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

[SqueakyG]

Ah, "Thunderf00t", one of the originals. He was around long before Belts and Skulls.

[Scribblor]

Ah, is that him? He seems to misunderstand what an adult theme is, what the rating system is for and how it works, what she's saying now, what she's said in the past. At least, that was the case in the two minutes of that video I suffered through.

[LaParka]

I've asked a few gg'ers to instead of pulling sarkeeseans argument apart (or trying to) why don't they give examples of decent strong female characters. Been quiet on the response front

[Made of Ghosts]

Oh my god his vooooooice

[Made of Ghosts]

Are there any Anita response vids that aren't completely insufferable? I find a fair bit to disagree with in some of her work. It would be nice to see some decently-thought-out counterpoints.

[Wroth]

I'm still trying to get my head around what exactly he "busted" her on. It seemed to consist of nothing but him desperately trying to find things to disagree with her about.

[Alex W.]

No, that's pretty much what it's all about.

[Unofficial Who]

On a sadder note (and completely non Gamergate related) Cara Ellison has left writing about videogames.

http://caraellison.co.uk/essay/goodbye-new-wave/

And it’s finally that sentiment that made me leave this year. The idea that what I’d been writing about all along had been everything, because games are everything, but that also means that games are a speck in the infinitesimal universe. Games can encompass all things but they are also surrounded by all things, and what if I was blinding myself to outside of that? What if I was not considering that, like Kieron says, my talents don’t just have to lie in games criticism? What if there were other subjects to write about, or perhaps there were interesting narratives in the world not being told in games that I could help create? What if games had taught me things and now I could exist in the world?

The thing was, I was thinking about games the way we all think about games. We are crushed by our love for them, hemmed in. We think that they are special, and that we talk in a unique way about them. But the reason other games critics have gone on to amazing things before me is that they were just good writers. They were just passionate creative people. It’s like that part in Men In Black with the marbles. There’s a whole place out there and games prepared me for it, and I have marginalised myself in a wide world of criticism and writing.

More at the link.

[George Clooney]

Angel finally gets his wish.....

[Phelan]

He does realise that games don't have to be 18+ to be considered suitable for adults? Seriously does he not get that?

I can only assume he only watches 18+ movies and has never seen Toy Story, Tron or Star Wars.

[Scribblor]

They're films for children, feminists and SJWs. Why would he watch them? He's a MAN!

[Alex W.]

So many classic children's films!

[Fry Crayola]

EA announce that FIFA 16 will have women's international teams.

Predictability ensues.

[milko]

I do love that women ruined the earth first, and only now have they moved on to FIFA.

[Broker]

It's the last bastion of tradition male values.

[Spacehost]

I bet someone comes out saying they're only doing it to distract people from the FIFA corruption arrests.

[ThePixelbarks]

Please, Sepp himself will be leading the art direction to ensure that they have "tighter shorts" and a "lighter ball to create a more female aesthetic"

But who are we kidding here, no one wants to play the amature international women's game, when they could be playing as the almighty East Sterling. Yeah? Fucking mooks...

[Dudley]

I do hope they manage to expand it to at least the leading British club sides in Fifa 2017.

But yeah, this is a good thing, for probably a pretty small amount of work in the grand scheme of things.

[Wroth]

Small amount of work? Female characters are a massive workload to implement! Just ask the developers of AC:Unity!

[MK-1601]

I bet someone comes out saying they're only doing it to distract people from the FIFA corruption arrests.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-05-28-eas-fifa-16-adds-female-players#comment-99007

I lol'ed

[SweatyTravolta]

I don't understand the logic of people not buying the game because it has female players as if their existence suddenly removes all the other content. There is no way you could sensibly spin this as a negative.

[milko]

Sure - there's people saying EA should be fixing bugs instead, or improving career mode. Any shortcomings in the new game are entirely down to the time they WASTED adding female players. Although you did specify sensibly, I reckon that'll do them.

[MK-1601]

On a sadder note (and completely non Gamergate related) Cara Ellison has left writing about videogames.

http://caraellison.co.uk/essay/goodbye-new-wave/

More at the link.

Well she's got 'time to namechecking Kieron Gillen' down to three words, there's nowhere to go from that really.

