Scientific studies have shown oxytocin, which is secreted mainly right after childbirth, generates feelings of trust as a neurologic hormone effect. So it biologically is a weird radiation reaching up from the uterus (actually from the pituitary but whatever).
Is this really a thing you're going to do
There are medically distinct but minute differences between the sexes that people confabulate into social concepts of gender. People did the same thing with race.
Okay I guess this is a thing you're going to do.
Maternity and Paternity - parenthood - are more than the birth process.
The protection instinct is incredibly powerful and experienced almost universally in some capacity, by everyone, even if a kid has not dropped out of their vagina.
For Christ's sake
It is very important that you stop thinking I am saying whatever you are thinking I am saying, because as far as I'm concerned you're responding to someone entirely different. You had wondered something earlier:
It makes me wonder why whenever the same feelings are (attempted to be) evoked in a female character, it's treated like this weird radiation reaching up from the uterus, something to be studied under a microscope
And I answered by saying that people noticed there was a small female hormone thing that people noticed and blew up into the whole mystical maternal instinct thing, which is elaborated in media. It was a direct answer to your query.
I may have a fundamental problem at communicating ideas which is disheartening. I am not sure that even this message will be clear. I expected it to be a neat little factoid that would be interesting, and it confounds me why people get upset over this. Was I doing something like implying that females are more suited to raise children? Why would I do that? And I thought that I had negated that possibility quite thoroughly in the second post. If it is something else, I'm drawing a blank here on what you're thinking I'm thinking. It makes me sad to think that people automatically assume the worst of anything I say.
No, you did not do anything explicitly wrong. I did not assume you meant what you actually meant, but there is a reason for that: I find it highly implausible, almost to the point of absurdity, that video game portrayals of women in parental roles are so stilted and weird compared to men in the same roles are caused by game developers thinking about the studies revolving around oxytocin.
Because that notion does not appear to conflate with reality. It kind of gestures at reality, in a sense, but it's more justification after the fact.
The Walking Dead is specifically a game about a sort of adoptive father and the little girl he takes care of. There are not any - or nearly as many - really good female characters portrayed in the same sort of relationships. Articles about oxycotin are not the reason for that disparity.
Oh, I see. No, people didn't read an article and then develop some grand hypothesis about the differences in male and female child rearing. It's just probable that the oxytocin mechanism was a factor noticed by unscientific, casual observers that just made it seem natural for the child to be more attached to the mother, regardless of how right or wrong that was, and that subtle hint of a difference was blown into a greater theory of gender roles because we like making mountains out of molehills. The oxytocin article is hindsight, not foresight, and does not dictate truth, but is more of an exploration into the anthropology of why people have this slanted fascination with the mother-child bond. Popular evidence further here:
As for the Walking Dead, I'm sure you'll agree that there are not any - or nearly as many - really good characters in the whole of interactive media as there were in that game.
Something for you to take back to the walking dead thread (spoilers please do not click if you have not played everybody):
You ever think about if Christa throwing up in the bushes when Lee buried the dog, her getting extra upset at the video, her extra special concern for Clementine, and Kenny's shock when she downs the Vodka are related?
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
From the first time she shows up in the game, and later on Lee flat out says it in case the player is too dense to realize it themselves. But that should kind of go in the TWD thread.
When you climb up the ladder, Omid's like "we could use help" and she goes "we're fine" and he goes "what about when...?" and I was like "welp she's pregnant."
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It was my fault; I decided to put in a little side note and I didn't explain it properly, so things got out of hand and took a while to get sorted.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This story about Dragons of Dredmor got me to buy the game, even though I don't like roguelikes. So I'll gladly throw my money at game developers that make anti harassment policies the norm. The question is where do I find such developers.
i want to quote this for the next page because i really don't believe it got the views it deserves
this is an AMAZING story and i want it to not be amazing anymore
i want this to be the norm, and eventually not necessary
hell i have ZERO interest in roguelikes and i'm thinking of getting dredmor because i wanna support this
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Dredmor is also interesting in that they later patched in a female hero as a character choice alongside the original male. Not hard for a story-less roguelike but still neat.
A lot devs whine about resources for female models, and you have TF2 which has robot and zombie models not to mention a zillion hats. Brink was another example.
