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.
You can usually trace this kind of thing back to outrage journalism, and it's actually a great example of how dangerous outrage journalism can be to a cause. When your media's primary focus is using anger to draw clicks you can get your cause a lot of attention, but in the long term you end up creating a lot of zealots, which in turn ends up shrinking your movement because the zealotry all sounds increasingly off to the people who aren't already convinced.
I made the comparison between Jezebel and Fox News last thread, but these kinds of things really drive home how accurate it is. You can see all the same mechanisms in play - the purity testing, the outrage and labeling sparked by any disagreement, the way that showing allegiance to to the cause becomes more important than the cause itself. It's all there, just with a different cause at the center of it. Feminism is a much better cause, but unfortunately the end result is probably about the same.
For any lurkers reading this: If you want to foster understanding and bring people together, if you want to change minds, do not do anything close to what Aegeri is doing here.
Of course, now we're seeing some of the same thing in games journalism. And as happy as I am to see feminist issues covered in the gaming press, I hope that they're able to do a better job and try to foster a discussion instead of attracting hits.
For any lurkers reading this: If you want to foster understanding and bring people together, if you want to change minds, do not do anything close to what Aegeri is doing here.
Hmmm. I think I have this covered: *excuse me* but your tone is VERY important that's why they're called "civil" rights. Meanwhile you willfully ignore arguments pointed out to you over and over again throughout the entire thread and the previous thread, ignore the actual argument made (such as just before) and then go on an irrelevant tangent to distract from the fact you don't want to engage the actual argument. Case in point: Your post above.
If we're getting back to the actual point what did anything you wrote have to do with the core point I was making? The core point is how are using real world justifications of things like a player characters size, shape or similar anything to do with why they can't have women? It's a fantasy setting where entirely absurd things already occur on a regular basis. Going into an irrelevant tangent about animations and similar is missing the point - why can't they design characters that would fit with those animations? A heavy "female" could have body armor that made her an equivalent size to the male character of the same class, as a simple example. The light class and medium class aren't even that beefcake either.
Really the point is that developers don't feel women are worth representing in the first place. That's a terrible attitude and is indefensible, especially for a science fiction fantasy setting that allows people to absorb bullets and be resurrected by medics.
I was under the impression that Team Fortress 2 was unusually popular with women. Shows what I know, I guess.
It was an example, and maybe not the best one. Do you get the actual point though, that adding the option of playing a female avatar would be less off-putting to women?
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.
You can usually trace this kind of thing back to outrage journalism, and it's actually a great example of how dangerous outrage journalism can be to a cause. When your media's primary focus is using anger to draw clicks you can get your cause a lot of attention, but in the long term you end up creating a lot of zealots, which in turn ends up shrinking your movement because the zealotry all sounds increasingly off to the people who aren't already convinced.
I made the comparison between Jezebel and Fox News last thread, but these kinds of things really drive home how accurate it is. You can see all the same mechanisms in play - the purity testing, the outrage and labeling sparked by any disagreement, the way that showing allegiance to to the cause becomes more important than the cause itself. It's all there, just with a different cause at the center of it. Feminism is a much better cause, but unfortunately the end result is probably about the same.
For any lurkers reading this: If you want to foster understanding and bring people together, if you want to change minds, do not do anything close to what Aegeri is doing here.
Game industry thread, not the jezebel thread.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
In fact let me make why I find your argument so absurd another way Squiget, because you have prominently defended the art in Dragons Crown in this thread and the previous thread. It's ridiculous and utterly absurd on every level, but you have defended it. Now you are turning around and trying to convince me you can coherently argue that it is okay for them not to have women in Brink because they would "look weird". Looking weird and having bizarre proportions is fine when you want to defend a games hideous depiction of women, but this is an entirely logical argument for why women shouldn't be in another game because the developer says so.
You must be flexible enough to pull off those comic book poses with a position like this.
Aegeri, I agree with the content of most of your posts, but your tone only makes them less likely to convert anyone. Humans are inherently resistant to admitting they were wrong. Hostility only creates an additional barrier. Zany twitter memes aren't going to change this. This does not justifies the behavior of the people you are debating, mind, but it does discredits you despite the excellent points you make. You are most persuasive when you do manage to stay polite.
Grey Paladin on
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
For any lurkers reading this: If you want to foster understanding and bring people together, if you want to change minds, do not do anything close to what Aegeri is doing here.
Well that tweet applies to everyone on this page, and especially professional devs in general that are open to feedback. If you don't address specifics but go for underlying theory, that's not feedback, that's just an indictment.
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.
In fact let me make why I find your argument so absurd another way Squiget, because you have prominently defended the art in Dragons Crown in this thread and the previous thread. It's ridiculous and utterly absurd on every level, but you have defended it. Now you are turning around and trying to convince me you can coherently argue that it is okay for them not to have women in Brink because they would "look weird". Looking weird and having bizarre proportions is fine when you want to defend a games hideous depiction of women, but this is an entirely logical argument for why women shouldn't be in another game because the developer says so.
You must be flexible enough to pull off those comic book poses with a position like this.
The art style of Brink and the art style of Dragon's Crown aren't comparable at all. I can accept, within the Looney Tunes world, that Bugs Bunny can contort himself into strange ships. However, if a character in a live-action movie did the same things Bugs Bunny frequently does, it would look bizarre. That's not a contradiction, it's a matter of different art styles and story-worlds having different rules.
Brink went with a semi-realistic art style and tries (from what I've seen) to make its animated characters look like humans. I haven't seen enough of the game to know whether they always succeed, but that certainly seems to be the style they're going for. When you're using a realistic style there are different expectations, and it's generally more difficult to break the rules without giving the viewer the feeling that something is off.
Understand, the point I'm making has nothing to do with the subject matter being drawn, it's entirely a technical point. The exact same thing would be true with any other significant change in proportions, it has nothing specifically to do with gender. If it helps, just imagine it with another proportion swap, like if you took the Heavy's TF2 model and gave it the Scout's animations. The end result would look terrible, even though both of those characters look great when animated in their own way.