[Unofficial Who]

Interesting article by Leigh Alexander

http://boingboing.net/2015/05/29/all-the-women-i-know-in-video.html

The bit about being hemmed into a niche corner

One of my colleagues just wrote me she's frustrated about all the conversations we're not having. We all are, I think, migrated against our will to interminable residencies in a politicized minefield, where even talk amongst ourselves is scrutinized. The unremarkable news that I like the game Bayonetta, for example, provoked an unsolicited Twitter flurry of users tagging in my friend and collegue Anita Sarkeesian, who was critical of the game Bayonetta, as if the fact of our two opinions could not stand. We are not free to debate and to disagree lest we be set against one another. Sometimes, we admit darkly in private and in bars and at "women's meetups" that some of us are against each other. Every smiling colleague, loathe to conflict with another woman, might hate me. She'll never say so, because many of us women are hated unfairly by enough of our enemies already.

Also this on how quickly women writing about games disapear from the scene which kind of echos Cara's concerns further up thread.

Recently on a whim I ordered an old book off of Amazon called "Surfing on the Internet," mostly because the title was funny. As it turned out, it was a brilliant memoir of the wild west days of early Usenet groups and mIRC channels, written by a woman called JC Herz. The politics of being a woman online had been part of her experience even in the 1990s. I also had written a memoir, called Breathing Machine, of the internet in the 1990s and my girlish adolescence there.

I turned over Herz' book and was startled to see her portrait on the back: A shock of wild, dark curly hair, like mine, a mischievous smile that felt familiar. I googled her and found that she wrote games criticism for the New York Times (we are constantly complaining about how traditional outlets like the New York Times never give us an opportunity) at the turn of the millennium, years before I became a writer. We were so alike, her course of life and work so like mine, and yet I had never even known of her until then.

Our ongoing memory crisis -- this field maintains little permanent record of either projects or conversations, reinvents the wheel every five years -- means we are all afraid to stop lest we be swept away and forgotten.

That concern might be an industry issue as it kind of echoes the essay by Chris Crawford in the 90's. http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-of-computer/jcgd-volume-5/a-grain-of-sand-a-gust-of.html

Jonathan Gay and Mark Stephen Pierce were a hot pair. Together, they created Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle, two of the hottest Macintosh games ever created. The games could not boast much in the way of creativity: they were, after all, straightforward running, jumping, climbing games. But they bristled with animations and digitized sounds at a time when such things were considered sinfully luxurious. And Macintosh players loved these two games. They bought a huge number of copies, dumping bushels of money all over Silicon Beach Software. The games collected every award around.

But now, a grain of sand, a gust of wind, and nothing is to be heard from Jonathan Gay and Mark Stephen Pierce. I don’t know where they are now or what they’re doing. One would have thought that after such great success, these two would go on to even greater things, creating even more sensational games, but that was not to be.

There are an uncountable number of grains of sand. The wind will never stop blowing. There are still those in our industry who follow the paths taken by these earlier stars. Some of them even now bask in acclaim and wealth.

[deerokus]

Cara Ellison seems like a fun and nice person but she is a bloody horrendous writer. Not sure of the wisdom of branching out of a field where you can get away with being considered a great writer despite being a horrible writer.

[Unofficial Who]

I had heard that she's leaving games journalism for writing for games.

Imagine, she could be the writer for the next EDF

[elmo]

Yeah, not to be a dick but our Elmo is really bad for that. You'd think a guy who is on loads of podcasts and writes loads of games stuff would be aware that criticism isn't censorship, but criticism only seems to be accepted for views he agrees with, and throws "censorship" at stuff he doesn't, like the big tirade he did in the thread for The Order saying that someone was literally trying to censor the genre because they said they personally didn't really like these cinematic barely-interactive action Uncharted things, despite that poster having absolutely zero influence over the industry or what things get made. Like surely you'd get a bit of cognitive dissonance for saying that and then turning around and saying that you didn't like a game? No?

Only just seen this, and while I agree I get my back up at times the post you mentioned was in reply to someone saying that gaming "shouldn't" be like this and that games should only have some level of the player improving their skills and I strongly disagree with that view. Maybe I went off on one too much, it's just the way I talk to my mates and sometimes that slips into the way I am on here so I'm genuinely sorry about that.

