"The Fall Of The Omnipotent Video Game Hero" or "Ralph Fiennes Is Pretty Rad"

[Seil]

So I had some time to kill tonight, and the only thing open in my small town was the local grocer. While perusing the magazines, I saw this season's M (http://magpile.com/m-magazine-the-new-class-of-man/) on sale, with Ralph Fiennes on the cover. It read "The Somewhat Tortured Genius Of Ralph Fiennes; A serious fellow goes for a romp in The Grand Budapest Hotel." Well, I like Ralph Fiennes, and I liked The Grand Budapest Hotel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bTbW70umbQ), and it was only $6, so I bought it.

It's a men's fashion magazine filled with ads and articles about Calvin Klein and shoe designers and pretty people wearing yellow plaid. Okay - I'll admit fashion is an art form, albeit one I don't understand. However, there were some genuinely interesting articles in the magazine, including:[WARNING: SPOILERS FOR Max Payne 3, The Last Of Us, and COD: Spec Ops]

In the opening scenes of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, an adult man named Joel, who is controlled by the player, leads his daughter through the burning streets of a zombie apocalypse, only to find himself unable to save her from being gunned down by a soldier. The rest of the game follows the haunted hero as he tries to protect another young girl, Ellie, from the same fate as they tramp across a ruined America. Think Children of Men meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in video-game form. Protecting Ellie becomes Joel’s obsession. Not for her sake, and not because she might be humanity’s savior, but for purely selfish and redemptive reasons: to prove he can protect her; to prove he is still a good father; to prove he is still a good man.
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Despite being played by men and women in equal measure, video games have long been construed as a masculinist enterprise. Most are designed by men, with a male audience in mind, and nearly every blockbuster features a male protagonist. The few games with leading women, such as Dontnod’s Remember Me or Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider, present them more as sex objects than active subjects, there for the (assumed) male audience to gawk at while pressing buttons. Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto V, a game with three protagonists, has not a single leading woman.

“The concept of being masculine was so key to this story” is the line Rockstar cofounder Dan Houser gave The Guardian.

It’s a poor excuse, one trotted out all too often by the male-dominated industry in response to any question concerning the dearth of significant women in games. But given the boys’-club atmosphere, video games are a fascinating place to see dominant ideals of masculinity played out.

Up until the past few years, the representations of masculinity we have seen in games were traditional: manly men protecting their women, children, and homelands with muscles and firearms. Video-game story lines, moreover, have largely taken place within the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, action, and Western, all of which offer their brawny heroes ample opportunities to make conspicuous displays of old-school manliness: In Super Mario Bros., Mario saves the princess; in Halo, Master Chief saves the Earth; in Time Crisis 2, a cop team blasts through terrorists to save both the world and the girl.

The preponderance of macho saviors in video games reflects their overrepresentation in other media. There’s no shortage of films, novels, comics, and songs that give men the role of protector and possessor.

But in video games, retrograde masculinity has found an almost natural home. Video games, after all, are about doing something—pressing buttons to create effects in virtual worlds. Few actions are as simple to design as those that are physical: pulling a trigger, throwing a punch, making a giant leap. It’s easy for video-game makers to represent normative ideas of what it means to be a man.

Despite all that, something new has been afoot in recent years. We’re not seeing a broader representation of masculinity: The vast majority of games (the Modern Warfare trilogy, for just one example) still feature muscular fellows who triumph in the end. But a few recent games are critiquing the dominant view of masculinity in subtle ways, presenting players with heroes who find that their guns and biceps prove insufficient for the challenges thrown their way, who try to protect what they hold dear, only to see it slip from their control.

The posture of this new hero slumps a little; his winking confidence is starting to droop; his facial hair is less a beard and more of an instantiation of apathy.

As suggested by the experiences of Joel in The Last of Us, who spends an entire game mourning the daughter he failed to save, the old masculine ideal is becoming less of a crown and more of a burden.
Sorry, bro.

The trope of a male protagonist who, like Joel in The Last of Us, undertakes a quest for revenge (or justice) after suffering the horrendous death of someone close to him is certainly nothing new. In story after story, a terrible event sends the hero on a journey that gives him a chance to find himself and prove his strength. Think of Mad Max or Dirty Harry, in the movies. In comics, similarly, the Green Lantern springs into action after finding his girlfriend’s corpse shoved into a fridge by his nemesis, a story element that has given rise to the shorthand phrase “Women in Refrigerators,” a term meant to signal this all-too-common story device. But in recent games, the tone of this narrative is different, darker. Protagonists like Joel still seek revenge and redemption—but now they don’t always find what they are looking for.

Or take Max Payne. In the series of games that shares the title, Payne is a superhuman character, able to leap through the air in slow motion while firing two pistols with pinpoint accuracy. He takes down terrorists and crooks and corrupt cops by the roomful. Yet he proves unable to save anyone or anything he loves.

When Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 begins, Payne is already at rock bottom. Across the previous two games, his wife, baby, and girlfriend have all perished, despite Payne’s efforts to save them. We encounter him as a drunk and a drug addict, his hair unkempt, his face grizzly. He is working as a private security guard for a rich Brazilian man whose wife is promptly kidnapped on Payne’s watch. Throughout the game, despite all his action-hero feats, Payne is unable to meet the challenge. Regardless of how skilled the player behind the controller is, the woman will die.

Payne is strong and capable, but those attributes are useless for the events he and his player are faced with. Toward the end of Max Payne 3, the woman he has been chasing is shot in the face as he stands by, useless.

“Martin Walker” is no “Max Payne,” but it is still a good, strong name. He is the protagonist of Spec Ops: The Line, which, on first play, seems to be a conventional military shooter, part of the subgenre of shoot-’em-up games that usually depicts American or Western armies saving the world from communists or terrorists through superior firepower and tactical knowledge. Spec Ops: The Line, however, flips this. It begins with three American men walking into a near-future Dubai, which has been utterly destroyed by a sandstorm, with the hope of saving those trapped there. What unfolds is a brutal series of events that sees Walker (not to mention the player at the controller) responsible for hundreds of deaths, while saving no one.

Walker goes mad. He hallucinates, and the player is unable to tell what is real and what isn’t. Walker is so obsessed with being a hero, with being a man, that he destroys everything while saving nothing.

There are many other recent games in which a character’s best attempts to be a traditional protective figure prove insufficient, where the scripted story defies the player’s best attempts to set things right. The leading men of Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto IV, L.A. Noire, The Walking Dead, BioShock: Infinite, and Splinter Cell: Conviction all face similar conundrums. Players might play these games well; they might shoot all the enemies; they might make all the “right” decisions; but the story will, regardless, take the player deep into losing territory. Characters and players alike come to these video-game scenarios with a tried-and-tested masculine skill set—only to find it lacking.

It’s the tragedy of modern manhood played out again and again. These days, the games tell us, being a man, in the old sense, is not enough. These days, global financial crises reveal the fickle stability of man-as-breadwinner. These days, unmanned drones and more than a decade of futile military interventions have emasculated man-as-protector. These days, dozens of other identities—other masculinities, other genders, other ethnicities, other sexualities—have challenged the myth of a dominant masculinity to a near-breaking point. Men are still the most privileged people in our society—undeniably—but that does not lessen the force of the blow that comes with the realization that the mythical properties of manliness are just that: a myth.

Such anxiety comes through vividly in The Last of Us, Max Payne 3, and Spec Ops: The Line. This sense of futility, of impotence. Of growing up in a world in which being a man is not as straightforward an endeavor as previous generations of movies and games have promised. “I’m a dumb-move guy,” Payne muses toward the end of Max Payne 3. “That’s my style, and it’s too late in the day to hope for change.”

What we are seeing in this complicating of the male stereotype isn’t necessarily a conscious critique by game developers. They are, in the end, still making action games about men for a young male audience. Rather, we are seeing the modern man’s frustrations at the constrictions of such a narrow identity, rendered in high-def detail. We are seeing the realization that dominant notions of manliness are incompatible with the world of 2014.

It’s no longer enough to be a strong man with a beard who is really good at shooting or punching things—nor should it be. A more diverse and nuanced array of characters and perspectives is essential if video games are to be recognized as a legitimate cultural form. Plumbing the depths of the old notion of masculinity is but the first step in realizing that masculinity is not, perhaps, a one-size-fits-all identity. Joel, Martin Walker, and Max Payne are the rear guard. But the futility of their tragic stories isn’t something to pity; rather, it’s exciting. It signals an acceptance that perhaps masculinity is more complex than we have made it out to be.

which isn’t to say we’ll be seeing fewer video games about guys saving the world—but the old-style heroes no longer rule this cultural sphere. The heartfelt Papo & Yo, for one, presents a vulnerable side of masculinity, telling the story of a boy with a drunk and abusive father; it is based on the childhood experiences of its designer, Vander Caballero. Meanwhile, Gone Home, one of the most critically acclaimed games of the past year, puts the player in the role of a young woman exploring her family’s house and history—not “saving” or “conquering” anything, just exploring.

Games like these suggest a future in which developers will tell nuanced stories, creating games that allow players to explore intricate ideas of self and society, where the hero’s identity is challenged and stretched.

[Solid Snake]

Last of Us takes a good hard look at masculinity, but it's doing so in the context of a game that gives its women characters personality and agency. Joel's sorry ass is saved by Ellie just as often as he saves her, Ellie makes some of the story's most important decisions on her own, Tess' role is instrumental in instigating the journey and her relationship with Joel is always a two-way street, and there's both gay and ethnic minorities littered throughout the cast (including Ellie) who defy stereotypes. Last of Us is definitely still a story that's putting a magnifying glass to the tropes of masculinity but it's often doing so to subvert the stereotypes, that's the kind of story with a male protagonist we need more of in the industry.

By contrast, Grand Theft Auto V is basically patriarchal stereotyping played straight. Every female character in the game is paper-thin and exists solely to enrapture or infuriate the male characters. The men are the only ones with even the tiniest morsel of depth. Michael's character is written so the (presumably male) gamer identifies with him -- despite being a murdering, chauvinistic psychopath -- and finds his wife and his daughter annoying, because they're caricatures. Trevor's mere existence is an affront to the integrity of the industry (sorry, all of y'all who like him.)

We absolutely need more games to star women and minorities and it's ludicrous that the industry is still dominated by white men. But, given that it stars a white, male protagonist, Last of Us still did things a lot better than its competition. Blows Max Payne and most the other games mentioned in this article out of the water, at any rate.

[Ryong]

I'd like to add that I'd like to also see female characters that don't fit into either "completely powerless" or "STRONG, INDEPENDENT, REQUIRES NO HELP WHATSOEVER FROM ANYONE".

Heck, just better writing for characters in general.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Heck, just better writing for characters in general.

This, and the themes being handled well.

Hopefully we'll see more of a nice diversity of flavors in gaming both 2D and 3D and more respect for each. And hopefully not a continuously depressing tone of "you accomplished nothing at the end" becoming the next big thing.

[mauve]

I do find it interesting that the latest trend in videogames is to have conflict both internally and externally, and not just in the standard venues of emo teen angst or the desire to beat the villain and live up to their family name and face FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES.

At this point I'm not sure if this will just be a short-lived trend riding on the success of The Walking Dead and Last Of Us, or if this will continue to evolve. I personally think the success of the former was the inspiration for this movement, although it's certainly not the first game to go that direction. But so many people commented on the deep emotional sucker-punch delivered by that franchise, and I think other studios listened.

Like others have mentioned, I'm happy to see this depth in character writing. Sure, there's a time and a place for games with flat characters and one-dimensional motivations: I like Super Mario Bros Wii, and that game's only point is to save the boring princess and pretend you didn't mean to thow Player 2 off that cliff to their death. But realistically-motivated and well constructed characters are vital to good storytelling, which as we have seen is just as effective in videogames as it is in books, film or tv. I look forward to seeing how this trend continues.

Even the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise, which in terms of gameplay felt like Dante's Peak:The Videogame to me, went out of it's way to redefine Lara Croft into something other than "Chick with big boobs and lots of guns, and something about pseudoarchaeology." New Lara had emotions and hesitations and semi-realistic reactions to things. It wasn't perfect, but it worked to define her as a relatable character.

[synkr0nized]

Even the rebooted Tomb Raider franchise, which in terms of gameplay felt like Dante's Peak:The Videogame to me, went out of it's way to redefine Lara Croft into something other than "Chick with big boobs and lots of guns, and something about pseudoarchaeology." New Lara had emotions and hesitations and semi-realistic reactions to things. It wasn't perfect, but it worked to define her as a relatable character.

I've been enjoying it. In addition, of the characters in her group she often seems like the only one with any survival instincts and capability to adapt, despite being thrust into the position and situation. I like that I feel like the more I do and encounter rewards me with seeing the character grow through the experiences rather than just get points in some kind of skill tree.

I also really, really like the bow, but that has nothing to with anything in this thread.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

We absolutely need more games to star women and minorities and it's ludicrous that the industry is still dominated by white men. But, given that it stars a white, male protagonist, Last of Us still did things a lot better than its competition. Blows Max Payne and most the other games mentioned in this article out of the water, at any rate.

That is understandable, but only a topical bandaid fix to the underlying issue. Diversity for the sake of diversity, if you will. The video game industry itself is extremely toxic towards anyone who isn't white (and generally male). Fix the root of the problem and the rest will be easier to move in the right direction.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I like it when female characters are just people like anyone else. There are a lot of things about Tomb Raider 2013 that bugged me, but Lara's portrayal was pretty solid to me because she was just a person, and the fact that she was a girl was rather irrelevant on the whole.

I do kinda wish she removed her earrings though, given the whole 'survival' thing.

