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Fumita Ueda is a sexist or: Why Females Don't Wear Pants or have grip strength
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GCX said:
Its not about whether it CAN work the other way around or not, but about whether it would fit in this game's world/setting and whether the player feels attached to the character or not.
Both of his games have worked before, so his reasonings might have some sense to it :lol
RustyNails
Member
I'd let her grip me. Anywhere.polyh3dron said:
Knux-Future
Banned
Holepunch said:Yeah a girl gripping ledges and wearing pants? What kind of mad game would have-
...that.
it's funny that you bring that up..because wasn't there some uproar over her design too
also I need to finish that game...no wait i got pissed after it introduced gunz.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
No question about it. Also, no question that on average, men/boys climb them better/faster.Nirolak said:
buy teh haloz
Banned
Even if she had to wear a skirt for whatever reason I don't see why that would stop them. They could easily avoid panty shots, and video game protagonists have worn more impractical clothing.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
charlequin said:
Is that rhetorical or do you have some answer? I've taken anthropology classes and it seems that women and men have used unique decorations throughout. Most tribal hunter-gatherer societies had completely different work for women and men. And in modern rainforest tribes there are plenty of male-female decoration differences... those famous neck rings come to mind.
freakin Amazons were a mythcharlequin said:here's a picture of a freaking Amazon wearing pants.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
I knew a female gymnast when I was kid and her shoulders were bigger than mine. It was kind of freaky.Nirolak said:
Ploid 3.0
Member
ShockingAlberto said:
This thread is about if a girl can grip and wear pants. There are girls with bigger muscles than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of course they can grip or bend steel or whatever else they want to do.
Maybe it would have been his vision to put a skirt on a girl to make her a bit delicate, or make her skin glow like the sun because he think it would like it like that. It seems team ICO is making games they want how they want. No FPS, Jpop rpg, or robot invasions.
What if it's a fake out for the big surprise at the end when it's revealed that the character is actually a alien which is neither a boy or a girl, but it had to choose it would be a girl.
Knux-Future
Banned
iammeiam said:
Dammit Japan.....
Fuck it this thread has gone on far too long. I'm out
EmCeeGramr
Member
On average, most young boys can't hurdle over large ancient stone ledges and throw barrels around and aren't best friends with a giant bird cat that they ride around on.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
But something to do with helping the suspension of disbelief.Fredescu said:
The other simple thing of course being the whole fairytale inspiration where these games draw much of their potency from, where part of that suspension of disbelief comes from.
What's wrong with Ueda's decision ? If he feels that having a boy protagonist is better for his game, then go for it. If he feels that having a girl protagonist will limit his approach, then that's just him being himself. He doesn't have to be neutral for the sake of political correctness. He needs to tell his story in a way he can believe in.
That article is interesting but doesn't focus on the key traits.
Females have the power to give birth. It is the best magic in this world (except that they need some err.... fuel to power up). Their bodies will be tuned to accommodate internal changes, and tolerate extreme pain. Their sensibility and nurturing nature make them incredibly good at bringing up a family. They are better at time management (multitasking). But they can be vulnerable to hormonal and emotion changes in general. They need to understand these in great depth to manage a family.
Traditionally, human males need to perform physical duties like hunting, building, fighting, etc. They will need spatial capabilities and focus. They may even need rage and dumbness/insensibility in some of these high risk tasks. They should feel threatened/vulnerable by all sorts of external stimuli earlier/quicker so that they can do something about the environment before things go bad.
Female mature faster to take care of young members. Males grow up slower but have better mass to deal with larger threat later. The 2 work hand in hand together.
Wait a minute, where's my supper ?
That article is interesting but doesn't focus on the key traits.
Females have the power to give birth. It is the best magic in this world (except that they need some err.... fuel to power up). Their bodies will be tuned to accommodate internal changes, and tolerate extreme pain. Their sensibility and nurturing nature make them incredibly good at bringing up a family. They are better at time management (multitasking). But they can be vulnerable to hormonal and emotion changes in general. They need to understand these in great depth to manage a family.
Traditionally, human males need to perform physical duties like hunting, building, fighting, etc. They will need spatial capabilities and focus. They may even need rage and dumbness/insensibility in some of these high risk tasks. They should feel threatened/vulnerable by all sorts of external stimuli earlier/quicker so that they can do something about the environment before things go bad.