I think some criticism of the way women are treated in games is bang on. Especially the idea that women are used as props. But sometimes that criticism can be misguided. I think that when the direction of criticism is aimed at the likes of Mondo from Killer Is Dead I feel it's damaging. If we're to accept Gaming as a form of art then criticising the fact that Mondo is sexist doesn't really work in my head. Mondo is sexist yeah, he's a sexist character and parts of the game that were being called to be removed that only further exposed this character's flaws to the player. I mean if you're offended then that's totally fine, I'm not going to tell you what should or shouldn't offend you but games have to be able to approach horrible characters and yes, ask you to play as them in order to raise questions and challenge the player's morality. It's important that we don't lose that.

That's all. I don't think i've ever cried 'censorship' on any game apart from Stick of Truth and that was for another matter altogether.

[Spacehost]

I think the issue with Mondo is that (as far as I can tell) the intention with him wasn't to criticise or critique sexist attitudes, it was to have a jolly along with someone indulging in them. In which case it's wholely worth criticising the game for that.

Maybe you've got a different interpretation of it (and I'd like to here it), but it doesn't invalidate the interpretation that Gigolo Mode (to be specific) is just gamifying some adolescent bollocks.

[elmo]

I think the issue with Mondo is that (as far as I can tell) the intention with him wasn't to criticise or critique sexist attitudes, it was to have a jolly along with someone indulging in them. In which case it's wholely worth criticising the game for that.

Maybe you've got a different interpretation of it (and I'd like to here it), but it doesn't invalidate the interpretation that Gigolo Mode (to be specific) is just gamifying some adolescent bollocks.

I don't know man, did you play it? The guy was a cunt throughout and the ending was fitting to that of a massive cunt.

The gigolo modes were indeed awful, but I think they were trying to see the seediness of Mondo's actions through his own eyes. I don't even believe the women in them were real in context to the story, just some sordid fantasy. Either way I think they missed the mark on both making a point and good gameplay.

[Capwn]

Mondo is sexist yeah, he's a sexist character and parts of the game that were being called to be removed that only further exposed this character's flaws to the player. I mean if you're offended then that's totally fine, I'm not going to tell you what should or shouldn't offend you but games have to be able to approach horrible characters and yes, ask you to play as them in order to raise questions and challenge the player's morality. It's important that we don't lose that.

Not played the game in question, only seen clips of the gigolo bits so I'm not too too clued up on it.

You're right, games have to explore horrible characters and situations if it's an industry that's going to be taken as seriously as say movies/books etc. There has to be ways of getting that across to the audience without asking the player to actually look at women's parts without instance consequence though? It's frustrating because I love elements of what Suda does, I have no doubt he was trying to play around with making the player feel bad through interaction rather than storytelling but in that particular instance it's clearly problematic based on the response it had.

Anyone have any ideas of a better way to show that a character is sexist in a more respectful way? Because Elmo is right, you shouldn't just ban a sexist character from ever being in a game. How do good tv shows/film do it? For example, The Office was a worldwide acclaimed tv show that was based on a sexist character. How did they get away with it?

I think the key is to have the audience be told that this person is in the wrong and weak in that very moment. For example in the first episode of the Office, Brent is in a serious meeting with his boss and gets caught looking at her legs. He looks weak because he's not capable of fulfilling basic requirements of his job and it's clearly sold as an awkward moment created by a weak person. Maybe a better example would be Finch, a character who is more forward and unapologetic with his sexism. Like the character in the game he gets his comeuppance at the end but even in the first scene it is clear that this is a horrible person. Even if it's just Tim giving those looks to the audience to communicate that this guy isn't like you and me and neither should we want to be.

From what I remember of Gigalo mode the women will perhaps roll their eyes or tell you off if you look for too long? That simply just isn't enough, that's going down the cheeky schoolboy route. The women he is objectifying need to look cooler, stronger and more human than the character in question. It needs to be shown right there and then that this guy is weak and pathetic. As I mentioned, not played the game so I may be missing key things here, I'm curious how often and which methods Suda uses to communicate to the player that this guy is weak? I can only imagine that any attempt at making him look weak would be reverted in the next few moments when he's jumping around slicing/shooting assassins in the slick cool looking ways Suda is know for.