[Magus]

I have to defend GTA V here--the three main characters are deeply flawed individuals whose masculinity and aggression lands them in deep shit. Michael is driven entirely by his own ego--his rage at his wife's infidelity (which he has caused himself by being a listless and aggressive sociopath) causes him to destroy a multi-million dollar house. His temper has also alienated his son and daughter. Trevor obviously has to live in the ass-end of nowhere due to the incompatibility of his psychopathy with civilization. And Franklin endlessly attempts to take the easy way out of his social circumstances by turning to the criminal underworld--he thinks he can impress Tanisha by throwing money around and driving fast cars, but she sees through his phoniness, and he's left sitting in an empty mansion, his real goal completely unobtainable.

All of them are also secretly vulnerable--Michael has a grandiose vision of himself as an old-school gangster, but he's really a failure on the inside. Trevor has an incredibly strange homoerotic attachment to Michael, and massive abandonment issues. Franklin, as mentioned, is dismissive of his culture and friends, and the rejection of them in pursuit of wealth leads to outward success but inward emptiness.

[greed]

I have to defend GTA V here--the three main characters are deeply flawed individuals whose masculinity and aggression lands them in deep shit. Michael is driven entirely by his own ego--his rage at his wife's infidelity (which he has caused himself by being a listless and aggressive sociopath) causes him to destroy a multi-million dollar house. His temper has also alienated his son and daughter. Trevor obviously has to live in the ass-end of nowhere due to the incompatibility of his psychopathy with civilization. And Franklin endlessly attempts to take the easy way out of his social circumstances by turning to the criminal underworld--he thinks he can impress Tanisha by throwing money around and driving fast cars, but she sees through his phoniness, and he's left sitting in an empty mansion, his real goal completely unobtainable.

All of them are also secretly vulnerable--Michael has a grandiose vision of himself as an old-school gangster, but he's really a failure on the inside. Trevor has an incredibly strange homoerotic attachment to Michael, and massive abandonment issues. Franklin, as mentioned, is dismissive of his culture and friends, and the rejection of them in pursuit of wealth leads to outward success but inward emptiness.

The problem with the messages here are the terrible execution of everything outside of the three of them, which massively undermines any sort of message. Michael not connecting with his family is made somewhat irrelevant cause his family is terrible, Trevor being an outsider because of his sociopathy is undermined by basically everyone in Los Santos showing little to no empathy themselves, and Franklin abandoning his old friends is undermined by the most worthwhile person from his old peer group being Lamarr.

GTA5's big problem writing wise was not giving anything real worth or emotion and just being unrelentingly cynical about everything. It's just really pretty boring and immature and not very funny or interesting.
Also being absolutely abysmal at writing women.

Gameplay wise I struggled with it because it was missing a lot of the advancements the genre has had in the SR games and Sleeping Dogs which made it feel really clunky and dated to play even if it looked fantastic.

[Solid Snake]

To piggyback on everything Greed said, I'd appreciate GTAV a lot more if it dared to even have a single remotely fleshed-out, interesting female character with even the slightest hint of depth.

Instead, every single woman in the game is basically there for you to despise. Trevor and Michael and Franklin are all assholes in their own way, but they're all written in such a manner that the gamer's expected to identify with them and even empathize a little with their respective plights. (Well, with Trevor it's more sociopathy porn than anything else, but at least Michael and Franklin are designed to be 'relatable' flawed anti-heroes.)

I mean, look at Michael's relationships with his wife and daughter. Even Michael's son is given the slightest morsel of depth during sequences where the two interact. The game provides you with reasons why the two characters fail to connect with each other, and both occasionally express regret for past misdeeds and seek some sort of compromise. But his wife and daughter are reduced to lifeless caricatures, stereotypes of how misogynists perceive women. If those characters were built like Michael, they'd still be flawed, but they'd at least have real personality. Even a certifiable asshole like Trevor is given more backstory and reason to commit his atrocities than are given to the women in GTA, who are often just presented as sexual objects, manipulative harpies, and/or submissive, loyal servants to powerful men. And there's no depth there, no hidden resentment, nothing outside these limited, flat, stale roles.

[Loyal]

Is it worth anthing that San Andreas had Kendl, determined at all costs to become an independent, legitimate (or as close as you can get in GTAworld) business person and take her family out of near-poverty, even if she had to drag her brother and boyfriend along the ride every step of the way?

[Jagos]

Last of Us takes a good hard look at masculinity, but it's doing so in the context of a game that gives its women characters personality and agency. Joel's sorry ass is saved by Ellie just as often as he saves her, Ellie makes some of the story's most important decisions on her own, Tess' role is instrumental in instigating the journey and her relationship with Joel is always a two-way street, and there's both gay and ethnic minorities littered throughout the cast (including Ellie) who defy stereotypes. Last of Us is definitely still a story that's putting a magnifying glass to the tropes of masculinity but it's often doing so to subvert the stereotypes, that's the kind of story with a male protagonist we need more of in the industry.

I don't buy it...

This sounds similar to Phoenix Wright: Justice for All, with the exception that Last of Us hid their laziness in a movie-game instead of truly fleshing it out so that people played a much more decent game. Just for the context, In PW:JfA you face off against Franciska von Karma, a female prosecutor aimed at winning a guilty verdict against you. You defend innocent people and win your cases based on proving their innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. Her personality is hyper-competitive, which is usually understood as a "male" trait and in the last case, she eventually saves the day.

The Last of Us and PW utilize a female sidekick (http://th07.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2013/316/4/e/a_guide_to_ace_attorney_assistants_by_maplerose-d6u2j56.jpg) to try to act as someone to either tell you what to do or bounce the story off of with some sort of comical routine to break up tense moments. And yet, because you're bombarded with good shrubbery, it excuses the Bad AI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0EaH73ee4) and the amazing amount of hand holding that comes from escort missions? Honestly, there's been 4+ games of note with a female sidekick and Last of Us seems to get a free pass on this...

Resident Evil 4 has you playing as the President's daughter for a bit, but she's someone you have to escort and a lot of gamers hated that.

Resident Evil 5 got a lot of backlash their own stupidity and ignorance (http://www.nuklearforums.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1240687)

Half Life 2 gave you Alyx who you could basically interpret the relationship a number of ways. At least she fought back and didn't slow you down too much.

Then finally there's Amy which does this but has you give her medicine to combat the fact that she could turn into a raving monster.

What really bugs me on LoU is that the rampagers ignore Elly for the most part. This really breaks immersion in certain fights because I'd have liked to see what she could do when put into a stressful situation. Just think how the E3 trailer had bad guys waiting around doors and trying to haunt you. Further, think about what would have happened had the world been opened up. We speak about open worlds, yet this one is closed off with corridors for the most part, trapping us on a linear path ala FFXIII just a little bit greener.

By contrast, Grand Theft Auto V is basically patriarchal stereotyping played straight. Every female character in the game is paper-thin and exists solely to enrapture or infuriate the male characters. The men are the only ones with even the tiniest morsel of depth. Michael's character is written so the (presumably male) gamer identifies with him -- despite being a murdering, chauvinistic psychopath -- and finds his wife and his daughter annoying, because they're caricatures. Trevor's mere existence is an affront to the integrity of the industry (sorry, all of y'all who like him.)

The men are the protagonists. They are the primary characters. The secondary characters are everyone else which interacts with them. This doesn't change the other characters having some depth (http://gta.wikia.com/Tanisha_Jackson) but it does point out that those characters won't be quite as developed as the main characrers.

Also, trying to characterize them based on their gender really ignores their personalities and what makes them the way they are. How can anyone say they know what makes Michael tick by just saying it's because he was born a man?

How did Trevor become so psychotic?

How is it that Franklin maintains such a relationship with these two that doesn't explode elsewhere? How can you say that being born with "masculine traits" allows for such a diversity in personality?

Further, if you didn't know, Trevor is the male form of Catalina (http://gta.wikia.com/Catalina) who does what she wants when she wants. Just sayin.

We absolutely need more games to star women and minorities and it's ludicrous that the industry is still dominated by white men. But, given that it stars a white, male protagonist, Last of Us still did things a lot better than its competition. Blows Max Payne and most the other games mentioned in this article out of the water, at any rate.

I never quite understood this... What is with this obscene fascination with white men? Not all games have white men. Some let you pick what you want as your avatar. Other games tell a story based on certain parameters.

We have games with all female (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcana_Heart) casts which get ignored (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_Roses) because somehow sex is a horrible thing to show in a video game.

We have great characters in a multitude of games that show off a great diversity in gaming. Yet we're stuck claiming that the games cater to only one group... By whose actual honest opinion does this fly? And if we can't even notice games which have been great in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisia_Dragoon), how can anyone know of great games now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remember_Me_(video_game)) which have much better game play but get ignored?

[Solid Snake]

What really bugs me on LoU is that the rampagers ignore Elly for the most part. This really breaks immersion in certain fights because I'd have liked to see what she could do when put into a stressful situation. Just think how the E3 trailer had bad guys waiting around doors and trying to haunt you.

Honestly, I don't mind this gameplay quirk because Last of Us would have actually been an annoyingly broken, frustrating escort mission if the AI was programmed to recognize Ellie and constantly attack her.
Also, I'm pretty sure the patriarchal game designers would've brought the threat of sexual assault into the mix even more so than in the already-scripted scenes that acknowledge Ellie (and the scenes where you're controlling her), like it's actually less intrusive for me that most the mooks generally just ignore her.

If the game was coded differently so that the bandits went after Ellie, you'd constantly have to protect her and lead her around and position her out of harm's way like in Resident Evil 4, and micromanaging her would really lessen the gameplay.

I also didn't mind the game's linearity, I don't need every game to have the same open-world feel. The problem with open-world is that, since those games have to enable you to go anywhere at any time, a lot of the content just feels barren and empty. I love Red Dead Redemption, it's my favorite open-world genre game of all-time, but there's just no question in my mind that Last of Us is able to have such a more beautiful and dense setting because you're being filtered into narrow areas. It's a trade-off, more than anything else, a quality vs. quantity kind of assessment.

[Kim]

Jagos, just FYI, critics problems with Rumble Roses aren't because of the sexuality present. They're because it is specifically sexualizing women for men. This is part of a general status quo where games tend to have male characters as power fantasies for men and women as sexual fantasies for those same men.

Even if you don't agree that this is the case, tho it is obviously an issue outside your experiences and one you are probably not especially qualified to comment on, it is horridly reductive to frame the problem as people just not liking sex in their games, especially when a great deal many feminists have no problem with sexuality itself being in games, and in fact quite a few would even like more sexuality in games.

[Jagos]

Honestly, I don't mind this gameplay quirk because Last of Us would have actually been an annoyingly broken, frustrating escort mission if the AI was programmed to recognize Ellie and constantly attack her.
Also, I'm pretty sure the patriarchal game designers would've brought the threat of sexual assault into the mix even more so than in the already-scripted scenes that acknowledge Ellie (and the scenes where you're controlling her), like it's actually less intrusive for me that most the mooks generally just ignore her.

If the game was coded differently so that the bandits went after Ellie, you'd constantly have to protect her and lead her around and position her out of harm's way like in Resident Evil 4, and micromanaging her would really lessen the gameplay.

I also didn't mind the game's linearity, I don't need every game to have the same open-world feel. The problem with open-world is that, since those games have to enable you to go anywhere at any time, a lot of the content just feels barren and empty. I love Red Dead Redemption, it's my favorite open-world genre game of all-time, but there's just no question in my mind that Last of Us is able to have such a more beautiful and dense setting because you're being filtered into narrow areas. It's a trade-off, more than anything else, a quality vs. quantity kind of assessment.

Ok, but GTA V has more going for it in regards to quantity. It has to stream your position, various cars, and maintain that vibrant world. What exactly does this game have going for it which hasn't been tried before?

There's a cornucopia of things they copied from a number of games and they hit the 35 year old gamer hard with this idea of a "patriarchal" protection of a young girl. Hell, they weren't even honest about it.

I could probably make the argument that LoU felt more like a more polished version of Manhunt and not be far from the truth.

What makes this worse is how you lose accessibility to previous areas. I'm perfectly fine with certain movie games but being able to explore this world and find new things would have added to the replay value considerably for me. All we have is the main quest and nothing outside of such a world filled with devastation. I just felt that there wasn't much to really do in the game outside of the parameters of what the developers wanted you to do.

And the developers worked hard to limit you... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkhhBduLNI&feature=youtu.be)

In a sense, this game competed with the Walking Dead and I believe that game to be superior. It has Clementine being a stronger "escort", the moral quandaries helped you to see different ways to the same stories on multiple playthroughs, and you can still have different ways to play the game depending on which season you're on. But how much have you played LoU since last time? The locations are predictable, there's no suspense that second time, and you can memorize the routes. Honestly, it's a cinematic game where everything was done better in other games.

But I want you to understand something about Neil Druckman... He's also had an interesting idea he tried to sell for the premise of LoU beforehand...

He wanted to have an idea that men killed the women to protect this girl (http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4744008/making-the-last-of-us-ps3):

The result was a pitch for a problematic title called Mankind. Just like in The Last of Us, the game was set in a world where Cordyceps has leaped from insects to humans, turning the infected into dangerous monsters and bringing down civilization with them. The key difference was that in Mankind, the virus only affected women. An early version of Ellie was the only female who was immune, and Joel decided to protect her in order to bring her to a lab where a cure could potentially be created. But they weren't able to sell the idea, especially after several female Naughty Dog employees voiced their concerns. "The reason it failed is because it was a misogynistic idea," says Druckmann.

For a game that wants to be far progressive, it sure did a lot in avoiding being hypersensitive...

No Queen Bees.. No "too evil" women... No backstabbing females... Yeah...

