass, cheesecake or not, is quite the same as many other better, more obvious examples. Singling it out as a clear negative only feeds the (incorrect) narrative that what we have generally been arguing is outright censorship rather than moderation and alternatives.

    You're muckin' with a G!

    Do not engage the Watermelons.
  • CygnusZCygnusZ Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Wyborn wrote: »
    CygnusZ wrote: »
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    You know, this isn't necessarily true, women enjoy the artifacts of femininity (sexy bathing suits included). The much larger repelling factor of Metroid is the emphasis on violent resolution to problems. The Longest Journey is probably a much better fit for teenage girls.

    At the risk of getting off-topic I'm not sure that violent resolution is necessarily repellant; ladies love the Legend of Zelda far more often than Metroid, and there are few conflicts in that series that don't involve you stabbing something in the face.

    I mostly play retro games so I'm not really that familiar with these series post-SNES, but I certainly feel that the adventure elements in OoT or LttP were much stronger than Metroid or Super Metroid which were basically straight ahead action games with some simple puzzles. I doubt either series has a large percentage of its fanbase being female, especially compared to a game like "The Sims" where probably over half the userbase is female.

    EDIT:: Yeah, also, in Metroid your basically shooting a gun for the entire game. People may feel that's a bit more violent than swinging a sword around as well.

    I stand by my initial assertion that violence is generally a turn off for girls. Strawberry Shortcake (female targeted) appeals to a very different type of person than Adventure Time (male targeted).

    CygnusZ on
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Lilnoobs wrote: »
    Well, considering more than half that list, strike that nearly the whole list, can't be found on the Walmart shelf...

    If someone asks you for video game recommendations, why on earth would you send them to Wal-Mart?
    Lilnoobs wrote:
    Besides that, I love how you repackaged the question from
    imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game.
    to
    bolding the ones I think might appeal the most to a non-gamer.

    Interesting assumption that wasn't in the original quotation.
    [/quote]

    That's the only likely context for the original question makes sense. People who are already gamers will almost always be more specific (I want a game like x, or for system y, or in genre z.) Games are so varied that if you are already play them then you probably have at least some idea of what you like and what you don't. For the most part, the only time someone asks you to recommend "a video game" with no other information is because they don't know enough about video games to narrow it down and just want to try out gaming in general.

    Squidget0 on
  • YggiDeeYggiDee The World Ends With You Shill Registered User regular
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    I would have thought that since the theoretical girl was asking a question, wouldn't that mean that she already plays games?

    Then again, that also just illustrates that people still don't believe that girls can actually be interested in or play video games.

    Hey, if I could ask an opinion of the thread... what about something like the Frag Dolls? More "reaching out to female gamers to show them they aren't alone online" or "gratuitous eye candy that can play video games so we can appear to be sensitive to female players"?

    As a former teenage girl, I can tell you that I and at least a few other girls I knew always felt sort of... wary of the Frag Dolls. Naming your empowered girl team 'dolls' was sort of patronizing. If they were an independant team maybe I'd feel differently, but because they were officially endorsed by Ubisoft I assumed it was some sort of trap. I don't really think this is by any means universal, but I've always felt a little hostile towards major game companies- like I've enjoyed video games in spite of them, rather than because of them. Also Ubisoft are the people who made 'Imagine: Babyz Fashion." Now I'm caught in this cycle where male-dominated games just make me roll my eyes and hope there's some cool gameplay aspects that make it worth playing, while the rare product they try to aim at my demographic seems pandering and hollow, and makes me defensive while I wait for the shoe to drop or something. Wow that was way more than I wanted to type.

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    Wyborn wrote: »
    Wyborn wrote: »
    Bliss 101 wrote: »
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    One of the BioWare guys what posts on the forum (I think vsove) has said it was one of the - I think it was cutscene directors? Christ, I don't know. But whoever did that, it was actually one person!

