Banjo Tango
Member
We're explicitly discussing his rationale, though. I don't think anyone is saying the game is inherently sexist.hey_it's_that_dog said:
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Fumita Ueda is a sexist or: Why Females Don't Wear Pants or have grip strength
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BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Yeah and....... "TIPPING?!!?".... for some reason (ie: thread officially ruined).TheShampion said:
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
It would make it worse because girls do have less upper body strength than boys in real life, and people know that intrinsically from their life experiences (which is what matters for the whole suspension of disbelief) even when they're not aware of statistics that confirm it. Sure, there are exceptions, but to make the exception more believable it would help to have it be worked into the story, which would mean spending time on something where it makes no sense to spend time on, unless it's actually important that the character is a girl.EmCeeGramr said:
No, clearly he didn't say it outright, but it doesn't take a big leap of logic to see why it would make sense for a female character to wear a skirt in the kind of fairytale inspired world his games are inhabiting.
etiolate said:
Having females as rescue objects is hardly something Ueda started. Young men are going to be dreaming about that kind of thing for a long time in the future no matter how desperately people try to break that habit. Also I just want to say I would have been perfectly fine with a female character for tlg, though that would have just caused more controversies.
SuperAngelo64
Banned
Hats off to Japan for not being up their own ass in political correctness.
Hadn't seen that one.Aeana said:
I don't see that as sexist so much as a terrible reasoning. By the same logic a female composer would be more ideal for a game targeted to women. Both are guilty of the same faulty logic but I don't see either as sexist.
It's weird though. Would have liked him to elaborate on both of these comments.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Lord Error said:
Tell me, how angry did you get at Mirror's Edge for not having a male protagonist? Did you lament how you simply couldn't believe that a female was doing these things?
(Of course not, that was before Ueda made a comment on female upper body strength so you had nothing to attack nor defend on the subject until a couple hours ago.)
Lord Error said:
He didn't just not say those "outright," he didn't imply those at all. It's an invention on your part, and until he actually says something to the contrary making such excuses is a bunch of meaningless noise.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
GG-Duo said:
Yeah, it's not so much sexism as a strange lay-theory of the relations between gender, music composition, and music enjoyment.
Banjo Tango
Member
By this logic, shouldn't the protagonist be an adult body-builder?Lord Error said:
Here's the explanation needed: "This is a girl who has enough 'grip-strentgh(tm)' to hold on to a flying bird-dog. She's pretty much your average young girl."Lord Error said:
edit - me format pretty
Not to dwell too much on the commercial side of things, but Mirror's Edge is probably not the most shining example of games featuring female leads, considering it literally did 1/3 of what EA expected out of it.
Arguable how much (if any) was down to the choice of casting Faith as the protagonist, but nevertheless it hasn't exactly inspired confidence, to be blunt.
Arguable how much (if any) was down to the choice of casting Faith as the protagonist, but nevertheless it hasn't exactly inspired confidence, to be blunt.
hukasmokincaterpillar
Member
Didn't Ueda say he dumped a female composer for SotC because he wanted a more masculine sound, or something to that effect?
Gender obviously influences any creative portrayal in a variety of aspects, down to language itself. Its always considered. I could see having a beef with how Ueda considers it, but the final product speaks for itself. There's no hidden meanings. He's a director, its a fucking direction.
Why be candid at all at this point...
Gender obviously influences any creative portrayal in a variety of aspects, down to language itself. Its always considered. I could see having a beef with how Ueda considers it, but the final product speaks for itself. There's no hidden meanings. He's a director, its a fucking direction.
Why be candid at all at this point...
EmCeeGramr
Member
Saying that someone has a sexist mentality or sexist thoughts, whether malicious or simply an unfortunate product of sexist cultural teachings, isn't calling someone a misogynist chauvinist pig.hauton said:
This is like when something racially insensitive or clearly based on old racist ideas comes up, and people act like only the KKK or the Nazis can be classified as "racist" so anything lesser can't be truly racist.
SuperAngelo64 said:
Yeah man, I'm glad that the belittlement, humiliation, and marginalization of minority or historically oppressed groups is still alive and well.
God I hate it when people talk about the very idea of political correctness as being some evil plague infringing on their god-given right to insult and ostracize
people who are different than them.
ShockingAlberto
Member
heyDennisK4 said:
I hated Kojima yesterday
Ploid 3.0
Member
For the record I'm not particularly a Udea fan, I even took a while to remember his name, not sure if it's spelled right. I only owned ICO from Electronic Boutique for $20 used as a impulse buy. It was a 3 hour game that people were mixed on. I only played SOTC's demo, and am not going to be anticipating SOTC HD. I think for myself.