That backlash from what the game was formerly really hit hard, didn't it? And to add insult to injury, he admits how the ideas came from games like Ico and Frank Miller:

Druckmann's idea was to merge three of the works that most influenced him as a creator: the game would feature the gameplay of PlayStation 2 classic Ico, a lead character much like John Hartigan from Sin City, and would be set during the zombie apocalypse of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

So yeah... This game was off to a rocky start. Granted, the game suffices. I just don't quite think it has a soul. It aimlessly works to be a good movie but once you see the problems of it as a game, it begins to unfold that it doesn't live up to its expectations.

[Solid Snake]

Last of Us is a game that isn't seeking to innovate from a mechanical perspective as much as it's trying to tell a story. It's aesthetically beautiful, but its purpose isn't to sell you on a drastic new gameplay ideas or to present a revolutionary way to play a videogame. (GTA V really isn't doing anything revolutionary either, though; every other open-world game out there is trying to achieve the exact effects of a "vibrant", unpredictable, open-ended world to explore that you've described.)

Last of Us is a game that's solely selling itself on its polish. Polish is what Naughty Dog does best. Sure, it plays like something akin to an interactive movie with combat elements interspersed with lots of cutscenes. (So does Metal Gear Solid, and I love me some MGS, or at least I did before MGS V.) This gameplay style may not work for you, but it clearly resonates with a lot of other people.

Personally, I don't really disagree regarding Walking Dead. I enjoyed both games. Last of Us is certainly less linear than Walking Dead, though, so I'm genuinely confused as to how you'd rate Walking Dead so highly while simultaneously arguing that Last of Us is a lesser game because of its linearity. Walking Dead often operates on an illusion of free will and player choice that doesn't really exist...same as Last of Us.

...And, are you trying to insult Last of Us by suggesting it's wrong to find inspiration from other sources? If anything, the fact that ICO served as an inspiration reinforces my love for both games.

Finally, the quote from Druckmann actually reinforces my position on Last of Us. It's one of the few AAA games released recently where the developers were actually really concerned about misogyny in their content. The mere fact that they originally conceived of a virus that only affected women wasn't the problem. Heck, Y: The Last Man (despite having problems of its own) took the opposite approach, and imagined a virus that nearly killed off all men.

The problem is how a world without women would affect the gameplay, and would affect the story in the context of that story being told as a videogame. You'd suddenly have hordes of men acting creepy as shit around the sole immune young girl, and the narrative would almost appear to justify their treating her solely as an object to be claimed and desired. Joel's own obsession with Ellie would read less like a father atoning for losing his daughter and would have more sexual undertones by default. It's not that the idea itself of a virus only affecting one gender is flawed, it's that its execution in this game would result in a lot more sexism and result in an underage girl becoming an object...heck, it'd almost be creepily symbolic of virginity, with Ellie as the only "pure" girl surrounded by "impure" women at risk of being infected.

The majority of game developers out there would just run with their ideas without considering misogyny. Naughty Dog, to their credit, actually listened. (I just wish their Uncharted teams listened to similar criticisms regarding ethnic minority representation in that series.)

If you can't understand what's wrong with all that, if you still feel that's "hypersensitive" of them to actually attribute that initial story idea as (however indirectly) misogynistic, I don't know what to say.

[Jagos]

Personally, I don't really disagree regarding Walking Dead. I enjoyed both games. Last of Us is certainly less linear than Walking Dead, though, so I'm genuinely confused as to how you'd rate Walking Dead so highly while simultaneously arguing that Last of Us is a lesser game because of its linearity. Walking Dead often operates on an illusion of free will and player choice that doesn't really exist...same as Last of Us.

A preference doesn't say that it's better or worse, it's more so a subjective opinion on the matter for my reasons.

...And, are you trying to insult Last of Us by suggesting it's wrong to find inspiration from other sources? If anything, the fact that ICO served as an inspiration reinforces my love for both games.

No... Just pointing it out. And the Ico reference really wasn't the controversial part of the inspiration.

The problem is how a world without women would affect the gameplay, and would affect the story in the context of that story being told as a videogame. You'd suddenly have hordes of men acting creepy as shit around the sole immune young girl, and the narrative would almost appear to justify their treating her solely as an object to be claimed and desired. Joel's own obsession with Ellie would read less like a father atoning for losing his daughter and would have more sexual undertones by default. It's not that the idea itself of a virus only affecting one gender is flawed, it's that its execution in this game would result in a lot more sexism and result in an underage girl becoming an object...heck, it'd almost be creepily symbolic of virginity, with Ellie as the only "pure" girl surrounded by "impure" women at risk of being infected.

... I honestly don't think that'd be the entire story, particularly with seeing how different people have different ways to respond to such a calamity. And Y would have been a good inspiration for the virus just to see that aspect. Iunno about sexual undertones because that'd probably be an entirely different game but that still doesn't change that we've had games that did something similar already. Enslaved comes to mind...

The majority of game developers out there would just run with their ideas without considering misogyny. Naughty Dog, to their credit, actually listened. (I just wish their Uncharted teams listened to similar criticisms regarding ethnic minority representation in that series.)

This makes the assumption that all game developers are automatically considered misogynistic by default. That's what I have a problem with. He had an idea, his team didn't support it. Okay, that's easy to understand. But when it comes out that people are coming in with a default position that a team creating a game is guilty until proven innocent, that's pretty messed up...

Jagos, just FYI, critics problems with Rumble Roses aren't because of the sexuality present. They're because it is specifically sexualizing women for men. This is part of a general status quo where games tend to have male characters as power fantasies for men and women as sexual fantasies for those same men.

By the logic of your own argument, the regular WWE games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_2K14) are part of the status quo of sexualizing men for women. So am I to take it that the Rock is part of a sexual fantasy for women while Rumble Roses is the sexual fantasy for men?

An alternative explanation could be that Rumble Roses represented Japanese Women's Wrestling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Japan_Women's_Pro-Wrestling) at the time which was popular ( and still is... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWP_Joshi_Puroresu)) in said country.

Even if you don't agree that this is the case, tho it is obviously an issue outside your experiences and one you are probably not especially qualified to comment on, it is horridly reductive to frame the problem as people just not liking sex in their games, especially when a great deal many feminists have no problem with sexuality itself being in games, and in fact quite a few would even like more sexuality in games.

I don't appreciate your condescension. You don't know my experiences and just because I don't ascribe to feminism doesn't mean I haven't researched or looked into it and made my own conclusions, particularly with how we last left off our arguments.

But since you want to get into that game...

Mirror's Edge (http://feministgamereviews.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/mirrors-edge/)

This article is filled with contradictions in it. The good thing that FGR claims is the ability to kill a lot of men:

She beats up a lot of guys in the game, and even pulls some Batman-esque disappearing acts in some of the cut scenes.

Along with the Bechdel Test...

The game passes the Bechdel Test! Faith and her sister remain close during the entire course of the game, and not because of a man.

Which ignores how Fayth and Celeste actually had a lot to say to each other about men (http://youtu.be/TXpeRwFYY-o?t=6m26s) along with their job. So I mean, it's a great test and all but it really doesn't do much to help us understand the game when parts of it (probably most of the game...) would fail the test.

But here comes the crazy stuff...

There may be a reason the game designers made the player’s character a woman: the vast majority of the gameplay revolves around running away from bad guys. It is rare for video games to ever have a male character running away from people, even when they are outgunned

Men don't run away in games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JARtwFLQpNY )

There may be another reason the game designers chose a female main character: the deaths in the game (falling off of skyscrapers, getting hit by a speeding subway train) are quite graphic, visceral, and brutal. Making the player’s character female makes it easier for male gamers to disassociate from the vivid deaths that the player character suffers in the game

Vivid, they say... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjxODO73mCs)

Vivid never happens (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obm6VIBDdBA)

Now due to the fact that this review is from 2012, I won't point out anything except the ones from the older games (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2W2K8oUplw) but it should be noted that the most recent Tomb Raider has even more graphic deaths.

Even then, I find her "misogynistic moments" to be very clearly biased and one sided.

While these graphic death sequences are effective at delivering a sense of vertigo-inducing terror, it is a little unfortunate that the first female protagonist to show up in the FPS genre for some time suffers far worse death than her generic male protagonist peers.

Mirror's Edge came out in 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror%27s_Edge) along with the Metroid Prime series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_Trilogy). To be fair, there is a noticeable gap between NOLF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Operative:_No_One_Lives_Forever) and Perfect Dark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Dark) and Mirror's Edge, but she mischaracterizes the game entirely as an FPS and ignores any research that suggests that other games that run counter to her narrative.

And this doesn't get into the recent Samus heels (http://kotaku.com/samus-new-high-heels-are-well-1561573770) fiasco, Tomodachi Life's localization issues (http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/09/nintendo-apology/) and a number of other shaming events.

My point is thus: If you really want me to talk about the issues of gaming and feminism, I'll be more than happy to do so. I'll point out the flaws of it and argue my points without having to be stigmatized or talked down and keeping to the argument at hand.

If it has to get as bad as it did last time, where you get to shout and show yourself to be a very poor debater, that's on you. Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean you have a special privilege to shut down other people's opinions or show your own condescension to the discussion.

[Kim]

I meant more that as a cisgender man, and thus not being a victim of institutional sexism, you lack a certain perspective, and as such probably shouldn't really go around deciding for women whether or not something is sexist against us.

[greed]

Is it worth anthing that San Andreas had Kendl, determined at all costs to become an independent, legitimate (or as close as you can get in GTAworld) business person and take her family out of near-poverty, even if she had to drag her brother and boyfriend along the ride every step of the way?

Nah Kendl was great. Part of my issue with GTAV is it's regression from the GTA team doing much better. Hell 3 had Asuka leading the Yakuza and Catalina as the final boss. So GTA can and has written women well (well only Kendl was really written well, but Catalina and Asuka while fairly 1 dimensional were in 3, which was back in 2001, and in a game where everyone was 1 dimensional so it's less important in their cases) and in important roles.

As I noted before half the problem with 5 is it's seems to have completely missed a lot of the development games in general, the genre in specific and even the GTA series in itself has made and reverted to seemingly being aimed squarely at 14 year boys and a cheap cynical view of everything that prevents any real emotional connection or interesting messages being meaningfully developed*.

I LOVED GTA SA because it nailed the above things, it had heart and soul and a well acted, fairly well written central cast I sympathised and empathised with and of course Tenpenny is still my most hated video game villain in a good way because it made defeating him feel like such a victory.



* I should note to be fair that I felt Saints Row did this to a smaller degree in 3, which is why I still greatly prefer 2 to it's successors. Also the complete lack of any talking about GTA4 is because I only played like 2 hours of it before the atrocious gameplay made me put it down, so I'm in no position to speak of it's writing.



Also Jagos, shirtless men wrestling do not counting as a sexual objectification in favour of women, they're a male power fantasy, that's basic shit.

[Solid Snake]

... I honestly don't think that'd be the entire story, particularly with seeing how different people have different ways to respond to such a calamity. And Y would have been a good inspiration for the virus just to see that aspect. Iunno about sexual undertones because that'd probably be an entirely different game but that still doesn't change that we've had games that did something similar already.

I guess my problem with your argument here is, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever regarding the content of the original "Mankind" conceptualization of The Last of Us, aside from an article that includes a few generic statements from Druckmann, you've decided that your own uninformed opinion as to whether or not the original concept was misogynistic has more merit than the perspectives of women who worked on the game and knew exactly how the concept would be implemented.

I mean, here's the thing, I don't really know either. But by Druckmann's own admission -- and he, being a man in the industry who'd probably prefer not be identified as sexist, has nothing to gain by confessing that his original idea was nixed because women objected to the misogyny -- it was too much.

And to his credit, he scrapped the idea and even publicly acknowledged that the original conceptualization was flawed. That's what I wanted to applaud him for. In the gaming industry, no one -- certainly not you, certainly not most gamers based on just about any gaming forum and online community you can visit -- seems to give a shit about whether the industry's misogynistic. You don't seem capable of accepting the possibility that women and feminists generally might actually disagree with your perspective and find a significant threshold of games produced by the industry to include offensive content.

Way back when I made my initial points, it was essentially contrasting GTA and Last of Us. By your own admission, GTA V's developers don't give a shit about whether their content is sexist. They're not having a discussion about it. It is not a priority for the developers. (http://kotaku.com/grand-theft-auto-v-and-women-1344112808)

GTAV’s lead writer Dan Houser has said that this game’s story “needed to be masculine”,
(Quote found here) (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10355275/Grand-Theft-Auto-V-is-designed-deliberately-to-degrade-women.html)

So, here are my points:

1: It's okay to like GTA V more than Last of Us. It's okay to subjectively prefer GTA V because it's a completely different style of game that appeals to a completely different style of gamer. I'm not debating with you out of some twisted desire to see Last of Us worshiped, it's an imperfect game with social justice issues of its own.

2: Regardless of what you think about Last of Us as a game, its developers care a lot more about writing a story that appeals to all gamers, men and women, and its developers deliberately made efforts to avoid misogynistic content, whereas GTA V's developers consciously made the opposite decision because they wanted GTA V to appeal more to the men they presumed would buy their product. This isn't exactly debatable. Last of Us' developers are on record for scrapping content that their female developers found too misogynistic. GTA V's developers are on record believing that anything is fair game to satire and that there's deliberately no major women characters in their story because they wanted to write a "masculine" story. Last of Us wrote characters like Ellie and Tess. There are no characters like Ellie or Tess in GTA V.

3: It is actually possible, believe it or not, to like GTA V more than Last of Us subjectively, but prefer Last of Us' stance on including women characters as equal participants with their own independent agency.

This makes the assumption that all game developers are automatically considered misogynistic by default.

I'm shocked that's something you even find debatable, honestly.

So am I to take it that the Rock is part of a sexual fantasy for women while Rumble Roses is the sexual fantasy for men?

