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

[deerokus]

They had the typical anime swimsuit scene in the last one but yeah, it's a bit of a weird shift.

I see that 8-4 (Mark McDonald's company who did the previous couple of entries) aren't localising this one.

[Dig Dug]

They've also apparently edited the not-at-all gross sequence where you, as a male hero, get to romance a female NPC who is attracted to women by spiking her with a drug that turns her straight.

The fact that these things have had to be edited out for the localisation rather than, you know, not being present in the first place, hasn't exactly enamoured me to the new game; for one of my favourite SRPG series, they've done a really a good job of completely putting me off buying it.

As much as I like the series I have little interest in both faiths and awakening, mainly because they look like departures from Path of Radiance in terms of theme and visual design. As for the scene from what I understand in the Japanese version features the protagonist spiking the girls drink so she sees all male characters as female because the sight of cute girls makes her faint, she then falls in love with the "female" Corrin, which is still pretty awful.

The relationship building is one of the better things about fire emblem, the system used in Path of Radiance had some excellent character development such as a character who goes from being a propaganda fed racist to befriending the characters from other races and easing the racial tensions the other characters also have, it's a meaningful message (and one that is used to help drive the plot) and it is delivered well through the games support system. Shame they dropped that system in Radiant Dawn (the writing in that game was a mess).

[Wiper]

Edit: at deerokus

Oh god, I'd forgotten that. Ugh. Such a sad turn the series has taken thematically (plus a few mechanical changes I'm not too fond of - the grind-encouraging sidequests particularly). Such a shame.

It's provably for the best that the Wars series is seemingly dead, as I'm not sure I'd want to live in a world where Sami gets thrust into a bikini and made a love interest.

[Jebs Votes]

I looked into this, and I think it's really not as clear-cut as other examples in this thread. I haven't played this game, (and it's been a long time since I've played a Fire Emblem game) so I have to rely on articles about this decision, but according to this article on Destructoid, the whole situation is more problematic than it appears.

The writer makes good points, although I'd argue that she/he plays down the issue a bit too much, but what I gather is that the character is badly written in general, and the writers didn't think everything through.

Considering what happened surrounding Tomodachi Life and this, I can imagine there's a lot of arguments about sexuality inside Nintendo. However, in a series where apparently there are plenty of times when the player can choose for characters to marry other characters of the same sex, it seems like a very strange misstep.

[therearerules]

They had the typical anime swimsuit scene in the last one but yeah, it's a bit of a weird shift.

I see that 8-4 (Mark McDonald's company who did the previous couple of entries) aren't localising this one.

Don't forget the pre-pubescent girl who's actually a hundred year old dragon thing or something.

[sir stiff_one]

Nowi who is thousands of years old and looks pretty young. I can allow that one I think as it does juggle around typical tropes a little and if you don't read in unsettling meanings to her character (attraction to young looking girls), you can write it off as her character. There is another dragon lady in it with a totally different character, and the kid you have with either of them (who comes back from the future grown up) is sexually ambiguous.

[MaffewE]

Ah, Prankster.

http://prankster101.com/articles/mirrors-edge-catalyst-labour-of-love/

The game delves into Faiths back story where it almost implies that its a prequel. Given the fact that Faiths history is being emphasized in such a dramatic way where the game places a lot of importance on Faith as a female character, does that maybe signify Electronic Arts attempt to get more female gamers into gaming, or ensure that the sexes are a little bit more equally represented? Because if you think about it, Faiths quite strong as a character and shes not one of those brainless bimbos as it were

Shes a super strong character. Im not sure that its a conscious decision to get more women to play. Everybody on the [development] team believes in diversity. We want everybody to play this. Personally, I find it really stupid to just focus on one segment, and its a waste to just blindly focus on one segment of your player base. Games are great for everybody, right? Faith is a woman, and shes a super strong character, and thats just part of what the game is. Its not a conscious decision to attract more women. Its just to attract more players.

So its not like FIFA where youve gotten female players on board I understand that EA is a massive company and that youve got shareholders to take care of, but this whole Gamergate thing, especially with the whole issue of excluding and / or including women, thats obviously had bearings with the inclusion of female players as part ofFIFA 16. Because of the timing, you could almost argue that there are Gamergate related politics involved as part of the industrys attempt to maybe appear to be a little bit more progressive than it actually is. With so much emphasis being placed on Faith and her backstory, which obviously implies that youre fleshing her out as a character, is this your way in of trying to legitimize female game characters and even gaming in general?

Ive followed Gamergate from a distance. I believe in equality. I also believe that you shouldnt treat people like shit regardless of what your opinion is. The fact that were creating a rich backstory for Faith is mainly because we want to create a rich backstory for the main character. We would have done the same thing for a male character. In fact we have rich backstories from most of our characters in the game. Its not something weve done just because shes a woman.