Games like Gotham City Impostors did better by just making some classes female and some male. Gosh, that was hard.
a tremendously robust character creation engine with thousands of combinations representing a whole range of ETHNIC diversity - however adding even a single woman is impossible
fuck that noise, fuck art teams, fuck art directors, fuck the system that trains them to think this way, fuck everythingGODDAMN
*headdesk*
curly haired boy on
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
a tremendously robust character creation engine with thousands of combinations representing a whole range of ETHNIC diversity - however adding even a single woman is impossible
fuck that noise, fuck art teams, fuck art directors, fuck the system that trains them to think this way, fuck everythingGODDAMN
*headdesk*
Brink had a big problem of having a lot of good ideas, but for some reason not seeing or being able to execute the seemingly obvious followthrough to complete them. But yeah, I was really discouraged about buying Brink when I read that.
To be fair, online F2P mmos really are the dregs of gaming. They're basically porn sites, in the obvious way but also in the way they're marketed through pop ups and have poor production values. There are even MMOs that are basically straight porn; we're talking newgrounds class exposure.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
I think the main problem for TF2 would have been rounding up all the voice actors for the serial updates.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
basically:
we had to choose between a ton of guys or fewer guys and some women.
we think guys are waaay more important!
and people wonder why more women don't play games like brink :V
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
basically:
we had to choose between a ton of guys or fewer guys and some women.
we think guys are waaay more important!
and people wonder why more women don't play games like brink :V
Also: We couldn't make the girls look girly enough while also being swole, and fuck work, we had to make Brink!
A lot devs whine about resources for female models, and you have TF2 which has robot and zombie models not to mention a zillion hats.
Well, I'm not an animation expert, but I'm told that stuff like the robot models is a lot easier because you can keep the same rigging and animations, or something. Valve doesn't even make most of the hats/weapons anymore, they cut-paste them right in from the community workshop. Although I personally think the all male cast (well maybe the Pyro is female???) adds to the atmosphere of TF2 anyway.
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
basically:
we had to choose between a ton of guys or fewer guys and some women.
we think guys are waaay more important!
and people wonder why more women don't play games like brink :V
Also: We couldn't make the girls look girly enough while also being swole, and fuck work, we had to make Brink!
They could have made all the female characters look like Hammer from Fable 2. Seriously, Hammer's the best. Why couldn't she have been immortal instead of that killstealing asshat Reaver?
Anyway, if guys can be made unrealistically muscular than so should women. City of Heroes/Villains dropped the ball by giving you a slender male, slender female, and Hulk-sized male model with no Hulk-sized female (and no, She-Hulk-sized wouldn't be good enough).
Hexmage-PA on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
A lot devs whine about resources for female models, and you have TF2 which has robot and zombie models not to mention a zillion hats.
Well, I'm not an animation expert, but I'm told that stuff like the robot models is a lot easier because you can keep the same rigging and animations, or something. Valve doesn't even make most of the hats/weapons anymore, they cut-paste them right in from the community workshop. Although I personally think the all male cast (well maybe the Pyro is female???) adds to the atmosphere of TF2 anyway.
Just out of curiosity, what is it in the atmosphere that you think would be lost if they added female characters?
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I'm really trying to think of any games I own other than games with lots of playable characters (like fighting games) and games with custom characters that let me play as female human (or at least humanoid) characters.
- Vanillaware's Odin Sphere starts you off as a young Valkyrie.
- Beyond Good & Evil's Jade.
- Mega Man ZX lets you play as either a male or female human twin, while ZXA lets you play as a male reploid or a female human.
- Bayonetta, which I just got yesterday.
- The all-female PC cast of Final Fantasy X-2 (which I get the feeling wouldn't be a favorite of this thread).
- Metroid Prime's Samus.
- Wet (which I bet also wouldn't be popular in this thread).
- Golden Axe: Beast Rider (again, probably not well-received)
- Viewtiful Joe 2's Sylvia.
- Kim Pines, Ramona Flowers, and (if you get the DLC) Knives Chau from Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game.
- Tron Bonne from The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (who has gotten lots of cameos in other games and merchandise but not another game of her own).
There's probably more I'm forgetting, but out of these Tron Bonne is definitely my favorite. I think she's supposed to be fourteen, but she's a genius mechanic who creates and pilots mechs for her older and younger brother (who themselves are actually kind of useless; she even saves the two of them from indentured servitude). Tron also built and commands a bunch of robots (called Servbots) that she alternates between treating as kids and treating as worthless mooks.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
A lot devs whine about resources for female models, and you have TF2 which has robot and zombie models not to mention a zillion hats.
