@TheElf. Obviously I agree with the second comment and the first. I don't necessarily agree with the any and all of Sarkeesian's points, some of them I'm kinda iffy on. But as far as goes giving her points for speaking out and starting a conversation, holding her ground against some extremely unpleasant filth? Hey, that definitely get's hero status from me.
@DreadKhan :embarass. My bad there, with the way I read things I thought you were going the opposite direction. I apologize for that. Bouncing between my android and a playthrough of Fallout 3. I need a tablet (+ another PC from Origin, an 8 year degree zapped matrix style into my brain, a few other things) :P
That is a pretty awesome gif. It'd be weak for me to abandon my own thread but I think I will devote a bit more time to some other pursuits for, oh, 8 - 10 hours. Thanks to everyone for commenting here and keeping a dialogue open.
With what I've seen of Anita Sarkeesian's stuff...
It's not a very good view on anything, while some things there can be legimate complaints to an extent... The majority of them end up being just complaining things that are not unique to female characters and saying they're bad because they can be done to women in video games.
It's just cherry picking, nothing more, nothing less.
And remember. Some people said it´s the games that make kids to murderers (colombine...) but missed the whole point of the pressure our society creates (group dynamics within younger circles) in the whole tragedy. We also had some school shootings here in germany and immidiately politicians with no clue called out FPS games that they are the hidden hand of the tragics because everything else in our super society cant be blamed... like being ugly or not rich and all these nice things you are being bullied in school. Our TV tells young people that they must be beauytfull, always glamourous and up to date, sell out everything and you make it and then these people blame the gamers because they are angry and frustrated. It´s not funny when you switch focus on deep problems to a thing that is considered for gamers as fun. Games are for people in these days a way to forget this bad environment called modern sell out society and now you want to kill that too. I promise you that it´s the wrong way and you should admit that it´s not the games but the preasure of society and this ugly sell out mentality!
What happens if you chase a rat in a corner ? It will attack you until death. I think it´s pure unresponsibility of Anita right now to call out problems that are created by our bad economy (bankers) and sell out mentality and throw it into the pit of gaming devs and players. But most of you narrow minded people will not see the deeper problems within our doomed economy and sell out disney world because you only focus on yourself.
We have real issues with millions of job and homeless people and the issue is with gaming. Sure. It´s the young boys who maybe have no vision for their future because they see their reality being destroyed by all the adults in power and you put more preasure on them by blaming them. I can only defend these young guys because we destroy not only their future but also the little bit of fun now because radicals have no problems with wars and starving people but with white male gamers who are frustrated to death because of our super modern tolerant society...
So what if you have silenced all young guys in their anger ? They will find another way to let go their frustration and what will follow then you shouldnt cry about. When someone puts me into a corner and even silences me when i want to just let go of my frustration I attack him until he is finished and i am free. I finish him off! I would never ever allow anyone to kill of my fun in a time where my surrounding is a mess.
All her and her henchmen reason centers around that its a message within games that creates a wrong attitude. And i know that it´s the people in power (media, politics and business) who ruin the environment for young people and us adults too. So instead being brave and honest what we can do another radical comes along and shift problems away from the same people who creates this bad society.
And honestly the only thing right now rules over all is money and so called tolerance. You dont give young people a spirit of culture or solid morality and now wonder why they flip out. Young people are a mirrorimage of our society but yeah keep attacking the symptome and not the root. Would you watch our television here in germany you could see that girls do EVERYTHING to be famous. They learn how to sell out via the media and society and you see the problem somewhere else. If you are a man in summer here you could think you are in an open bordello for pedos!
@NWN_babaYaga If I understood you correctly you are critical of much of modern media, but you want to disucss only the broad origins as opposed to the concrete instances such as games? But why does one exclude the other? I agreee that alot of modern media (wherein games are important) is little-thought out and cynical - We should be able to discuss the concrete manifestations such as cynical use of bewbage on posters and still be critical of the way society is run. These concrete examples only make it easier to udnerstand the world in my humble opinion.
Also, regarding feminism, I think you have a good point @Nonnahswriter, in that feminism should be *liberating* for both men and women. If you are a girl and want to play a bad-ass swordsman, go do that - If you want to play a frivioulous maiden play that. As a guy, I should be able to play a musclepumping berskerker or a emotional bard. Of course this translates to real life: Your gender should not limit your life in any way. The reason I still call it feminism is because the power structures are still mainly male-leaning (CEOs, presidents and so on), though the end-result should be liberating for all.
I am a male preschool teacher, just ten years ago this would have been very taboo - luckily I live in a country where this has become much more common the last years, and I never really get any social stigma from it. Though I have experienced some stigma from (only two!) girls who have a problem with a guy perhaps being better at them with kids than they are. That's the way the development should go, and it is a good example of how feminism is liberating for men as well.
I´m out. You dont want to understand. My brother is a teacher too just so you know!