    One person who didn't get called on it

    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    Also, I fail to see how the camera placement lessened the character or story. And I'm fairly certain that these shots happened when Miranda was talking about how she was 'modified' for just that kind of appeal. Seems more like the argument can be made both that BioWare simply wants to show off the...ahem...detail they went into that part of the character and that they're also using her created sexuality on the player the same way she might on others.

    Considering that it happens so little (and frankly, the Yeoman Chambers 'reward' is far more objectionable...and the player can trigger it at any time) it's hard for me to find much fault in it. To me it's in the same vein as the full-frontal cutscene in The Lost and Damned. Sometimes 'Because we can!' is important, too. Even if it might contain otherwise objectionable content.

    And since this is the same game where people lost their shit when SuZe/Jack was premiered (THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO APPEAL TO TWELVE-YEAR OLD BOYS!!!!), I'm more apt to give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, this just skirts the premise that we are trying to prevent this sort of thing from *ever* appearing.

    In principle I agree with you

    But said BioWare dude, as I remember, said something like

    "I know the guy responsible for those camera angles. Believe me, it had nothing to do with lampshading sexualization, or characterization emphasis, or anything like that."

    It was pure cheesecake

    This reminds me of something I heard regarding the director of one of them thar Japanimation programs. He was adapting a series for TV that was about zombies but also had highly sexualized female characters (including one whose breasts make the Dragon's Crown Sorceress' look modest in comparison). When asked in an interview how he was going to alter the source material his answer was basically "I am going to objectify the everloving shit out of the female characters in every way possible".

    There's a clip on Youtube from the show that has a man using a woman's chest as a stand for a sniper rifle with bullets in slow-mo passing between another girl's thighs and cleavage. The existence of something as ludicrous as that has convinced me that you can never parody sexualization or lampshade it, because somebody will find the most ridiculous shit titillating.

    Also, if you think that previous example was bad, I was at a student art show at the University of Georgia the other day where a four foot by four foot painting of an extreme close-up of a naked woman's spread open crotch was hung up for all to see. The title? "Self-Portrait by Philip".



  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Double posr

    Hexmage-PA on
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    CygnusZ wrote: »
    Wyborn wrote: »
    CygnusZ wrote: »
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    But she also posed a challenge- imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game. What do you tell her she can play that isn't going to turn her off from video games?

    For the longest time, my answer was Super Metroid- until I went back and realized that the ultimate reward for speed-running the game was finding out that Samus apparently wears a swimsuit and boots underneath her power-armor. Yeah. Nintendo dropped the ball on her long before Other M.

    You know, this isn't necessarily true, women enjoy the artifacts of femininity (sexy bathing suits included). The much larger repelling factor of Metroid is the emphasis on violent resolution to problems. The Longest Journey is probably a much better fit for teenage girls.

    At the risk of getting off-topic I'm not sure that violent resolution is necessarily repellant; ladies love the Legend of Zelda far more often than Metroid, and there are few conflicts in that series that don't involve you stabbing something in the face.

    I mostly play retro games so I'm not really that familiar with these series post-SNES, but I certainly feel that the adventure elements in OoT or LttP were much stronger than Metroid or Super Metroid which were basically straight ahead action games with some simple puzzles. I doubt either series has a large percentage of its fanbase being female, especially compared to a game like "The Sims" where probably over half the userbase is female.

    I stand by my initial assertion that violence is generally a turn off for girls. Strawberry Shortcake (female targeted) appeals to a very different type of person than Adventure Time (male targeted).

    I think perhaps you're being overly reductive, here. Strawberry Shortcake is sort of a gross pandering - or at least, it was 20-30 years ago. Adventure Time appeals to boys and girls.

    I don't have any numbers for how many girls like Zelda, but it's... it's a lot.

    dN0T6ur.png
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Cambiata wrote: »
    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    I have yet to see anyone, especially in this thread, call Bioware perfect.

    I think you're reading that a bit too literally. But plenty of people here (this board) are quick to point out how great they think BioWare is. But whether or not BioWare has a good track record overall, they're still capable of making bad choices on any number of things.

    Even so, I just don't think Miranda's Ass, cheesecake or not, is quite the same as many other better, more obvious examples. Singling it out as a clear negative only feeds the (incorrect) narrative that what we have generally been arguing is outright censorship rather than moderation and alternatives.