Faith doesn’t have the ability to use guns in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Can you please explain why, and is this Electronic Arts’ attempt to maybe “sterilize” its future gaming products?

First of all, using guns didn’t fit with the Faith character that we’ve created for this game. It just didn’t fit. We didn’t want her to use guns. Also, guns and first person shooters are often games that while you’re shooting, you tend to stand still way more than Faith is doing. Mirror’s Edge is a game about momentum. It’s a game of just continuously propelling yourself forward and chaining moves together, and we wanted combat to reflect that too. That’s another reason we removed the guns. We wanted Faith and the players to get up close to the enemies and basically knock them on the head. So first of all, from a gameplay reason, we didn’t want the player to stop. We didn’t want to have flow breakers like that. And the second big reason is that it didn’t fit with the story we wanted to tell about Faith.

Good work, Erik Odeldahl.

[Rowan Morrison]

The temptation to break down and admit that Catalyst is indeed the first move in an attempt to sterilize future products must have been enormous. Yes, Battlefield 5 will be heavily inspired by Animal Crossing and guns are being phased out in favour of gifts and helping people. You'll be able to hop out of your hot air balloon and lend another player a book or collaborate on a mural. But please don't publish this terrible secret now that you've figured it out with your big brain, because it's basically like Watergate for games.

[Alex W.]

He keeps going on about how EA has a responsibility to its shareholders as a publicly traded company to put out games that will make a lot of money rather than games DICE actually wants to develop.

Plankster: Given that Electronic Arts is a public trading company that answers to shareholders, and given that Mirror’s Edge wasn’t as successful as Electronic Arts hoped for it to be the first time round, what steps did you and DICE have to take in order to persuade Electronic Arts to give you a second chance, especially with Catalyst being a reboot?

Everybody at DICE loves Mirror’s Edge and it shows in what we do. Everybody felt that this concept that we had was really strong. It was the right time, the right concept, and a lot of pieces just came together. So here we are.

Plankster: [...] in what way has EA’s expectations in terms of financial and production assistance been tempered? Because ultimately, the Mirror’s Edge franchise is not Battlefield. It’s not Star Wars. It’s a second chance. Otherwise you’d be building upon the first game’s legacy by calling it a sequel quite confidently.

You can call it a “second chance”. The first game was actually quite successful over the long run…

Plankster: “Over the long run”. But given the Electronic Arts is a public company, ultimately the shareholders want their money now. Is that true or not?

To be honest, I don’t have any insight on that so I wouldn’t know.

He's also really convinced that it must've had cut-backs because DICE works on more than one game at a time.

Plankster: Given that all those people worked on Battlefront in order to ensure that it shipped on time, in what way has the production for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst been affected over these years? It can’t be that many people who have consistently worked on the game as DICE’s resources have needed to go towards games that have kept the lights on and have paid the bills. I understand that [as a franchise] Mirror’s Edge is a commercial product, but it’s not the golden goose, which is why it required a reboot…

Maybe… We helped out. I personally helped out on Battlefield 4 to fix stuff. It’s what we do. We come together as a studio because it’s our games and we want our games to be good. We want them to be stable. It’s a matter of pride as well. Everybody comes together to fix things. That’s one of the good things at a studio like DICE. When we need to, we work together and we fix things. Battlefield 4 turned really, really good in the end.

Plankster: I’m speculating that the game may have had cutbacks in terms of its production budget relative to all other AAA games coming out on today’s consoles. What I’d like to ask is how has Mirror’s Edge Catalyst‘s development been affected by Battlefield 4 and its associated problems, as well as the pressures that EA faced in ensuring that Star Wars Battlefront shipped on time?

I can’t really comment on that. I’m sorry. I can’t do that.

Usually if you're going into an interview with an agenda to push, you don't then publish the bit where you're desperately fishing for the answers you want.

[jon_cybernet]

It's almost like he's a fucking idiot who doesn't know what he's doing.

Also, his copy makes my eyes bleed.

Like, actual blood. From my eyes.

[Alex W.]

He's actually going out and getting people to interview with him which is a sight more than most personal blogs bother with, like actual journalistic stuff. So I'll give him credit for that.

[K]

I really admire the way prankster doesn't edit the interviews to make him look good. It takes an incredibly modest man to resist the temptation to remove anything that shows him up as a bumbling idiot.

[Delargey]

Prankster once stopped me in the street outside Topshop on Oxford Street. We wanted me to answer a questionaire on video games magazines. He seemed a bit put out when I mentioned i posted here.

[Timmo]

How did you know it was him?

[Delargey]

He told me as he was explaining why he know longer posts here.

[RubberJohnny]

I really didn't expect to see prankster101 pop up in here.

