I haven't played much of the Witcher. I've played the sequel for an hour or so before I got too busy to game regularly. A woman got naked in a sex scene near the opening of the game, and it didn't seem particularly sexist to me. Is there a more sexist part later?
In the original there was a dumb collectible card aspect where whenever you slept with a different woman you got a card with her on it. I'm pretty sure they where usually naked on the card.
In the original there was a dumb collectible card aspect where whenever you slept with a different woman you got a card with her on it. I'm pretty sure they where usually naked on the card.
In the original there was a dumb collectible card aspect where whenever you slept with a different woman you got a card with her on it. I'm pretty sure they where usually naked on the card.
Wait I don't think I even got far enough for this to happen. Do they do anything or are they like saying you had sex with them?
Granted, in the same source material where you see scantily clad manly men, you also see the scantily clad women are generally shown to be weaker and smaller than the men.
In the original there was a dumb collectible card aspect where whenever you slept with a different woman you got a card with her on it. I'm pretty sure they where usually naked on the card.
And that just demonstrates the double standard when it comes to multiple partners, although it was hardly a necessary part of completion.
Granted, in the same source material where you see scantily clad manly men, you also see the scantily clad women are generally shown to be weaker and smaller than the men.
Aren't women generally smaller and less muscular than men? Should every woman in a source book be depicted as Amazonian?
I've seen plenty of scrawny cleric/page/peasant men in sourcebooks...
Granted, in the same source material where you see scantily clad manly men, you also see the scantily clad women are generally shown to be weaker and smaller than the men.
Aren't women generally smaller and less muscular than men? Should every woman in a source book be depicted as Amazonian?
I've seen plenty of scrawny cleric/page/peasant men in sourcebooks...
To a certain point but I expect a woman who can chop my head off with a sword to have some kind of muscles going on.
Granted, in the same source material where you see scantily clad manly men, you also see the scantily clad women are generally shown to be weaker and smaller than the men.
Aren't women generally smaller and less muscular than men? Should every woman in a source book be depicted as Amazonian?
I've seen plenty of scrawny cleric/page/peasant men in sourcebooks...
To a certain point but I expect a woman who can chop my head off with a sword to have some kind of muscles going on.
Eh, you might have a point. Fantasy setting = idealized bodies for the heroes, especially in the 80s. Since ideals were vastly different, possibly rooted in sexism... yeah.
Oh yeah, another blog where they make a huge deal out of the fact that people call catwoman "Bitch" all the time, but completely ignore the fact that every five minutes or less, someone threatens to pretty much rape her to death.
The author makes references to Batman tossing a VILLAIN aside when she refuses to move and tries to call THAT sexist, but that's pretty weak sauce, man.
Oddly, I agree. It's not like this isn't absolutely on-character for Batman - He doesn't care about Gender, he's more concerned with "Justice" and if you're standing between him and justice. I'm not saying it's right to go about beating up women or tossing them around, but they're really drawing a weak point here - I remember the scene they're talking about. The reason Batman tosses her aside is because she's literally trying to kick his goddamn face in, with an eye to killing or capturing him(with the ultimate aim of killing him). In making that point, they're essentially saying "It was sexist for this guy to defend himself with appropriate force, because the attacker was a woman" - which is a fucking stupid point to make, and completely against any sort of sense, let alone the point they're trying to make.
In the original there was a dumb collectible card aspect where whenever you slept with a different woman you got a card with her on it. I'm pretty sure they where usually naked on the card.
Yep, though they were usually pin-up naked, rather than just full frontal hangin' it all out there. Doesn't make it any better, but just pointing it out.
I never really managed to get that many women for my collectible card game. I guess the dude wasn't a womanizer enough to make up for my own shortcomings.
I think the simplist way to look at this argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the occasional fanservice or infrequent use of stereotypes within a certain context. One of my favourite games of all time is Red Alert 3, which revels in some serious cheesecake imagery as part of it's over the top image.
