Riposte
Member
Well, good thing you said "IMHO", or else that would just be really rude and ban worthy lol.
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New Tropes vs Women video is out (Women as Background Decoration pt. 2)
- Thread starter Fracas
- Start date
Well, good thing you said "IMHO", or else that would just be really rude and ban worthy lol.
I have an easy solution to your woes: If you didn't watch the video and don't care about the topic, don't post in the thread.
There's no contradiction there. A woman deciding to dress a particular way for cosplay is not the same thing as a bunch of dudes deciding that a female NPC needs to wear a revealing outfit and have sex with the player character because that'll help sell their product. If you think it's a matter of people thinking "sexy = bad," you are fundamentally misunderstanding what this entire thing is about.
bigwinnerx
Member
This may have all gone completely over your head.
QuantumZebra
Member
What a well thought out response. You're going to last a long time around here.
EdibleKnife
Member
IMHO Sex sells is such a lazy excuse to keep the status quo. There are various ways to create atmosphere, build hype, or garner interest that doesn't have to involve the sexual objectification of either gender.
QuantumZebra
Member
Well judging from how bad Sin City 2 bombed, sex isn't selling as much anymore in the mainstream...
Damerman
Member
Sigh... how does it devolve to this? how?!
i see this argument a lot and i don't really feel it holds water unless you think her argument is that these example games are problematic and sexist throughout. i think what she's doing is pointing out why these tropes are a problem even when they exist in games that are otherwise totally fine or even progressive.
in dishonored the brothel is literally just window dressing. the suffering and despair of the women who live and work there isn't fleshed out or interesting at all, it's just a cheap way to say "this place sucks and the people who are in charge are bad" which is pretty much the entire point of the video. it's an easy and lazy way to force a particular tone into a game, and i agree with her that it's exploitative and could be done far better.
EdibleKnife
Member
I hope that is totally true. I'm not too up on current advertizing but from what I've seen the "sexy women like this/are in this" thing that I used to see quite a bit has been reduced somewhat.
Wiktor
Member
A woman deciding to dress like that is to me somehow sexier than the same clothes being worn by character in the game or a model hired by publisher.
in fact i'm not sure why people are defending dishonored at all, since every female character in it is an object with no agency that exists either as background tone (the prostitutes and the madam who owns them), as a macguffin to move the story along (the empress and her daughter), or as a goal to be removed by killing or selling into presumed sexual slavery (lady boyle).
don't get me wrong, i really love the game itself, but story and character development were most definitely not its strong points. and yes, most of the men were also flat and uninteresting, but many of them were more than just objects.
don't get me wrong, i really love the game itself, but story and character development were most definitely not its strong points. and yes, most of the men were also flat and uninteresting, but many of them were more than just objects.
~Devil Trigger~
In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
thats not why the movie bombed
notoccupanther
Member
Cue the hissyfits .. but FIFA? Madden? Gran Turismo? DriveClub? These are not videogames or are videogames but do not fall under this category? Yes they are sports games, but I'm going out on a limb here in a vain attempt of equality and will assume that girls / women like to play sports games too ...
Umbrella generalisations don't apply ... yes there are knobs, hell, there are knobs in my work office, but that don't make it all bad ...
And I wouldn't think that the 'women as background decoration' is something that has been organised by an all male tin-foil-hat-wearing cartel from the early 80's and have managed to dictate how all games are to be designed since.
There are undoubtedly plenty of tomes deconstructing the 'Man vs Woman / Man saves Woman' narrative, and Anita may have read them all throughout her journey. And for every woman that want's to stand on her own and declare her prowess there's another that wants to continue the status quo and be saved by some hairy brute.
A medium such as video games merely bring out the extremities of those that engage, and as such, projection of the male psyche's collective arrested development, via a games console / internet outlet, will end in immature and often hateful comments / opinions.
Alternatively, Video Games have provided an output for those who garnered a career from same. Has nurtured some fantastically creative people (both male and female) to fulfil their fantasies as they illustrate, design, program, illuminate & render fantasy worlds for us.
It's an interesting topic and I salute Anita's work thus far ... and shall continue to do so.
Umbrella generalisations don't apply ... yes there are knobs, hell, there are knobs in my work office, but that don't make it all bad ...
And I wouldn't think that the 'women as background decoration' is something that has been organised by an all male tin-foil-hat-wearing cartel from the early 80's and have managed to dictate how all games are to be designed since.