Quite how he still manages to get interviews I don't know, you think a lot of places would know he's a nutter by now.

[Alex W.]

Email's a great thing, if you drop some organisation a line and say you want to write a few words about them they're usually happy to find someone to chat. You just need to make the effort.

[Professor Puzzles]

I applaud your efforts in changing Prankster to Plankster in those interview quotes.

[Anne Summers]

The funniest one is his interview with booth babes, where he walks around asking them "Do you feel exploited? are you being objectified?" and they say "Well, I suppose I am a bit.." and he goes "SEE! I told you none of them feel exploited!"

[Dudley]

I'm sure way back in the mists of time in one of the slightly less embarrassing parts of this thread someone brought up that there really aren't any small chested women in games. Some "normal", oh so many large but not really small.

And they're right, which is probably why I noticed suddenly I was playing an example where there really was.

Life is Strange, the main character Max is certainly like that and in general the characters have a decent range of bodyshapes.

I'm not sure what this, or the fact I didn't even notice it until I remembered the comment in this thread tells us but there you go.

[NEG]

The funniest one is his interview with booth babes, where he walks around asking them "Do you feel exploited? are you being objectified?" and they say "Well, I suppose I am a bit.." and he goes "SEE! I told you none of them feel exploited!"

Link?

[Anne Summers]

http://prankster101.com/articles/interviews-with-booth-babes/

Some choice moments:

Have you been forced into doing this job and wearing the clothes that you wear?

I’ve never been forced to do the job, but the clothes are not our choice. They say “You should wear these clothes” and we have the choice if we want to or if we don’t want to. I think its okay.

(He asks her, seriously, if she was forced to be a booth babe, and when she says no, takes that as a vindication of his views)

Ultimately you are not being forced into it and it’s your choice entirely?

(He asks her again to confirm that she has not been forced to work as a booth babe by anyone. Which of course shows he has absolutely no understanding of the debate around booth babes which was ongoing at the time, and was in no way concerned with girls being "forced" into the profession).

How do you think people at gaming conventions perceive you and how do the gamers treat you?

Sometimes they treat us like animals, because they think that we are just sitting there and we are just there to look good. And they can take photos and touch us like animals, but then it’s our turn to say, “okay… no. Step further you can take a photo, but no touching and we are just there smiling for you, but there’s not acting like animals in a circus or something”. And this is how many people try to treat us here...

Have you been forced into doing this job and wearing the kind of clothes that you wear?

It was kind of described in the job [description]. It was my decision if I wanted to do this job or not, it was not that I was booked for the job then they told me what I had to wear, I already saw in the description before the job what I have to wear. So, it was alright with me and I think my clothes are a lot more appropriate than other clothes here, and I’m very happy about that because this event is very full of young boys and guys who are not always respectful. They don’t always say nice things, and so I’m very glad my outfit allows me to not be as naked as other girls.

[Anne Summers]

WTF is Jordan Owen doing now?

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/quest-the-story-of-sierra-on-line-dead-project#/

Edit: Ok I watched it and sort of worked out what's going on - Jordan was crowdfunding another documentary, this one about Sierra. He posted about it on a Sierra Facebook page and one of the old Sierra devs, Corey Cole, replied to say that he had looked into Jordan's past work and because of the Sarkeesian effect would have nothing to do with this project.

The video above is hilarious, about half way in it turns into a completely over emotional and hysterical attempt to guilt trip Cole for ruining his documentary (because apparently Cole's statement led to SJWs boycotting his crowdfunding).

[TehStu]

It sometimes pains me when we send morons referral traffic.

[Alex W.]

Hold on, I thought that Real Gamers were supposed to be the silent majority? How is SJWs declining to fund his documentary supposed to be a problem?

[David Kenny]

If he spoke at the rate a normal human being speaks, that video would be about 3 minutes long. The pauses are excruciating.

Edit: Man that video is amazing. If Ricky Gervais had written it it would be hailed as genius comic writing.

"It's like having Stephen Spielberg call you asshole, or Charles Schulz call you an asshole, or.. {lists loads of people who he wouldn't like to be called an asshole by}...

of course you didn't actually call me an asshole."

[Straps]

Was his Sierra documentary basically "they have (had?) a woman in an important role, checkmate feminazis"?

[Broker]

When you find out someone you admire thinks you're an asshole the only response is to whine about it at a camera. What else would you do?

[deerokus]

I love the lack of insight. Even if you take the politics out of it it would still be the case that no one with any sense would want him to make a documentary about their work given the hilarious farce that was The Sarkeesian Effect.

[b00dles]

Well precisely, even if you're a huge GG-er and hate the wimmins. I still wouldn't want to give him money to make another documentary as the previous one he was involved in was an unmitigated disaster.