If you laugh at this you are part of the problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCXALRc88Ag
If you laugh at this you are part of the problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCXALRc88Ag
that gamasutra composer quote is incredible. such a bafflingly stupid thing to say. the reasoning for the character being male is silly and insulting too, of course. disappointing from ueda, but i guess him making great games shouldn't make me assume anything about his politics or ethics.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Empty said:
If he sincerely believes that a composer's gender influences their compositions and their appeal to men and women, is it really bafflingly stupid? What if there's some truth to it? What if it's more true in Japan than elsewhere? It's an empirical question, and I doubt any of us have data on it.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Of course I wasn't. It's all in the context. Characters like Faith or Lara make sense to have their skills and strength at that level by their character design and backstory, whereas the character who would for example, be a different version of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, would be much less so. Now of course, they wouldn't have to have the character like that, but it's a convention they were following in the previous two games, and this one doesn't seem to take place in a world any different from that.EmCeeGramr said:
Oh good, you brought up the difference between simple "sexism" and outright "misogyny" - I was gonna until I realized I was probably going to get torn to shreds for playing semantics/splitting hairs/what have you.EmCeeGramr said:
Ultimately, I think this comes down to the chicken-and-egg problem surrounding females and mainstream videogames:
How can one develop games that appeal to females, if there's no female audience to appeal to?
How can one nurture a female audience, if there's no games that appeal to females?
Oft-discussed and really for another topic, but highly relevant to what Ueda is saying ITT.
To be honest, I'm trying to think of any games where females really break the mold - no Princess Peace damsel in distress, no Lara Croft TnA...Ploid 3.0 said:
Queen of Queens?
Banjo Tango
Member
So the reason you have trouble accepting a female protagonist is because Ueda has to-date portrayed women (aside from the Queen) as helpless?Lord Error said:
hey_it's_that_dog said:
I think that a sexist designer could create something non-sexist. Unfortunately, there have already been questions of sexism in his games and this lends credence to those accusations. I can look at the games without considering the author and judge them on their own merits, which is fine.
The issue here isn't whether or not the games are sexist on their own, but how this looks to people when we're talking about an industry with a huge problem in how it handles gender. If genders are being chosen based on these ideas then it is adding to a grander problem, which is the lack of normal people in games who happen to be female in gender. There are sexist portrayals of males and females, but there are less sexualized males or characters who happen to be male and this gender identity is not their defining mark. We do not have that for female characters, give or take two or three examples. One of the main reasons is the lack of female developers and the sparse space of friendliness and openness to such an idea. If composers are not being hired because people think this need's a "man's touch" and characterization choices are made along the same problematic lines then there is not the blunt, singular sexist depiction you are looking for, but a cohesive obtrusion towards any reality existing outside the "boys club" mentality that plagues gaming.
hukasmokincaterpillar
Member
EmCeeGramr said:
Good gravy, in what way will TLG do any of the above to anything? Folks are essentially upset about what makes sense in the fictional world of some dude's creative imagination. Authorial control is a bitch huh?
Ploid 3.0
Member
Lord Error said:
If ICO was about a mom protecting her baby boy (wait is it wrong for him to be a small boy instead of being tall like Yorda?). Ok ICO the story of a short girl protecting a blind tall man (crap why did I handicap him). The dude isn't blind then, he just doesn't know his way around the castle. Turns out he can pick locks that the girl can't, and there are ghosts after the dude because he don't belong in the magical castle. Man that still sounds a bit sexist because this guy can pick locks, girls can pick locks too.
cuyahoga said:
Do you watch movies, listen to talk radio, and music?
buy teh haloz
Banned
I like how the wording of this post subtlety suggests that he already hits his wife.AngelComa said:
Lord Error said:
ًWhoever designed Lara is a sexist. He inspired people to say stuff like this:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8HiuOWMTp8#t=01m13s
It was funny, even if it sounded fake. There is no way in hell someone thinks that way.
Banjo Tango
Member
What Ueda is saying is nonsense, not sure how this is highly relevant. If he said "We chose a boy because our target audience is male," that would not have sparked this discussion.hauton said:
As for how to make games that appeal to women?
1) Make good games - good games appeal to female gamers today
2) You don't need to be sexist to appeal to male gamers, so don't make them sexist. Also, apply the same diversity you have for male roles to female roles.
You see male gamers complaining about the same tropes being rolled out for male characters over and over... but compare that to what is offered for female characters.
hey_it's_that_dog said:
he doesn't have data on it either then, he's using his pre-existing sexist gender stereotypes to completely rule out a woman composing the game rather than judging it on the suitability of their compositions. i find it bafflingly stupid that he would a) do that and b) admit it in a public interview.
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