    The "no one wants to believe Bioware isn't perfect" comment just seems weirdly out of place in this thread in particular, considering how often Samara is brought up to criticize.

    I mean Miranda is maybe kinda excusable, even though the male gaze camera is hilariously excessive, because that way of dressing matches her personality or whatever. (note, though: All anyone who wants to make ridiculous costume choices has to say is "that's what the character wants!" and they think they have a free pass. For the record, they really don't, not when every fictional female seems to "want" to dress and pose in ways that give the player boners)

    However excusable Miranda might be, though, Samara the celebate monk is definitely not. Asari, the sexy blue stripper race is not, especially with the complete lack of male strippers anywhere in the universe. Not bothering to design female versions of any of the alien races (until ME3, just barely) is not.

    And I really do feel a bit guilty harping on Bioware because yes even despite all that they are leaps and bounds ahead of almost any other company when it comes to inclusion. The reason people praise Bioware despite the things mentioned above is that Bioware is very clearly trying to do better. And that alone garners a lot of good will. But man in two threads we've hardly ever let up criticizing them, so I don't know where the idea that "no one wants to believe Bioware isn't perfect" even comes from.

    Cambiata on
    Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
    On my sleeve, let the runway start
  • OneAngryPossumOneAngryPossum Registered User regular
    Cambiata wrote: »
    I never was 100% sure what was going on with Braid, because most of what the presented text is deliberately vague. But there was an interesting role reversal at the very last level: You think all this time you were Mario trying to rescue the princess, when the last level reframes things to suggest that you're a scary stalker that the "princess" is desperately trying to get away from.

    Braid requires a bit of foreknowledge going in that things aren't what they seem, I'd think. It's also a little too sympathetic to the protagonist for my tastes, but it does seem to be intended as a criticism of the 'nice guy'. Still misses the mark in my book, but it came close enough to be notable.

    That said, I wouldn't recommend it as an introductory game of some sort. There might be a point, but the surface is just too abrasive for that to matter.

  • EriktheVikingGamerEriktheVikingGamer Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Squidget0 wrote: »
    Lilnoobs wrote: »
    Well, considering more than half that list, strike that nearly the whole list, can't be found on the Walmart shelf...

    If someone asks you for video game recommendations, why on earth would you send them to Wal-Mart?
    Lilnoobs wrote:
    Besides that, I love how you repackaged the question from
    imagine that a teenage girl asks your advice on a game.
    to
    bolding the ones I think might appeal the most to a non-gamer.

    Interesting assumption that wasn't in the original quotation.

    That's the only likely context for the original question makes sense. People who are already gamers tend to be more specific (I want a game like x), and they already know how to look through Steam or whatever to find basic examples of the games they like. For the most part, the only time someone asks you to recommend "a video game" with no other information is because they don't know enough about video games to narrow it down and just want to try out gaming in general.

    Um, what?

    Video gaming is a hobby. And as with any hobby there are casual and hardcore participants. A casual participant who is looking to broaden his or her horizons would most definitely fall under the purview of JaysonFour's original challenge. A person's experience with various media does not merely exist in a binary state.

    EriktheVikingGamer on
    Steam - DailyFatigueBar
    FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
  • Bliss 101Bliss 101 Registered User regular
    Wyborn wrote: »
    Bliss 101 wrote: »
    I'd love to see more/better body types available in games with character creators.
    It's frustrating to want to create, say, a male character who looks like a long distance runner and get SWOLE, or a female character that looks like she could do 10 pullups.

    Seriously. Greater customizability should be the norm.

    Then again, the design and presentation of NPC characters is an issue, too. Bioware gets a lot of praise for their non-sexist characters, but after replaying ME2 I can't help noticing Miranda's Ass. Really, I mean I literally cannot help noticing it, because in several cutscenes the camera points directly at it. I won't complain about her appearance or her outfit, because it's consistent with her background and her personality; she's designed to be physically "perfect", and she likes making people uncomfortable. It's the way the camera gratuitously lingers on her ass. That's a bit too much. It's telling that even a company like Bioware would do that. They undermine the very nature of one of their central characters just to let their perceived target audience ogle at her ass.