In general, if an artist makes something that takes you out of the world they're presenting and makes you remember you're only looking at a piece of art, that's a problem. That's equally true for Dragon's Crown and, the two games are simply presenting different worlds to the player.
Edit: If there is a point that you feel I've ignored, please let me know. I haven't specifically tried to ignore anything, so feel free to ask any question you like if there's something about my position that has been unclear.
Now you are turning around and trying to convince me you can coherently argue that it is okay for them not to have women in Brink because they would "look weird". Looking weird and having bizarre proportions is fine when you want to defend a games hideous depiction of women, but this is an entirely logical argument for why women shouldn't be in another game because the developer says so.
Didn't he clarify that by "looking weird" he thought the in-game character models would suffer from clipping and other such issues, and not necessarily that the female character designs would look weird?
Brink went with a semi-realistic art style and tries (from what I've seen) to make its animated characters look like humans. I haven't seen enough of the game to know whether they always succeed, but that certainly seems to be the style they're going for. When you're using a realistic style there are different expectations, and it's generally more difficult to break the rules without giving the viewer the feeling that something is off.
Ehh, they could still justify unusually proportioned women probably. I don't know anything about the world of Brink, but in addition to possible sci-fi handwavey explanations they could just say women can be larger in that world.
Brink went with a semi-realistic art style and tries (from what I've seen) to make its animated characters look like humans. I haven't seen enough of the game to know whether they always succeed, but that certainly seems to be the style they're going for. When you're using a realistic style there are different expectations, and it's generally more difficult to break the rules without giving the viewer the feeling that something is off.
Ehh, they could still justify unusually proportioned women probably. I don't know anything about the world of Brink, but in addition to possible sci-fi handwavey explanations they could just say women can be larger in that world.
Oh, absolutely, they could have gone that route. Granted its probably a less effective approach; the whole point of adding female models would be to resonate with people who want to play as women, so if the models don't look feminine (not necessarily idealized, but feminine) many of the people who wanted them could end up disappointed. Sometimes it's better to not do something than to half-ass it, it depends on the feature.
Again, I can see why they would take any one of several approaches, including the one they went with. It sounds like it was a decision made fairly late in development, and probably not an easy one. Clearly they intended to have female models in the game at some point, and had to cut them for lack of time. Nobody likes cutting their ideas, but sometimes the alternatives are worse, and it's hard to say for sure without a better window into the development process.
Squidget0 on
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YggiDeeThe World Ends With You ShillRegistered Userregular
On the "female characters would have weird proportions" front, Chemical Alia has made several skins for Team Fortress 2 replacing the male characters with women, taking the time to match the silhouettes as much as possible. I think they work pretty damn well.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
In fact let me make why I find your argument so absurd another way Squiget, because you have prominently defended the art in Dragons Crown in this thread and the previous thread. It's ridiculous and utterly absurd on every level, but you have defended it. Now you are turning around and trying to convince me you can coherently argue that it is okay for them not to have women in Brink because they would "look weird". Looking weird and having bizarre proportions is fine when you want to defend a games hideous depiction of women, but this is an entirely logical argument for why women shouldn't be in another game because the developer says so.
You must be flexible enough to pull off those comic book poses with a position like this.
The art style of Brink and the art style of Dragon's Crown aren't comparable at all.
This is not the argument. I don't care about art. I don't care about art style. I care about why you are specifically so focused on defending "art" when it is done at the objectification of women or the exclusion of women. For what is, essentially the opposite argument on both ends of the scale. You defend the weird looking proportions of the women in Dragons Crown, then support the developer of Brink when they won't add women because it would look weird.
I am asking you again, why in a world with utterly ridiculous things like people absorbing bullets to only drop then magically ressurected by a needle, are we incredibly hung up on realism? How weird do you believe you need to be to not fit into that kind of world? You go on to state it's about "different art styles having different rules", but I am arguing that the "rules" in Brink are already obscenely fucking weird (the way many classes work, the concept that people take a ton of bullets to put down), out of proportion (the heavy) and the entire scenario of the game in the first place (which is science fiction, set on gigantic floating arks after the apocalypse).
What I am basically asking you is actually something already discussed previously in the thread (big surprise there): When the artist in question decides the entire fucking world in the first place, why do you believe it's defensible to then claim "Women have no place in it". Let alone for their argument that it would look weird due to needing to make women have the "same profile":
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.
In a world where they decided men can be shot hundreds of times with bullets and getting them back up with a syringe is pheasible science, an actual thing that works in this game, their decision about how real women are generally smaller means that exaggerating their proportions was a terrible amount of work to bother with having women.
It even worked well according to them but it was just too hard and ultimately, drumroll please because I am about to hit the point hammer home, the industry does not consider women a relevant or important enough part to include female avatars. I hate to say this for the millionth time, but this is the point of the thread.
Before continuing, I saw your response Hexmage and the above question answers the "clipping" nonsense pretty well. I would also point out that if we are talking about clipping into breasts (this really feels the implication to be btw), they could always just make reasonably sized breasts. That doesn't seem difficult to me but you know where this will go.
Also I won't get into this, but the idea that you can just justify why something is sexist using plot/explanations, does not, in fact, make those aspects any less inherent sexist.
When you're using a realistic style there are different expectations, and it's generally more difficult to break the rules without giving the viewer the feeling that something is off.
So how do you conflate this excuse you are trying to give with the fact they tried adding women, exaggerating their proportions to fit the same profile and finding it working well? Especially when they are making them roughly the same size and shape. Also I would point out Brink is a pretty janky game in motion anyway (like many games are actually), so I find the "feeling that something is off" part rather laughable. Again, in a world where people take a considerable number of bullets to down and then need to be finished off while on the ground - it just isnt a coherent defense.
And again, "realistic" in this context should be understood in context of a world with syringes that instantly restore bullet wounds. This is not an argument I will accept as being coherent, especially with the quote from the developer above as well which amounted to "Whatever, women were ultimately not an important enough aspect of the game to add them". Having women wasn't about realism, it was about if they could be bothered to make the effort.