Well, I'm not an animation expert, but I'm told that stuff like the robot models is a lot easier because you can keep the same rigging and animations, or something. Valve doesn't even make most of the hats/weapons anymore, they cut-paste them right in from the community workshop. Although I personally think the all male cast (well maybe the Pyro is female???) adds to the atmosphere of TF2 anyway.
I am really curious about this. What exactly is this "atmosphere" you are describing and how would having women in the game impact it?
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
I'm really trying to think of any games I own other than games with lots of playable characters (like fighting games) and games with custom characters that let me play as female human (or at least humanoid) characters.
Just for fun, I went down my steam games list and picked out the ones I can remember making this possible. I left off games where I couldn't remember if they gave the option, or games where you don't directly control a single character (like a lot of strategy games.) I'm not really trying to prove a point or anything here, just thought it was interesting to do.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (DLC only)
Aquaria
Awesomenauts
Batman: Arkham City (DLC only)
The Binding of Issac (not adults)
Borderlands
Cart Life
Chantelise
Dark Souls
Dead Rising 2
Dungeon Defenders
Dungeons of Dredmor
Dustforce
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
Indigo Prophecy
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Left4Dead
Left4Dead2
Legend of Grimrock
The Longest Journey
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Monaco
Monday Night Combat
Mount & Blade
NyxQuest
Orcs Must Die 2
Portal
Portal 2
Realm of the Mad God
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Resident Evil 5
Terraria
They Bleed Pixels
Titan Quest
Torchlight
Trine
Trine 2
Unreal Tournament 2004
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
In general, in art it's preferred to not have something than to have something that looks "weird" to the eye.
Honestly, it sounds like they just planned poorly and ran out of time. That happens with a lot of games, and it's always tough. I don't particularly fault their decision either way, I can see why they would do either.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
In general, in art it's preferred to not have something than to have something that looks "weird" to the eye.
Yeah because I know so many 6 ft tall beefcake men who run around dilapidated environments shooting one another and going down into a "help me, I need a medic pose". Happens all the fucking time so if I saw a woman like that I would just have no idea how to react. I would be all, damn girl, this just doesn't make sense and looks weird.
Edit: I should add, without the sarcasm, that this simple sentence demonstrates the depth of the misogyny and sexism in the games industry aptly. When we can be talking about a game with the kind of absurd things that happen within it, like people being shot multiple times then falling flat on their backs to "beg" for a medic and yet in this same fucking game "women" are regarded as too weird. Women would be too weird. 50% of the fucking planet, would be too weird.
Congrats, this is why you are part of the problem when you think this is an actual fucking excuse.
Honestly, this post made me so enraged that I very nearly went ballistic. It took every fiber of my being to be this polite.
I'm sure a lot of female gamers who would otherwise be meh about it would now be more interested.
If female gamers didn't give a shit about TF2 before, why will they suddenly care once you do nothing but gender flip the characters? I mean if it's really just that simple... go ahead. I couldn't give two shits what the gender of my character is. If it'll make them feel more welcome, I'm seriously all for it.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
Oh look, it's that thing again! "I couldn't X". It's almost like I addressed this before, somewhere. I wouldn't even know where.
It's almost as if I wish there is a image of a tweet I could post here that would encompass every problem I have with what you just said extremely well. It would be from an account ironically called something like "White Male Priviledge" and have some incredibly witty text that reads something like "Hold on now, please allow me to explain to you how you should talk to me". Man I so wish something like that existed so I didn't have to do so much typing.
I will never check to see if a game developer is male before playing a game, or prefer a male game developer's games just because he is male, or avoid a female game developer's games just because she is female.
Dear lord. You are a master of missing the forest for the trees, then you go about completely ignoring everything that was just said (you failed to address a single one of the arguments I made) and then go on an irrelevant tangent. Here let me quote this for you directly as you have missed it twice now, from David Gaider (one of the lead writers of Dragon Age):
Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally.
This quote isn't even about anything to do with this thread, yet is such a fantastic summary. When people are making statements like "I don't care who designed a game" or "I don't care if women make games" or "I don't mind breasts, what's the problem everyone else is having?" you are the problem. It's a lack of emphathy and the inability to consider how someone else might perceive the world outside of your own opinions that's the problem. It's saying "Who cares if women design games, so long as they are good" which is the problem because that's why we have this undercurrent of "Who cares if women are in the games industry and why should we bother encouraging them?". It's the entire core of this thread, of this discussion and why the entire twitter thing started in the first place.