You can keep your Anita ideas and follow the feminist agenda of everyone is equal theoretically but not when it comes to money aka power in reality and i will watch this industry being blackmailed via preasure and how you change the young males mind with your censorship and dictate how to think. But whenever i can i will try to tell young guys do what you want and dont let yourself being educated by radical wrong people who wants to suppress your manhood. That you dont want a better society is clear to me. You just want to keep the big money guys in power and let them do their ugly and filthy sexual sell out agenda going. I have no sympathy with hypocrites and manipulators who dont want to fight the real problems we have so whatever. Miley Cyrus is a real feminists too... i bet disney is proud that they support both types of people! Good night in your sleep
The rest of this post is completely off-topic and inflammatory. Refer to the site rules about trolling here.
and this is for the new BDSM teens you all want. Thanks to our new fuhrers of social justice! Hopefully you will think of yourself being guilty of sexual depravity in teens by supporting people like this!
@NWN_babaYaga please don't derail the thread with disinformation and changes of subject. This site is not the place for starting or continuing an anti-feminist campaign.
Thank you, Dee. @Mathsorcerer I figured. Boogeyman's hood was such a joke item for selling your soul like that. I know destroying Megaton makes sense as the more vile act but that one definitely made a shower necessary. Probably because you were so much closer on the witness level.
As a woman myself who has been playing games since Space Invaders, I have to say, I may not have played all the games that Anita Sarkeesian calls out, but when I watch her videos, i am not so much stunned at the lazy tropes employed by game developers against women but 1) How widespread they are in the industry and 2) Just how long video game developers have been getting away with these lazy tropes. Relying on cultural shorthand (You a big, strong man! You woman has been kidnapped! Bad guys over there! Get they arse!) when you can have a deep storyline is LAZY. Relying on them over and over and over again? Even LAZIER.
Yes, I know that many gamers skip cutscenes so they can get back to the killenating. But hey, some of us like story. Not everyone is "Shut up, let me get back to killing dudes!" But that's why games that let you just kill dudes (Nearly every first person shooter on the face of the planet) exist.
I don't get the hatred of Anita. It's not like she's threatening to take your toys away. Games for dudes and "Dudebros" will still exist- they make money, of course they will exist. But not everyone wants to shut off the cutscenes to just kill more dudes. And when your game is just 100% dudekilling, isn't it going to be just like the 20 or so other games that are 100% dudekilling? Okay, in this game, you get to kill Nazi Dudes. In this game, you get to kill blue-skinned dudes. The fine details of the dudes you are killing changes (or maybe not), but it's all dude killing all the time. To me, that sounds like Hell, literally, the most boring thing to do, EVER. It's fine for letting off steam, but don't you want a richer, deeper experience than just shooting interchangeable dudes on a map somewhere? In fact, that's what seems to be killing all these FPS games. By making it all about PVP, they have nearly literally become the same. Single player campaign? You're lucky if you even get one. It's all about facing off against other Dudes with guns across a map and insulting each other in chat in real time. So, you get slightly different guns. So, the names of the sides change. But the objective of the game is to shoot other dudes.
That's why I am into RPGs. RPGs have a story. I LIKE story, and I think that other people who play RPGs *also* like a story. Because the story is where it is. It's what the game is about. If a game has no story or a really bad story, I'm not gonna play it.
Now, to respond to several assertions made in this thread. #1) Reacting to characters or people with sexual interest isn't sexist. I've been watching Graham Stark from Loading Ready Run live stream the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution on twitter for months now. I find Adam Jensen, the game's protagonist, Hot, Yes, as in a "Makes me tingle below the waist" kind of way. No, he wasn't sexualized for women. But I still think he's hot. However, I've seen him turned into a female character in art, and just about every artist that depicted him gave female Adam Jensen ginormous boobs (when, as a male character, he's kinda slender and slim-built (Let's face it, even before the augmentation, he wasn't built like a Gears of War character- he was trim and toned- even the famous shirtless pic of him- he's slender. No female form of him is gonna be packing watermelons at chest height)). In any case, just because I find that character hot doesn't make me sexist. It makes me human.
Also, @NWN_babayaga, I was really surprised to see you compare Anita Sarkeesian to Hitler, when you happen to be German. Nazis appear as a villain trope in video games because they are the last real enemy it was okay to hate. In fact, video games keep using this lazy trope because they are lazy. Want to gin up hatred towards the foe you are fighting in a military FPS game? Make 'em fight Nazis! You don't even have to justify why you are killing them! They are Nazis, they deserve killing! Aside from equating feminism with Nazism, you claim to know what she is saying and how she is saying it despite not having watched any of her videos. Which, I have to say, immediately tells me I can ignore you- you obviously don't know what you are talking about. And until you actually watch them, I'll keep that opinion.
I had an idea for making the trope of female sex workers in the BG Games less lazy/sexist by making some of them male (other than in the Dark Elf City). Because having only female sex workers is sexist- and Ed Greenwood makes it clear there are both male and female sex workers for both men and women in the Realms. So, if you are going to have women going around saying, "Ah'm a fine looking strumpet!", "Would ye like to take a look at me titties?" and similar- you should merely have male sex workers to even out the pain, so to speak.