No.
The Rock and other wrestlers are a power fantasy for men. (Most women would not identify The Rock as their ideal for sexual attractiveness. More men find The Rock's physique desirable then women.)
Rumble Roses is a sexual fantasy for men.
Both examples you're providing are more appealing to men than women, they're just appealing for different reasons.

EDIT: Like, what I'm trying to crucially distinguish here is that we should all have standards of assessing the content in videogames, or any other medium, that are independent of our actual enjoyment of the product.
Persona 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, but that doesn't prevent me from being able to criticize components of the story that are just offensive to women and members of the LGBT community.
You can love GTA V all you want, no one's taking that away from you, and you absolutely can justifiably like GTA V more than Last of Us. But that doesn't stop others from being able to pick faults with the way it relies on 'satire' to justify offensive content disproportionately geared towards insulting minorities for the benefit of its disproportionately privileged, white male audience.

[Jagos]

I guess my problem with your argument here is, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever regarding the content of the original "Mankind" conceptualization of The Last of Us, aside from an article that includes a few generic statements from Druckmann, you've decided that your own uninformed opinion as to whether or not the original concept was misogynistic has more merit than the perspectives of women who worked on the game and knew exactly how the concept would be implemented.

First of all, when I brought that up, it wasn't to do nothing more than inform you about some of the background that I thought you might be interested in and you use that as a friggin hammer against me. Thanks for that.

Second, that article had nothing to do with my informed opinion based on that game as well as other games that I've played that I feel on running an opinion. That's pretty dismissive and condescending. So thanks for that too.

I mean, here's the thing, I don't really know either. But by Druckmann's own admission -- and he, being a man in the industry who'd probably prefer not be identified as sexist, has nothing to gain by confessing that his original idea was nixed because women objected to the misogyny -- it was too much.

The bias that is on display here is stunning... Look, he was on a team, and I'm pretty sure that quite a few people, male and female saw the argument and decided that wasn't an idea that they were going with. That, I could accept and agree with though the premise may be an interesting one to work with albeit under different circumstances. I dunno, I don't know how the idea may work. But if no one is willing to work with it, it's not getting done. Or else you have something like Brink which is interesting but gets fed to the wolves when the director doesn't know what he's doing.

In the gaming industry, no one -- certainly not you, certainly not most gamers based on just about any gaming forum and online community you can visit -- seems to give a shit about whether the industry's misogynistic.

I sure don't. When someone comes into an industry with a preconceived conclusion to say that everything is sexist, forgive me if I find those people skeptical, particularly when we've had 30 years of games made by women and men that show that the opposite is true, ie games have been increasingly progressive (http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Elsa/the-invisibility-of-the-older-woman--267778.phtml).

In particular I find the dismissal of "gender swappable protagonists" by feminists to be particularly reprehensible. Video games are the only media that skipped right past feminist-based "women's studies" all the way to the more currently relevant "gender studies". A large segment of gaming has had non-gendered protagonists (games like Zork where your gender was never specified) all the way to the customizable protagonist where you can be a burly halbert wielding woman or a slender, long haired effeminate male mage in a dress casting buffing spells from a safe distance. Gaming is the only media to offer choice, not just in terms of gender... but also the gender role. Rather than dismissing this aspect of gaming as irrelevant, we should be celebrating gaming as being far ahead of it's time in allowing such incredible flexibility regarding gender roles. Games like Ultima, Phantasy Star, RuneQuest and others allowed for independent, powerful female characters long before Xena or Buffy became feminist icons. Even today, video games continue to expand on gender roles far more than most other forms of media.

What you're literally telling me is that the gaming industry has been sexist against women. That because women have a vagina, they aren't allowed. That the people that play the games are to blame which is entirely upsetting and bass-akwards while all developers hold onto to this "misogyny" to sit here and discriminate against women specifically.

I find that some pretty shaky ground, and I've been playing games for at least 25 years.

You don't seem capable of accepting the possibility that women and feminists generally might actually disagree with your perspective and find a significant threshold of games produced by the industry to include offensive content.

What, that games are progressive and most of this social justice nonsense came from unresolved issues with comics and music which already has a similar argument to Frederick Wertham (http://io9.com/5985199/how-one-mans-lies-almost-destroyed-the-comics-industry) and how he thought that empowering women through comics like Wonder Woman was bad and had to lie and deceive people to do so?

Somehow, I don't see a lot of feminists (http://www.videogameologists.com/2014/03/03/not-everything-needs-more-female-characters/) promoting that idea... Or going to lengths to say that games are misogynistic. (http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Elsa/fun-facts-about-females-255351.phtml) That's a pretty strong claim with less evidence than the video game violence debates.

Way back when I made my initial points, it was essentially contrasting GTA and Last of Us. By your own admission, GTA V's developers don't give a shit about whether their content is sexist. They're not having a discussion about it. It is not a priority for the developers. (http://kotaku.com/grand-theft-auto-v-and-women-1344112808)

Ok, but what is it that you want them to do, exactly? They have a way for you to play the game as a female in the multiplayer if that's what you want to do. The main single player character has an option to play as THREE playable characters with THREE different motivations for their actions. But instead, people wanted female characters which to me, seems to be missing the forest for the trees. All the ways that you can switch characters (fairly unique for any game IMO), three interacting story arcs (though Franklin's seems to be muted in the late game...), and overall, a lot to do for supporters of the series. Suddenly, they're supposed to drop their intentions for this game, their characters that they created, and everything else to add a character with breasts because a small minority, that probably hasn't played the games at all or just believes they have a responsibility to do such a thing, demands it.

How does that not sound like squashing the intents of developers? And even then, the game made money (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2014/05/13/grand-theft-auto-5-has-sold-nearly-2-billion-at-retail/) off its supporters. 33 million people at nearly $2 billion dollars...

In the AAA industry, money talks. Why should anyone support the artsy games if they're not catered to what EA, Activision, Rockstar, and other devs in that industry already know works? That makes no sense. Now can you build a new market based on indie titles? Sure, but trying to change the AAA industry is like trying to right the Titanic. It's slow moving and a lot easier to go to smaller crowds that form up that niche.


1: It's okay to like GTA V more than Last of Us. It's okay to subjectively prefer GTA V because it's a completely different style of game that appeals to a completely different style of gamer. I'm not debating with you out of some twisted desire to see Last of Us worshiped, it's an imperfect game with social justice issues of its own.

I never said I liked GTA V because of misogyny or anything else. I brought it up mainly to point out some of the technical aspects which I said that GTA V had going for it which can make it a better game overall which I felt that LoU could have done to give it more replay value while also pointing out my opinion on it and where I did find fault. Yeah, Naughty Dog does polish, but some of those issues, like the AI should have been fixed, particularly when they demo'd a far different game with AI that was capable of sneaking around doors and noticing a shotgun and running away.

2: Regardless of what you think about Last of Us as a game---

What the hell does that even mean? That really seems like a side jab for no reason other than to come of incredibly negative about LoU when I really haven't been.

-- its developers care a lot more about writing a story that appeals to all gamers, men and women, and its developers deliberately made efforts to avoid misogynistic content,

And that's why none of the bandits are female, the "zombies" are male and we go right back into the old trope that men are expendable (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender) while most of the women show similar strong traits to make them feel a bit more secure while ignoring the depth and complexity problems I've pointed out before...

-- whereas GTA V's developers consciously made the opposite decision because they wanted GTA V to appeal more to the men they presumed would buy their product.

Or the other option is to drop the gender bias and notice that the 35 million people that bought it were made up of men and women so that girls are just as depraved in the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7x1rntCVM) and there's really no reason to segregate who bought the game based on gender...

This isn't exactly debatable. Last of Us' developers are on record for scrapping content that their female developers found too misogynistic. GTA V's developers are on record believing that anything is fair game to satire and that there's deliberately no major women characters in their story because they wanted to write a "masculine" story. Last of Us wrote characters like Ellie and Tess. There are no characters like Ellie or Tess in GTA V.

Tanisha Jackson (http://gta.wikia.com/Tanisha_Jackson) and Debra (http://gta.wikia.com/Debra) would like a word. Also, the torturing of an innocent man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwTm3brlTEY) kind of has a few words too...

3: It is actually possible, believe it or not, to like GTA V more than Last of Us subjectively, but prefer Last of Us' stance on including women characters as equal participants with their own independent agency.

That's a pretty odd statement when what you're asking for is that women become more primary characters in stories...

I'm shocked that's something you even find debatable, honestly.

I find it pretty far out the norm to assume a developer is sexist unless otherwise proven to be part of a female club.

Particularly when certain developers create games for couples (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6q4GY6g26I) or their wives (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GMybmWHzfU) to which people seem incredibly intent to say games from other countries are premised on discriminating against women by quote mining or assumptions.


The Rock and other wrestlers are a power fantasy for men. (Most women would not identify The Rock as their ideal for sexual attractiveness. More men find The Rock's physique desirable then women.)
Rumble Roses is a sexual fantasy for men.
Both examples you're providing are more appealing to men than women, they're just appealing for different reasons.

And there's your problem... You ignored my link to Japanese pro wrestling where women are the ones that do alot in the leagues they chose to go into. They get training from men in a certain style, sure... But to deny women are even into wrestling (http://www.lethalwow.com/tnaknockouts.php) and want to be athletes, divas, and champions in their own right? Chances are, somewhere there may be someone in the LGBT that enjoys this but it's all about men... Just wow...

That's what floors me about something like this. The very same contradiction people claim to be against, they can't see outside of it and railroad arguments towards that conclusion. The very logic of the argument is premised on claiming that looking at Rumble Roses as merely for men. So obviously, the exact opposite, ie, a game with mostly men with objectified bodies must be for women. And yet, that is just out right denied when the gender changes... That's a pretty huge bias.

EDIT:
You can love GTA V all you want, no one's taking that away from you, and you absolutely can justifiably like GTA V more than Last of Us. But that doesn't stop others from being able to pick faults with the way it relies on 'satire' to justify offensive content disproportionately geared towards insulting minorities for the benefit of its disproportionately privileged, white male audience.

I never said I liked GTA V, I just used the damn game because you brought it up. But then to go on about white males is just your own prejudicial nonsense and I find it to be incredibly bigoted even if I'm not white at all. Good gracious, do you listen to what you're saying?

You're trying to tell me that a game is sexist, misogynist, and all these other words based on YOU not liking the game and denying that there's merit to it being better than LoU. I'd prefer it if you were honest about this and just plain state how you take any criticism of LoU as a personal attack because it sure seems like you came to that conclusion on your own. And then you come to attack me and I sure don't appreciate it. Your entire argument being premised on me supposedly liking the game is based on nothing and you really should have asked about that and had me clarify statements because I don't like it when you take me out of context like this.

My personal favorite game out of anything discussed in this thread is Phoenix Wright. Hell, I don't like GTA V but I give it credit where do. Same as I would Red Dead Revolver, Bully, or any other Rockstar game. Yet you pointed out this game, call it discriminatory, and just expect other people to accept this as a fact. I don't. Sorry.

I'm incredibly skeptical when people use such language and I get more leery when people sit down to promote such hatred because it really does remind me of the 1960s. I'll tell you exactly what I was taught...

I was taught that no one should ride on the Four Horsemen of Calumny- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretchasesmithconscience.html) (FIBS).

It sure seems that the "white man" gets a lot of blame and an argument premised on such a thing is something I find intolerable. If your argument wants to continue in this manner, count me out. I've never had to point fingers at a group of people to make myself feel better and I doubt strongly that doing so for fictional stories in the entertainment medium will actually lead to the gender equality you seek.

[Solid Snake]

Before I even start to respond to your points, it's clear just based on your comments that you've made some fundamentally erroneous assumptions about what I'm actually arguing, which is ironic, because much of your commentary seems to suggest that you're convinced that I'm the one making the erroneous assumptions. So, it's possible we're just both going to start shouting loudly over each other.

It's clear, at any rate, that you've spent an awful lot of time responding to points I'm not really making, or making allegations that I "hate GTA V" when that isn't actually the case and that's not even what I'm arguing about.

As I pointed out when I used Persona 4 as an example in my most recent post: It is possible to simultaneously enjoy a game and a criticize it. The fact that I enjoyed GTA V -- it's not my favorite game, I'll concede that, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Last of Us, but I do own it, I've beaten it and I had fun with it -- is irrelevant.

That's what I keep trying to say and that's what you keep misconstruing. Whatever you think about GTA and whatever you think about Last of Us as games, whether you believe Last of Us is uninspired or whether you had a lot of fun with GTA V's gameplay or whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that Last of Us still a more inclusive (albeit, yes, imperfect) world. Several of the major characters in Last of Us are women who are able to display independent agency and who have depth in their characterizations. That fact is true and it's true whether you like the game or not. While you've cited a couple examples of characters you believe show similar agency in GTA V, I'd argue that even those characters were presented as paper-thin stereotypes, and I linked to journalistic articles that feel similarly.

You can disagree with my assertions and the assertions made by the journalists who wrote those pieces and the women who've found GTA V objectionable but you can't claim, especially as a privileged white man, that you are the sole arbiter who gets to judge whether the industry is misogynistic or not. I don't get to make that claim either. The key is how open and willing you are to consider viewpoints other than your own, how willing you're able to reflect when others point out dissenting viewpoints from the narrative you've mentally construed. That's where you fall apart, because the minute you're confronted with the view that an industry you enjoy advances sexist views that harm women, you fly off the goddamn handle defensively overreacting to defend them, as if somehow your own pride's at stake.



Second, that article had nothing to do with my informed opinion based on that game as well as other games that I've played that I feel on running an opinion. That's pretty dismissive and condescending. So thanks for that too.