There are undoubtedly plenty of tomes deconstructing the 'Man vs Woman / Man saves Woman' narrative, and Anita may have read them all throughout her journey. And for every woman that want's to stand on her own and declare her prowess there's another that wants to continue the status quo and be saved by some hairy brute.
A medium such as video games merely bring out the extremities of those that engage, and as such, projection of the male psyche's collective arrested development, via a games console / internet outlet, will end in immature and often hateful comments / opinions.
Alternatively, Video Games have provided an output for those who garnered a career from same. Has nurtured some fantastically creative people (both male and female) to fulfil their fantasies as they illustrate, design, program, illuminate & render fantasy worlds for us.
It's an interesting topic and I salute Anita's work thus far ... and shall continue to do so.
Disclaimer: I haven't watched the whole vid, but FIFA kept banging on im my head as I started to watch it in work at lunchtime. Above was a complete rant so apologies for lack of editing .. lunch break over
What would you change in dishonoured apart from removing the scenery entirely? Are there any videogames featuring brothels where it doesn't come off as exploitative?
Wiktor
Member
Granny Rags wasn't. Lady Boyle also was as strong character as any of the initial assassinatin targets. And everybody else, I think devs still are generally afraid to make gamer commit atrocities on women, even when they're every bit as evil as males.
Anyway, if you want Dishonored woman that had actual strong agency play the DLC.
Wiktor
Member
The funny thing is that the brother wasn;t anything like that. Women there appeared to be quite content. Sure, some were tricked into the business, but quick stroll through Dunwall made it pretty clear they were one of the luckiest people in the city. Others had it far far worse unless they were the artistocracy. Unless we consider that every woman who works as prostitute is a helpless victim,which isn't really true. So the brother wasn;t really used as a place to show how bad the world is or to show how evil the people are. The woman who ran it wasn't really evil and the twins you had to kill there were monsters for completely different reasons, that had nothing to do with them using the services of this particular establishment
i think it's kind of a problem in that game particularly because none of the characters are fleshed out very well. you could have a brothel i would be fine with if it were more than just casual background cruelty, but that describes most of the bad things in that game (note to pedants: i think casual background cruelty is also a problem when it happens to characters other than women, but that goes beyond the scope of this thread).
personally i would just get rid of it. it's not essential in the slightest, especially since you're just there to kill/remove some noblemen and rescue the damsel princess all of whom could be anywhere.
granny rags was interesting, true. lady boyle wasn't. she wasn't even actively part of the coup, as i recall, she's just the regent's paramour and partial financier.
now i'm trying to remember other female characters and remembering the creepy peeping tom scientist. thinking back that game had some real issues with women.
and i do need to play the DLC.
The Jackdog
Member
lol, sin city bombed for a LOT more reasons than that
Red Chocobo
Banned
Every time she gets abuse and death threats there are lots of news articles about it with links to her latest videos.
If I were a tinfoil hat kind of guy........
If I were a tinfoil hat kind of guy........
Wiktor
Member
Looking for her indentity did provide gamer with more knowledge about her than some of the other assassination targets though. And I did feel bad for kiling her. Still better than the alternative though.
Loved that mission
It was a small humorous scene.I don't see anything wrong with it.
And yeah. Play the DLC. A lot better story than the main game and the missions are at least as good, if not actually better. Plus two strong woman characters.
Red Chocobo
Banned
Say hello to the fastest-selling paperback of all time.
Plot twist:
Purchased mostly by women.
She was more critiquing the mechanics of both Dishonored and Hitman when it's clear she didn't actually understand them. If she just wants to say "there's a brothel in this game, it's bad", that might be different.
i reeeeeally didn't get that from the video at all. the theme of this video was "women as background decorations" and the clips she showed of the prostitutes in dishonored most certainly fit.
and it's not bad that there's a brothel in the game, it's that the brothel and its occupants are inessential window dressing that only exist to show how shitty the city and its leaders are. this kind of thing being so prevalent across so many games is cheap, manipulative, and exploitative towards women in general and sex workers in particular.
But when is a brothel more than background cruelty? In Deus Ex you help a prostitute finding her kidnapped friend and you can take down one of the pimps. Does that already make it more than a background?
IMO are most settings just background for the player. Anita made the comparison of scripted scenes to a Disneyland attraction and that's kind of what all scripted games are guilty of.
At the same time, I'm not sure if "just don't do this anymore" is really the answer a designer is looking for.
