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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGeneralWomen as Background Decoration: Part 2
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Müsta Klaki
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« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2014, 07:14:11 PM »

Summarizing, I have a big problem with her examples, which almost in their entirety are just good depicting of the settings. She wants the developers to sacrifice credibility and immersion in order to show a better world and culture than the one that exists.

Her arguments are notoriously stupid. She's the type of person that thinks of an argument then doesn't subsequently think of any counter-arguments. A normal person has an argument, takes in counter arguments, and then modifies their original argument. She just says her argument and disables comments/ratings.

It's like the people who complained about how most of the women in HBO dramas are just prostitutes. It's like in Deadwood, most women are either prostitutes or they're dead/going to die. Or they're Alma. Who probably also would have died if the show wasn't cancelled.

They want to depict something that takes place in a historical setting, then they do it properly and they're now sexist. It's like hey, fuck you, history is sexist, not the developers. You want sexist developers take a good long gander at most of the incredibly sexist drivel that comes out of Japan's gaming scene.

That's just an isolated incident though, so it could be a coincidence. The problem is, there have been so many strip clubs and brothels in games that people have written articles on which ones are better. http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/09/the-10-best-strip-clubs-and-brothels-in-video-games/strip-club

You'll find articles like that in everything, videogames, movies, comics etc. It's just clickbait for incredibly lonely people. Same reason putting a half naked anime chick in your YouTube thumbnail will skyrocket your views.
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Blambo
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« Reply #21 on: August 28, 2014, 08:03:48 PM »

its crazy, i had no idea that every woman in the wild west was a prostitute

something that feels authentic isn't necessarily historically true. you can't hide behind accuracy when you're making everything up.
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CesarD8
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« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2014, 08:17:36 PM »


As far the subject of the brothels, I agree that the developers have more or less gotten it right when it comes to depicting them. The more pressing issue is why are there so many brothels in the first place? If we take GTA 4, sure it is accurate to the setting, but it's also one of the few types buildings that you can enter. An equally appropriate setting would be a gas station that could be robbed. However, the developers prioritized the strip club instead, presumably for the sexual titillation.

In my opinion, the brothel in GTA IV is more or less justified. The game features an immoral and criminal social circle. A brothel is a frequented establishment of these kind of people and is more associable with them. A gas station would not be a bad choice, but it represents nothing of the culture and the way of life of the protagonists, where the brothel can be associated with ammorality, carelessness, crime, etc.

Buuuuut also it could be as you say, and the developers went for the sexual titillation, which would be a shame  Concerned
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CesarD8
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« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2014, 08:26:30 PM »

its crazy, i had no idea that every woman in the wild west was a prostitute

something that feels authentic isn't necessarily historically true. you can't hide behind accuracy when you're making everything up.

Not every woman, but most of the other "historical depictions" of the god forgotten towns in the wild west normally show us flirty girls, or prostitutes, or bartenders. It's a cliche, and probably a bad one, but as I said earlier, it's more of a cultural problem than a videogame one. I have no problem with her arguments, they are valid, it's just that she presents them in a quite stupid and uninformed way. She should be better informed considering all the money she got from the kickstarter and the low volume of videos she has made.
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gimymblert
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« Reply #24 on: August 28, 2014, 08:33:54 PM »

Total biscuit disable comment, get praise for it ... double standard?
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Blambo
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« Reply #25 on: August 28, 2014, 08:55:10 PM »

its crazy, i had no idea that every woman in the wild west was a prostitute

something that feels authentic isn't necessarily historically true. you can't hide behind accuracy when you're making everything up.