The irony here is that you're so sensitive to the notion that I've been dismissive towards your "informed opinion," which was typed in response to your incredibly dismissive and condescending opinion towards women and other feminists who criticize the gaming industry's representation of women in the medium.

The bias that is on display here is stunning... Look, he was on a team, and I'm pretty sure that quite a few people, male and female saw the argument and decided that wasn't an idea that they were going with.

...How the hell is my interpretation biased when it's based on Druckmann's own words?
Like, I'd understand you accusing me of a biased interpretation if Druckmann just explained the original idea of Mankind and said that others on his team made vague objections so it was scrapped. If I then interjected and said "Must've been because the idea was misogynistic and female developers didn't stand for it!" Than yeah, that'd be uninformed.

But Druckmann HIMSELF is quoted as pointing out that idea was scrapped because women developers on his team claimed it was too misogynistic!!! He pointed out the women developers, he even used the word "misogyny."

I sure don't. When someone comes into an industry with a preconceived conclusion to say that everything is sexist,

The problem is right here in this statement.
You're convinced I'm coming from a "preconceived conclusion that everything [the gaming industry produces] is sexist."

That's actually kind of hysterical, because if anything, as a gamer, my initial preconception was that the gaming industry wasn't sexist at all.

Remember good old Conservative Snake? I hadn't experienced sexism back then because of my privilege and I hadn't read anything about feminism or women's societal struggles. In that kind of a vacuum, I personally felt that the industry wasn't sexist, because I personally wasn't offended by the industry's representations of women, which were often designed to appeal to me.
And then I looked at the evidence. Well, more appropriately, people in my life like Kim forced me to take a good hard look at the industry. And I read a lot of perspectives that weren't my own. And I tried to put myself in a woman's shoes, however imperfectly, and imagine what it'd feel like if videogames represented me constantly in such a manner.

You're assuming I'm going after GTA V because of a preconceived bias. I'm not. I'm going after GTA V because its representation of women within its fictional world is atrocious. If I truly believed every video game was inherently sexist, if I did have that kind of preconception, I wouldn't have given kudos to Druckmann for avoiding the temptation to write Ellie in Last of Us into an awful metaphor for "purity" among "impure women."

Finally, the fact that a minority of video games out there are designed by women designers, are made for a female audience or actually avoid misogynistic story tropes doesn't change the fact that the majority of the industry's representations of women as a whole are degrading and offensive. I'm still surprised -- still surprised -- that's controversial. There's a wealth of articles written by women who are far better educated on the subject than me who could prove it to you, or I could just link to Anita Sarkeesian's work and really let this thread delve into the traditional "Sarkeesian SUCKS she hates our vidjagaems" bloodbath.

What you're literally telling me is that the gaming industry has been sexist against women. That because women have a vagina, they aren't allowed.

...The latter statement is hyperbole.
I'm saying that the industry is sexist against women, but like most institutional sexism, it permeates on a far more subtle level than to be outright exclusionary.
No game developer would overtly claim they didn't want women to enjoy their content. But that doesn't change the fact that the content they're promoting disproportionately sexualizes women, or leaves them as ancillary objects, passive and without agency, for the men to claim or fight over, or reduces them to one-note paper-thin antagonistic cliches while leaving the depth to the men.

The main single player character has an option to play as THREE playable characters with THREE different motivations for their actions.

Right.
And the developers deliberately avoided having one of those characters be a woman because they wanted the story to be "masculine" and resonate with a predominantly male consumer base. By their own admission, Rockstar has conceded this.
So I don't understand what you're arguing about. You've proven that Rockstar had a chance to easily incorporate a woman's voice into their story, and in fact had the kind of multiple-protagonist arc that would have made said inclusion easy, but they chose not to.

And all your subsequent arguments about how the three-character motif in GTA V works for the game on other levels completely ignores the social justice argument, which is the argument we're having here. Again: GTA V can do a lot of innovative things right, but still get things wrong when it comes to women in its game, and conceding the latter as a flaw does not negate the value of the former.

In the AAA industry, money talks.

Fine.
But making the decision that's most beneficial for the corporation financially does not immunize the developers from criticism of that decision.
How is that even an argument.


I never said I liked GTA V because of misogyny or anything else. I brought it up mainly to point out some of the technical aspects which I said that GTA V had going for it which can make it a better game overall which I felt that LoU could have done to give it more replay value while also pointing out my opinion on it and where I did find fault.

...And here's where we reveal that we're just shouting over each other all this time.

Because, you see, my argument and yours don't necessarily contradict! If your position genuinely is that GTA V is merely a "better game overall" than Last of Us, then we'd agree to disagree on that point specifically...I'd prefer Last of Us, personally...but that's not what brought us into this argument.

Because that's not the argument you're actually making.
Because that's not even what we were discussing before you even began making that argument.

The thread's title is "The Fall of the Omnipotent Video Game Hero." The article talks about masculinity and the portrayal of male protagonists in video games.

This opens the door to a social justice argument. I went off on a tangent about how I felt Last of Us' approach towards a flawed male protagonist in Joel, surrounded by women who exhibited their own agency and often thwarted or altered his own objectives and ambitions, was a better example for the industry than GTA V's portrayal of the vast majority (if not all, honestly) of its female characters as stereotypes of how men often perceive women. (Vapid celebrities seeking fame at all costs, sexual activeness exclusively portrayed as a negative character trait, daughters and wives obsessed with feminine products and domineering over their fathers and husbands, the previously linked-to articles I referenced cover the gamut of the stereotypes in the game.)

That really seems like a side jab for no reason other than to come of incredibly negative about LoU when I really haven't been.

For the fifty trillionth time.
I don't care whether or not you like Last of Us.
I care about you using your perspective on Last of Us as a way to diminish or minimize the developers' surprisingly progressive view on striking down misogynistic tropes.
I am not asking you to like Last of Us.
I am asking you to appreciate Last of Us for rejecting a certain pervasive standard towards women in its story that other developers wholeheartedly accept and defend as typical in an industry that's predominantly creating its product for a male audience.

Again: You can hate Last of Us as a game but still appreciate the fact that Druckmann actually even dared to use the words "too misogynistic" to describe an initial story concept. How many developers out there would even use the term? Unfortunately many developers would probably wear "too misogynistic" as a badge of honor.

You're trying to tell me that a game is sexist, misogynist, and all these other words based on YOU not liking the game and denying that there's merit to it being better than LoU.

No.
No.
No.
That's not what's happening.
Dear God what planet are you are on right now.
Have you even read anything I've written.
Here is something I actually wrote before, as opposed to something you're erroneously believing I've written:

1: It's okay to like GTA V more than Last of Us. It's okay to subjectively prefer GTA V because it's a completely different style of game that appeals to a completely different style of gamer. I'm not debating with you out of some twisted desire to see Last of Us worshiped, it's an imperfect game with social justice issues of its own.

[Kim]

Just FYI Jagos it's cissexist to equate women to vaginas. Not all women have vaginas, and even among those of use who don't have vaginas not all of us want one, so in the future I would recommend against that.

[MuMu]

You know what would be good thread? Cataloguing recent AAA titles on how fair they were to genders, then investigate a bit if the studio was all male, all female, mostly male, mostly female, etc. and how that affected the development. It'd interesting, a good topic to talk, we'd learn more about studios and what to expect from them.

I nominate Kimberly and Snake to pick the studios apart considering their chemistry and how well suited they are for this job.

[Jagos]

Before I even start to respond to your points, it's clear just based on your comments that you've made some fundamentally erroneous assumptions about what I'm actually arguing, which is ironic, because much of your commentary seems to suggest that you're convinced that I'm the one making the erroneous assumptions. So, it's possible we're just both going to start shouting loudly over each other.

When you go for a Turnabout, it might be a good idea to premise your argument with what's been said to show how that's "erroneous" instead of making a claim out of nowhere.

*Thumbs up*

It's clear, at any rate, that you've spent an awful lot of time responding to points I'm not really making, or making allegations that I "hate GTA V" when that isn't actually the case and that's not even what I'm arguing about.

As I pointed out when I used Persona 4 as an example in my most recent post: It is possible to simultaneously enjoy a game and a criticize it. The fact that I enjoyed GTA V -- it's not my favorite game, I'll concede that, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Last of Us, but I do own it, I've beaten it and I had fun with it -- is irrelevant.

Snake, this is a critique:

The Last of Us and PW utilize a female sidekick to try to act as someone to either tell you what to do or bounce the story off of with some sort of comical routine to break up tense moments. And yet, because you're bombarded with good shrubbery, it excuses the Bad AI and the amazing amount of hand holding that comes from escort missions? Honestly, there's been 4+ games of note with a female sidekick and Last of Us seems to get a free pass on this...

I point out the bad AI, which has been a point of contention, and how one game that I like has similar elements and question how a supposedly "male element" in a person (competition) in a female character suddenly makes her a man with boobs by your argument. I've yet to get a response to this. You get into this defensive mode while not even viewing any parts of the technical aspects of the game that I've mentioned and how they could improve the game. If you want to critique, you sure don't want the game to change even if I stated how some of it is immersion breaking. So if you're not even honest about the critique, and comment on how it's part of the masculine, how is it that this isn't an overgeneralization?

Several of the major characters in Last of Us are women who are able to display independent agency and who have depth in their characterizations. That fact is true and it's true whether you like the game or not. While you've cited a couple examples of characters you believe show similar agency in GTA V, I'd argue that even those characters were presented as paper-thin stereotypes, and I linked to journalistic articles that feel similarly.

That's a contradiction. How can people in one game show independent agency but games in another be paper thin stereotypes?

Further, linking to Tom Hoggins and his article about how women are mistreated, doesn't help your argument that they are. It seems to say that having strippers in the game along with prostitutes is misogynistic towards women.

So basically, having sex workers in a fictional rendition of LA is a bad thing but being able to torture a man is A-OK? Or ignoring women in game that have their own agency? (http://gta.wikia.com/Paige_Harris)

What exactly are you trying to discuss here? You view one game negatively and one game positively. Fine. Great. Fantastic. But taking such a narrow view and trying to hold two opposing viewpoints isn't working for your argument. You can't say one game is sexist based on ignoring women in the game that hurt the author's premise and suddenly the second game gets a free pass on the same issues. As stated, I found that the women of Last of Us were exactly as you mentioned for different reasons. They were not given quite as much depth even though that depth could have helped them make different choices in the overall plotline.



You can disagree with my assertions and the assertions made by the journalists who wrote those pieces and the women who've found GTA V objectionable but you can't claim, especially as a privileged white man, that you are the sole arbiter who gets to judge whether the industry is misogynistic or not.

I was never privileged, and this is an asinine argument to make. I disagree with the "journalists" who have a premise based on lies and dishonesty. I disagree with you because you take your conclusion first and build facts around it.

I don't get to make that claim either. The key is how open and willing you are to consider viewpoints other than your own, how willing you're able to reflect when others point out dissenting viewpoints from the narrative you've mentally construed. That's where you fall apart, because the minute you're confronted with the view that an industry you enjoy advances sexist views that harm women, you fly off the goddamn handle defensively overreacting to defend them, as if somehow your own pride's at stake.

This isn't bible study, and all I've asked is that you're honest about the games instead of misconstruing them to make them sound bad. And now you've claimed a game is sexist based on what... Anything the game said?

Nope. Trevor loves his mom and has Michael rescue his daughter later in the game while Franklin is pining for one. You've yet to make an argument based on anything the game said and keep using the term "sexist" to mean anything you don't like. Why?




The irony here is that you're so sensitive to the notion that I've been dismissive towards your "informed opinion," which was typed in response to your incredibly dismissive and condescending opinion towards women and other feminists who criticize the gaming industry's representation of women in the medium.

Ah yes... Generalizing my argument about the game to mean that it's about all women. As if YOU represent them. Good job, Snake.



...How the hell is my interpretation biased when it's based on Druckmann's own words?

But by Druckmann's own admission -- and he, being a man in the industry who'd probably prefer not be identified as sexist, has nothing to gain by confessing that his original idea was nixed because women objected to the misogyny -- it was too much.

Men need not apply, right? Gender bias. Like you can't see anything outside of believing that men only want violence and women can only be strong as men through violence or somesuch?

Yeah, great way to look at different ways people work on games.

]quote] He pointed out the women developers, he even used the word "misogyny."

And here goes the counterargument that there's two sexes (male and female) on the team and I'm pretty sure others probably helped on the team besides, but this seems mired in the weeds to the point that you've only wanted to talk about women on the team to prove your argument stronger, ignoring any other perspective outside of that gender bias.

The problem is right here in this statement.
You're convinced I'm coming from a "preconceived conclusion that everything [the gaming industry produces] is sexist."

You told me that here:

I'm shocked that's something you even find debatable, honestly.

When I said this:


This makes the assumption that all game developers are automatically considered misogynistic by default.

Which tells me you're claiming all people you don't like are sexist. That's just stupid.

Remember good old Conservative Snake? I hadn't experienced sexism back then because of my privilege and I hadn't read anything about feminism or women's societal struggles. In that kind of a vacuum, I personally felt that the industry wasn't sexist, because I personally wasn't offended by the industry's representations of women, which were often designed to appeal to me.


Now you're just throwing around that damn word without any substantiation of it. And yes, I came from a conservative background myself. I went libertarian, liberal and moved further left as I learned more. Not because of privilege.

And then I looked at the evidence. Well, more appropriately, people in my life like Kim forced me to take a good hard look at the industry. And I read a lot of perspectives that weren't my own. And I tried to put myself in a woman's shoes, however imperfectly, and imagine what it'd feel like if videogames represented me constantly in such a manner.

Last I checked, Kim is the same one throwing around crap like "Die cis scum" because she couldn't be arsed to learn about Poison, a fictional character who's controversial for coming out in the US as a Newhalf. And if I recall, the Japanese have a lot more transgendered characters than most Western game companies outside of Bioware.