When you say "I don't ..." expect me to immediately completely ignore you when I am not talking about your specific opinion on something. How about saying "How do other people feel ..." or "What do other people say they want to see ..." and go from there?
Seriously, what you think is or isn't a big issue isn't important. It is like when Paladin (who has, numerous pages later, still entirely ignored this argument to go down entirely new strawmen and irrelevant tangents in this thread) argued that it shouldn't matter that women weren't in the industry because he, personally, didn't care who made the games he liked. This is missing the entire point, which I explained above and it's why this is a terrible exclusionary argument.
But hey, as long as it doesn't affect you who gives a fuck if they ever represent women right? But if this isn't your intention, then for the love of God, stop making this damn argument.
It's almost as if I wish there is a image of a tweet I could post here that would encompass every problem I have with what you just said extremely well. It would be from an account ironically called something like "White Male Priviledge" and have some incredibly witty text that reads something like "Hold on now, please allow me to explain to you how you should talk to me". Man I so wish something like that existed so I didn't have to do so much typing.
I will never check to see if a game developer is male before playing a game, or prefer a male game developer's games just because he is male, or avoid a female game developer's games just because she is female.
Dear lord. You are a master of missing the forest for the trees, then you go about completely ignoring everything that was just said (you failed to address a single one of the arguments I made) and then go on an irrelevant tangent. Here let me quote this for you directly as you have missed it twice now, from David Gaider (one of the lead writers of Dragon Age):
Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally.
This quote isn't even about anything to do with this thread, yet is such a fantastic summary. When people are making statements like "I don't care who designed a game" or "I don't care if women make games" or "I don't mind breasts, what's the problem everyone else is having?" you are the problem. It's a lack of emphathy and the inability to consider how someone else might perceive the world outside of your own opinions that's the problem. It's saying "Who cares if women design games, so long as they are good" which is the problem because that's why we have this undercurrent of "Who cares if women are in the games industry and why should we bother encouraging them?". It's the entire core of this thread, of this discussion and why the entire twitter thing started in the first place.
When you say "I don't ..." expect me to immediately completely ignore you when I am not talking about your specific opinion on something. How about saying "How do other people feel ..." or "What do other people say they want to see ..." and go from there?
Seriously, what you think is or isn't a big issue isn't important. It is like when Paladin (who has, numerous pages later, still entirely ignored this argument to go down entirely new strawmen and irrelevant tangents in this thread) argued that it shouldn't matter that women weren't in the industry because he, personally, didn't care who made the games he liked. This is missing the entire point, which I explained above and it's why this is a terrible exclusionary argument.
But hey, as long as it doesn't affect you who gives a fuck if they ever represent women right? But if this isn't your intention, then for the love of God, stop making this damn argument.
Is this directed at me? Because I thought the solution to the problem was to realize and change the deep seated social issues that exist in our society today. To have better represented female characters. Who are not boiled down to a pair of tits on the box to be rescued. Y'know, shit that's a ton more complicated than just flipping a toggle from "Male" to "Female".
If that's the almighty secret, then do it and make the world a better place. I'm all fucking for it. Honestly.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
Yes, that is directed at you and you might want to read the post again. Specifically where you write;
I couldn't give two shits what the gender of my character is.
and then in the above I want you to read what David Gaider wrote:
Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally.
The people saying that it would be nice if women would actually be represented in games, instead of a feature that is perfectly "ignorable" might in fact think it is a problem. Just because you don't care, is utterly fucking irrelevant to anything to do with this argument. It simply makes you look like you have not bothered to understand almost 134 (including previous thread) of discussion.
So yes, if you had read the thread you might realize that women might feel better if they were better represented in games. I mean, I suppose the alternative to portrayed as agency devoid sex objects is not at all, but I would like to think we can do better than that.
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
In general, in art it's preferred to not have something than to have something that looks "weird" to the eye.
Yeah because I know so many 6 ft tall beefcake men who run around dilapidated environments shooting one another and going down into a "help me, I need a medic pose". Happens all the fucking time so if I saw a woman like that I would just have no idea how to react. I would be all, damn girl, this just doesn't make sense and looks weird.