If you compared the number of game releases with and without brothels, do you think the presence would be dominant?
If the pattern of behaviors in brothels is being used by the games as social criticism, isn't that a legitimate narrative technique? You can't simultaneously characterize the presence of brothels as troubling because of the real-world implications, but also say using their presence to criticize the dehumanizing characteristics of brothels is unacceptable in the same breath. You're denying that inclusion can be used in criticism.
I know that "window dressing" is the point of this video but what about the rest of the game? There are plenty of things that can be considered window dressing. You can't make every character that appears in a game important or central to the narrative.
Locations in games are often selected to build atmosphere and the places chosen are designed to create a certain ambiance (whether positive or negative). Some games go too far with this aspect, of course, and those deserve critique, but I don't think simply having a place like a brothel with women not central to the story is inherently bad especially when the world around it consists of other window dressing characters as well from both sexes.
Is window dressing a bad thing then? It seems to depend on how it's executed in relation to the rest of the game. At this point, though, it seems more lazy than sexist.
TyrantGuardian
Member
God daaaaaaaamn that video was scathing as fuck and right to the point. Probably the best episode yet imo.
yeeeeaaahhh that's kind of the problem
i think when it comes to depictions of murder and abuse we owe it to ourselves to ask for better. you can show these things, but "this guy is obviously evil because he raped a woman and then cut her throat" is lazy and doesn't really do the subject justice. even so i wouldn't have that much of a problem with it if it weren't such a common thing.
in this particular case i think the game would have been better without it (mainly because the way to include it would be a drastic increase in the quality of writing and character design and that would basically redo the whole game), but i'm not a game designer or generally a very creative person. it's not my job to tell designers how to make their games, i just respond to what i consume, and my response to stuff like this is "please don't".
gasping4meaning
Banned
You realize that you're trying to apply rational and reasonable thought processes to people who are clearly irrational and unreasonable, right? I mean, if somebody gets angry enough with a Youtube video to send threats over Twitter, that is obviously a mentally ill person to one degree or another. You can't reason with someone who is that far gone, they just need to get help before they hurt someone (or themselves).
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
...you'd at least have the courage to stand behind your insinuations?
I don't recall her addressing the mechanics in Dishonored directly at all. What about the mechanics do you think changes her criticism of casual and lazy portrayals of compromised and exploited women as grimdark wallpaper?
When it casually and lazily deals with real world exploitation still happening to many people, yes.
Most developers would never dream of depicting a Mississippi lynching, because it's a real thing. Most would never attempt to show a concentration camp. Battlefield: Hardline has a huge obstacle to overcome in marketing now that it seems to depict police militarization at the absolute worst possible time. You won't see many games tackle child abuse. These real world tragedies and disgusting events clearly should not be exploited for cheap thrills and gasps in video games, and developers know this. The audience (mostly) knows it.
But the impulse to depict human trafficking, sexual harassment, and rape don't even seem worth a moment of contemplation. It's not even something shocking and new that comes across as attention seeking, because it's been done so much. It is lazy, yes, but the fact that the violation of female bodies is so normalized that it barely registers on the radar as a sensitive topic that should perhaps be treated with respect and consideration is why it's also tied up in many problems in society's sexist subconscious.
A lot of sexism is lazy. It's habitual and thoughtless, and that's why criticism is meant to be informative. It's what someone does in response to the information that the assumptions they take for granted are harmful that matters most.
To make a video game with a lazy and exploitative element is one thing. To continue to do so after it's been pointed out is another. Maybe it's optimistic to hope for a gradual change in the industry, but it's nice to see developers at least are listening and thinking.
Given she was receiving threats of rape and abuse before the videos even existed, I'm not sure why you think the response has anything to do with presumed stifled dissent.
I do not condone these actions let me put that out in the forefront...
She posts these videos as a one sided discussion, there is no way to counter them, she disables ratings/comments removes opposing twitter comments so on and so forth. Even talking about her here is walking in a very heavily laden mine-field.
I think that if she would at least try to let some sort of discussion happen, that something like this could be avoided....yes the internet is full of angry mobs and irrational assholes, but putting a leash on them isn't going to do much good, someone is gonna chew through that leash...
it's clearly lazy and i'm sure it's not intentionally sexist on the part of (most) developers, but the result is the perpetuation of sexist ideas. and again, it's not that any one game does these things, but that MOST games seem to, at least when you're talking about games involving human characters and storylines.
as a counter-example i just thought of, consider half-life 2. it takes place in a ruined dystopian city ruled by an iron-fisted despot who employs secret police and jack-booted thugs to murder and abuse the citizenry, much like dishonored. but in HL2 (as far as i remember anyway) the violence is never sexualized, there's female characters with agency who affect the world around them through their choices, and even the background NPCs have more character and individual stories than the ones in dishonored. the people seem more real, especially since many of them (men and women both) have joined a resistance movement, which is something i think was sorely missing from dishonored.