The problem comes from the fact that every game has this shit. The entire industry is absolutely saturated in this imagery that, even if it were baseline respectful half the time (which it isn't), it would still be degrading through sheer volume. There are almost no games with female characters in major roles where they aren't treated like trash, nevermind the large number of games where women quite simply don't exist.
It's a little like the Bechdel Test. Failing the Bechdel Test doesn't make a movie bad or sexist, but when you step back and look at the sheer number of movies that fail, you realize there is a negative trend. An individual instance of a game trading on fanservice or something it is not bad by itself but is part of a larger trend which, taken together across the industry, is overwhelmingly negative.
It's just not awesome that we've decided an entire medium is guys only and must be perfectly tailored to our fantasies, and to disregard anyone pointing out how rigged it is as "politically correct bullshit". Anyone remember that guy who had a meltdown over the existence of gay relationships in Dragon Age 2? This is the same sort of silly shit.
I'm not saying there's not an oversaturation, just for the record.
My argument is mostly that "sexy" or "scanty" outfits are not necessarily degrading or disempowering. There's nothing shameful or degrading about human anatomy or even promiscuity. The problem lies much more with the audience (and the culture of the audience) than with the media.
It's bad in that way too much of anything is bad.
Now, portraying women as bubble headed rescue trophies, that's something else, but is that really going on in a pervasive way anymore? I'm not sure.
There isn't anything wrong with sexy outfits, no. There starts to be something wrong when the only reason anyone has women in a thing is so they can (not) wear them. The problem is oversaturation, not simply it's existence. It's a result of, and an enforcing element of, part of a larger cultural trend of placing the value of women strictly on their appearance whereas men can actually be judged on their character and skill. At least machismo stereotypes that adversely effect men at least give them the agency to do shit for themselves.
I just beat gothic 1, where the only women in the game work hard, seemingly as slaves, for all the powerful men in the land. They are only dressed up in revealing clothing. I guess in a way it sort of makes sense within the scope of the game world, as the story is about a harsh prison colony from a position of power, so they demand women along with alcohol and other goods for pleasure. Goes to show how fucked that game is.
I agree with the statement on last page about being embarrassed of a game. Too many games have the stupidest, most unnecessary content. I'm tired of games with otherwise good gameplay being stained by all forms of boobalicious content. If a game is about being that way, fine. But random games should not just have this content in there. Unless the purpose of your game is to be hypersexual, this kind of oversexualized treatment of women shouldn't be a part of a game. The fact that some games "just have it" is the big part of the problem. It's the subtle idea that it's just there, looming in the background of TONS of popular modern releases. Rather than being up-front and something that can be pointed out as intentional, so many games hide it behind a veil that subtly changes the way people think about women.
If you want to argue that gamers aren't affected by the way games treat female characters, you need to examine the multitudes of places on the internet where the gaming youth is sharing negative opinions of women, or in Japan where many men are preferring to spend time with virtual women that live up to some strange standard they've developed. They didn't get that way on their own, the media they consumed has slowly made them think this is okay.
I think there's a legit genius in my Russian class. He's 17 and he speaks French, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, Czech, Swedish, and Arabic. At least two of those are self-taught.
From what I understand, usually when there is a crazy spike off in one focus it isn't indicative of overall intelligence in proportion, per say. There is usually something else going on.
Polyglossia actually correlates more with extreme introversion as opposed to genius IQs.
That's interesting. The people capable of talking to the most people are least likely to do so.
Yeah. One of the leading theories says that hyperpolyglotism has less to due with an interest in socializing, and more to do with a desire to master complex systems.