    I am not opposed to ass-ogling. I just feel that it should not happen at the expense of the characters and the story. In situations where ogling is appropriate, both male and female asses of various proportions should be ogleable.

    One of the BioWare guys what posts on the forum (I think vsove) has said it was one of the - I think it was cutscene directors? Christ, I don't know. But whoever did that, it was actually one person!

    One person who didn't get called on it

    BioWare isn't perfect. In spite of what people want to believe.

    Also, I fail to see how the camera placement lessened the character or story. And I'm fairly certain that these shots happened when Miranda was talking about how she was 'modified' for just that kind of appeal. Seems more like the argument can be made both that BioWare simply wants to show off the...ahem...detail they went into that part of the character and that they're also using her created sexuality on the player the same way she might on others.

    Would her appearance not be seductive enough otherwise? Miranda's entire character is all about being in control, and these exploitative shots just detract from that. She's talking, but how can you take her seriously when your face seems to be inexplicably embedded in her ass?

    MSL59.jpg
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    That was what I was thinking. Why can't some company actually put together a bunch of girls who are actually gamers that don't have to fit the attractiveness level of an E3 booth babe? There are plenty of them out there...

    Honestly, I also found it odd that the list of games I was given was mostly Steam games... not to mention most of the list that wasn't already knocked off seemed to be nothing but "casual" games. Why no Oblivion? Why no Skyrim? Why no Fallout or the like? Do we just assume that since a gamer is female, it limits them to playing things that male gamers classify as "casual" games?
    Wyborn wrote: »
    This comes up from time to time for me

    The appropriate answer is almost always "Well what do you like to play"

    If that doesn't yield any results (though that's becoming increasingly rare) I tend to try to figure out based on other interests they have. If all else fails I recommend Zelda.

    Nice try, but dodging the question isn't really an answer. And Zelda? Yet another game where you play as a guy working to save the princess? (I could make a whole post about Zelda, that's for sure.) I'd think a girl would want to play as a female character- after all, women are strong in their own right- they don't need to pretend to be a male character simply to feel strong.

    Is it bad that the only game I would honestly think about giving her is Portal 1? No online component (no exposure to mouthbreathers who would surely ask her for her a/s/l and send her a dick-pic in five minutes...), but still a nice person... but still, Chell never speaks.

    Answering my own challenge is harder than I thought...

    steam_sig.png
    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • YggiDeeYggiDee The World Ends With You Shill Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    Introducing Braid to a first-time gamer is a great way to introduce your controller to a wall. There's some really interesting subtext in there but from what I remember the weird goddamn time puzzles are not newbie-friendly.

    edit: Also ladies love some Zelda.

    YggiDee on
  • Squidget0Squidget0 Registered User regular
    Squidget wrote:
    That's the only likely context for the original question makes sense. People who are already gamers tend to be more specific (I want a game like x), and they already know how to look through Steam or whatever to find basic examples of the games they like. For the most part, the only time someone asks you to recommend "a video game" with no other information is because they don't know enough about video games to narrow it down and just want to try out gaming in general.

    Um, what?

    Video gaming is a hobby. And as with any hobby there are casual and hardcore participants. A casual participant who is looking to broaden his or her horizons would most definitely fall under the purview of JaysonFour's original challenge. A person's experience with various media does not merely exist in a binary state.

    If someone tells me "Recommend me a video game!" with no other context, I'm going to ask them what games then make recommendations based on that. The only way I wouldn't get an answer to that is if they didn't know enough about games to know what game they would like. Therefore, the only time I can picture myself answering the original question on its own is if I'm talking to a non-gamer.

    Clearer?

  • KingofMadCowsKingofMadCows Registered User regular
    I would suggest some games that may not be obvious choices. Heroes of Might and Magic 3 would be a good example.