And yes, I know that them being in the game is a sign of its age- but if we need to have a slightly seedy red light district or area- make them both. That, to me, is better than having them only be female. No, it's not perfect, but nothing ever is. I am unaware of a game with male prostitutes, but they exist in real life. I mean, let's face it, "Midnight Cowboy" is all about a cowboy who goes to LA to get into acting and ends up being forced into that lifestyle at least once. But when you see prostitution in games, it's ALWAYS 100% female. Women selling their bodies. Women flaunting themselves on street corners. Women as the product to be rented in brothels- never as the customer.That's why I feel that having men selling themselves would be just the thing to draw attention to the fact that it's always women who are put in this trope as the purveyor of sex products- never the consumer (Except in the Dark Elf City, which is matriarchal and therefore the tropes are reversed). So, have it be both. Women as sex workers- women as purchaser of the product of both male and female sex workers and vice versa with men. Better than tucking it away out of sight by not having it be in the game. There is nothing dirty about sex, there is nothing dirty about enjoying sex- male or female. What IS dirty is coercing it, Or treating it as if you enjoy sex, there is something wrong with you. That's what I consider wrong.
And while I haven't played the new Lara Croft game, I do remember the cover of NextGen Magazine with a naked from the waist up Lara with her breasts covered by Duke Nukem's hands. And he's ogling her (how very Duke Nukem of him…) Something very like this:
Ironically, the cover was for an article about over the top sexualization and violence in games… in 2001. Ah… found the actual cover.
@LadyRhian while I feel most of what you say, I mostly disagree with your take on the female and male sex workers. According to Ed Greenwood there are both female and male sex workers in Faerun. But is it that hard to believe that in Faerun, just like in the real world, the percentage is skewed *heavily* toward female sex workers?
There actually was a male sex worker in the pirate island, and as you mentioned the Underdark had some too. It is just a matter of numbers.
I think that when evaluating art it is easy to mistake the fact that art is imitating real life with the idea that it is endorsing aspects of the real world that are unfair/ugly/not to our liking. Just because there is sexism in the game world does not mean that the game is sexist or that depicting a sexist culture in a story is sexist in and of itself.
Life in the setting of these games has many ugly elements, such as theft and violence being depicted with scary frequency. I don't feel like the fact that there is sexism and a disproportionate number of female sex workers in Faerun is really all that remarkable.
Shortened version: the real world is an imperfect place, and it should not be shocking that fantasy worlds are also imperfect.
As far as this Anita woman is concerned, I have never watched any of her videos before, but I skimmed through "Damsel in Distress part 1" and didn't really see anything wrong with what she was saying. Her point about how the heroes always escape captivity through their own abilities while damsels never get this option was actually kinda insightful.
To be honest I have not played nearly enough video games to really have an opinion on "the gaming industry" as a whole, and she might be making a mountain out of an anthole, but I can see why she'd have beef with the Mario/Zelda type games for sure. When it comes to "over-sexualization" in games, I can't really say since I've never played a game like the ones that everyone is referencing. Since I play mostly FIFA, Mario games and Infinity Engine games the closest I ever came to seeing a scantily clad woman was Yxunomei... and at that time sex was the LAST thing on my mind O.o
@booinyoureyes That's fair. I just like the idea of having enough male sex workers to get people/players to think about them being there. As in a "Hey, wait, there are GUYS doing this?! Hunh… usually they are only female. Wonder why…" I totally missed the guy on the Pirate Island when I played. Well spotted! Maybe I am reading too much into it and it will only be picked up by FOX News, "Game makes Men into Prostitutes!" You know, like they do.
Also, Graham is playing Deus Ex: HR on Twitch, not twitter. :P My bad.
Okay, in this game, you get to kill Nazi Dudes. In this game, you get to kill blue-skinned dudes. The fine details of the dudes you are killing changes (or maybe not), but it's all dude killing all the time. To me, that sounds like Hell, literally, the most boring thing to do, EVER. It's fine for letting off steam, but don't you want a richer, deeper experience than just shooting interchangeable dudes on a map somewhere? In fact, that's what seems to be killing all these FPS games. By making it all about PVP, they have nearly literally become the same. Single player campaign? You're lucky if you even get one. It's all about facing off against other Dudes with guns across a map and insulting each other in chat in real time. So, you get slightly different guns. So, the names of the sides change. But the objective of the game is to shoot other dudes.
This is why I can't be bothered with FPS games anymore, with the exception of a few (namely the new Rise of the Triad - and even that's only for the nostalgia value). However, I wouldn't say it was killing FPS games, since that seems to be what a lot of gamers want. Although traditional FPS games are on the way out, the Modern Military Shooter seems to be very much in at the moment, and people still get excited about the new Call of Duty game. People seem to prefer realism.
Speaking of Call of Duty, I'm surprised that there are still no female soldiers in any of those games - in the WW2 ones I can understand, since women weren't allowed to join the army in the mid 20th century, but they are today. It makes sense that you should at least be able to create a female soldier for multiplayer.
