Gender Diversity / Politics in games (was Tropes Vs. Women)

[Fury4k]

In the entire history of genre fiction across all mediums I don't think I've ever come across anything so transparently nasty.

That's a bit hyperbolic. Don't you think maybe it's supposed to be nasty? This is the thing that makes the legendary hero finally decide the world's not worth saving. It's got to be a step above what's come before so the audience might empathise with his fall.

Please enlighten me as to the commentary on sexual violence GZ was apparently making, because it seems to be missing from my copy.

Genuine question, you think there is one, I'd like to hear what you think Kojima is saying.

Like you, I haven't played MGS5 yet, so I don't know if, or what it will be. GZ isn't much more than an extended promo for MGS5, it's meant to make you hate the villain by having him perform a hateful act.

[Spacehost]

As has been exhaustingly pointed out, depiction is not commentary.

[Fury4k]

I didn't say it was, I said there may be commentary in MGS5, not that there in GZ.

[Spacehost]

Like you, I haven't played MGS5 yet, so I don't know if, or what it will be. GZ isn't much more than an extended promo for MGS5, it's meant to make you hate the villain by having him perform a hateful act.

If, and I sincerely doubt it, Kojima makes some intelligent commentary on the rapes in GZ in TPP, it'll be so far removed in time both in the game and the world as to be borderline meaningless. If the reason Kojima did it is to show the villain is A Bad Man it'll still be the kind of crass exploitationism that comic writers got absolutely panned for in the 80s and 90s for being a lazy attempt at edginess.

[Spacehost]

Unless, of course, the commentary is that sexual assault can be so emotionally devastating as to make you transgender, in which case it'll be both insultingly lazy retroactive commentary and a piece of transphobic garbage. Kojima is dancing through a minefield in clown shoes, jumping at anything remotely dangerous looking with the glee of a toddler splashing into a puddle.

[Spacehost]

I didn't say it was, I said there may be commentary in MGS5, not that there in GZ.

I sincerely doubt it, but I have to read GZ as the artefact it is, not assume it'll retroactively improve after the fact.

[Alex W.]

If you try to apply a deeper reading to it than "this is something that Skull Face can do that is really bad to emphasise how evil he is" it just gets more problematic. Like, he removes many of her internal organs, so she's not really a person any more, so she's a weapon with a declining lifespan. And the payload is in her sex organs?

Paging Dr. Freud.

An analogy occurs to me: Quentin Tarantino makes similar sort of really controversial statements, like his whole "we can finally discuss race with movies" thing, and he uses these really pulpy genre stories to get into really important themes. But Tarantino never buys into the indulgence of the genre movie. He plays everything straight, and builds these real characters, and weaves his themes into the action, and then he shoots it with an understanding of visual storytelling that is undoubtedly in the top ten in Hollywood. He uses genre stories to tell real movies. Kojima wants the indulgence, and it makes it very difficult for him to draw in serious stuff on top.

(Kill Bill, of course, indulged in the genre nonsense, and was a fiasco.)

Example scene: while we're sticking with exploitation approaches to sex, the gimp scene in Pulp Fiction could've very easily been a childish, homophobic mess. But the way it plays - and it still has moments of humour in it - it's like a horror movie, and it's got homophobia in it, implicit, but it's not some big gay rape joke. If Kojima had done that, the gimp would've had a monologue laying out his backstory and it would've ended with a joke about sore bums.

[Nick R]

Mad Max: Thunder Road, from the creator of 'Babe'*

Dick King-Smith has directed a post-apocalyptic action movie?

[matt0]

That's a bit hyperbolic. Don't you think maybe it's supposed to be nasty? This is the thing that makes the legendary hero finally decide the world's not worth saving. It's got to be a step above what's come before so the audience might empathise with his fall.

.

I've no doubt Kojima intended it to be shocking, horiffic even, but at the end of the day it's just a leeringly extreme woman-in-the-refrigerator moment.

I also doubt Kojima consciously intended to create the most blatantly gynephobic moment in games (an achievement considering R-type literally has you shooting at a giant clitoris).

Also, VAGINA BOMB.