This thread is entirely about making the industry know it should absolutely be bothered to make the effort.
Understand, the point I'm making has nothing to do with the subject matter being drawn, it's entirely a technical point. The exact same thing would be true with any other significant change in proportions, it has nothing specifically to do with gender.
And yet I don't accept many of these "technical points" and I am making an entire point that having women in games is not an insurmounable Mount Everest of gaming to actually achieve. Indeed many games have actually managed to have women in the game and sometimes even playable! The point of the matter is that limp excuses are always offered for entirely excluding women from games as playable characters or just, being meaningful in the first place.
Again this is what the thread is about, that arguing on one hand "It's fantasy, they can have these ridiculous proportions and no clothing" out of one side of your mouth and then going "It's realistic, we can't possibly have women" out the other is really problematic and again, is symptomatic of the sexism inherent in the games industry.
I am going to be 100% utterly brutal now.
You are perfectly fine with barely clothed huge breasted women wielding weapons in an entirely nonsensical manner that would be impossible for them with their build,
Yet
Are completely fine with not having women in a semi-realistic (actually barely so, but that is another argument not for this thread) game who would have had male like proportions due to "Clipping" issues.
I think both of these things are utterly absurd and for entirely different reasons, but the main reason I think this is absurd is because of the inherent sexism inherent in both in their respective implementation/exclusion. Women are fine if they are huge breasted scantily clad objects, but heaven forbid we have women who need to be proportioned like men are because that won't look right.
I am sitting here eyebrow raised going "Really?".
In general, if an artist makes something that takes you out of the world they're presenting and makes you remember you're only looking at a piece of art, that's a problem.
So let me get it clear:
Absurdly proportioned women in ridiculous sexualized poses (such as rubbing a skeleton against her breasts) and animations = well disguised art that functions as a game. These are female characters a developer should be spending time and effort on adding into a game.
Male like proportioned women to reuse animations/skeletons (from the above quote, this was their attempt to "add" women) that might look somewhat janky = Something that takes you out of the world they are presenting, a world where people take numerous shots to the head/chest from a machine gun and are instantly ressurected by stuff in a syringe.
Can you really not see what the problems are with how you align these arguments?
The art style of Brink and the art style of Dragon's Crown aren't comparable at all.
So?
That has nothing to do with you supporting one that has women looking weird and saying the other can't have women because they'd look weird.
I think I counted about 25 words there.
That is basically the tl;dr of my entire post above in one sentence. This is the core point and what I am getting at, especially because both games are inherently fantasy (or science fiction for brink if you want to get really specific), but the point is their creators decide what is really appropriate. I just find the creators idea of what is appropriate in Brink (given other aspects) entirely unsatisfactory.
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.
While this is certainly a valid excuse on the face of it, it simply reinforces AGAIN that male is always the default. Got a protagonist? He's male. Maybe we'll add a female protagonist too! Aren't we so inclusive!!! Oh no wait we ran out of dev time, gotta stick with the default male, sorry we're not sexist we're just bound by rules of development time.
I double dare you to show me a game where they planned to add a choice between male and female protagonists and the MALE option got cut due to development constraints. of course such an option almost certainly does not exist because publishers think it won't sell, and maybe they are right because videogame communities have some fucked up ideas about women and AROUND AND AROUND WE GO
Also I won't get into this, but the idea that you can just justify why something is sexist using plot/explanations, does not, in fact, make those aspects any less inherent sexist.
I'm not certain if this is directed at me or not, but if it is I was talking about justifying in-game why the female characters might look a little strange.
It's very late and I'm not communicating at my best, so I don't feel up for wading through that quote tree right now. I'll try one more time before I go to bed. I think the confusion here is that you guys are conflating art quality and subject matter.
Subject matter is the visible literal thing being drawn or depicted. Maybe it's a realistic character, maybe it's some exaggerated cartoon, maybe its Bugs Bunny. Subject matter can be anything, realistic or not. It really doesn't matter.
Art quality is how effectively the artist is able to convey what they're trying to convey. If you've ever sat down and tried to draw something only to get a scribble or stick figure, you'll know exactly what I mean. You know that the piece isn't doing what you want it to do, and the viewer knows it too. Bear this distinction in mind as we go forward, because it's key to the point being made.
I am okay with just about any subject matter an artist wants to draw. I think that artists should be free to experiment with all kinds of subject matter in their efforts to find something that resonates. Art quality, however, is another story. If I were the art director on a game, I would feel perfectly justified rejecting art that I felt was low-quality, regardless of the subject matter. It sounds like that's the case with Brink - they couldn't make animations and characters to the quality bar they set within the time they had. If an artist at Vanillaware made a character that was simply a stick figure, I think the art director would be justified in rejecting that too. Again, it's about quality, not subject matter.
You may not like George Katamani's subject matter, but his art being the way it is isn't a mistake. He intended it to be that way. Its a style he's exhibited over a very long time, and he started his own studio largely so he could express that art style. The unnatural look of his characters is entirely intentional, it's deliberately stylized with clear influences and an overarching theme. You certainly don't have to like the style, but recognize that it's his, and that it is doing exactly what he wants it to do.
I would note as well that if the Brink team had decided to add female models I would be fine with that too. I think that under the circumstances they probably could have made either choice and it would be reasonable. If playing as a humanoid female is important to you (as it is to me), I actually posted a list of 40+ games on the previous page that include this great feature. It's disingenuous in the extreme to say that "the industry" won't include female character options because one game made by one team planned to include it but wasn't able to fit it into their time constraints.
A sex positive feminist is (most likely) not going to agree with your or The Sauce's theory that men deciding women's sexuality in games is exactly the same as a woman deciding her own sexuality.
What? I never said anything like... This is absolutely nothing like what I...
