Susan's Place Logo

News:

Based on internal web log processing I show 3,417,511 Users made 5,324,115 Visits Accounting for 199,729,420 pageviews and 8.954.49 TB of data transfer for 2017, all on a little over $2,000 per month.

Help support this website by Donating or Subscribing! (Updated)

Main Menu

Feminism and Gaming

Started by Lavender, January 04, 2014, 02:53:21 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Lavender

Alright, I had no idea where to post this so I decided I would here. Just watched Angry Joe's video on Top 10 Controversies in Gaming for 2013 and a segment starting at 24:58 is just something I had to share.

http://angryjoeshow.com/2014/01/top-10-gaming-controversies-of-2013/

I knew people could be rather...aggressive in defending their passions and all but wow. How did I not know this was a thing? Also, really great points to be made. If I posted this in the wrong section or whatever feel free to move it or lock it of course. (Probably goes without saying, Explicit Content)
  •  

Saria

Wow how did I miss this whole thing to o.o As sad and disturbing the comments against her are, part of me was not shocked one bit. I really think these guys making these type of comments are not only pathetic, but probably feel that their "manly activity" is being threatened. Instead of being a decent/civil human being they have to be pure monsters and come up with the most horrible things to react with. This ties in with my thoughts on how men treat girl gamer's in general. Give female gamers loads of crap just because their manhood is threatened by a female gamer, and form my experiences a good portion of female gamers are as good or better then the ones giving them crap. Guys being really egotistic just because god forbid another human who just happens to be female or have female characteristics have any amount of skill or enjoy playing for fun. And then of course there are those men who think women were put on earth to have sex with and make them food. But screw those guys. But getting back on topic, I never put much thought into if i liked angry Joe; however after watching this he definitely earned some respect from me. As far as I can see I totally agree with at least most of what he said in that segment.
  •  

~RoadToTrista~

#2
Wtf are they mad about? I just watched two of her videos and she's totally right. When they're creating a new race or weird cartoon character or whatever, they do always default to male and make a female variation later. The female variation is often just the male variation with lots of makeup and a pink bow. When they have like five superheroes or whatever, four of them are males with various personalities and one of them is "the girl". The damsel in distress trope is WAY overdone.
  •  

FalseHybridPrincess

Guys are pretty self consious about it if you ask me...its still pathetic though...

Its really annoying to play an online game and only hear how big my boobs are!
or how I should stop playing that kind of game,,,or even when they treat me sooo nice as if I am a godess or something...
I had freaking love confessions in video games just because I was a girl , kinda though  , kinda ...lol

And , an other notice , nobody calls me bad names when they know im a girl,,,at least Im not having fights like guys usually have....

Wieeeerd stuff if you ask me,,,
why cant we just play the game normaly!
(btw it would be unfair if I didnt mention that I do actually get those normal games from time to time , without comments or anything...)

http://falsehybridprincess.tumblr.com/
Follow me and I ll do your dishes.

Also lets be friends on fb :D
  •  

Lavender

Quote from: FalsePrincess on January 05, 2014, 09:14:03 AM
Guys are pretty self consious about it if you ask me...its still pathetic though...

Its really annoying to play an online game and only hear how big my boobs are!
or how I should stop playing that kind of game,,,or even when they treat me sooo nice as if I am a godess or something...
I had freaking love confessions in video games just because I was a girl , kinda though  , kinda ...lol

And , an other notice , nobody calls me bad names when they know im a girl,,,at least Im not having fights like guys usually have....

Wieeeerd stuff if you ask me,,,
why cant we just play the game normaly!
(btw it would be unfair if I didnt mention that I do actually get those normal games from time to time , without comments or anything...)

Yeah...I played an online game before too and got a lot of, albeit positive, unwanted attention lol. So far as to one of the devs (It isn't a big game) spawned things for me, I kid you not o.o...