As for multiplayer...people seem to prefer that now, which is probably due to humankind's naturally competitive nature. Developers love it because it means they don't have to make a campaign. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun (I myself have plenty of hours of Unreal Tournament, Jedi Knight 2, and Mount and Blade multiplayer, behind me), but many self-styled "hardcore gamers" are of the impression that multiplayer is the ONLY way to go, and a lot of games are neglecting the single player element because of this demand for competitive gaming. Try visiting the Star Citizen forums and raising concerns about PVP griefers and you'll see what I mean. All I ever hear there is "AI will NEVER be as good as a player!!111!".
Anyway, I digress...wrt male sex workers, they may exist but they aren't going to be as common as female ones, because there is going to be less demand. Men are far more likely to want sex enough to have to pay for it. One argument I commonly hear is "if a man sleeps with 50 women, he's a stud, but if a woman sleeps with 50 men she's a slut!", but there's a good reason for this. A man who wants to sleep with 50 women needs to individually woo each one personally, while a woman who wants to sleep with 50 guys needs only announce her intentions and 500 guys will form a queue.
@Squire In some cases, literally. I recall a famous prostitute who was filmed doing the act with, like 2000 guys, I think. And she'd literally put an ad in several newspapers, and guys just showed up (they probably had to be screened for social diseases- I am assuming she didn't want to get unnamed extras out of all of this.) And again, literally, it was a line of guys in a huge warehouse. I think she was trying to set some kind of record or something. And according to her it was excruciating- painful and each guy had only a couple of minutes to get off. Sounds like the least sexy thing in the world, to me.
I guess it speaks to how desperately men want it. Women can afford to be discriminating. Some men (who knows, maybe even a majority of men) aren't.
As for my comments about the FPS dying- they are actually selling less and less in terms of number of units sold. At least some people, and probably more than some, are only buying the game because their friends do. Some aren't even doing that. Or instead of playing ALL the FPS games, only choosing one. FPS, as a genre, is not doing well, and the publishers are rather concerned for this. Not that they'd admit it, but yeah, the FPS genre is dying out. Everyone wants to be Call of Duty, and there is only so much interest and so much money to go around in that area. It's like WoW. Every MMORPG wants to be WoW, but WoW is the one who got there first and does the most innovation, so every so-called "WoW Killer" has failed to do so. And WoW, too, is facing a series of seriously diminishing returns. People play the new content for a month, maybe two, and finish it out and leave, only to return for another month or two when the next expansion comes out. They are losing their player base, slowly but surely, and the number of actual monthly subscribers are way down.
I'm not against this. I'm for more innovation and more new games- even if the new games are really good old ones that are remastered or enhanced. But you know game publishers, they will continue to milk that cow until its remains are drier than the dust of the Sahara Desert at high noon. Furthermore, Publishers and Developers are having to spend so much on Spectacle in their games that they have to sell insane numbers of units to even get back what they spent on a game, let alone turn a profit. And I do mean INSANE numbers, like multi million units. Or the game is deemed a "failure". It's not a business model that's sustainable for the long haul.
... the internet is also the reality and the real live is nothing more then an illusion. The new generation has understood the way our world is. The I-net tells it and thats how we have to design the future because the I-net has spoken. Hail the I-net for it´s many words of wisdom! Down with de lazy game designers who did stuff how they want. We want to dictate how to do it because we cant code ourself. Damn the skills we dont have but the others....
and yes polygon is a great site and not biased no no. All is neutral and no bias for them nono....
but when I post a link to a site it´s called "disinformation" and immaflamatory yes. Thats the honest freedom and greatness aka tolerance you talk about. Well, it´s not better then the NS regime did. Only our oppinion is de truht and anyone else is WRONG. My grandparents lived in the NS regime and i know it!
In the end gamers worldwide will just do what they always did... they dont care about the "gaming" journalists with a social oppinon and just shot the bits out of male soldiers. And if the game devs. change the stuff then modders will take it back to be raw and real.
When someone has so much time to brag and whine about game content i wonder why he she it is not doing something instead of empty talk. Work gives you respect and nothing else. WORK!
... the internet is also the reality and the real live is nothing more then an illusion. The new generation has understood the way our world is. The I-net tells it and thats how we have to design the future because the I-net has spoken. Hail the I-net for it´s many words of wisdom! Down with de lazy game designers who did stuff how they want. We want to dictate how to do it because we cant code ourself. Damn the skills we dont have but the others....
It is not the masses on internet that is telling game designers to be more inclusive but the all mighty dollar.
If you are an independent game designer working on your own time and creating what you want to create, great! Create a game that you and a niche group of people will enjoy and play. No one is stopping you.
However, if you are working for a company the only thing that matters is the bottom line. The more appealing your game or product is to the masses, the more it will sell.
Two of the biggest debates about video games is how to open them up to a wider market and how to make them so that they are consider on par regarding storytelling with other genres like tv and movies.
The only way to fully embrace this shift to getting more people to play games is to listen to critique he targeted group is giving and not fall to stereotypical beliefs.
The story of Lego and how they started making Lego for girls is a good case study on the evolution and thought process to get equality right.