You know what. I give up. I'm going to take a break from communication attempts in this thread. I don't think anyone I'm actually trying to reach has heard a word I've said.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
If playing as a humanoid female is important to you (as it is to me), I actually posted a list of 40+ games on the previous page that include this great feature. It's disingenuous in the extreme to say that "the industry" won't include female character options because one game made by one team planned to include it but wasn't able to fit it into their time constraints.
the bolded is the problem. not with you, with the industry.
women characters are considered a 'feature', an 'option', a selling point that's 'extra'. they're not viewed as something as INHERENTLY NECESSARY as a player character/avatar.
and that brings up the concept of default, which is another aspect of this monster we haven't really addressed
here's a thought experiment.
close your eyes and think of an imaginary game. it's set in a gritty war-torn environment, and it's extremely brown and extremely shooty. you're playing in first-person.
QUICK LOOK DOWN
ARE YOU A MAN OR A WOMAN
ARE YOU WHITE
ARE YOU BALD
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
It's very late and I'm not communicating at my best, so I don't feel up for wading through that quote tree right now. I'll try one more time before I go to bed. I think the confusion here is that you guys are conflating art quality and subject matter.
Subject matter is the visible literal thing being drawn or depicted. Maybe it's a realistic character, maybe it's some exaggerated cartoon, maybe its Bugs Bunny. Subject matter can be anything, realistic or not. It really doesn't matter.
Art quality is how effectively the artist is able to convey what they're trying to convey. If you've ever sat down and tried to draw something only to get a scribble or stick figure, you'll know exactly what I mean. You know that the piece isn't doing what you want it to do, and the viewer knows it too. Bear this distinction in mind as we go forward, because it's key to the point being made.
I am okay with just about any subject matter an artist wants to draw. I think that artists should be free to experiment with all kinds of subject matter in their efforts to find something that resonates. Art quality, however, is another story. If I were the art director on a game, I would feel perfectly justified rejecting art that I felt was low-quality, regardless of the subject matter. It sounds like that's the case with Brink - they couldn't make animations and characters to the quality bar they set within the time they had. If an artist at Vanillaware made a character that was simply a stick figure, I think the art director would be justified in rejecting that too. Again, it's about quality, not subject matter.
You may not like George Katamani's subject matter, but his art being the way it is isn't a mistake. He intended it to be that way. Its a style he's exhibited over a very long time, and he started his own studio largely so he could express that art style. The unnatural look of his characters is entirely intentional, it's deliberately stylized with clear influences and an overarching theme. You certainly don't have to like the style, but recognize that it's his, and that it is doing exactly what he wants it to do.
I would note as well that if the Brink team had decided to add female models I would be fine with that too. I think that under the circumstances they probably could have made either choice and it would be reasonable. If playing as a humanoid female is important to you (as it is to me), I actually posted a list of 40+ games on the previous page that include this great feature. It's disingenuous in the extreme to say that "the industry" won't include female character options because one game made by one team planned to include it but wasn't able to fit it into their time constraints.
This is a lot of words to say "artists can and should do anything they want...as long as it's drawn well." I'm not really sure you're posting in good faith.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Also I won't get into this, but the idea that you can just justify why something is sexist using plot/explanations, does not, in fact, make those aspects any less inherent sexist.
I'm not certain if this is directed at me or not, but if it is I was talking about justifying in-game why the female characters might look a little strange.
Nope, that wasn't directed at you. I got that you were meaning that you can justify why they might look strange in any manner, as it's a science fiction setting. That's kind of an important point - no - the most essential point.
It's very late and I'm not communicating at my best, so I don't feel up for wading through that quote tree right now. I'll try one more time before I go to bed. I think the confusion here is that you guys are conflating art quality and subject matter.
This isn't even remotely close to anything I argued whatsoever. If you don't want to wade through a quote tree AKA "Reading what people are actually writing", then there is a summary from Quid which aptly sums up the core of my argument:
The art style of Brink and the art style of Dragon's Crown aren't comparable at all.
So?
That has nothing to do with you supporting one that has women looking weird and saying the other can't have women because they'd look weird.
This is the inherent contradiction in your argument.
So let's go through and make each point of my argument piecemeal, without huge quote trees or lots of text. I want to be 100% clear in what idea I am conveying.
Point A) Artists can make whatever they want
Point Fantasy and science fiction settings can justify anything they want
Do you agree? I am certain given your previous arguments I can assume you agree to both.
If you agree, let's move along because the above two points are utterly irrelevant to anything I have argued beyond establishing that people can make whatever they want in fantasy settings. Unless you disagree that both of these things are true, which is when it affects my argument. In context of this argument, it doesn't matter what they look like, when we are dealing with psychic magic, needles that raise the dead and similar we are dealing with "weirdness".
Point C) "Weirdness" is entirely up to the person who makes the game and most games are filled with realism breaking weirdness (seriously)
If we agree that games have numerous unrealistic or plain weird things, then the next three points all go together and need to be answered as one inherently linked argument.
Point D) Why virgorously defend examples of a game that objectifies women in an obviously sexual and incredibly weird way, in a game that does numerous reality breaking weird things on a regular basis
And then
Point E) Why then turn around and defend excluding women because they would look weird (we have no idea if they would be sexualized and this isn't a relevant point), in a game that itself does numerous reality breaking weird things on a regular basis
And then
Point F) Do you understand why in the context of the games industry being terribly sexist, this Janus faced defense makes it seem like an overall justification of the status quo in terms of sexism in games?
So is this clear? Are the points of discussion here entirely clear now? Are you actually going to address the core argument? Bear in mind that all of the above is argued in detail in my previous post, which is what I really want you to address. This is just so we can grasp that I don't give two flying fucks what the art style is: My argument is infinitely more nuanced and doesn't rely on if the art style in Dagons Crown is trying to do the same thing as Brink. It's not relevant in any manner to my argument.
I would note as well that if the Brink team had decided to add female models I would be fine with that too. I think that under the circumstances they probably could have made either choice and it would be reasonable. If playing as a humanoid female is important to you (as it is to me), I actually posted a list of 40+ games on the previous page that include this great feature. It's disingenuous in the extreme to say that "the industry" won't include female character options because one game made by one team planned to include it but wasn't able to fit it into their time constraints.