Edit: I should add, without the sarcasm, that this simple sentence demonstrates the depth of the misogyny and sexism in the games industry aptly. When we can be talking about a game with the kind of absurd things that happen within it, like people being shot multiple times then falling flat on their backs to "beg" for a medic and yet in this same fucking game "women" are regarded as too weird. Women would be too weird. 50% of the fucking planet, would be too weird.
Congrats, this is why you are part of the problem when you think this is an actual fucking excuse.
Honestly, this post made me so enraged that I very nearly went ballistic. It took every fiber of my being to be this polite.
I'm not a professional animator, but my experience as an amateur is that if you take an animation and then apply it to a different model (unless the models are extremely similar) it's usually going to look weird unless the two models are pretty much identical. Not like "non-idealized" weird, but uncanny valley weird. Different body shapes can cause clipping in certain animations (cases where one body part moves unnaturally through another body part.) Different body shapes tend to produce different poses. There are also all kinds of minor subconscious differences between male and female gestures and movement patterns, most of which you don't even notice unless you specifically learn about them. If you're curious to learn more, a lot of them are documented in detail on trans-friendly websites.
Basically, adding both genders was more than they felt they could do in the time available, and they didn't want to half-ass it or produce something that would look bad. It's fine if you don't like the decision, I'm just saying that I get it. Game developers can't do everything, and sometimes you have to cut stuff, even features you like. In the end, it's their decision to make and they don't need an excuse on whether or not to include that particular form of character customization.
Also, you are being pointlessly rude, and your faux-outrage is tiresome. I have no idea what I said to piss you off, If you're honestly finding a forum topic that frustrating, you should probably take a step back. This is a civil discussion between adults with a variety of opinions. No one is hurting anyone.
Splash Damage's rationale for no women in Brink is... something.
From the outset, we wanted to create a character customization system that was so deep and varied that you would never run into another player that looked exactly like you. As we got deeper into development, we were faced with an incredibly tough choice: massively cut back the amount of customization options as well as the quality of the assets, or cut female models.
Ultimately, we didn’t want to compromise our initial vision of having incredibly varied character customization without hurting the artistic quality, so we decided to only focus on male customization and make that the best we possibly can. This was a very, very hard decision for us to make, but we feel that it was the right one for the overall quality of the game.
Also, you’d practically double up on animation (women move noticeably differently to men) doubling up on the production of animations, and the memory footprint for that.
One of the only things we really found challenging about fitting female characters into Brink’s gameplay proper is that in order for gameplay to be balanced, the females would have to be roughly the same height and width as the male characters in order to prevent any issues with hit detection or visibility.
Since women naturally tend to be smaller than men in reality, it meant we had to be pretty exaggerated in terms of their proportions when concepting the early designs. It actually worked fairly well in the end but it was a lot more work than getting the males to look right at the same size.
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
In general, in art it's preferred to not have something than to have something that looks "weird" to the eye.
Yeah because I know so many 6 ft tall beefcake men who run around dilapidated environments shooting one another and going down into a "help me, I need a medic pose". Happens all the fucking time so if I saw a woman like that I would just have no idea how to react. I would be all, damn girl, this just doesn't make sense and looks weird.
Edit: I should add, without the sarcasm, that this simple sentence demonstrates the depth of the misogyny and sexism in the games industry aptly. When we can be talking about a game with the kind of absurd things that happen within it, like people being shot multiple times then falling flat on their backs to "beg" for a medic and yet in this same fucking game "women" are regarded as too weird. Women would be too weird. 50% of the fucking planet, would be too weird.
Congrats, this is why you are part of the problem when you think this is an actual fucking excuse.
Honestly, this post made me so enraged that I very nearly went ballistic. It took every fiber of my being to be this polite.
The game already looks weird as shit and does entirely illogical things that don't look right in the first place. From the way the males behave, from being shot to falling over in a set pose (the "beg for medic" specifically) and similar. Yet these things, which already look damn weird anyway are so much worse when it's a woman. Really?
Could you answer the argument, not your usual obtuse obfuscation of points, avoiding the actual argument made and similar?
Edit: And many games have been getting away with using similar skeletons and animations for women for years. Frankly the idea that all the characters in the game are so buff that women wouldn't fit onto existing skeletons/animations is kind of absurd. Yeah if you want to really emphasize that women are smaller framed sure, but in a fantasy game of futuristic parkour and medic classes that heal bullet wounds is realism the essential argument to keeping them out of the game?