These people pick out "internet" illusions and throw it into the every day reality of our world. Do you think little white guys ran around, rape girls and want to treat them like a plastic bad ? Have you seen the hardcore insults from the other side that uses the word f**** as if there is no daylight ? If you demand morality and equality anywhere be a guide by your livestyle and not a wannabe something that should get a medal of pretending! you know i live here in the reality and what is talked about most of the time is an I-net illusion nothing more. I live in a big city BERLIN and what they talk about is almost non existant.
@NWN_babaYaga Maybe I'm still sleepy, but this is angry gibberish to me. And rude gibberish. I can get you not being a native speaker, but there is no excuse for LITERALLY ignorantly ranting against a series of videos you did not even bother watching. You are getting pretty heavy hints from the mods that your behaviour isn't acceptable, and what is your solution?? Accusing the mods of being Nazis. This begs the question, if the mods/developers are so awful, why keep posting here? Also? I glanced at your link, it *is* clearly so biased that its worthless.
@Squire a strong argument can be made that men are socialized to be sluts, while women are not. Horomones exist for both obviously. However, in a city the size of BG it seems odd that you would have oodles of female prostitutes, and in an actual port city, basicly no male prostitutes?? You guys are ignoring the fact that most male prostitutes sell to other men. And don't forget pirates were disproportionately gay (or at least bi).
I don't know, I kind of feel like if you've been forced to leave your house because of death threats from or instigated by a particular website's members, denouncing a fundraiser because of that website's involvement isn't really outside the realm of believability.
However, looking for (or inventing) mistakes and errors of judgment (however legitimate they may be) in order to paint someone's persona in a negative light for no other reason than because they say something you disagree with is disingenuous at best, and criminal at worst.
Refusing to even discuss that person's actual points in a thread about that person and persistently trying to derail the thread with attacks on that person's character (or on the character of moderators telling you to stop) is trolling. This isn't fascism, this isn't me being a Nazi, this isn't Anita Sarkeesian being a "fuhrer", this isn't you being oppressed. This is you using politically charged terminology to try and divert attention from the conversation everyone else is trying to have.
So this is your second warning, @NWN_babaYaga - you won't get a third.
There are people on both sides of the issue in this thread, but so far everyone else has been able to voice their opinion without resorting to name-calling or battlecries. Either join the discussion as a civil participant, or leave it.
I never insulted anita i just told the truth that she is an attention seeking creature who has no clue about gaming at all and only serves her own agenda. Like i said, you can ban me for my own oppinion, thats your right here on this side but i stay by my priorities and learned history so all in all what should i realy care. to me it´s more important to learn from history and be responsible about the truth and not about your agenda that already caused guys being fired, flame wars which were created by anita and comrades and so on. To have a different point of view and to showcase what these people also represents is a sin for you yes i understand because it shows the true intention once again. You are free to ban me. I will enjoy IWDEE anyway because i can separate gaming from social topics. I will enjoy the game and say good bye with no hatred at all. But with a little bit frustration to be honest because i see it´s not the games and it´s scene but personal oppinions about social and political idiology!
You can also tell me how to delete my account and i´ll do it in a second. I have enough self respect to just go, i dont need that
that she is an attention seeking creature who has no clue about gaming at all and only serves her own agenda.
Care to try that again?
In many of your previous posts you also refer to her as Fuhrer, Hitler, and no better than the Nazis. If you don't see how that's an insult, then I think we're done here.
Perhaps I should become a russianist(?) and raise a few hundred grand whining about how Russians are misportrayed in video games and other popular culture.
Comments
(I've been waiting for an excuse to use this gif. Mwahahahahaha!)
It's not a very good view on anything, while some things there can be legimate complaints to an extent... The majority of them end up being just complaining things that are not unique to female characters and saying they're bad because they can be done to women in video games.
It's just cherry picking, nothing more, nothing less.
What happens if you chase a rat in a corner ? It will attack you until death. I think it´s pure unresponsibility of Anita right now to call out problems that are created by our bad economy (bankers) and sell out mentality and throw it into the pit of gaming devs and players. But most of you narrow minded people will not see the deeper problems within our doomed economy and sell out disney world because you only focus on yourself.
We have real issues with millions of job and homeless people and the issue is with gaming. Sure. It´s the young boys who maybe have no vision for their future because they see their reality being destroyed by all the adults in power and you put more preasure on them by blaming them. I can only defend these young guys because we destroy not only their future but also the little bit of fun now because radicals have no problems with wars and starving people but with white male gamers who are frustrated to death because of our super modern tolerant society...
So what if you have silenced all young guys in their anger ? They will find another way to let go their frustration and what will follow then you shouldnt cry about. When someone puts me into a corner and even silences me when i want to just let go of my frustration I attack him until he is finished and i am free. I finish him off! I would never ever allow anyone to kill of my fun in a time where my surrounding is a mess.
All her and her henchmen reason centers around that its a message within games that creates a wrong attitude.
And i know that it´s the people in power (media, politics and business) who ruin the environment for young people and us adults too. So instead being brave and honest what we can do another radical comes along and shift problems away from the same people who creates this bad society.