Not every woman, but most of the other "historical depictions" of the god forgotten towns in the wild west normally show us flirty girls, or prostitutes, or bartenders. It's a cliche, and probably a bad one, but as I said earlier, it's more of a cultural problem than a videogame one. I have no problem with her arguments, they are valid, it's just that she presents them in a quite stupid and uninformed way. She should be better informed considering all the money she got from the kickstarter and the low volume of videos she has made.

bruh you speak of a "cultural problem" as if video games aren't part of culture. its a small part but it doesn't mean it doesn't affect everything by at least a little
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CesarD8
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« Reply #26 on: August 28, 2014, 09:11:36 PM »

bruh you speak of a "cultural problem" as if video games aren't part of culture. its a small part but it doesn't mean it doesn't affect everything by at least a little

I agree, the things that I'm against with these videos is that in some way Sarkeesian implies that videogames are at fault in these particular topic, and it's really not. Also her examples are mostly depictions that are historically accurate by our social standard, and in this regard, videogames are a product of the culture that they are based from. On the other hand, if Sarkeesian would bring out the MMO, that would be a very different discussion, since it's a very common practice to CREATE a world and a culture where females are hypersexualized and objectified. There are some exceptions, but a lot of popular MMO tend to follow these practices.

Or why not talk about how we, gamers, as a culture tend to discriminate the female share of our group. That is an intrinsec problem of videogames and one that has no real argument to exist.
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Blambo
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« Reply #27 on: August 28, 2014, 09:12:58 PM »

why not do that and examine how sexism manifests in the works themselves
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Tuba
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« Reply #28 on: August 28, 2014, 11:09:13 PM »


As far the subject of the brothels, I agree that the developers have more or less gotten it right when it comes to depicting them. The more pressing issue is why are there so many brothels in the first place? If we take GTA 4, sure it is accurate to the setting, but it's also one of the few types buildings that you can enter. An equally appropriate setting would be a gas station that could be robbed. However, the developers prioritized the strip club instead, presumably for the sexual titillation.

In my opinion, the brothel in GTA IV is more or less justified. The game features an immoral and criminal social circle. A brothel is a frequented establishment of these kind of people and is more associable with them. A gas station would not be a bad choice, but it represents nothing of the culture and the way of life of the protagonists, where the brothel can be associated with ammorality, carelessness, crime, etc.

Buuuuut also it could be as you say, and the developers went for the sexual titillation, which would be a shame  Concerned

The brothel is justified in GTA. Indeed, the game is about crime and the whole setting reflects that. So IMO it's ok to have strip clubs and hookers in GTA, the problem here is how you interact with them. Having sex with hookers to refill your life is already pretty silly but GTAV has this ridiculous lapdance minigame where you can get the stripper's phone number if you "win" by touching her without anyone seeing... now, I've never been to a strip club but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. It's not just sexist and unnecessary, it makes no sense!
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Tazi
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« Reply #29 on: August 29, 2014, 12:23:46 AM »

tazi, you're a moron

Very interesting, please tell me more.
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oodavid
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« Reply #30 on: August 29, 2014, 12:52:00 AM »

why a hell would she need to fake harassment? she has more than enough real haters. unless you believe those are all sockpuppets as well, in which case...





My theory? The devil makes work for idle hands. There's not many small studios / indie devs that have the time to justify adding brothels to their games; they're simply too busy cleaving through all the thousands of other tasks that make their games work.
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« Reply #31 on: August 29, 2014, 03:13:01 AM »

I read the transcript but didn't see her recommendations - is her recommendation that men should appear as victims more often (eg, a developer should go through the situations in-game and aim for equal representation of each gender) or to redress female models so they are not sexualized, or both or just eliminate rescue situations altogether when possible (eg, eliminate hostage quests and replace them with something that is mechanically similar but doesn't involve a victim, if so, is there any particular recommendation on what to replace them with)? Does she feel depictions of prostitutes and whorehouses should include more males, or just be avoided altogether when possible (eg, use casinos, mob lairs to depict 'sinful' locations without relying on sex or titillation)? "Don't do this" is only half as useful as "Do this instead".