I am amazed at this. First, calling it a "feature" is the whole problem here really as pointed out by curly haired boy.
But what is incredible is the second bolded portion, because we have an entire thread and previous thread talking about all the examples (too many to note) of how women are treated poorly. Yet you construct this entirely absurd strawman argument out of nowhere, as if there weren't so many other examples given than one game.
Shall we retread Bioshock Infinite again? The battle the developers of Remember Me faced? The fact the most popular current multiplayer shooter includes no female soldier options? They guy from Epic games declaring that having a female protagonist was a death sentence? The controversy over GTA5 having three protagonists, not one of whom is actually a woman and so on.
Really, do you think that the games industry is horribly sexist towards women is actually a point in dispute? I am genuinely curious, because that is what that last sentence suggests to me that you think.
I guess I don't get the "women are shorter therefore no girls in our game" thing.
Any shooters with class systems already have multimorphism among characters. You're also not going to be pulled out of the experience of shooting pretend people a bunch of times by having your squadmate/opponent's female character be the same height as your male character.
This seems to be more an issue with how people think women should look in games than with any actual issues regarding application.
I was going to say this before but didn't because I thought you'd get there eventually.
It's pretty obvious that the makers of Brink are just making up a shitty excuse. Sure they might have forgotten to add women altogether, like so many other men does in their works, and they were too embarrassed to admit it, but I'm pretty sure what they mean by short of time was "too little time to sculpt pornstars". To copy+paste the male mesh, scale it down slightly and make female skins wouldn't have taken very long.
brink's excuse is hilarious because despite the deep character customization system in actual multiplayer matches you don't see any of that because it's replaced with generic models and you don't see yourself because it's first person so all the dev time on the customization was worthless and you coulda just made a few generic female models
brink's excuse is hilarious because despite the deep character customization system in actual multiplayer matches you don't see any of that because it's replaced with generic models and you don't see yourself because it's first person so all the dev time on the customization was worthless and you coulda just made a few generic female models
That result of that being a huge failure compared to the level of customization that exists for male characters.
In other words, as much a failure. If not more so.
So many pages of people avoiding the fact that the only problem seems to be that woman create/play/buy video games a lot less than men.
There is nothing wrong with sexualization, there's nothing wrong with having the avatars of violence being depicted more often than not as male. If you are upset with either of those things, add to the examples in ways you find appealing, or don't. Dictating what should be created is wrong. The answer to a lack of art you like is "more art".
Too many of the arguments are boiling down to "some game designers aren't as creative as I feel they should be". No shit?
So many pages of people avoiding the fact that the only problem seems to be that woman create/play/buy video games a lot less than men.
There is nothing wrong with sexualization, there's nothing wrong with having the avatars of violence being depicted more often than not as male. If you are upset with either of those things, add to the examples in ways you find appealing, or don't. Dictating what should be created is wrong. The answer to a lack of art you like is "more art".
Too many of the arguments are boiling down to "some game designers aren't as creative as I feel they should be". No shit?
Nope. Welcome to the thread, I recommend reading the OP.
There is a problem with sexualization when it is the norm for a specific gender.
No one has said they should be able to dictate what others create outside of telling someone what they think.
Harmful art doesn't cease to be harmful simply through the creation of other, better art.
There's nothing wrong with calling shitty design shitty.
brink's excuse is hilarious because despite the deep character customization system in actual multiplayer matches you don't see any of that because it's replaced with generic models and you don't see yourself because it's first person so all the dev time on the customization was worthless and you coulda just made a few generic female models
That result of that being a huge failure compared to the level of customization that exists for male characters.
In other words, as much a failure. If not more so.
no I mean in the false dichotomy that the devs set up between lots cuztomization and women, go ahead scrap the customization because apparently technical limitations don't allow those customized characters to even be seen by anyone in game
So many pages of people avoiding the fact that the only problem seems to be that woman create/play/buy video games a lot less than men.
This is disingenuous. The entire thread is predicated on that lack of representation and the exploration of the reasons why this is so.
It is not, by any means, the only problem. It is the end result of a much bigger problem.
It seemed to be predicated on anecdotal examples of misunderstandings and bad behavior. I suggest that both the cause and symptom are located in my first sentence. I already know why more romantic comedies are not targeted, or marketed towards me, and it's for very similar reasons.
So many pages of people avoiding the fact that the only problem seems to be that woman create/play/buy video games a lot less than men.
There is nothing wrong with sexualization, there's nothing wrong with having the avatars of violence being depicted more often than not as male. If you are upset with either of those things, add to the examples in ways you find appealing, or don't. Dictating what should be created is wrong. The answer to a lack of art you like is "more art".
Too many of the arguments are boiling down to "some game designers aren't as creative as I feel they should be". No shit?
Nope. Welcome to the thread, I recommend reading the OP.
There is a problem with sexualization when it is the norm for a specific gender.
No one has said they should be able to dictate what others create outside of telling someone what they think.
Harmful art doesn't cease to be harmful simply through the creation of other, better art.
There's nothing wrong with calling shitty design shitty.
I don't see the norm for a particular gender being much more than oversimplifications of real humans because of limitations of certain media its forms. Princess peach could be a victim in Super Mario Brothers, or a powerful ruler....Mario could be a violent man with nothing but murder in his eyes....but guess what it's an 8 bit video game without any real story.
and yes people have said they should be able to dictate what others create, you might not be doing it, but its happening.
Thats a misleading statistic and you know it. What percentage of the genders games that cost more than 1.99? What percentage buy games that have depictions of human forms? What percentage own and purchased their own gaming system? How many systems do they own? How many games per system?
Posts
You can usually trace this kind of thing back to outrage journalism, and it's actually a great example of how dangerous outrage journalism can be to a cause. When your media's primary focus is using anger to draw clicks you can get your cause a lot of attention, but in the long term you end up creating a lot of zealots, which in turn ends up shrinking your movement because the zealotry all sounds increasingly off to the people who aren't already convinced.