And honestly the only thing right now rules over all is money and so called tolerance. You dont give young people a spirit of culture or solid morality and now wonder why they flip out. Young people are a mirrorimage of our society but yeah keep attacking the symptome and not the root. Would you watch our television here in germany you could see that girls do EVERYTHING to be famous. They learn how to sell out via the media and society and you see the problem somewhere else. If you are a man in summer here you could think you are in an open bordello for pedos!
If I understood you correctly you are critical of much of modern media, but you want to disucss only the broad origins as opposed to the concrete instances such as games? But why does one exclude the other?
I agreee that alot of modern media (wherein games are important) is little-thought out and cynical - We should be able to discuss the concrete manifestations such as cynical use of bewbage on posters and still be critical of the way society is run. These concrete examples only make it easier to udnerstand the world in my humble opinion.
Also, regarding feminism, I think you have a good point @Nonnahswriter, in that feminism should be *liberating* for both men and women. If you are a girl and want to play a bad-ass swordsman, go do that - If you want to play a frivioulous maiden play that. As a guy, I should be able to play a musclepumping berskerker or a emotional bard. Of course this translates to real life: Your gender should not limit your life in any way. The reason I still call it feminism is because the power structures are still mainly male-leaning (CEOs, presidents and so on), though the end-result should be liberating for all.
I am a male preschool teacher, just ten years ago this would have been very taboo - luckily I live in a country where this has become much more common the last years, and I never really get any social stigma from it. Though I have experienced some stigma from (only two!) girls who have a problem with a guy perhaps being better at them with kids than they are. That's the way the development should go, and it is a good example of how feminism is liberating for men as well.
You can keep your Anita ideas and follow the feminist agenda of everyone is equal theoretically but not when it comes to money aka power in reality and i will watch this industry being blackmailed via preasure and how you change the young males mind with your censorship and dictate how to think. But whenever i can i will try to tell young guys do what you want and dont let yourself being educated by radical wrong people who wants to suppress your manhood. That you dont want a better society is clear to me. You just want to keep the big money guys in power and let them do their ugly and filthy sexual sell out agenda going. I have no sympathy with hypocrites and manipulators who dont want to fight the real problems we have so whatever. Miley Cyrus is a real feminists too... i bet disney is proud that they support both types of people! Good night in your sleep
The rest of this post is completely off-topic and inflammatory. Refer to the site rules about trolling here.
http://www.returnofkings.com/44681/feminist-laci-green-is-trying-to-censor-youtube-without-consent
here are your nice people. I know you love them
https://saynsumthn.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/planned-parenthood-celeb-excited-about-film-that-will-spread-inaccurate-info-about-bdsm-to-teens/
and this is for the new BDSM teens you all want. Thanks to our new fuhrers of social justice!
Hopefully you will think of yourself being guilty of sexual depravity in teens by supporting people like this!
@Mathsorcerer I figured. Boogeyman's hood was such a joke item for selling your soul like that. I know destroying Megaton makes sense as the more vile act but that one definitely made a shower necessary. Probably because you were so much closer on the witness level.
Yes, I know that many gamers skip cutscenes so they can get back to the killenating. But hey, some of us like story. Not everyone is "Shut up, let me get back to killing dudes!" But that's why games that let you just kill dudes (Nearly every first person shooter on the face of the planet) exist.
I don't get the hatred of Anita. It's not like she's threatening to take your toys away. Games for dudes and "Dudebros" will still exist- they make money, of course they will exist. But not everyone wants to shut off the cutscenes to just kill more dudes. And when your game is just 100% dudekilling, isn't it going to be just like the 20 or so other games that are 100% dudekilling? Okay, in this game, you get to kill Nazi Dudes. In this game, you get to kill blue-skinned dudes. The fine details of the dudes you are killing changes (or maybe not), but it's all dude killing all the time. To me, that sounds like Hell, literally, the most boring thing to do, EVER. It's fine for letting off steam, but don't you want a richer, deeper experience than just shooting interchangeable dudes on a map somewhere? In fact, that's what seems to be killing all these FPS games. By making it all about PVP, they have nearly literally become the same. Single player campaign? You're lucky if you even get one. It's all about facing off against other Dudes with guns across a map and insulting each other in chat in real time. So, you get slightly different guns. So, the names of the sides change. But the objective of the game is to shoot other dudes.
That's why I am into RPGs. RPGs have a story. I LIKE story, and I think that other people who play RPGs *also* like a story. Because the story is where it is. It's what the game is about. If a game has no story or a really bad story, I'm not gonna play it.
Now, to respond to several assertions made in this thread. #1) Reacting to characters or people with sexual interest isn't sexist. I've been watching Graham Stark from Loading Ready Run live stream the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution on twitter for months now. I find Adam Jensen, the game's protagonist, Hot, Yes, as in a "Makes me tingle below the waist" kind of way. No, he wasn't sexualized for women. But I still think he's hot. However, I've seen him turned into a female character in art, and just about every artist that depicted him gave female Adam Jensen ginormous boobs (when, as a male character, he's kinda slender and slim-built (Let's face it, even before the augmentation, he wasn't built like a Gears of War character- he was trim and toned- even the famous shirtless pic of him- he's slender. No female form of him is gonna be packing watermelons at chest height)). In any case, just because I find that character hot doesn't make me sexist. It makes me human.