Really?
Edit2: I can assure you, there is no "faux outrage" over seeing you fail to get the same points over and over again in this discussion. It's genuine.
Actually I can say I don't have a problem with the gender of my character and still recognize the problem. Hence the statement, if that's the solution, do it. I'll still play the games no problem, and if it means girls feel more welcome, it's win/win all around.
But you know what? Fuck it. This thread is a fucking joke as it is. What with you and Dhalphir snapping and snarling at everybody who doesn't see it 110% your way. Hence there will never be a meaningful discussion so long as you shit over everybody for not instantly getting it.
The message and the goal is a worthwhile one. Good luck getting it out there. I'm through.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Actually I can say I don't have a problem with the gender of my character and still recognize the problem. Hence the statement, if that's the solution, do it. I'll still play the games no problem, and if it means girls feel more welcome, it's win/win all around.
But you know what? Fuck it. This thread is a fucking joke as it is. What with you and Dhalphir snapping and snarling at everybody who doesn't see it 110% your way. Hence there will never be a meaningful discussion so long as you shit over everybody for not instantly getting it.
The message and the goal is a worthwhile one. Good luck getting it out there. I'm through.
If I am going to criticize other people for doing it, but then go and ignore people in agreement with me doing it, then that makes me a gigantic hypocrite. So if I criticize Paladin for doing this just because you are in agreement does not mean I shouldnt point it out. Its a horrible argument to make and imagine if someone told you "I honestly couldn't give a shit about something you really care about or want to see" and then was like "But I guess if it does bother you, it's fine if they do it", how would you feel? Would you feel this is a person really that interested in supporting you?
Because that's how someone once explained it to me and that's why I dislike that kind of argument. You say "I don't care" or "I couldn't care" and then the "But if it helps you, that sounds great" as almost a backhanded concession to the way they feel. And I can assure you, they won't be feeling great.
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I'll leave it at that, I guess
edit: whoops! I coulda sworn this was the Steam thread.
The rest of my post stands...
Oh, I see. No, people didn't read an article and then develop some grand hypothesis about the differences in male and female child rearing. It's just probable that the oxytocin mechanism was a factor noticed by unscientific, casual observers that just made it seem natural for the child to be more attached to the mother, regardless of how right or wrong that was, and that subtle hint of a difference was blown into a greater theory of gender roles because we like making mountains out of molehills. The oxytocin article is hindsight, not foresight, and does not dictate truth, but is more of an exploration into the anthropology of why people have this slanted fascination with the mother-child bond. Popular evidence further here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aDxajXekbaM#t=214s
As for the Walking Dead, I'm sure you'll agree that there are not any - or nearly as many - really good characters in the whole of interactive media as there were in that game.
Something for you to take back to the walking dead thread (spoilers please do not click if you have not played everybody):
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
EDIT - Really, oxy and childbirth? Come on.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
i want to quote this for the next page because i really don't believe it got the views it deserves
this is an AMAZING story and i want it to not be amazing anymore
i want this to be the norm, and eventually not necessary
hell i have ZERO interest in roguelikes and i'm thinking of getting dredmor because i wanna support this
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
i just watched that scarlet blade video on the previous page
i nearly had an aneurysm
i don't want to live in a world where that game got made
i really don't
if that's where gaming is going, count me the fuck out. i'm done. i'm just done.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Games like Gotham City Impostors did better by just making some classes female and some male. Gosh, that was hard.
a tremendously robust character creation engine with thousands of combinations representing a whole range of ETHNIC diversity - however adding even a single woman is impossible
fuck that noise, fuck art teams, fuck art directors, fuck the system that trains them to think this way, fuck everything GODDAMN
*headdesk*
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Brink had a big problem of having a lot of good ideas, but for some reason not seeing or being able to execute the seemingly obvious followthrough to complete them. But yeah, I was really discouraged about buying Brink when I read that.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
basically:
and people wonder why more women don't play games like brink :V
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Also: We couldn't make the girls look girly enough while also being swole, and fuck work, we had to make Brink!
They could have made all the female characters look like Hammer from Fable 2. Seriously, Hammer's the best. Why couldn't she have been immortal instead of that killstealing asshat Reaver?