I made the comparison between Jezebel and Fox News last thread, but these kinds of things really drive home how accurate it is. You can see all the same mechanisms in play - the purity testing, the outrage and labeling sparked by any disagreement, the way that showing allegiance to to the cause becomes more important than the cause itself. It's all there, just with a different cause at the center of it. Feminism is a much better cause, but unfortunately the end result is probably about the same.
For any lurkers reading this: If you want to foster understanding and bring people together, if you want to change minds, do not do anything close to what Aegeri is doing here.
Of course, now we're seeing some of the same thing in games journalism. And as happy as I am to see feminist issues covered in the gaming press, I hope that they're able to do a better job and try to foster a discussion instead of attracting hits.
Hmmm. I think I have this covered: *excuse me* but your tone is VERY important that's why they're called "civil" rights. Meanwhile you willfully ignore arguments pointed out to you over and over again throughout the entire thread and the previous thread, ignore the actual argument made (such as just before) and then go on an irrelevant tangent to distract from the fact you don't want to engage the actual argument. Case in point: Your post above.
If we're getting back to the actual point what did anything you wrote have to do with the core point I was making? The core point is how are using real world justifications of things like a player characters size, shape or similar anything to do with why they can't have women? It's a fantasy setting where entirely absurd things already occur on a regular basis. Going into an irrelevant tangent about animations and similar is missing the point - why can't they design characters that would fit with those animations? A heavy "female" could have body armor that made her an equivalent size to the male character of the same class, as a simple example. The light class and medium class aren't even that beefcake either.
Really the point is that developers don't feel women are worth representing in the first place. That's a terrible attitude and is indefensible, especially for a science fiction fantasy setting that allows people to absorb bullets and be resurrected by medics.
It was an example, and maybe not the best one. Do you get the actual point though, that adding the option of playing a female avatar would be less off-putting to women?
Game industry thread, not the jezebel thread.
You must be flexible enough to pull off those comic book poses with a position like this.
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.
The art style of Brink and the art style of Dragon's Crown aren't comparable at all. I can accept, within the Looney Tunes world, that Bugs Bunny can contort himself into strange ships. However, if a character in a live-action movie did the same things Bugs Bunny frequently does, it would look bizarre. That's not a contradiction, it's a matter of different art styles and story-worlds having different rules.
Brink went with a semi-realistic art style and tries (from what I've seen) to make its animated characters look like humans. I haven't seen enough of the game to know whether they always succeed, but that certainly seems to be the style they're going for. When you're using a realistic style there are different expectations, and it's generally more difficult to break the rules without giving the viewer the feeling that something is off.
Understand, the point I'm making has nothing to do with the subject matter being drawn, it's entirely a technical point. The exact same thing would be true with any other significant change in proportions, it has nothing specifically to do with gender. If it helps, just imagine it with another proportion swap, like if you took the Heavy's TF2 model and gave it the Scout's animations. The end result would look terrible, even though both of those characters look great when animated in their own way.
In general, if an artist makes something that takes you out of the world they're presenting and makes you remember you're only looking at a piece of art, that's a problem. That's equally true for Dragon's Crown and, the two games are simply presenting different worlds to the player.
Edit: If there is a point that you feel I've ignored, please let me know. I haven't specifically tried to ignore anything, so feel free to ask any question you like if there's something about my position that has been unclear.
Didn't he clarify that by "looking weird" he thought the in-game character models would suffer from clipping and other such issues, and not necessarily that the female character designs would look weird?
Ehh, they could still justify unusually proportioned women probably. I don't know anything about the world of Brink, but in addition to possible sci-fi handwavey explanations they could just say women can be larger in that world.
Oh, absolutely, they could have gone that route. Granted its probably a less effective approach; the whole point of adding female models would be to resonate with people who want to play as women, so if the models don't look feminine (not necessarily idealized, but feminine) many of the people who wanted them could end up disappointed. Sometimes it's better to not do something than to half-ass it, it depends on the feature.
Again, I can see why they would take any one of several approaches, including the one they went with. It sounds like it was a decision made fairly late in development, and probably not an easy one. Clearly they intended to have female models in the game at some point, and had to cut them for lack of time. Nobody likes cutting their ideas, but sometimes the alternatives are worse, and it's hard to say for sure without a better window into the development process.
This is not the argument. I don't care about art. I don't care about art style. I care about why you are specifically so focused on defending "art" when it is done at the objectification of women or the exclusion of women. For what is, essentially the opposite argument on both ends of the scale. You defend the weird looking proportions of the women in Dragons Crown, then support the developer of Brink when they won't add women because it would look weird.
I am asking you again, why in a world with utterly ridiculous things like people absorbing bullets to only drop then magically ressurected by a needle, are we incredibly hung up on realism? How weird do you believe you need to be to not fit into that kind of world? You go on to state it's about "different art styles having different rules", but I am arguing that the "rules" in Brink are already obscenely fucking weird (the way many classes work, the concept that people take a ton of bullets to put down), out of proportion (the heavy) and the entire scenario of the game in the first place (which is science fiction, set on gigantic floating arks after the apocalypse).
What I am basically asking you is actually something already discussed previously in the thread (big surprise there): When the artist in question decides the entire fucking world in the first place, why do you believe it's defensible to then claim "Women have no place in it". Let alone for their argument that it would look weird due to needing to make women have the "same profile":
In a world where they decided men can be shot hundreds of times with bullets and getting them back up with a syringe is pheasible science, an actual thing that works in this game, their decision about how real women are generally smaller means that exaggerating their proportions was a terrible amount of work to bother with having women.
It even worked well according to them but it was just too hard and ultimately, drumroll please because I am about to hit the point hammer home, the industry does not consider women a relevant or important enough part to include female avatars. I hate to say this for the millionth time, but this is the point of the thread.
Before continuing, I saw your response Hexmage and the above question answers the "clipping" nonsense pretty well. I would also point out that if we are talking about clipping into breasts (this really feels the implication to be btw), they could always just make reasonably sized breasts. That doesn't seem difficult to me but you know where this will go.
Also I won't get into this, but the idea that you can just justify why something is sexist using plot/explanations, does not, in fact, make those aspects any less inherent sexist.