Her comment about the inability to call an EMT was sort of left hanging, and it had potential. Does she think that a game that involves a player calling authorities would be stronger, possibly because it suggests a course of action applicable in real-life situations (eg, show the player that they are stronger/more virtuous for not being a glory hog and doing it all themselves)? Is it something that would work for a large number of games or would it be a gimmick that only would work for a handful of games? She missed an opportunity by not talking about this much more and presenting a vision of what she would see as a good game that handles this situation correctly.

I think this piece would have been tremendously stronger if she used only half as many examples (she had plenty of them already to lead off the piece) and instead use the second half of the episode to provide a rubric for interested developers to follow if they want to check their work for unintentional sexism.

I still maintain her videos in general would benefit hugely by spending much more time on games that do it right (or, in the absence of these/in addition to these, recommendations on how she would change the games she reviews to address her observed problems) especially if she can provide her feedback on games she enjoys/would theoretically enjoy playing.
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starsrift
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« Reply #32 on: August 29, 2014, 05:33:16 AM »

Haven't had a chance to see the clip yet, but I'm not sure I want to bother. Seems like it's the same old, same old - bad arguments, good intentions/goals.

Is there anything worth noting in this one?
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« Reply #33 on: August 29, 2014, 05:38:27 AM »

In my opinion, the brothel in GTA IV is more or less justified. The game features an immoral and criminal social circle. A brothel is a frequented establishment of these kind of people and is more associable with them. A gas station would not be a bad choice, but it represents nothing of the culture and the way of life of the protagonists, where the brothel can be associated with ammorality, carelessness, crime, etc.
This is quiet close to what I think. My main problem with Sarkeesian is her double standards. You can't really blame unfair representation of women on a a game which features 90% of female characters as bad girls, when the 90% of male characters as bad boys too. (And the game is about criminals anyway.)
You also can't point out the usage of pink clothes and a ribbon on the female main hero as sexist and call it ms.male trope, when the male main character has lightblue clothes and a tie.
You can't say about a game that it does crimes against women, by letting you kill them in case you can kill every kind of gender, without any discrimination. You can say, it's a outrageous thing that genocide is presented as fun entertainment, but you can't say that it's directly against women.
Does the game have only a couple of female characters, and all shown as one dimensional love interests for man, or victims? Now that's a different story.

Does Total Biscuit disables the comments on his videos? Basing my judgment on his views, that's pretty much a double stardard too. It's disgusting, and he should be called out about it. If he would say "if I'd let them comment they would harass me", that's bullshit. Contious harrasment is a cruel thing, but it doesn't make anyone free from the committed crimes. Just because Zoe gets death treaths, and every Twitter post mets with 50 angry posts by her haters, that doesn't mean she is a victim in every single thing people blame her for, and everyone who criticizes her is wrong and a mysogynist. Some nazi fuck killed a transwoman, that's terrible, but that doesn't mean that all the other males who are not murderers are a "cis scum".

Zoe claimed that cheating is rape, then she cheated her boyfriend. Is that rape too? Hell no, all you other people are mysogynists! Sure, sex is a personal thing, except if you're an activist sharing your view constantly about it, then it turns out you're a liar.
The other thing she did is calling out TFYC on their feminist game jam being transphobe and abusing woman by not paying them. Well, everyone who felt herself a woman was able to enter the contest, so I guess that's pretty libaral and pro-trans, and the winner also get 8% royalty after the finished game she will provide mostly the idea for. You can say it's not really women making games, I agree it's faulty a bit. But you can't say that she doesn't get any money for it.
Now the TFYC replied to Zoe as like: "Please contant me in email, and let's talk about how we could improve the contest, and solve the mistakes"
What was Zoe's answer? They "accidently doxxed" (her words) TFYC. What the hell or what the hell?

Now after all this, I just can't understand why anyone would think that she is a nice role model, or even purely a victim. She looks pretty much the aggressor to me, she doesn't fight mysogynists, she fights everyone for things they never did.