  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    That was what I was thinking. Why can't some company actually put together a bunch of girls who are actually gamers that don't have to fit the attractiveness level of an E3 booth babe? There are plenty of them out there...

    Honestly, I also found it odd that the list of games I was given was mostly Steam games... not to mention most of the list that wasn't already knocked off seemed to be nothing but "casual" games. Why no Oblivion? Why no Skyrim? Why no Fallout or the like? Do we just assume that since a gamer is female, it limits them to playing things that male gamers classify as "casual" games?
    Wyborn wrote: »
    This comes up from time to time for me

    The appropriate answer is almost always "Well what do you like to play"

    If that doesn't yield any results (though that's becoming increasingly rare) I tend to try to figure out based on other interests they have. If all else fails I recommend Zelda.

    Nice try, but dodging the question isn't really an answer. And Zelda? Yet another game where you play as a guy working to save the princess? (I could make a whole post about Zelda, that's for sure.) I'd think a girl would want to play as a female character- after all, women are strong in their own right- they don't need to pretend to be a male character simply to feel strong.

    Is it bad that the only game I would honestly think about giving her is Portal 1? No online component (no exposure to mouthbreathers who would surely ask her for her a/s/l and send her a dick-pic in five minutes...), but still a nice person... but still, Chell never speaks.

    Answering my own challenge is harder than I thought...

    But it's not dodging the question. Recommending games necessitates talking to people and understanding their tastes, because they are people and not collections of traits which I can use to parse what they do or do not want in video games. Engaging them as a person with their own tastes is the only real answer there is, because different people - including women - are going to want different things.

    I recommend Zelda games because they are terrific. Are they paragons of gender equality? Nah, not most of the time. Damn good games, though, and that tends to be my first criteria lacking anything else. And ladies love them! On Skyward Sword launch, the sharp majority of the 40+ people who showed up for store open were women between the ages of 13 and 30, though that's probably more a reflection of the area I live in

    Man, I

    I appreciate the question you brought to the table here but what you're saying seems to imply a lot of presuppositions about what women want or experience and it's kinda weirding me out a little

    Wyborn on
    dN0T6ur.png
  • EriktheVikingGamerEriktheVikingGamer Registered User regular
    edited April 2013
    JaysonFour wrote: »
    That was what I was thinking. Why can't some company actually put together a bunch of girls who are actually gamers that don't have to fit the attractiveness level of an E3 booth babe? There are plenty of them out there...

    Honestly, I also found it odd that the list of games I was given was mostly Steam games... not to mention most of the list that wasn't already knocked off seemed to be nothing but "casual" games. Why no Oblivion? Why no Skyrim? Why no Fallout or the like? Do we just assume that since a gamer is female, it limits them to playing things that male gamers classify as "casual" games?
    Wyborn wrote: »
    This comes up from time to time for me

    The appropriate answer is almost always "Well what do you like to play"

    If that doesn't yield any results (though that's becoming increasingly rare) I tend to try to figure out based on other interests they have. If all else fails I recommend Zelda.

    Nice try, but dodging the question isn't really an answer. And Zelda? Yet another game where you play as a guy working to save the princess? (I could make a whole post about Zelda, that's for sure.) I'd think a girl would want to play as a female character- after all, women are strong in their own right- they don't need to pretend to be a male character simply to feel strong.

    Is it bad that the only game I would honestly think about giving her is Portal 1? No online component (no exposure to mouthbreathers who would surely ask her for her a/s/l and send her a dick-pic in five minutes...), but still a nice person... but still, Chell never speaks.

    Answering my own challenge is harder than I thought...

    OG Metriod, Metriod Prime, OG Myst (minus the part where that game is downright tedious), and Mirror's Edge are all I can really think of off of the top of my head. But yeah, this list is definitely not easy to compile.

    EDIT: Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, Metroid Fusion, Final Fantasy 6, Pokemon

    EriktheVikingGamer on
    Steam - DailyFatigueBar
    FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
  • emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    How did 'cheesecake' wind up being an idiom for fan-service? Cheesecake is delicious.

This discussion has been closed.