So how do you conflate this excuse you are trying to give with the fact they tried adding women, exaggerating their proportions to fit the same profile and finding it working well? Especially when they are making them roughly the same size and shape. Also I would point out Brink is a pretty janky game in motion anyway (like many games are actually), so I find the "feeling that something is off" part rather laughable. Again, in a world where people take a considerable number of bullets to down and then need to be finished off while on the ground - it just isnt a coherent defense.
And again, "realistic" in this context should be understood in context of a world with syringes that instantly restore bullet wounds. This is not an argument I will accept as being coherent, especially with the quote from the developer above as well which amounted to "Whatever, women were ultimately not an important enough aspect of the game to add them". Having women wasn't about realism, it was about if they could be bothered to make the effort.
This thread is entirely about making the industry know it should absolutely be bothered to make the effort.
And yet I don't accept many of these "technical points" and I am making an entire point that having women in games is not an insurmounable Mount Everest of gaming to actually achieve. Indeed many games have actually managed to have women in the game and sometimes even playable! The point of the matter is that limp excuses are always offered for entirely excluding women from games as playable characters or just, being meaningful in the first place.
Again this is what the thread is about, that arguing on one hand "It's fantasy, they can have these ridiculous proportions and no clothing" out of one side of your mouth and then going "It's realistic, we can't possibly have women" out the other is really problematic and again, is symptomatic of the sexism inherent in the games industry.
I am going to be 100% utterly brutal now.
You are perfectly fine with barely clothed huge breasted women wielding weapons in an entirely nonsensical manner that would be impossible for them with their build,
Yet
Are completely fine with not having women in a semi-realistic (actually barely so, but that is another argument not for this thread) game who would have had male like proportions due to "Clipping" issues.
I think both of these things are utterly absurd and for entirely different reasons, but the main reason I think this is absurd is because of the inherent sexism inherent in both in their respective implementation/exclusion. Women are fine if they are huge breasted scantily clad objects, but heaven forbid we have women who need to be proportioned like men are because that won't look right.
I am sitting here eyebrow raised going "Really?".
So let me get it clear:
Absurdly proportioned women in ridiculous sexualized poses (such as rubbing a skeleton against her breasts) and animations = well disguised art that functions as a game. These are female characters a developer should be spending time and effort on adding into a game.
Male like proportioned women to reuse animations/skeletons (from the above quote, this was their attempt to "add" women) that might look somewhat janky = Something that takes you out of the world they are presenting, a world where people take numerous shots to the head/chest from a machine gun and are instantly ressurected by stuff in a syringe.
Can you really not see what the problems are with how you align these arguments?
So?
That has nothing to do with you supporting one that has women looking weird and saying the other can't have women because they'd look weird.
I think I counted about 25 words there.
That is basically the tl;dr of my entire post above in one sentence. This is the core point and what I am getting at, especially because both games are inherently fantasy (or science fiction for brink if you want to get really specific), but the point is their creators decide what is really appropriate. I just find the creators idea of what is appropriate in Brink (given other aspects) entirely unsatisfactory.
While this is certainly a valid excuse on the face of it, it simply reinforces AGAIN that male is always the default. Got a protagonist? He's male. Maybe we'll add a female protagonist too! Aren't we so inclusive!!! Oh no wait we ran out of dev time, gotta stick with the default male, sorry we're not sexist we're just bound by rules of development time.
I double dare you to show me a game where they planned to add a choice between male and female protagonists and the MALE option got cut due to development constraints. of course such an option almost certainly does not exist because publishers think it won't sell, and maybe they are right because videogame communities have some fucked up ideas about women and AROUND AND AROUND WE GO
I'm not certain if this is directed at me or not, but if it is I was talking about justifying in-game why the female characters might look a little strange.
Subject matter is the visible literal thing being drawn or depicted. Maybe it's a realistic character, maybe it's some exaggerated cartoon, maybe its Bugs Bunny. Subject matter can be anything, realistic or not. It really doesn't matter.
Art quality is how effectively the artist is able to convey what they're trying to convey. If you've ever sat down and tried to draw something only to get a scribble or stick figure, you'll know exactly what I mean. You know that the piece isn't doing what you want it to do, and the viewer knows it too. Bear this distinction in mind as we go forward, because it's key to the point being made.
I am okay with just about any subject matter an artist wants to draw. I think that artists should be free to experiment with all kinds of subject matter in their efforts to find something that resonates. Art quality, however, is another story. If I were the art director on a game, I would feel perfectly justified rejecting art that I felt was low-quality, regardless of the subject matter. It sounds like that's the case with Brink - they couldn't make animations and characters to the quality bar they set within the time they had. If an artist at Vanillaware made a character that was simply a stick figure, I think the art director would be justified in rejecting that too. Again, it's about quality, not subject matter.
You may not like George Katamani's subject matter, but his art being the way it is isn't a mistake. He intended it to be that way. Its a style he's exhibited over a very long time, and he started his own studio largely so he could express that art style. The unnatural look of his characters is entirely intentional, it's deliberately stylized with clear influences and an overarching theme. You certainly don't have to like the style, but recognize that it's his, and that it is doing exactly what he wants it to do.
I would note as well that if the Brink team had decided to add female models I would be fine with that too. I think that under the circumstances they probably could have made either choice and it would be reasonable. If playing as a humanoid female is important to you (as it is to me), I actually posted a list of 40+ games on the previous page that include this great feature. It's disingenuous in the extreme to say that "the industry" won't include female character options because one game made by one team planned to include it but wasn't able to fit it into their time constraints.
You know what. I give up. I'm going to take a break from communication attempts in this thread. I don't think anyone I'm actually trying to reach has heard a word I've said.
the bolded is the problem. not with you, with the industry.
women characters are considered a 'feature', an 'option', a selling point that's 'extra'. they're not viewed as something as INHERENTLY NECESSARY as a player character/avatar.
and that brings up the concept of default, which is another aspect of this monster we haven't really addressed
here's a thought experiment.
close your eyes and think of an imaginary game. it's set in a gritty war-torn environment, and it's extremely brown and extremely shooty. you're playing in first-person.