Yeah, her opinion is pretty valid. Female characters tend to be supporting characters at best. Luckily, there are a few exceptions. Granted, we really don't need any more Super Princess Peach's or Metroid: Other M's >> yeah I know they are both Nintendo, but I really hated both of those.
  •  

~RoadToTrista~

Her channel's actually pretty interesting. Imma subscribe (not that I agree with absolutely everything she says)

And I don't think she's "Man-hating" like he said, lol
  •  

Horizon

Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on January 07, 2014, 02:26:03 AM
And I don't think she's "Man-hating" like he said, lol

Angry Joe knows she isn't out to get men or take away their precious games - he's just pointing out how ridiculous some of the more vocal gamers actually sound.  It's undeniable that Anita has taken some actions that I would like to see her apologize for (using Youtube footage without permission or proper crediting is weaksauce, especially considering how much funding she received for the video series), but that's nothing compared to the flak she's received for being the only girl who dares to voice her opinion.

Anyone mind if I borrow a soapbox for a minute?  Women are typically an afterthought when it comes to game and character creation - this is completely true.  Like she stated in one of her newer videos, in a cast of six characters, the five males will have distinct personalities.  The sixth is known as the "group girl," and wears a bow.  Most female characters are either submissive to men, waiting to be rescued as a plot object, or the plot focuses on how they find strength in a hopeless situation.  It's a horrifically bland palette of portrayal.

That being said, I feel like male characters in gaming are receiving just as much sexism as the women, and maybe even in a more harmful way.  IMO, the peak moment of female sexism in the gaming industry was the "Tomb Raider accident" (accidentally adding an extra digit to her breast size and deciding it was more attractive) and the spawn of similar character designs that followed suit.  This was nearly two decades ago, if I remember correctly.  Now, at least when it comes to purely physical aspects, females are being much more fairly depicted.  Instead of adding more T&A, more designers (Western, mostly) are giving their characters youthful faces, interesting makeup designs, elaborate hair models, interesting outfits, etc.  The characters may or may not be objects in the grand scheme of the plot, but at least their physical appearances are becoming less and less harmful to the image of a "sexy" female body.  That's not enough, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

On the male side, characters are made "more attractive" by receiving bigger muscles, gravelly voices, and being more...well endowed (the new developers of Halo literally made Master Chief's codpiece [is that the right word for it?] twice as large without changing anything else about his armor).  I can't stress enough how harmful this is to men.  I may not identify as male, but for my first twenty years of existence, I was constantly bullied for my small height and frame.  I've been taunted for having a higher voice than most.  I've had people call me a ->-bleeped-<-got for my slightly longer than average hair.  Of course, none of this bothers me now that I'm transitioning (I don't know if it bothered me much to begin with, but I was sick of hearing it by second grade), but for the smaller guys out there who aren't trans*?  They're subjected to a lot of the sexism that women receive.  Even though I received higher marks than most everyone in my graduating class, I was never taken seriously when placed in groups with other guys - they never saw me as a "man," so listened to nothing I had to say.  Video games certainly aren't to blame, but the way they depict "real manly men" is only going to make the situation worse.  It's great of Anita to take a step back and examine the industry from another perspective, as it's just as beneficial to men as it is to women.  The feminist movement shows that women come in all kinds of shapes and with a variety of distinctive attributes - maybe this will lead to the assumption that men can do the same while still being "men."

/end rant.  Sorry to go off like that, this has been on my mind for a while.  It feels good to just get all of it out there and be done.
  •  

Lavender

Nonono! That's totally ok and understandable. I guess you can go with the argument that all things fantastical are going to be done through the use of archetypes and certain stereotypes, but we have seen time and time again it doesn't have to be that way.

Using WoW as an example of what you said, all the male characters are ripped as can be. Heck, they bulked up one race, Blood Elves, because their old model wasn't bulky enough. http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2006/10/oldnew01-1.jpg

I dealt with a lot of what you said as well Horizon, even though again, it personally doesn't bother me today.
  •  

FalseHybridPrincess

Quote from: Lavender on January 07, 2014, 08:24:12 PM

Using WoW as an example of what you said, all the male characters are ripped as can be. Heck, they bulked up one race, Blood Elves, because their old model wasn't bulky enough. http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2006/10/oldnew01-1.jpg


aaand female characters always have huge breasts  :-\

only jinx is flat...but flat is justice.
http://falsehybridprincess.tumblr.com/
Follow me and I ll do your dishes.