So after all this... Anita Sarkeesian supports her. Why?
« Last Edit: August 29, 2014, 05:46:35 AM by Tazi » Logged

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« Reply #34 on: August 29, 2014, 05:59:55 AM »

you're not getting it. just because zoe quinn is a (allegedly) bad person doesn't make the "criticisms" of her not misogynist. as far as i can see, most of the people who are really mad about this are "anti-sjws" who are using zoe to discredit feminism and women in gaming as a whole (same goes for the majority of ppl who believe anita is "ripping off" her backers).
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« Reply #35 on: August 29, 2014, 06:32:08 AM »

you're not getting it. just because zoe quinn is a (allegedly) bad person doesn't make the "criticisms" of her not misogynist.

as far as i can see, most of the people who are really mad about this are "anti-sjws" who are using zoe to discredit feminism and women in gaming as a whole (same goes for the majority of ppl who believe anita is "ripping off" her backers).

I mostly called her a liar, cuz you know, she not told the truth, she lied. Like in multiple times. And it even went against her own views.
Why is it "allegedly"?
Is calling her a liar a misogynist statement? I'm not calling women liars, I'm calling Zoe Quinn a liar which has nothing to do with her genitals.

Making mistakes doesn't make feminsm a faulty view, indeed. Instead it makes Zoe's credibility to fall. The things that most sober feminists wants are still right.

And I think I'm getting it. But if not, please help me understand what's going on. I'm think I can communicate with enough respect, without dragging down the topic to a point where it has to be closed.
I'm not here discussing, because I want to throw around crap-bullets, but because I think there's a lot of inequity going on in the game world, and the perpetrator gets supported by people, who I tought were intelligent and open-minded.
 
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« Reply #36 on: August 29, 2014, 06:41:34 AM »

The Zoe quinn case is inconclusive so far, there is more people that has meet zoe who like her that the contrary, and pretty much like everyone in life nobody can like you, especially jelly and salty boyfriend. The whole elements seems blow out of proportion because the mra frustation needed a target as they were loosing the argument battle. BTW if Zoe happen to be a bad person (tm) MRA are still worse by a long shoot, they are downright criminal. Let's not talk about the silence about yogcast from the mra, and many similar case, where did they go when those "cheating" happen, but no it's okay to harass if woman, remember women are object for men to act on.

On totalbiscuit, he only get sympathy for disabling comments as internet toxicity is well known, and this is not the same as censorship, like anita pointed out, you can still make your own video and blog and discussion on your own public forums.

On this video, anita has pointed solution: don't do it for pure shock value, some says gta is about crime, BO IT'S NOT, it's about empowerement, it does not say anything about crime, it's not a deconstruction and analysis of its mechanism, there is no analysis of the impacts it have on people life and on culture by large, it is just windows dressing a background theme. In fact you can mostly swap it without much damage. The other solution she point is simply empowerment, most game have women as object for men (either the player or the npc) to manipulate. In fact most of her solution are not women specific, it call for better writing and less cartoon use of serious trope tm. And there is so few game that do it right ... almost inexistant, if you can point to one? I can't. BTW I'm not sure "violence on women" can be done right in a game context, especially when women
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gimymblert
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« Reply #37 on: August 29, 2014, 06:49:55 AM »

Also why the sudden hate for zoe quinn as a liar is not credible is that it has happen in the past regardless of absence of misdeed.

http://www.themarysue.com/mighty-no-9-dina-abou-karam/



If she is a liar "now" is just a bit too conveniant.
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CesarD8
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« Reply #38 on: August 29, 2014, 06:58:12 AM »

Haven't had a chance to see the clip yet, but I'm not sure I want to bother. Seems like it's the same old, same old - bad arguments, good intentions/goals.

Is there anything worth noting in this one?

Nope, it's just the new face of feminism in games presenting poorly her good arguments.
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« Reply #39 on: August 29, 2014, 07:09:38 AM »

Well I've always thought that games featuring criminal environments were basing on reality especially from 3rd world countries. Fortunately it's just a misogynistic propaganda spread by those vicious small-penis frustrated developers. Thank god Anita opened my eyes.
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