You're getting one perspective, Snake. I have friends who are trans too and came to different conclusions than Kim. Maybe you should listen to them (https://soundcloud.com/deviever/devi-ever-podcast-008-hate?in=deviever/sets/devi-ever-podcast) and hear their words as well as Kim's.

You're assuming I'm going after GTA V because of a preconceived bias. I'm not. I'm going after GTA V because its representation of women within its fictional world is atrocious.

If you'd just say that this is based on your subjective opinion, I wouldn't care. But you claim this without playing the game, without research or knowledge of it, ignoring the characters within to claim sexism and misogyny. That's what I have a problem with. Even that crazy psychopath in the game has a mother he loves and protects (http://gta.wikia.com/Mrs._Philips) while our first introduction to Trevor is him killing a protagonist from another game. FFS, if you care about women being degraded, the sex work angle is tired and cliche itself with a number of sex workers speaking out against mainstream feminists who don't even try to understand the industry as they attempt to get sex work shut down.

I'd recommend researching it (http://sexworkresearch.wordpress.com/) instead of complaining about fictional sex workers in a game.

Finally, the fact that a minority of video games out there are designed by women designers, are made for a female audience or actually avoid misogynistic story tropes doesn't change the fact that the majority of the industry's representations of women as a whole are degrading and offensive.

Congratulations on ignoring entire genres of games which women play. And given that women make up majorities in games without "strong female representation (http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Elsa/fun-facts-about-females-255351.phtml), it seems your argument is premised on looking at a small minority of games instead of what people actually play.

I'm still surprised -- still surprised -- that's controversial.

It's not. Don't worry.

There's a wealth of articles written by women who are far better educated on the subject than me who could prove it to you, or I could just link to Anita Sarkeesian's work and really let this thread delve into the traditional "Sarkeesian SUCKS she hates our vidjagaems" bloodbath.

Hahahahahaha!

Oh wait. You're serious... Let me laugh harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The absolute worst person for your argument is Anita Sarkeesian. She lied about her background, had her audience do the research for her, stole Let's Play footage instead of create her own, got paid as a researcher and failed that, is a corporate for-profit business, spammed her crap on 4chan to make money, recycled her argument verbatim from her free series, finds sexism under every rock, and has harsh crap to say about men and women in the gaming industry.

Oh, and she conned her supporters big time. I knew of her from her Bayonetta video that she has unlisted. When Kim was spamming her stuff around here, it had already been two weeks of her spamming her Kickstarter link to 4chan, Reddit, IGN, Moviebob's blog and every place she could find.

Her using her marketing skills to steal from female artists (current count is two) doesn't make her any more credible and if you actually want to see better alternatives and female characters, Gaming Goose does far better as a feminist himself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP9OvnqfOXo)

And you want to support Anita? Okay... Just so ya know, that award she got makes her the second woman to win the Community Award since Sheri Ganer Ray (http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Inclusive-Game-Design-Development/dp/1584502398) has her beat. So if you really think about it, Anita's kinda accidentally the first just because of a name change.

Not to mention her sexist notions of Japan (gender segregated cars?) from her Bayonetta video and ignoring Mari Shimazaki as the creator of Bayonetta and calling her a single mom.

But that sexist narcissist you want to support... The same one that thought putting up her acceptance speech on her channel instead of her next video on April Fool's was a good idea.

Thanks Snake, that really made me laugh and I needed that.



...The latter statement is hyperbole.

No shit.

Disliking someone who is a woman does not make you sexist

Disliking someone because they are a woman makes you sexist

Yet you claim the game industry hates women in it.

I'm saying that the industry is sexist against women, but like most institutional sexism, it permeates on a far more subtle level than to be outright exclusionary.

And God has the whole world in his hands. Should I be scared that he's going to crush the world if it falls out of favor with him?

Of course, the other option might be that taking games out of context is disingenuous and games don't alter one's behavior (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131119/03314525287/study-11k-children-video-games-probably-dont-alter-behavior.shtml). Your call.

No game developer would overtly claim they didn't want women to enjoy their content.

But you're going to accuse them of sexism anyway? Wonderful. Jack Thompson with a vagina will be proud...

But that doesn't change the fact that the content they're promoting disproportionately sexualizes women, or leaves them as ancillary objects, passive and without agency, for the men to claim or fight over, or reduces them to one-note paper-thin antagonistic cliches while leaving the depth to the men.

So basically, women can't be sexualized at all or parts of rescue plots because you don't like sexy characters and don't like to play Mario. Ignoring that men can be objectified, regardless of the relevance of "Default Male Syndrome", to the point that the "hypermasculine male" that all men aspire to is basically... Zangief (http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/Zangief).

So let's get into sexiness for a bit... It's a game. It's fiction. Some stories have attractive females in them. I haven't seen anyone point to romance novels and suddenly claim them to be sexist, but they sure like to do that with games because Orchid and Ivy have large boobs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDXrTnkIVM) Somehow, I believe that the world has existed with sexy characters and I doubt complaining about them all the time will be quite effective. But if you feel like talking about the unique characteristics of Peacock (http://skullgirls.com/characters/peacock/) or Momo (http://bof.wikia.com/wiki/Momo) any time soon, lemme know. I likes me some biguns but believing that the entire world is filled with nothing but sexy characters that deprive men of their senses is hard on your blood pressure. Too much work for too little gain. Particularly when your argument ignores good games (http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Arcana_Heart_3) with Great female characters (http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Touhou_Wiki) to complain about games you don't play.


Right.
And the developers deliberately avoided having one of those characters be a woman because they wanted the story to be "masculine" and resonate with a predominantly male consumer base. By their own admission, Rockstar has conceded this.

And you've made this about being "masculine" just because there are three male characters. Which again, makes no sense. I've already pointed out to you that if you're looking at character traits, there are already female characters (http://aceattorney.wikia.com/wiki/Franziska_von_Karma) with your supposed "masculine traits". They don't seem to ascribe to the notion of gender roles as you do and you use this and a biased article to support your view.

And here's the original quote[/quote]:

on the lack of playable female characters ("The concept of being masculine was so key to this story")

Nothing about resonating with a predominantly male base...

Nothing about how women can't play the game...

Nothing about discriminating against women...

But a subjective opinion about how they decided to have three male skins, give them three male voices, allow you to move around a metropolis and cause mayhem as you want.

With four years of development, a 1,000-page script, months of motion and voice capture, and a process that saw 80 per cent of the ever-growing company – eight international studios and counting – involved in recreating a fully functioning metropolis based closely on Los Angeles...

Yeah, eight studios of people only make misogynistic ways of viewing women based on nothing more than the real Los Angeles...

So I don't understand what you're arguing about. You've proven that Rockstar had a chance to easily incorporate a woman's voice into their story, and in fact had the kind of multiple-protagonist arc that would have made said inclusion easy, but they chose not to.

Or maybe they just didn't want to make that story. It might just be that simple.

And all your subsequent arguments about how the three-character motif in GTA V works for the game on other levels completely ignores the social justice argument, which is the argument we're having here.

Because stating how the game is "sexist" or "misogynistic" without rhyme or reason is somehow an argument?

Again: GTA V can do a lot of innovative things right, but still get things wrong when it comes to women in its game, and conceding the latter as a flaw does not negate the value of the former.

And ignoring women in the game that disprove your claims makes your argument less coherent.


But making the decision that's most beneficial for the corporation financially does not immunize the developers from criticism of that decision.
How is that even an argument.

Criticism that a game you don't play somehow treats women poorly in the game? Okay, that sounds extremely logical...



Because that's not the argument you're actually making.
Because that's not even what we were discussing before you even began making that argument.

The thread's title is "The Fall of the Omnipotent Video Game Hero." The article talks about masculinity and the portrayal of male protagonists in video games.

This opens the door to a social justice argument. I went off on a tangent about how I felt Last of Us' approach towards a flawed male protagonist in Joel, surrounded by women who exhibited their own agency and often thwarted or altered his own objectives and ambitions, was a better example for the industry than GTA V's portrayal of the vast majority (if not all, honestly) of its female characters as stereotypes of how men often perceive women.

And yet... You don't compare Joel to the three playable protagonists and their personality types?

You call one game patriarchal stereotyping played straight. Last I checked, Franklin was the second main playable protagonist of color in a GTA game, second only to CJ in San Andreas. That's just an outright dismissal of the game.

Further, the article absolutely missed everything about theme, which you did in turn. Did you ever watch any old movies like Casablanca? I'm assuming no, because you sure don't seem to be interested in talking about the style of movie it is with a nihilistic character trying to find redemption as their world goes to shit.

It's something I saw with Anita and her look at Max Payne and God of War which really cemented that the social justice argument has no idea what it's talking about.

You're claiming patriarchy on characters that run outside of it. Payne is this figure that represents a certain type of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir]noir (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/07/grand-theft-auto-dan-houser) that it's based off of. God of War is a tale of Greek tragedy (the second and third games... Not so much) that had a number of shortcomings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtgA6SaHHa0) as it progressed. Things that run counter to the SJ argument seem to be anything regarding context. That's what you're missing here.

Further, after reading the article, I pointed out Phoenix Wright to explain that those stories exist.

And people play them. And people play games with females. In fact, they play games with all female characters and not a single fuck was given. So how in the hell am I supposed to take an argument that stereotypes people and can't back it up with anything close to logical consistency?

I am asking you to appreciate Last of Us for rejecting a certain pervasive standard towards women in its story that other developers wholeheartedly accept and defend as typical in an industry that's [/b]predominantly creating its product for a male audience.[/b]

After everything stated, I find the bold to be the bullshit.

Unfortunately many developers would probably wear "too misogynistic" as a badge of honor.

And here's more. Unless you find evidence that developers you don't like is sexist, I don't take this as a fact. It's harsh rhetorical nonsense and quite insulting of developers while being quite ignorant of the creation of AAA titles.

And the rest is you relying on the same rhetorical argument by falsely equating Last of Us and GTA V when it's becoming clear that you'll use one game to promote another by attacking parts you have no knowledge of.

The irony of such a position isn't lost on me, I can assure you...

[Jagos]

Before I even start to respond to your points, it's clear just based on your comments that you've made some fundamentally erroneous assumptions about what I'm actually arguing, which is ironic, because much of your commentary seems to suggest that you're convinced that I'm the one making the erroneous assumptions. So, it's possible we're just both going to start shouting loudly over each other.

When you go for a Turnabout, it might be a good idea to premise your argument with what's been said to show how that's "erroneous" instead of making a claim out of nowhere.

*Thumbs up*

It's clear, at any rate, that you've spent an awful lot of time responding to points I'm not really making, or making allegations that I "hate GTA V" when that isn't actually the case and that's not even what I'm arguing about.

As I pointed out when I used Persona 4 as an example in my most recent post: It is possible to simultaneously enjoy a game and a criticize it. The fact that I enjoyed GTA V -- it's not my favorite game, I'll concede that, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Last of Us, but I do own it, I've beaten it and I had fun with it -- is irrelevant.

Snake, this is a critique:

The Last of Us and PW utilize a female sidekick to try to act as someone to either tell you what to do or bounce the story off of with some sort of comical routine to break up tense moments. And yet, because you're bombarded with good shrubbery, it excuses the Bad AI and the amazing amount of hand holding that comes from escort missions? Honestly, there's been 4+ games of note with a female sidekick and Last of Us seems to get a free pass on this...

I point out the bad AI, which has been a point of contention, and how one game that I like has similar elements and question how a supposedly "male element" in a person (competition) in a female character suddenly makes her a man with boobs by your argument. I've yet to get a response to this. You get into this defensive mode while not even viewing any parts of the technical aspects of the game that I've mentioned and how they could improve the game. If you want to critique, you sure don't want the game to change even if I stated how some of it is immersion breaking. So if you're not even honest about the critique, and comment on how it's part of the masculine, how is it that this isn't an overgeneralization?

Several of the major characters in Last of Us are women who are able to display independent agency and who have depth in their characterizations. That fact is true and it's true whether you like the game or not. While you've cited a couple examples of characters you believe show similar agency in GTA V, I'd argue that even those characters were presented as paper-thin stereotypes, and I linked to journalistic articles that feel similarly.

That's a contradiction. How can people in one game show independent agency but people in another be paper thin stereotypes? You're not judging the games by the same criteria.

Further, linking to Tom Hoggins and his article about how women are mistreated, doesn't help your argument that they are. It seems to say that having strippers in the game along with prostitutes is misogynistic towards women.

So basically, having sex workers in a fictional rendition of LA is a bad thing but being able to torture a man is A-OK? Or ignoring women in game that have their own agency? (http://gta.wikia.com/Paige_Harris)

What exactly are you trying to discuss here? You view one game negatively and one game positively. Fine. Great. Fantastic. But taking such a narrow view and trying to hold two opposing viewpoints isn't working for your argument. You can't say one game is sexist by ignoring women in the game that hurt the your argument or the author's premise and suddenly the second game gets a free pass on the same issues. As stated, I found that the women of Last of Us were exactly as you mentioned for different reasons. They were not given quite as much depth even though that depth could have helped them make different choices in the overall plotline.



You can disagree with my assertions and the assertions made by the journalists who wrote those pieces and the women who've found GTA V objectionable but you can't claim, especially as a privileged white man, that you are the sole arbiter who gets to judge whether the industry is misogynistic or not.

I was never privileged, and this is an asinine argument to make. I disagree with the "journalists" who have a premise based on lies and dishonesty. I disagree with you because you take your conclusion first and build facts around it.