Also lets be friends on fb :D
  •  

~RoadToTrista~

I don't have a problem with either gender being designed to be attractive. But it is annoying in fighting games or whatever to see men being fully armored while women are put in skimpy armor you can't take seriously just to show off their stomach and cleavage. (which is totally fine if the men are dressed super skimpy as well ^^)

  •  

Misato

Joe's vid hit me too. That guy with the long blonde hair going off on Anita was so over the top he was pathetic. His was like a WWE, "I'm going to smack you down at Wrestlemania!" speech.

In all seriousness, I don't think the Anita outrage and the Fake Gamer Girl outrage is about gaming or any woman's gaming cred or anyone trying to take anyone else's games away. Because when I think of these people so passionately trying to tear her and other women down, I find my memory going to ole' Mr. Gone from The Maxx:
Quote
"OF COURSE I'VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH WOMEN! Everyone has a problem with women because women taunt and tease because they are attractive and they punish you for being attracted."
Or to put it another way: Misogyny mixed with the victim mentality.

I've been working on this for a while and only have these few words which are probably enough. I just think we're looking at a problem that is bigger than gaming. The passionate, sustained outrage displayed does not fit the input of, "A woman is talking about video games that once said she didn't play games." Change that input to misogyny perhaps in combination with victimhood and that, or those inputs, seem to me to fit with the output.
  •  

~RoadToTrista~

Ever since I subscribed to her I get a bunch of hater videos recommended to me. >.> lol
  •  

Emo

Here is my oppinion!
I knew about this. Ive noticed in every medium that females are oversexualized. But i have noticed that most of the people in the industry who make this stuff, who reap the most profit, are men. And any person will make their product for themselves first. The fact is, there are not enough women in these industries to counter the culture in a way that actually changes it. As long as we stay hidden and feed the machine so to speak, we will always be seen as this way in videogames.
As women we need to step up to leadership. We cant stay behind the scenes anymore if we really want this to change. We must be at the forefront of innovation in this day and age or we will always be dictated upon how we should look or act.
Its time to act! \(>__<)/
  •  

VeryGnawty

Here are the facts:

1)  Many people have a problem with Anita not because the points she makes aren't valid, but because her points are buried by her gross dishonesty.

2)  It appears that Anita hasn't played many of the games that she critiques, even though all the money she raised for her "research" should allow her to do so fairly easily.

3)  Anita deliberately delivers one-sided arguments that present evidence for her conclusions while she omits male characters, sexism against men and male characters, and similar content that would reveal a fuller context to the problems of sexism in general (including sexism against women)

4)  Anita openly admits that she doesn't care about the context of the characters in the games that she critiques, and that she is only interested in how people might view such characters in a "larger cultural context"

5)  Nobody, Anita included, is going to achieve equality of genders by focusing only on one gender.  This goes for the MRA crowd, too....
"The cake is a lie."
  •  

Curious

Fallout, skyrim, mirrors edge, fable se :-\ries are examples of non bias female story development.  Typically MMO games are plagued with lewd females, that have large breasts and butts with tiny waists, slutty bikini armor, and unrealstic sqeaky combat sounds that resemble orgasms. The male MMO characters are normally generic with spiky hair or whatever. Anyway, single player games dont usually do this, but they sometimes include poor chatacter personalities with very little distinction between gender.
In short, either females aren't indivdualized enough or they are just eye candy for perverted men.
  •  

Jen72

Having played mmos a lot I have noticed the sexism against females.  Myself even before questioning would rather defend the females if I can and sometimes it is pointless for one reason.  The immature idiots that gang up and perpetuate comments will always be there since their male ego is threatened and that fear combined with immaturity just leads to mob mentality.  On a side note it could be reversed but more male tendency by far compared to female and speaking of mind not body.  I heard one comment in WoW and it holds so true you do not want to fight the witless because they will only bring you down to their level.  All that being said I would love to see this change but realist enough to know it is like asking for peace on earth.  Sadly there will always be people mostly male that want/take/have the bigger toy, those in the middle that could care less and finally those that are the target of the toy or been abused from said toy.  And toy as in could be gun, tank or even just an idea.