I was talking to Rym on our walk to the diner tonight and we were talking about how sexist bias and male privilege in media and culture is not visible to people who are in power and benefiting from it, unless they realize it's existence and start to see it. It's like suddenly you can see the spooky ghosts that are causing all the trouble. Simply put, I like video games pretty much, but I have trouble finding female characters that I would like to fantasize about being. Aren't video games supposed to provide some sort of bridge to the character, so you vicariously play the adventure while empathizing with them? I guess I just want there to be more variety. It just feels like male is the default, and females are mostly there to be sex symbols. There's nothing wrong with human sexuality, sure, but if that seems to be the driving factor of female roles in games but not male roles, there are some balance issues. Here's a trick I want guys to try. Do you ever imagine what it would be like to be different video game characters? Now guys, imagine yourself as one of the sexy girls from a game. Do you really identify with that person? Would you fantasize about what it would be like to live her life? Probably not so much. Now realize that I feel the same. I don't want to be the sexy side character! I want to be the party leader who makes brave decisions and is interesting. Also, Chell is awesome and an example of a good female character in a first person game, because her femininity is not the focal point. She just happens to be a human girl trapped in a conflict.
Faith from Mirrors Edge. Also, I don't really imagine or want to be most of the male video game characters either. They are mostly super buff, testosterone douche bags.
EDIT: Alyx from HL2 is also a pretty good character (even though she is an NPC).
Comments
I've seen plenty of scrawny cleric/page/peasant men in sourcebooks...
The problem comes from the fact that every game has this shit. The entire industry is absolutely saturated in this imagery that, even if it were baseline respectful half the time (which it isn't), it would still be degrading through sheer volume. There are almost no games with female characters in major roles where they aren't treated like trash, nevermind the large number of games where women quite simply don't exist.
It's a little like the Bechdel Test. Failing the Bechdel Test doesn't make a movie bad or sexist, but when you step back and look at the sheer number of movies that fail, you realize there is a negative trend. An individual instance of a game trading on fanservice or something it is not bad by itself but is part of a larger trend which, taken together across the industry, is overwhelmingly negative.
It's just not awesome that we've decided an entire medium is guys only and must be perfectly tailored to our fantasies, and to disregard anyone pointing out how rigged it is as "politically correct bullshit". Anyone remember that guy who had a meltdown over the existence of gay relationships in Dragon Age 2? This is the same sort of silly shit.
My argument is mostly that "sexy" or "scanty" outfits are not necessarily degrading or disempowering. There's nothing shameful or degrading about human anatomy or even promiscuity. The problem lies much more with the audience (and the culture of the audience) than with the media.
It's bad in that way too much of anything is bad.
Now, portraying women as bubble headed rescue trophies, that's something else, but is that really going on in a pervasive way anymore? I'm not sure.
If you want to argue that gamers aren't affected by the way games treat female characters, you need to examine the multitudes of places on the internet where the gaming youth is sharing negative opinions of women, or in Japan where many men are preferring to spend time with virtual women that live up to some strange standard they've developed. They didn't get that way on their own, the media they consumed has slowly made them think this is okay.
Here's the Economist article I sourced that from if you want to know more.
Simply put, I like video games pretty much, but I have trouble finding female characters that I would like to fantasize about being. Aren't video games supposed to provide some sort of bridge to the character, so you vicariously play the adventure while empathizing with them? I guess I just want there to be more variety. It just feels like male is the default, and females are mostly there to be sex symbols. There's nothing wrong with human sexuality, sure, but if that seems to be the driving factor of female roles in games but not male roles, there are some balance issues.
Here's a trick I want guys to try. Do you ever imagine what it would be like to be different video game characters? Now guys, imagine yourself as one of the sexy girls from a game. Do you really identify with that person? Would you fantasize about what it would be like to live her life? Probably not so much. Now realize that I feel the same. I don't want to be the sexy side character! I want to be the party leader who makes brave decisions and is interesting.
Also, Chell is awesome and an example of a good female character in a first person game, because her femininity is not the focal point. She just happens to be a human girl trapped in a conflict.
EDIT: Alyx from HL2 is also a pretty good character (even though she is an NPC).