I don't get to make that claim either. The key is how open and willing you are to consider viewpoints other than your own, how willing you're able to reflect when others point out dissenting viewpoints from the narrative you've mentally construed. That's where you fall apart, because the minute you're confronted with the view that an industry you enjoy advances sexist views that harm women, you fly off the goddamn handle defensively overreacting to defend them, as if somehow your own pride's at stake.

This isn't bible study, and all I've asked is that you're honest about the games instead of misconstruing them to make them sound bad. And now you've claimed a game is sexist based on what... Anything the game said?

Nope. Trevor loves his mom and has Michael rescue his daughter later in the game while Franklin is pining for one. You've yet to make an argument based on anything the game said and keep using the term "sexist" to mean anything you don't like. Why?


The irony here is that you're so sensitive to the notion that I've been dismissive towards your "informed opinion," which was typed in response to your incredibly dismissive and condescending opinion towards women and other feminists who criticize the gaming industry's representation of women in the medium.

Ah yes... Generalizing my argument about the game to mean that it's about all women. As if YOU represent them. Good job, Snake.



...How the hell is my interpretation biased when it's based on Druckmann's own words?

But by Druckmann's own admission -- and he, being a man in the industry who'd probably prefer not be identified as sexist, has nothing to gain by confessing that his original idea was nixed because women objected to the misogyny -- it was too much.

Men need not apply, right? Gender bias. Like you can't see anything outside of believing that men only want violence and women can only be strong as men through violence or somesuch?

Yeah, great way to look at different ways people work on games.

He pointed out the women developers, he even used the word "misogyny."

And here goes the counterargument that there's two sexes (male and female) on the team and I'm pretty sure others probably helped on the team besides, but this seems mired in the weeds to the point that you've only wanted to talk about women on the team to prove your argument stronger, ignoring any other perspective outside of that gender bias.

The problem is right here in this statement.
You're convinced I'm coming from a "preconceived conclusion that everything [the gaming industry produces] is sexist."

You told me that here:

I'm shocked that's something you even find debatable, honestly.

When I said this:


This makes the assumption that all game developers are automatically considered misogynistic by default.

Which tells me you're claiming all developers you don't like are sexist. That's just stupid.

Remember good old Conservative Snake? I hadn't experienced sexism back then because of my privilege and I hadn't read anything about feminism or women's societal struggles. In that kind of a vacuum, I personally felt that the industry wasn't sexist, because I personally wasn't offended by the industry's representations of women, which were often designed to appeal to me.


Now you're just throwing around that damn word without any substantiation of it. And yes, I came from a conservative background myself. I went libertarian, liberal and moved further left as I learned more. Not because of privilege.

And then I looked at the evidence. Well, more appropriately, people in my life like Kim forced me to take a good hard look at the industry. And I read a lot of perspectives that weren't my own. And I tried to put myself in a woman's shoes, however imperfectly, and imagine what it'd feel like if videogames represented me constantly in such a manner.

Last I checked, Kim is the same one throwing around crap like "Die cis scum" because she couldn't be arsed to learn about Poison, a fictional character who's controversial for coming out in the US as a Newhalf. And if I recall, the Japanese have a lot more transgendered characters than most Western game companies outside of Bioware.

You're getting one perspective, Snake. I listen to other people who came to different conclusions than Kim. Maybe you should listen to them (https://soundcloud.com/deviever/devi-ever-podcast-008-hate?in=deviever/sets/devi-ever-podcast) and hear their words as well as Kim's. Your call.

You're assuming I'm going after GTA V because of a preconceived bias. I'm not. I'm going after GTA V because its representation of women within its fictional world is atrocious.

If you'd just say that this is based on your subjective opinion, I wouldn't care. But you claim this without playing the game, without research or knowledge of it, ignoring the characters within to claim sexism and misogyny. That's what I have a problem with. Even that crazy psychopath in the game has a mother he loves and protects (http://gta.wikia.com/Mrs._Philips) while our first introduction to Trevor is him killing a protagonist from another game. FFS, if you care about women being degraded, the sex work angle is tired and cliche itself with a number of sex workers speaking out against mainstream feminists who don't even try to understand the industry as they attempt to get sex work shut down.

I'd recommend researching it (http://sexworkresearch.wordpress.com/) instead of complaining about fictional sex workers in a game.

Finally, the fact that a minority of video games out there are designed by women designers, are made for a female audience or actually avoid misogynistic story tropes doesn't change the fact that the majority of the industry's representations of women as a whole are degrading and offensive.

Congratulations on ignoring entire genres of games which women play. And given that women make up majorities in games without "strong female representation (http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Elsa/fun-facts-about-females-255351.phtml), it seems your argument is premised on looking at a small minority of games instead of what people actually play.

I'm still surprised -- still surprised -- that's controversial.

It's not. Don't worry.

There's a wealth of articles written by women who are far better educated on the subject than me who could prove it to you, or I could just link to Anita Sarkeesian's work and really let this thread delve into the traditional "Sarkeesian SUCKS she hates our vidjagaems" bloodbath.

Hahahahahaha!

Oh wait. You're serious... Let me laugh harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The absolute worst person for your argument is Anita Sarkeesian. She lied about her background, had her audience do the research for her, stole Let's Play footage instead of create her own, got paid as a researcher and failed that, is a corporate for-profit business, spammed her crap on 4chan to make money, recycled her argument verbatim from her free series, finds sexism under every rock, and has harsh crap to say about men and women in the gaming industry.

Oh, and she conned her supporters big time. I knew of her from her Bayonetta video that she has unlisted. When Kim was spamming her stuff around here, it had already been two weeks of her spamming her Kickstarter link to 4chan, Reddit, IGN, Moviebob's blog and every place she could find.

Her using her marketing skills to steal from female artists (current count is two) doesn't make her any more credible and if you actually want to see better alternatives and female characters, Gaming Goose does far better as a feminist himself (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP9OvnqfOXo)

And you want to support Anita? Okay... Just so ya know, that award she got makes her the second woman to win the Community Award since Sheri Ganer Ray (http://www.amazon.com/Gender-Inclusive-Game-Design-Development/dp/1584502398) has her beat. So if you really think about it, Anita's kinda accidentally the first just because of a name change.

Not to mention her sexist notions of Japan (gender segregated cars?) from her Bayonetta video and ignoring Mari Shimazaki as the creator of Bayonetta and calling Bayonetta a single mom.

But that sexist narcissist you want to support... The same one that thought putting up her acceptance speech on her channel instead of her next video on April Fool's was a good idea.

Thanks Snake, that really made me laugh and I needed that.

...The latter statement is hyperbole.

No shit.

Disliking someone who is a woman does not make you sexist

Disliking someone because they are a woman makes you sexist

Yet you claim the game industry hates women in it since you keep insisting on using that term incorrectly.

I'm saying that the industry is sexist against women, but like most institutional sexism, it permeates on a far more subtle level than to be outright exclusionary.

And God has the whole world in his hands. Should I be scared that he's going to crush the world if it falls out of favor with him?

Of course, the other option might be that taking games out of context is disingenuous and games don't alter one's behavior (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131119/03314525287/study-11k-children-video-games-probably-dont-alter-behavior.shtml). Your call.

No game developer would overtly claim they didn't want women to enjoy their content.

But you're going to accuse them of sexism anyway? Wonderful. Jack Thompson with a vagina will be proud...

But that doesn't change the fact that the content they're promoting disproportionately sexualizes women, or leaves them as ancillary objects, passive and without agency, for the men to claim or fight over, or reduces them to one-note paper-thin antagonistic cliches while leaving the depth to the men.

So basically, women can't be sexualized at all or parts of rescue plots because you don't like sexy characters and don't like to play Mario. Ignoring that men can be objectified, regardless of the relevance of "Default Male Syndrome", to the point that the "hypermasculine male" that all men aspire to is basically... Zangief (http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/Zangief).

So let's get into sexiness for a bit... It's a game. It's fiction. Some stories have attractive females in them. I haven't seen anyone point to romance novels and suddenly claim them to be sexist, but they sure like to do that with games because Orchid and Ivy have large boobs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDXrTnkIVM) Somehow, I believe that the world has existed with sexy characters and I doubt complaining about them all the time will be quite effective. But if you feel like talking about the unique characteristics of Peacock (http://skullgirls.com/characters/peacock/) or Momo (http://bof.wikia.com/wiki/Momo) any time soon, lemme know. I likes me some biguns but believing that the entire world is filled with nothing but sexy characters that deprive men of their senses is hard on your blood pressure. Too much work for too little gain. Particularly when your argument ignores good games (http://wiki.mizuumi.net/w/Arcana_Heart_3) with great female characters (http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Touhou_Wiki) to complain about games you don't play.


Right.
And the developers deliberately avoided having one of those characters be a woman because they wanted the story to be "masculine" and resonate with a predominantly male consumer base. By their own admission, Rockstar has conceded this.

And you've made this about being "masculine" just because there are three male characters. Which again, makes no sense. I've already pointed out to you that if you're looking at character traits, there are already female characters (http://aceattorney.wikia.com/wiki/Franziska_von_Karma) with your supposed "masculine traits". They don't seem to ascribe to the notion of gender roles as you do and you use this and a biased article to support your view.

And here's the original quote (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/07/grand-theft-auto-dan-houser):

on the lack of playable female characters ("The concept of being masculine was so key to this story")

Nothing about resonating with a predominantly male base...

Nothing about how women can't play the game...

Nothing about discriminating against women...

But a subjective opinion about how they decided to have three male skins, give them three male voices, allow you to move around a metropolis and cause mayhem as you want.

With four years of development, a 1,000-page script, months of motion and voice capture, and a process that saw 80 per cent of the ever-growing company – eight international studios and counting – involved in recreating a fully functioning metropolis based closely on Los Angeles...

Yeah, eight studios of people only make misogynistic ways of viewing women based on nothing more than the real Los Angeles...

So I don't understand what you're arguing about. You've proven that Rockstar had a chance to easily incorporate a woman's voice into their story, and in fact had the kind of multiple-protagonist arc that would have made said inclusion easy, but they chose not to.

Or maybe they just didn't want to make that story. It might just be that simple.

And all your subsequent arguments about how the three-character motif in GTA V works for the game on other levels completely ignores the social justice argument, which is the argument we're having here.

Because stating how the game is "sexist" or "misogynistic" without rhyme or reason is somehow an argument?

[/I] Again: GTA V can do a lot of innovative things right, but still get things wrong when it comes to women in its game, and conceding the latter as a flaw does not negate the value of the former.

And ignoring women in the game that disprove your claims makes your argument less coherent.


But making the decision that's most beneficial for the corporation financially does not immunize the developers from criticism of that decision.
How is that even an argument.

Criticism that a game you don't play somehow treats women poorly in the game? Okay, that sounds extremely logical...



Because that's not the argument you're actually making.
Because that's not even what we were discussing before you even began making that argument.

The thread's title is "The Fall of the Omnipotent Video Game Hero." The article talks about masculinity and the portrayal of male protagonists in video games.

This opens the door to a social justice argument. I went off on a tangent about how I felt Last of Us' approach towards a flawed male protagonist in Joel, surrounded by women who exhibited their own agency and often thwarted or altered his own objectives and ambitions, was a better example for the industry than GTA V's portrayal of the vast majority (if not all, honestly) of its female characters as stereotypes of how men often perceive women.

And yet... You don't compare Joel to the three playable protagonists and their personality types?

You call one game patriarchal stereotyping played straight. Last I checked, Franklin was the second main playable protagonist of color in a GTA game, second only to CJ in San Andreas. That's just an outright dismissal of the game.

Further, the article absolutely missed everything about theme, which you did in turn. Did you ever watch any old movies like Casablanca? I'm assuming no, because you sure don't seem to be interested in talking about the style of movie it is with a nihilistic character trying to find redemption as their world goes to shit.

It's something I saw with Anita and her look at Max Payne and God of War which really cemented that the social justice argument has no idea what it's talking about.

You're claiming patriarchy on characters that run outside of it. Payne is this figure that represents a certain type of noir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir) that it's based off of. God of War is a tale of Greek tragedy (the second and third games... Not so much) that had a number of shortcomings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtgA6SaHHa0) as it progressed. Things that run counter to the SJ argument seem to be anything regarding context. That's what you're missing here.

Further, after reading the article, I pointed out Phoenix Wright to explain that those stories exist.

And people play them. And people play games with females. In fact, they play games with all female characters and not a single fuck was given. So how in the hell am I supposed to take an argument that stereotypes people and can't back it up with anything close to logical consistency?

I am asking you to appreciate Last of Us for rejecting a certain pervasive standard towards women in its story that other developers wholeheartedly accept and defend as typical in an industry that's [/b]predominantly creating its product for a male audience.[/b]

After everything stated, I find the bold to be the bullshit.

Unfortunately many developers would probably wear "too misogynistic" as a badge of honor.

And here's more. Unless you find evidence that developers you don't like is sexist, I don't take this as a fact. It's harsh rhetorical nonsense and quite insulting of developers while being quite ignorant of the creation of AAA titles.

And the rest is you relying on the same rhetorical argument by falsely equating Last of Us and GTA V when it's becoming clear that you'll use one game to promote another by attacking parts you have no knowledge of.

The irony of such a position isn't lost on me, I can assure you...

[synkr0nized]

Nice trollbait, Kim.

Yo

Don't do this. Especially when that's a reasonable request Kim has made of you. In a thread wherein folks are trying to legit talk about social issues, yourself ostensibly included. Especially after we just warned another user for doing the same kind of thing with respect to treating each other like shit and calling names.

So have a few days off to write more essay replies and, maybe, think about how to conduct yourself more civilly.

[Aerozord]

Personally I find the strong independent female about as sexist as the damsel in distress. This "strong" female character is often just a typical male power fantasy thats made female. It continues to teach something worse than reinforced gender roles. It teaches that traits we often place on women are inherently weaker. She isn't "stronger" she is more masculine. I'm not even talking about female characters but characters in general.