Also, @NWN_babayaga, I was really surprised to see you compare Anita Sarkeesian to Hitler, when you happen to be German. Nazis appear as a villain trope in video games because they are the last real enemy it was okay to hate. In fact, video games keep using this lazy trope because they are lazy. Want to gin up hatred towards the foe you are fighting in a military FPS game? Make 'em fight Nazis! You don't even have to justify why you are killing them! They are Nazis, they deserve killing! Aside from equating feminism with Nazism, you claim to know what she is saying and how she is saying it despite not having watched any of her videos. Which, I have to say, immediately tells me I can ignore you- you obviously don't know what you are talking about. And until you actually watch them, I'll keep that opinion.
I had an idea for making the trope of female sex workers in the BG Games less lazy/sexist by making some of them male (other than in the Dark Elf City). Because having only female sex workers is sexist- and Ed Greenwood makes it clear there are both male and female sex workers for both men and women in the Realms. So, if you are going to have women going around saying, "Ah'm a fine looking strumpet!", "Would ye like to take a look at me titties?" and similar- you should merely have male sex workers to even out the pain, so to speak.
And yes, I know that them being in the game is a sign of its age- but if we need to have a slightly seedy red light district or area- make them both. That, to me, is better than having them only be female. No, it's not perfect, but nothing ever is. I am unaware of a game with male prostitutes, but they exist in real life. I mean, let's face it, "Midnight Cowboy" is all about a cowboy who goes to LA to get into acting and ends up being forced into that lifestyle at least once. But when you see prostitution in games, it's ALWAYS 100% female. Women selling their bodies. Women flaunting themselves on street corners. Women as the product to be rented in brothels- never as the customer.That's why I feel that having men selling themselves would be just the thing to draw attention to the fact that it's always women who are put in this trope as the purveyor of sex products- never the consumer (Except in the Dark Elf City, which is matriarchal and therefore the tropes are reversed). So, have it be both. Women as sex workers- women as purchaser of the product of both male and female sex workers and vice versa with men. Better than tucking it away out of sight by not having it be in the game. There is nothing dirty about sex, there is nothing dirty about enjoying sex- male or female. What IS dirty is coercing it, Or treating it as if you enjoy sex, there is something wrong with you. That's what I consider wrong.
And while I haven't played the new Lara Croft game, I do remember the cover of NextGen Magazine with a naked from the waist up Lara with her breasts covered by Duke Nukem's hands. And he's ogling her (how very Duke Nukem of him…) Something very like this:
Ironically, the cover was for an article about over the top sexualization and violence in games… in 2001. Ah… found the actual cover.
There actually was a male sex worker in the pirate island, and as you mentioned the Underdark had some too. It is just a matter of numbers.
I think that when evaluating art it is easy to mistake the fact that art is imitating real life with the idea that it is endorsing aspects of the real world that are unfair/ugly/not to our liking. Just because there is sexism in the game world does not mean that the game is sexist or that depicting a sexist culture in a story is sexist in and of itself.
Life in the setting of these games has many ugly elements, such as theft and violence being depicted with scary frequency. I don't feel like the fact that there is sexism and a disproportionate number of female sex workers in Faerun is really all that remarkable.
Shortened version: the real world is an imperfect place, and it should not be shocking that fantasy worlds are also imperfect.
As far as this Anita woman is concerned, I have never watched any of her videos before, but I skimmed through "Damsel in Distress part 1" and didn't really see anything wrong with what she was saying. Her point about how the heroes always escape captivity through their own abilities while damsels never get this option was actually kinda insightful.
To be honest I have not played nearly enough video games to really have an opinion on "the gaming industry" as a whole, and she might be making a mountain out of an anthole, but I can see why she'd have beef with the Mario/Zelda type games for sure. When it comes to "over-sexualization" in games, I can't really say since I've never played a game like the ones that everyone is referencing. Since I play mostly FIFA, Mario games and Infinity Engine games the closest I ever came to seeing a scantily clad woman was Yxunomei... and at that time sex was the LAST thing on my mind O.o
Also, Graham is playing Deus Ex: HR on Twitch, not twitter. :P My bad.
Speaking of Call of Duty, I'm surprised that there are still no female soldiers in any of those games - in the WW2 ones I can understand, since women weren't allowed to join the army in the mid 20th century, but they are today. It makes sense that you should at least be able to create a female soldier for multiplayer.
As for multiplayer...people seem to prefer that now, which is probably due to humankind's naturally competitive nature. Developers love it because it means they don't have to make a campaign. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun (I myself have plenty of hours of Unreal Tournament, Jedi Knight 2, and Mount and Blade multiplayer, behind me), but many self-styled "hardcore gamers" are of the impression that multiplayer is the ONLY way to go, and a lot of games are neglecting the single player element because of this demand for competitive gaming. Try visiting the Star Citizen forums and raising concerns about PVP griefers and you'll see what I mean. All I ever hear there is "AI will NEVER be as good as a player!!111!".