QUICK LOOK DOWN
ARE YOU A MAN OR A WOMAN
ARE YOU WHITE
ARE YOU BALD
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Also: Blah blah blah art bullshit.
This is a lot of words to say "artists can and should do anything they want...as long as it's drawn well." I'm not really sure you're posting in good faith.
Nope, that wasn't directed at you. I got that you were meaning that you can justify why they might look strange in any manner, as it's a science fiction setting. That's kind of an important point - no - the most essential point.
This isn't even remotely close to anything I argued whatsoever. If you don't want to wade through a quote tree AKA "Reading what people are actually writing", then there is a summary from Quid which aptly sums up the core of my argument:
This is the inherent contradiction in your argument.
So let's go through and make each point of my argument piecemeal, without huge quote trees or lots of text. I want to be 100% clear in what idea I am conveying.
Point A) Artists can make whatever they want
Point
Do you agree? I am certain given your previous arguments I can assume you agree to both.
If you agree, let's move along because the above two points are utterly irrelevant to anything I have argued beyond establishing that people can make whatever they want in fantasy settings. Unless you disagree that both of these things are true, which is when it affects my argument. In context of this argument, it doesn't matter what they look like, when we are dealing with psychic magic, needles that raise the dead and similar we are dealing with "weirdness".
Point C) "Weirdness" is entirely up to the person who makes the game and most games are filled with realism breaking weirdness (seriously)
If we agree that games have numerous unrealistic or plain weird things, then the next three points all go together and need to be answered as one inherently linked argument.
Point D) Why virgorously defend examples of a game that objectifies women in an obviously sexual and incredibly weird way, in a game that does numerous reality breaking weird things on a regular basis
And then
Point E) Why then turn around and defend excluding women because they would look weird (we have no idea if they would be sexualized and this isn't a relevant point), in a game that itself does numerous reality breaking weird things on a regular basis
And then
Point F) Do you understand why in the context of the games industry being terribly sexist, this Janus faced defense makes it seem like an overall justification of the status quo in terms of sexism in games?
So is this clear? Are the points of discussion here entirely clear now? Are you actually going to address the core argument? Bear in mind that all of the above is argued in detail in my previous post, which is what I really want you to address. This is just so we can grasp that I don't give two flying fucks what the art style is: My argument is infinitely more nuanced and doesn't rely on if the art style in Dagons Crown is trying to do the same thing as Brink. It's not relevant in any manner to my argument.
I am amazed at this. First, calling it a "feature" is the whole problem here really as pointed out by curly haired boy.
But what is incredible is the second bolded portion, because we have an entire thread and previous thread talking about all the examples (too many to note) of how women are treated poorly. Yet you construct this entirely absurd strawman argument out of nowhere, as if there weren't so many other examples given than one game.
Shall we retread Bioshock Infinite again? The battle the developers of Remember Me faced? The fact the most popular current multiplayer shooter includes no female soldier options? They guy from Epic games declaring that having a female protagonist was a death sentence? The controversy over GTA5 having three protagonists, not one of whom is actually a woman and so on.
Really, do you think that the games industry is horribly sexist towards women is actually a point in dispute? I am genuinely curious, because that is what that last sentence suggests to me that you think.
Any shooters with class systems already have multimorphism among characters. You're also not going to be pulled out of the experience of shooting pretend people a bunch of times by having your squadmate/opponent's female character be the same height as your male character.
This seems to be more an issue with how people think women should look in games than with any actual issues regarding application.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
It's pretty obvious that the makers of Brink are just making up a shitty excuse. Sure they might have forgotten to add women altogether, like so many other men does in their works, and they were too embarrassed to admit it, but I'm pretty sure what they mean by short of time was "too little time to sculpt pornstars". To copy+paste the male mesh, scale it down slightly and make female skins wouldn't have taken very long.
Tl;dr I call bullshit
That result of that being a huge failure compared to the level of customization that exists for male characters.
In other words, as much a failure. If not more so.
There is nothing wrong with sexualization, there's nothing wrong with having the avatars of violence being depicted more often than not as male. If you are upset with either of those things, add to the examples in ways you find appealing, or don't. Dictating what should be created is wrong. The answer to a lack of art you like is "more art".
Too many of the arguments are boiling down to "some game designers aren't as creative as I feel they should be". No shit?
This is disingenuous. The entire thread is predicated on that lack of representation and the exploration of the reasons why this is so.
It is not, by any means, the only problem. It is the end result of a much bigger problem.
Nope. Welcome to the thread, I recommend reading the OP.
There is a problem with sexualization when it is the norm for a specific gender.
No one has said they should be able to dictate what others create outside of telling someone what they think.
Harmful art doesn't cease to be harmful simply through the creation of other, better art.
There's nothing wrong with calling shitty design shitty.
no I mean in the false dichotomy that the devs set up between lots cuztomization and women, go ahead scrap the customization because apparently technical limitations don't allow those customized characters to even be seen by anyone in game
It seemed to be predicated on anecdotal examples of misunderstandings and bad behavior. I suggest that both the cause and symptom are located in my first sentence. I already know why more romantic comedies are not targeted, or marketed towards me, and it's for very similar reasons.
do you think there might be a reason for this that is related to the issues being discussed in this thread
Then you should really read the OP. Because you're quite incorrect.
I don't see the norm for a particular gender being much more than oversimplifications of real humans because of limitations of certain media its forms. Princess peach could be a victim in Super Mario Brothers, or a powerful ruler....Mario could be a violent man with nothing but murder in his eyes....but guess what it's an 8 bit video game without any real story.
and yes people have said they should be able to dictate what others create, you might not be doing it, but its happening.
uh ahem we're talking about real gamers...
Thats a misleading statistic and you know it. What percentage of the genders games that cost more than 1.99? What percentage buy games that have depictions of human forms? What percentage own and purchased their own gaming system? How many systems do they own? How many games per system?