So I'm gonna come out and say it, Last of Us had poorly done characters. It used cheap ploys to build empathy for the character rather than making them interesting and relatable. I mean come on the moment we saw that kid in the opening we all knew she wasn't making it out of this alive, why? Because murdering a child is the easiest way to build drama and sympathy. The protagonist of the Last of Us is a monster. A horrible self serving dick, and giving him a morality pet doesn't make him good, or deep. Its a ploy to trick you into thinking there is depth. He goes on and on about how feelings, sympathy, empathy, are weakness and being manly is the only way to survive. That thinking nothing of murdering people is needed and correct. Again, having one or two people he'd like to keep alive does not change this. Its just further selfishness that if HE likes the person they are worth keeping alive.

Now let me contrast that to the other example, The Walking Dead. This is that stuff done right. For one the child isn't a surrogate for another. Clementine also behaves like an actual child. In contrast to Joel, Lee does care about other people. When there is senseless death he is horrified. He feels guilt over killing people. He shows empathy and compassion and its not treated as weakness but strength. He also doesn't just "protect" the child he is looking after like a patriarchal watch dog. Lee cares about her comfort, giving her a chance to play, food, and making it so she will be fine without him. Its not about protecting something, its about rearing her and helping her grow.

Ok I said my piece, sorry for interrupting

[Kim]

Personally I find the strong independent female about as sexist as the damsel in distress. This "strong" female character is often just a typical male power fantasy thats made female. It continues to teach something worse than reinforced gender roles. It teaches that traits we often place on women are inherently weaker. She isn't "stronger" she is more masculine. I'm not even talking about female characters but characters in general.

This is correct and a major problem in games, movies, etc. In our culture, being a woman and femininity in general is considered synonymous with weakness. "Throw like a girl" "What a pussy" "What a whiny bitch"

Masculinity is often centered around Not Being Like Women and Not Being Weak and such, and it's rather toxic as a result. See how the one of the few emotions it's acceptable for a man to express is anger.

We refuse to consider those who embrace femininity as strong, and we refuse to consider the traits we perceive as feminine as having value.

Even something as simple as makeup. Women are considered vain and deceitful for wearing it. Of course, if we don't wear makeup, we aren't caring enough about our appearance, people tell us.

There's been a cultural shift where masculine women or women who at least embrace parts of masculinity are becoming much more accepted, which is a good thing, but it's also reinforcing this general attitude of masculinity as preferable or superior and I dislike that a lot.

That's one of the reasons me and quite a few others weren't super fond of the Legend of Zelda thing Dresden Codak thought up. Because he distanced her from femininity in attempting to present her as a character who could be capable and strong.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

That's one of the reasons me and quite a few others weren't super fond of the Legend of Zelda thing Dresden Codak thought up. Because he distanced her from femininity in attempting to present her as a character who could be capable and strong.

Now that I think about that it's especially kind of off that he went out of his way to portray multiple roles, playstyles, schools of magic and other stuff but never really addresses giving Zelda a way to be a hero while moving closer to femininity.

[Kim]

To be fair, Zelda the franchise manages to be even worse. Ocarina of Time says she's only a capable fighter while presenting as male. As soon as she's revealed as otherwise she gets kidnapped, and as you rescue her she just sorta tags along behind you, going "Aaah!!" anytime she sees Link get hurt.

[Aerozord]

To be fair, Zelda the franchise manages to be even worse. Ocarina of Time says she's only a capable fighter while presenting as male. As soon as she's revealed as otherwise she gets kidnapped, and as you rescue her she just sorta tags along behind you, going "Aaah!!" anytime she sees Link get hurt.

I think its less "female" and more "princess". Tetra was awesome, then she became princess Zelda and was immediately reduced to macguffin.

[Red Mage Black]

Okay, since reading this thread and all the replies, there has been some really nagging questions in my head and I just want to see what is thrown out:

Is there really any accurate way to portray a man or woman in a video game without any harsh critique to how the characters act? This question stems mostly from, "You can't please everybody."

Or is this only based on who created it? (Men, women, etc.)

If all people are to have free agency over whatever it is they want to do and we take a look at video games, how is it fair to critique how they are portrayed and doesn't that make any opinion of the character's portrayal subjective?

On top of that, if one character is hypermasculine and another hyperfeminine, does that automatically nullify ones that fall in between? Note, I'm not using specific genders or sexes. Since all are equally capable of those two, as well as the ones that fall in between. Which brings up another question tied to this one. Are there particular traits that can even be shown at this point that aren't associated with, in one way or another, the feminine/masculine dichotomy? (Feel free to correct the use of this word. I'm not even sure I used it right or in the right context.)

[Kim]

There is no way to portray something that won't receive complaint. That is because while there are people in the world making good criticisms, there are also people making shitty ones. You can't please everybody and you shouldn't try. You should, however, try to not be sexist, racist, or otherwise bigoted.

Characters don't have agency. When a person creates a work of fiction, and the characters behave in certain ways, it basically means one of two things:

1. This is how the creator thinks such people would act

2. This behavior is how the creator wanted them to behave, with the possible reasons for that varying.

Basically is the creator treating them as people or as tools toward an end? Regardless, the creator is reflected in their writing.

It is fair to critique portrayals in fiction because they both reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the creators and reinforce attitudes and beliefs of consumers. Especially when that fiction is reinforcing dominant narratives. (Women are vain, black men are violent, trans women are just dudes with stubble wearing dresses)

It is important to critique these things for this very reason.

So whether a character is masculine/feminine/androgynous is important only in the context of what message it conveys and what narratives it reinforces. i.e. How a game might reinforce the idea of masculinity as strong and femininity as weak.

A good way to counter this is often to have varied casts. Like featuring multiple women in prominent roles whose strengths aren't dependent on how masculine they are. Avoiding stereotypes is also important.

[Menarker]

On that particular question, TVTropes has an article written on how to avoid "Unfortunate Implications" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/AvoidUnfortunateImplications). What Kim has said above are some of the points mentioned, although this page has other details as well (as well as links to elaborate on specific points).

[Red Mage Black]

I suppose that answers those questions for now. I have another set I forgot to include with that set and trying to answer them myself isn't turning up anything helpful. I'm not sure if I'm derailing by asking these though, considering what the original topic is. As a foreword, I recall seeing a call for more LGBT(Q+? I don't know, I've seen so many iterations of this it's hard to keep track) characters in video games and other forms of media, which these stem from:

How would you portray any of these types of characters in a game? To me, it seems as though it would end up just drawing attention towards only one aspect of the character, to where nobody even looks at their other traits anymore. Are they brave? Cunning? Devious? Quick Witted? Funny? What kind of work do they do? What makes them tick? I'm not saying it shouldn't be mentioned, but I don't think it should draw away from what else defines them and not made a huge deal of.

How would a transgender character work? I mean, should it depend on the narrative, where it varies to whether they're still in transition or already finished? Do you not just bring it up unless it becomes a plot point? Like a friend or love interest feeling betrayed because the other person didn't tell them out of fear of a possibly violent reaction or a threat of violence against the character? You know, like the real situations faced by trans people today.

Again, is there a way to portray any of this without drawing attention away from the character(or multiple characters) other defining traits or drawing away from the story itself?

I might be thinking too narrowly, which is why I'm asking for a bit of insight into this. I don't ask with any intent other than educating myself.

[Kim]

You prevent that by not writing them as The Trans Character and instead writing them as a character that is trans. You might delve into their transness or their transness might be incidental. When being written by non-trans people, I would generally prefer the latter.

You can show transness in a variety of ways. There are a great many ways to be trans.

I don't think it should be a matter of "is it a plotpoint" because well written characters generally have a lot of incidental character traits. Making a character's transness a plot point shouldn't generally be done except by people who know what they're talking about, and while creators and writers should do research before writing trans characters, that won't necessarily make them qualified to delve into transness in any meaningful way.

So, how would you tell the player? Have the player character flirt with them and the character will let the player character know. Or bring it up when the cast goes to a Hot Spring like happens in Vesperia (or it might have been graces) Or have the character always want someone to accompany them to the restroom, someone ask why that is, and they mention it.

ALSO a general protip for putting trans characters in things. You don't need to replicate transphobia in your game or your narrative, especially if you aren't going to call it out. If you're cis, you probably aren't qualified to deal with transphobia in your game so putting it in is just asking to fuck something up. If you feel a need to have a transphobic person, maybe try avoiding characterizing the Good Guys as such, and overtly, deliberately call out the transphobia that happens as shitty instead of "Well obviously it was shitty" because blugh.

[Solid Snake]

If you'd just say that this is based on your subjective opinion, I wouldn't care. But you claim this without playing the game, without research or knowledge of it, ignoring the characters within to claim sexism and misogyny.

...For fuck's sake, I don't have the patience to tackle half the shit you're tossing in my direction in a general attempt to troll me, Kim, and whoever the fuck else you're attempting to troll with your special brand of lunacy. I just don't care anymore. Christ, this is exactly why I left NPF in the first place.

But damn if I won't at least correct you on this point, by repeating the exact same thing I said earlier that you conveniently continue to ignore:
I beat GTA V.
I liked GTA V.
I liked it enough that even after beating GTA V and spending dozens upon dozens of hours in the game, I actually continued to play the game so I could master flight school, hijack military aircraft, complete all the side missions I could, and collect the random collectibles.

Hell, I wasted several hours climbing the top of that damn mountain on foot and staring off longingly into the beautifully rendered distance before I randomly decided that I'd spend a lot of time getting my wanted level up and bringing the police up to the top of the mountain with me just so I could engage in hysterial hijinks.

Here's what I can't stand: I can't stand this notion that any social-justice related criticism of a game necessarily implies that the critic DESPISES the game and therefore should be attacked for despising a 'good game.'
For fuck's sake. I wouldn't have played the game to completion and then some if I was truly having a miserable time.

And yet 99.99% of your comments, EVEN AFTER I FUCKING EXPLAINED THIS IN PREVIOUS POSTS TEN THOUSAND TIMES ON REPEAT, boil down to: "You're just trying to justify liking a game you like and antagonizing a game you dislike."

No, you see, if I truly hated Grand Theft Auto, like if I truly thought Rockstar was a bunch of a fucking asshole developers who needed to be herded like cattle and disposed of for the betterment of the industry, I wouldn't bother criticizing the game at all. I wouldn't even acknowledge its existence.

I get the same kind of crap when I talk about Persona 4 among Atlus' fans. "You're criticizing Persona 4, you must hate Persona 4, therefore I must belittle and badger you into submission!"
No, no, no, Atlus fans. I love Persona 4, it's one of my top ten games of all time, and it's precisely because I love it and its characters and its world and its gameplay and its story that I am offended when the game makes its missteps and engages in offensive stereotypes and promotes a misogynistic attitude towards women and a homophobic/transphobic attitude towards the LGBT community

...Admittingly, I don't love GTA V that much. I think it's flawed and it has problems, actually many of its problems were actually more gameplay related than social-justice related, and yeah, okay, GTA V is not one of my top ten or even one of my top 100 games of all-time. But that doesn't mean it's an awful, atrocious, piece of excrement of a game! Because if were that, I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all, and instead I basically enjoyed it very much but found some of its content problematic. Which is not remotely akin in any way, shape or form whatsoever to hating GTA V or despising its developers to the extent that you seem to believe I do.

You're getting one perspective, Snake.

Hahahaha so really what this all boils down to is that you're making the assumption of a person who you do not even know that said person is only and exclusively getting all his social-justice knowledge from a single other person.
Like, what the fuck? Is this really all this boils down to, in the end? At the end of the day, you think I don't read or listen to any perspectives from anyone who isn't Kim?

Look, if this is just ad hominem bullshit because you think I'm Kim's vile little lackey, why don't you just stop pretending you have actual substantive objections to things I'm typing and instead just attack me for the actual reason under-girding your stream of nonsense, namely that you don't even respect me enough as a person to believe I'm capable of independent, rational thought and instead view me solely as another person's mouthpiece.

...Because when you confess that's true I can just tell you to eff-off and save us both hours upon hours of time typing walls.

EDIT:

In literally the same material you quoted before accusing me of only hearing one perspective, I said:

And I read a lot of perspectives that weren't my own.
Which you then promptly ignored in making the completely unjustified opposite point
You're not even trying to disguise your true intentions very well.

[Krylo]

Snake. Snake.

He was banned for that post, Snake.

Be chill Snake. Be chill.

[Aerozord]

Just tossing out something else, what really bothers me is the lack of variety. The most stereotypical submissive over sexualized air headed woman in and of itself does not bother me. Ok it bothers me alittle but thats more because its a shallow archtype but I already went on a rant about that. Because people like that exist, or rather they exist as much as any other simplified fictional human is. Its the fact its treated as something so common. So its not really the characters its the trend I dislike.

This is one reason why "strong independent woman" bothers me just as much. As too would an idealized feminist protagonist if it became an overused archetype. Because in all of those situations they are grouping all women into a single mold. The best thing we can do is show variety, a large varied assortment of females.

I think the solution is to treat aspects like sex as just a trait. Show how that trait is a factor due to society and biology but thats about it. Other traits should not go along with it. Its easy to make a strong female character. Write a well designed well rounded character, than have their sex be female. If they are well designed that choice should have about as much impacts as say, their skin color, as in more about how society treats them than how they are.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Indeed, a good balance can really help make a good cast of characters.

[Ryong]

I feel some points (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1240688&postcount=3) are being repeated (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1240713&postcount=4).

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I feel some points (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1240688&postcount=3) are being repeated (http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1240713&postcount=4).

They are, worded differently but we have been repeating curtain things.