Anyway, I digress...wrt male sex workers, they may exist but they aren't going to be as common as female ones, because there is going to be less demand. Men are far more likely to want sex enough to have to pay for it. One argument I commonly hear is "if a man sleeps with 50 women, he's a stud, but if a woman sleeps with 50 men she's a slut!", but there's a good reason for this. A man who wants to sleep with 50 women needs to individually woo each one personally, while a woman who wants to sleep with 50 guys needs only announce her intentions and 500 guys will form a queue.
I guess it speaks to how desperately men want it. Women can afford to be discriminating. Some men (who knows, maybe even a majority of men) aren't.
As for my comments about the FPS dying- they are actually selling less and less in terms of number of units sold. At least some people, and probably more than some, are only buying the game because their friends do. Some aren't even doing that. Or instead of playing ALL the FPS games, only choosing one. FPS, as a genre, is not doing well, and the publishers are rather concerned for this. Not that they'd admit it, but yeah, the FPS genre is dying out. Everyone wants to be Call of Duty, and there is only so much interest and so much money to go around in that area. It's like WoW. Every MMORPG wants to be WoW, but WoW is the one who got there first and does the most innovation, so every so-called "WoW Killer" has failed to do so. And WoW, too, is facing a series of seriously diminishing returns. People play the new content for a month, maybe two, and finish it out and leave, only to return for another month or two when the next expansion comes out. They are losing their player base, slowly but surely, and the number of actual monthly subscribers are way down.
I'm not against this. I'm for more innovation and more new games- even if the new games are really good old ones that are remastered or enhanced. But you know game publishers, they will continue to milk that cow until its remains are drier than the dust of the Sahara Desert at high noon. Furthermore, Publishers and Developers are having to spend so much on Spectacle in their games that they have to sell insane numbers of units to even get back what they spent on a game, let alone turn a profit. And I do mean INSANE numbers, like multi million units. Or the game is deemed a "failure". It's not a business model that's sustainable for the long haul.
Here's an article from 2012 that points this out: http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/3439738/the-state-of-games-state-of-aaa
and yes polygon is a great site and not biased no no. All is neutral and no bias for them nono....
but when I post a link to a site it´s called "disinformation" and immaflamatory yes. Thats the honest freedom and greatness aka tolerance you talk about. Well, it´s not better then the NS regime did. Only our oppinion is de truht and anyone else is WRONG. My grandparents lived in the NS regime and i know it!
In the end gamers worldwide will just do what they always did... they dont care about the "gaming" journalists with a social oppinon and just shot the bits out of male soldiers. And if the game devs. change the stuff then modders will take it back to be raw and real.
When someone has so much time to brag and whine about game content i wonder why he she it is not doing something instead of empty talk. Work gives you respect and nothing else. WORK!
Ps. edited for a link
here is another interesting thing about anita. Which is clearly all lies and manipulation by us people with common sense
http://acesrhigh.tumblr.com/post/95813220683/nope-im-done-too-far-zoe-quinn-and-anita-sarkeesian
If you are an independent game designer working on your own time and creating what you want to create, great! Create a game that you and a niche group of people will enjoy and play. No one is stopping you.
However, if you are working for a company the only thing that matters is the bottom line. The more appealing your game or product is to the masses, the more it will sell.
Two of the biggest debates about video games is how to open them up to a wider market and how to make them so that they are consider on par regarding storytelling with other genres like tv and movies.
The only way to fully embrace this shift to getting more people to play games is to listen to critique he targeted group is giving and not fall to stereotypical beliefs.
The story of Lego and how they started making Lego for girls is a good case study on the evolution and thought process to get equality right.
@Squire a strong argument can be made that men are socialized to be sluts, while women are not. Horomones exist for both obviously. However, in a city the size of BG it seems odd that you would have oodles of female prostitutes, and in an actual port city, basicly no male prostitutes?? You guys are ignoring the fact that most male prostitutes sell to other men. And don't forget pirates were disproportionately gay (or at least bi).
However, looking for (or inventing) mistakes and errors of judgment (however legitimate they may be) in order to paint someone's persona in a negative light for no other reason than because they say something you disagree with is disingenuous at best, and criminal at worst.
Refusing to even discuss that person's actual points in a thread about that person and persistently trying to derail the thread with attacks on that person's character (or on the character of moderators telling you to stop) is trolling. This isn't fascism, this isn't me being a Nazi, this isn't Anita Sarkeesian being a "fuhrer", this isn't you being oppressed. This is you using politically charged terminology to try and divert attention from the conversation everyone else is trying to have.
So this is your second warning, @NWN_babaYaga - you won't get a third.
There are people on both sides of the issue in this thread, but so far everyone else has been able to voice their opinion without resorting to name-calling or battlecries. Either join the discussion as a civil participant, or leave it.
You can also tell me how to delete my account and i´ll do it in a second. I have enough self respect to just go, i dont need that
In many of your previous posts you also refer to her as Fuhrer, Hitler, and no better than the Nazis. If you don't see how that's an insult, then I think we're done here.