This is excellent.
discussion is going to take place IRL and everywhere else on the internet and anita has made no effort to stifle it, but at the same time she has no obligation whatsoever to make it even easier for assholes to abuse her and her audience
especially when it would mean hateful vitriol being spammed in the space directly beneath her videos
Good points. I'm out of my league here. I lack the conviction to really fire back with a convincing argument.
It has made me realize that I've become overly desensitized, however. Those subjects you mention would not offend me in any way if they were included in a fictional medium even if I find them incredibly repulsive and horrific in the real world. I wouldn't create something that included these themes myself, however.
Messofanego
Banned
Has this been posted?
Bioshock 2 developers (Jordan Thomas, JP LeBreton, Ryan Mattson, David Pittman) reflected:
https://twitter.com/nullspeak/status/504045057507217408
https://twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/430896253652582400
Bioshock 2 developers (Jordan Thomas, JP LeBreton, Ryan Mattson, David Pittman) reflected:
https://twitter.com/nullspeak/status/504045057507217408
https://twitter.com/vectorpoem/status/430896253652582400
EdibleKnife
Member
Seriously good on them. Glad it's had its intended effect on some developers.
Messofanego
Banned
"What would you change" is never the right question. It's never just one thing. The problem is at the root. Like, they should have realized where they were heading back at the drawing board.
But the video actually answers the question in a way. "She thought she was going to a factory" or something like that. The Dishonored brothel stuff could have just been a Dickens-time factory, women substituted for orphans, poor people, whatever. But that's not the answer, really. And that's her point I think, these cases where you could just "pallete" swap your setting are vapid and cynically made. You're using some shorthand for "evil" to justify the hyperviolent actions of the Player/Character.
So you used (images of) people as a means and you pissed off Kant, and she's illustrating why that's a particular problem qua using women as a means because of the broader culture context in which women-as-means is a common or even dominant paradigm.
Read the OP.
How you mean? What do you think the premise of this series is?
Red Chocobo
Banned
Saying that something could easily be insinuated by people is not the same as actually insinuating.
Hence, my use of the word "if".
Trust me. If I were going to insinuate it myself, I would just flat-out do it lol. I take bans on the chin.
To be fair, in a narrative where you're trying to show inhumanity as the core of the antagonist, isn't actual, systemic mistreatment of people a pretty necessary element to represent that? I mean I totally concede that if all the symbols of that in a game are focused on how women are mistreated, I immediately see that shortcoming to the writing, but in the broader sense, believable mistreatment of women used as part of the justification for why an antagonist deserves their role seems justified. This is assuming it's part of a broader use of social symbols for the characterization. I find it troubling in this pair of videos that the structure is to select just this one slice of content in so many games, largely disregarding the surrounding elements in those games. That's almost exactly the concern about cherry-picking in criticism; it ignores authorial intent (and the success or failing of the broader execution).
You are suggesting the possibility in the first place. Don't use the "Some people say" excuse to throw out insinuations you know are silly.
This is a troubling trend among video game players; more than any other form of media (Except watching sports), I see them identify themselves with products. They're not "people who buy <x company's> products," they're "<x company> fans". It extends to this conflation of the product with one's own self-worth: "I want this game to review well and sell well because it validates me." And the problem with identifying with a product is that it's not something you do, it's something you consume, and so you have no control over what you see as important. You stop trying to control what actually affects your life because you're too invested in some faraway thing out of your control, and it's no longer "escapism" because you're invested in it through thick and thin.
I've seen this trend in myself too, which is one of the reasons it worries me so much.
Saying a cliche is harmful is another way of saying it's a well-worn device that is associated with negative ideas but we're so used to the functional paradigm we gloss over what its broader implications are. For a good example of this, see the Bioshock 2 devs' comments about looking back at the game, above. IMO if you're going to use a device you should at least acknowledge and accept its implications, which is something few people want to do when called on it. Good on Gaynor, Thomas, etc for not getting defensive over being challenged on this.