Anyway, if guys can be made unrealistically muscular than so should women. City of Heroes/Villains dropped the ball by giving you a slender male, slender female, and Hulk-sized male model with no Hulk-sized female (and no, She-Hulk-sized wouldn't be good enough).
Just out of curiosity, what is it in the atmosphere that you think would be lost if they added female characters?
I'm sure a lot of female gamers who would otherwise be meh about it would now be more interested.
- Vanillaware's Odin Sphere starts you off as a young Valkyrie.
- Beyond Good & Evil's Jade.
- Mega Man ZX lets you play as either a male or female human twin, while ZXA lets you play as a male reploid or a female human.
- Bayonetta, which I just got yesterday.
- The all-female PC cast of Final Fantasy X-2 (which I get the feeling wouldn't be a favorite of this thread).
- Metroid Prime's Samus.
- Wet (which I bet also wouldn't be popular in this thread).
- Golden Axe: Beast Rider (again, probably not well-received)
- Viewtiful Joe 2's Sylvia.
- Kim Pines, Ramona Flowers, and (if you get the DLC) Knives Chau from Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game.
- Tron Bonne from The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (who has gotten lots of cameos in other games and merchandise but not another game of her own).
There's probably more I'm forgetting, but out of these Tron Bonne is definitely my favorite. I think she's supposed to be fourteen, but she's a genius mechanic who creates and pilots mechs for her older and younger brother (who themselves are actually kind of useless; she even saves the two of them from indentured servitude). Tron also built and commands a bunch of robots (called Servbots) that she alternates between treating as kids and treating as worthless mooks.
I am really curious about this. What exactly is this "atmosphere" you are describing and how would having women in the game impact it?
why on earth were they so obsessed with making the women in the game move like stereotypical women and be as small as sterotypical women? would it have been so awful to have them be the same height and use the same animations as the male avatars? or develop the female animations first and give them to the male
Just for fun, I went down my steam games list and picked out the ones I can remember making this possible. I left off games where I couldn't remember if they gave the option, or games where you don't directly control a single character (like a lot of strategy games.) I'm not really trying to prove a point or anything here, just thought it was interesting to do.
Aquaria
Awesomenauts
Batman: Arkham City (DLC only)
The Binding of Issac (not adults)
Borderlands
Cart Life
Chantelise
Dark Souls
Dead Rising 2
Dungeon Defenders
Dungeons of Dredmor
Dustforce
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
Indigo Prophecy
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Left4Dead
Left4Dead2
Legend of Grimrock
The Longest Journey
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Monaco
Monday Night Combat
Mount & Blade
NyxQuest
Orcs Must Die 2
Portal
Portal 2
Realm of the Mad God
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale
Resident Evil 5
Terraria
They Bleed Pixels
Titan Quest
Torchlight
Trine
Trine 2
Unreal Tournament 2004
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
In general, in art it's preferred to not have something than to have something that looks "weird" to the eye.
Honestly, it sounds like they just planned poorly and ran out of time. That happens with a lot of games, and it's always tough. I don't particularly fault their decision either way, I can see why they would do either.
Yeah because I know so many 6 ft tall beefcake men who run around dilapidated environments shooting one another and going down into a "help me, I need a medic pose". Happens all the fucking time so if I saw a woman like that I would just have no idea how to react. I would be all, damn girl, this just doesn't make sense and looks weird.
Edit: I should add, without the sarcasm, that this simple sentence demonstrates the depth of the misogyny and sexism in the games industry aptly. When we can be talking about a game with the kind of absurd things that happen within it, like people being shot multiple times then falling flat on their backs to "beg" for a medic and yet in this same fucking game "women" are regarded as too weird. Women would be too weird. 50% of the fucking planet, would be too weird.
Congrats, this is why you are part of the problem when you think this is an actual fucking excuse.
Honestly, this post made me so enraged that I very nearly went ballistic. It took every fiber of my being to be this polite.
If female gamers didn't give a shit about TF2 before, why will they suddenly care once you do nothing but gender flip the characters? I mean if it's really just that simple... go ahead. I couldn't give two shits what the gender of my character is. If it'll make them feel more welcome, I'm seriously all for it.
Seriously, what you think is or isn't a big issue isn't important. It is like when Paladin (who has, numerous pages later, still entirely ignored this argument to go down entirely new strawmen and irrelevant tangents in this thread) argued that it shouldn't matter that women weren't in the industry because he, personally, didn't care who made the games he liked. This is missing the entire point, which I explained above and it's why this is a terrible exclusionary argument.