Old saying Cant we all just get along!:)  I guess that must be a feminine side I don't know more just common decency has nothing to do with gender really:)

P.S. Maturity is not always acquired with age and I would bet all of you out there are more on the mature side due to the challenges we face as well females are in theory generally more mature since they have to fight the Period.
For every day that stings better days it brings.
For every road that ends another will begin.

From a song called "Master of the Wind"" by Man O War.

I my opinions hurt anyone it is NOT my intent.  I try to look at things in a neutral manner but we are all biased to a degree.  If I ever post anything wrong PLEASE correct me!  Human after all.
  •  

VeryGnawty

TERA is the worst when it comes to the slutty "armor" options.  And I say "options" loosely because your option for female characters is to look like a prostitute, or to look like a poorly dressed prostitute.  Maybe there are some actual clothes late-game, but when I tried playing that game my first thought was that every female character is basically wearing nothing regardless of what class they were.  Maybe some races get different armor?  I don't know.  I didn't play the game very much.

And don't even get me started on that race that looks like little girls.  And yes, if you were going to ask, their armor options aren't much better than the options for the elves/humans/etc

Actually, TERA didn't seem half bad.  My computer hates the game, though.  Maybe it's really graphic intensive, or something.  Even if I turn character models all the way to the minimum, the game is very unstable for me.  I can run Guild Wars 2 and it rarely crashes, but TERA wants to stall even if two or three other characters are barely within drawing distance.
"The cake is a lie."
  •  

OreSama

I personally dislike Anita because of her tendency to steal, con, and take things way out of context.  She makes the occasional good point and she doesn't deserve the extreme hatred she gets, but honestly I want videos from someone who genuinely loves video games and happens to find problematic elements in games instead of some outsider looking to be offended.
  •  

Rachelicious

Anything "feminism" with Angry Joe referenced is heading in the wrong direction from the very beginning.
  •  

VeryGnawty

Quote from: OreSama on August 29, 2014, 08:06:14 PM
I personally dislike Anita because of her tendency to steal, con, and take things way out of context.  She makes the occasional good point and she doesn't deserve the extreme hatred she gets

Actually, she does deserve the hatred that she gets.  She does make some good points, sometimes, though.

Thunderf00t has made some good video responses explaining why she deserves the hatred that she gets.  Her gross dishonesty is unforgivable.  For example, Anita claims in one of her videos that one of the Hitman games promotes violence against women because you can kill strippers.  She shows footage of Agent 47 dragging a dead stripper around.  The problem with this is that the game doesn't promote violence against women.  Most of the characters in the game you are likely to kill are men, and in fact the game DISCOURAGES you from killing the strippers because you are rewarded for not attracting attention and you lose points for killing civilians.  Anita never mentions any of these other facts even once in her video.  However, she does spend a lot of time talking about how you can kill the women and about how gross it is that you can kill the women.

Basically, it's "sexist" just because it's POSSIBLE to kill a woman in a game.  I guess she wants all video games to be made to where the female characters have a magical shield which makes them invulnerable to any and all attacks.  I guess that's the reason that she's a "pop culture critic" rather than a game developer coming up with new and groundbreaking games based on radical feminism where female characters could never be the victim of any kind of violence.  Those who can't act, talk.

Anita is the worst combination of confirmation bias, intentional misrepresentation, and willful ignorance.  So, yes, she does deserve the hate that she gets.  Her only redeeming quality is that she does make some valid arguments sometimes, and every now and again she'll make a really good point.  But, that doesn't excuse the obvious confirmation bias and the blatant dishonesty.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  She needs more than a few valid points to be excused from the derision that she rightfully deserves.  When you are a critic who is as biased as she is, you should expect to be criticized yourself.
"The cake is a lie."
  •