Female mature faster to take care of young members. Males grow up slower but have better mass to deal with larger threat later. The 2 work hand in hand together.
Wait a minute, where's my supper ?
Nirolak said:
The designer of a game was asked for reasons behind his decision about the genders of the characters, and so he gives a reason.
The ones getting all technical and nitpicking this decision are you guys :lol
God forbid he speaks his mind about what he thinks would fit better on his game, specially when questioned!
GCX said:
But his "bad reasoning" fit and worked very well for his previous games, so why would it still be considered "bad reasoning" for the third? :lol
EmCeeGramr
Member
Be perfectly honest here. If a girl was in this game and she was pretty much just the female version of the boy, would you actually look at your TV and say "Hey! A girl can't do those things in real life!"?Lord Error said:
Torhthelm Tídwald
Member
patsu said:
If there was a shitstorm when people learned that the game would star a boy, I must have missed it. This thread became this thread when Ueda gave stupid and sexist reasons for his choice.
RustyNails
Member
I was imagining Benny Hill music in my head for that gif. Now its ruined.Zeliard said:
EmCeeGramr
Member
I'm going by the reasons that Fumito Ueda gave, not imaginary hypothetical ones created and credited to him by message board goers to defend him.Noshino said:
Answer the question instead of dodging it.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
I don't know if I even believe his reasons, he might have just preferred a boy implicitly and made that decision and then when asked to justify it, said some stuff that he thought would make sense, or made a joke about it.
And if he did mean it, I can't blame him for using those kinds of rationalizations given the culture he is a part of (in which gender relations are different from, say, the U.S.).
So, yeah, sexism is bad, etc. But I wouldn't necessarily expect him (or any person) to be able to transcend his cultural values without formal academic examination, and maybe he hasn't had that education. I certainly don't condemn him for saying things that are acceptable in his own culture. He probably doesn't mean any harm, and he might not really understand how we "enlightened egalitarians" hear his statements.
And yes, this is an argument from cultural relativism, which I am not a proponent of in all cases, but this seems like a minor issue in the grand scheme of possible moral transgressions.
And if he did mean it, I can't blame him for using those kinds of rationalizations given the culture he is a part of (in which gender relations are different from, say, the U.S.).
So, yeah, sexism is bad, etc. But I wouldn't necessarily expect him (or any person) to be able to transcend his cultural values without formal academic examination, and maybe he hasn't had that education. I certainly don't condemn him for saying things that are acceptable in his own culture. He probably doesn't mean any harm, and he might not really understand how we "enlightened egalitarians" hear his statements.
And yes, this is an argument from cultural relativism, which I am not a proponent of in all cases, but this seems like a minor issue in the grand scheme of possible moral transgressions.
painful fart
Member
Came here to post this.Holepunch said:Yeah a girl gripping ledges and wearing pants? What kind of mad game would have-
...that.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Pretty sure I'd believe it less than I'd believe a boy could. I mean in both cases it'd be realistically unbelievable feats of physical strength, but precisely in those physically impossible scenarios, every bit helps to maintain the suspension of disbelief.EmCeeGramr said:
Also, as I and other posters keep repeating, this disbelief would be disturbed even more by the game turning away from the classic fairytale tropes that it draws its strength from.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Lord Error said:
Answer. The. Question. You dodged it. Would you actually be unable to suspend your disbelief if it was a girl?
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
etiolate said:
Some of us just might feel that the pre-sexual protagonist's gender doesn't really amount to much as a gender issue. Yeah, the creator's reasons were dumb, but he could have come up with equally dumb reasons for choosing a girl (in fact, I'd wager big money that lots of reasons given for using a female protagonist are dumb). Which is the right choice? He could have said the character IS a girl, and people would be like "OK, it's a girl with short hair."
So again, even if his reasons are dumb, there isn't anything to talk about regarding "the portrayal of women in video games" because the game is about a child with no gender characteristics. People who haven't read the interview and don't know who the fuck Ueda is will not have their views of gender impacted in any way. If what we care about is the responsible or sensitive or enlightened (or whatever) portrayal of women in games, this game isn't relevant to that concern.
painful fart said:
It's a good thing you didn't because you'd be yet another person submitting as evidence the physical abilities of a grown woman to try to make a point about the physical abilities of a child.
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