[Petrousgyre]

It's just that on the basis of Ground Zeroes, Kojima is making a complete dog's dinner of the most touchy parts of it.

Whereas he handled the story in the earlier games with such skill and deftness of touch.

As soon as the conversation turns to Kojima it becomes, to my mind at least, inherently farcical. I'm reasonably fond of the first two MGS's as games but the story is abject nonsense, the most hackneyed ponderous dross imaginable, the sort of puerile stuff that falls out of the head of a 14 year old after one too many Red Bulls. It wouldn't be discussed in any other medium as it wouldn't be made, no publisher would go anywhere near it if it were a book and it wouldn't get within a million miles of being green lit by a studio. As it's attached to a successful game it takes on this absurd import beyond any proportion to its merit as a peice of narrative, grown men earnestly discussing vagina bombs and the like. That's not a criticism, it's perfectly legitimate to discuss the story in games but the crushing inability of Kojima to do this to any sort of satisfactory standard casts something of an odd light on proceedings.

[Spacehost]

Weird thing is some of the stuff he explores is really interesting, but he manages to wrap it all up in layers of bollocks.

[Blunt]

it wouldn't get within a million miles of being green lit by a studio.

The movie is in development. Let's not kid ourselves that movies greenlit by a studio are inherently better than even the worst videogames stories. There's some terrible terrible shit being pumped out on cinema screens regularly.

[Talvalin]

I feel like the first post of this thread needs to be updated with arguments that have been made ("CENSORSHIP!", "But what about the men?", "Stop calling X sexist!") and rebuttals thereof. Whilst it would take time (and need Unofficial Who's blessing), it would save us from people jumping in late and reiterating the same old stuff, be that in the form of concern trolling or genuine curiousity.

I also feel like someone has said this before, but we're up to 360 pages now and a summary on the first page would be the most help. Thoughts?

[Alex W.]

Whereas he handled the story in the earlier games with such skill and deftness of touch.

Bingo. It's one thing being a really scruffy and incompetent writer of pulp military SF, but it's quite another trying to address Real Issues with that skill set.

[Capwn]

“

The production of a doll like this where players are encouraged to physically molest an already hyper-sexualized female game character’s breasts is gross, but should not be at all surprising, at least not to anyone who’s been paying attention to the Metal Gear Solid series, This doll is completely consistent with Kojima’s ongoing pattern of sexually objectifying the majority of his female characters. For just one of many examples, in Metal Gear Solid 4, during Snake’s therapy sessions, the developers built in a mechanic where the player is encouraged to shake the Sixaxis Playstation controller to jiggle the breasts of the protagonist’s PTSD counselor.

”

- Anita Sarkeesian speaking to Forbes about Kojima’s recent tweet showing off his Metal Gear Solid 5 Quiet doll

[Capwn]

Haha, I do feel Polygon are pushing it sometimes. In the Witcher 3 review they begin the wrap up by going straight into it's objectification of women. It's an important point to make but to start the conclusion to your review with that seems a bit calculated. Am sure it's going to wind up some people to the point of madness.

"The Witcher 3's subject matter, its almost defiant doubling down on its treatment of women as titillating props for Geralt and the player, even as it tries to flesh out more female leads, is its most disappointing aspect. "

http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/13/8533059/the-witcher-3-review-wild-hunt-PC-PS4-Xbox-one

[Comrade]

Witcher 3 is almost certainly full of crazy sexist shit, but I'd have to hear it from someone other than Arthur Gies before I'd get upset about it. That man can see rampant misogyny in literally anything.

[Capwn]

Never played any of the games, did watch the new one on the Conan show briefly and it seemed pretty juvenile and embarrassing. Am sure it's great in so many other ways but these days just a poorly handled brothel scene is enough to turn me off.

[Petrousgyre]

The movie is in development. Let's not kid ourselves that movies greenlit by a studio are inherently better than even the worst videogames stories. There's some terrible terrible shit being pumped out on cinema screens regularly.

That misses the point, the only reason a film would be made is due to it already being a successful game. Had Kojima tried to get his vision of MGS made into a film on its own merit he wouldn't have got anywhere. Of course there are bad films but nothing as terminally incoherent and poorly executed as MGS.