But hey, as long as it doesn't affect you who gives a fuck if they ever represent women right? But if this isn't your intention, then for the love of God, stop making this damn argument.
Is this directed at me? Because I thought the solution to the problem was to realize and change the deep seated social issues that exist in our society today. To have better represented female characters. Who are not boiled down to a pair of tits on the box to be rescued. Y'know, shit that's a ton more complicated than just flipping a toggle from "Male" to "Female".
If that's the almighty secret, then do it and make the world a better place. I'm all fucking for it. Honestly.
and then in the above I want you to read what David Gaider wrote:
The people saying that it would be nice if women would actually be represented in games, instead of a feature that is perfectly "ignorable" might in fact think it is a problem. Just because you don't care, is utterly fucking irrelevant to anything to do with this argument. It simply makes you look like you have not bothered to understand almost 134 (including previous thread) of discussion.
So yes, if you had read the thread you might realize that women might feel better if they were better represented in games. I mean, I suppose the alternative to portrayed as agency devoid sex objects is not at all, but I would like to think we can do better than that.
I'm not a professional animator, but my experience as an amateur is that if you take an animation and then apply it to a different model (unless the models are extremely similar) it's usually going to look weird unless the two models are pretty much identical. Not like "non-idealized" weird, but uncanny valley weird. Different body shapes can cause clipping in certain animations (cases where one body part moves unnaturally through another body part.) Different body shapes tend to produce different poses. There are also all kinds of minor subconscious differences between male and female gestures and movement patterns, most of which you don't even notice unless you specifically learn about them. If you're curious to learn more, a lot of them are documented in detail on trans-friendly websites.
Basically, adding both genders was more than they felt they could do in the time available, and they didn't want to half-ass it or produce something that would look bad. It's fine if you don't like the decision, I'm just saying that I get it. Game developers can't do everything, and sometimes you have to cut stuff, even features you like. In the end, it's their decision to make and they don't need an excuse on whether or not to include that particular form of character customization.
Also, you are being pointlessly rude, and your faux-outrage is tiresome. I have no idea what I said to piss you off, If you're honestly finding a forum topic that frustrating, you should probably take a step back. This is a civil discussion between adults with a variety of opinions. No one is hurting anyone.
Also I didn't say flip it. Ever. I have however been advocating "adding options".
That was the sound of the entire point sailing all the way over Squigets head. Would you like to try again?
The game already looks weird as shit and does entirely illogical things that don't look right in the first place. From the way the males behave, from being shot to falling over in a set pose (the "beg for medic" specifically) and similar. Yet these things, which already look damn weird anyway are so much worse when it's a woman. Really?
Could you answer the argument, not your usual obtuse obfuscation of points, avoiding the actual argument made and similar?
Edit: And many games have been getting away with using similar skeletons and animations for women for years. Frankly the idea that all the characters in the game are so buff that women wouldn't fit onto existing skeletons/animations is kind of absurd. Yeah if you want to really emphasize that women are smaller framed sure, but in a fantasy game of futuristic parkour and medic classes that heal bullet wounds is realism the essential argument to keeping them out of the game?
Really?
Edit2: I can assure you, there is no "faux outrage" over seeing you fail to get the same points over and over again in this discussion. It's genuine.
But you know what? Fuck it. This thread is a fucking joke as it is. What with you and Dhalphir snapping and snarling at everybody who doesn't see it 110% your way. Hence there will never be a meaningful discussion so long as you shit over everybody for not instantly getting it.
The message and the goal is a worthwhile one. Good luck getting it out there. I'm through.
If I am going to criticize other people for doing it, but then go and ignore people in agreement with me doing it, then that makes me a gigantic hypocrite. So if I criticize Paladin for doing this just because you are in agreement does not mean I shouldnt point it out. Its a horrible argument to make and imagine if someone told you "I honestly couldn't give a shit about something you really care about or want to see" and then was like "But I guess if it does bother you, it's fine if they do it", how would you feel? Would you feel this is a person really that interested in supporting you?
Because that's how someone once explained it to me and that's why I dislike that kind of argument. You say "I don't care" or "I couldn't care" and then the "But if it helps you, that sounds great" as almost a backhanded concession to the way they feel. And I can assure you, they won't be feeling great.