[Blunt]

You obviously haven't seen Prometheus.

[Petrousgyre]

I have, I didn't much care for it, but any direct qualitative comparisons with MGS are beyond fatuous.

[Laine]

I hope one of the male characters in MGS5 gets a bomb sewn into his ball bag.

[Zael]

Haha, I do feel Polygon are pushing it sometimes. In the Witcher 3 review they begin the wrap up by going straight into it's objectification of women. It's an important point to make but to start the conclusion to your review with that seems a bit calculated. Am sure it's going to wind up some people to the point of madness.

"The Witcher 3's subject matter, its almost defiant doubling down on its treatment of women as titillating props for Geralt and the player, even as it tries to flesh out more female leads, is its most disappointing aspect. "

http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/13/8533059/the-witcher-3-review-wild-hunt-PC-PS4-Xbox-one

I think we've gotten to the stage where not all reviews have to cover the same things. Sure a conclusion that covers how the world looks or how to combat feels is important to a review but there are tons of sites and magazines out there that do that.

It would be nice if not every place gave topics like this just a solitary paragraph or line in favour of mechanics and graphics in every single review.

[BossSaru]

As somebody who has not properly played a MGS game since the PSOne iteration, I must say that the discussion in this thread has scared me away from the subsequent episodes in the series. I don't even want to know how the series moved from "Agent infiltrates secret enemy base to sabotage terrorist weapon" to "Agent infiltrates secret enemy base to be exposed to Ron Jeremy's take on Escape from New York". Maybed the series crossed over with Dead Or Alive or Rapelay at some point.

It is like playing Mario 64, never owning a Nintendo console again, and then finding out twenty years later that Super Mario 3D World shows the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom doing tricks for Koopas to feed their heroin habit.

[Alex W.]

It's not that bad. It's, like, 90% interesting stealth espionage. It's just that in the past few games, when it's bad, you begin to wonder about Kojima's sanity.

[RubberJohnny]

Denis Dyack has now joined GamerGate, adding to their current crop of lead devs at failed studios blaming the press for their issues. Where Mark Kerns issues with the gaming press involved that they did investigative journalism into all the ways the studio had squandered money on convention trucks and Youtube gameshows and suffered under inconsistent leadership, Dyacks issues go back much further.

Too Human was originally shown at E3 2006 and had a terrible showing, but he blamed the press and said that negative previews should be outlawed. He sort of refined his manifesto of press control over the years, appearing on the 1UPShow in 2007 to reel off a big libertarian spiel about how people posting negative impressions of a game on forums should open those forums up to being sued and shut down. Because Ethics. The hosts didn't really expect John Galts speech and the whole thing is two extraordinarily awkward hours.

Too Human came out and no-one wanted to fund a sequel. Since then, he flailed around blaming everyone else - most notably suing Epic over Unreal 3, which he blamed for the games troubles. This backfired massively, as their studio had illegally stolen Epics code for their own engine used in the shitty X-Men game, they lost the trial and were ordered to pay to recall every copy of the X-Men game they could and incinerate them.

The studio went bankrupt, but another studio was set up suspiciously with the same people and transferred assets, like an Eternal Darkness 2 demo which a bit of journalism pointed out were paid for by the funding of the X-Men game in another bit of underhandedness. This popped up with a kickstarter for an episodic spiritual sequel to ED, but the whole thing stunk of a scam, it too failed.

Now Dyack has decided to add "joining a hate group" to his resume.

[Jarik]

I wonder if we could call these people joining Gamergate its 'leaders' & as such, hold them responsible for organizing it into something that doesn't allow harassment & has a clear ethics policy rather than the incoherent mess it currently is?

[Alex W.]

Yeah, I'm sure that after signing up to a misogynist movement just because it hates the same news sites he does, Dyack has a really clear picture of what its overall platform should be.

[Fry Crayola]

Where do you sign up to GamerGate?

Asking for a fiend.

[Spacehost]

I can't say I'm surprised, Dyack has been angry at the press for a while now, and the Kotaku article about the failure of X-Men Destiny seems to have royally pissed him off.