I'm simply arguing that violence in videogames causing/giving rise to/influencing violence in real life is just as credible as sexism in videogames causing/giving rise to/influencing sexism in real life (which is a point that has been argued).
That has been the point I've been arguing ever since I've got into this thread.
Yes, and it's a point that never needed to be made, because this isn't
about sexism in games creating sexism in real life. I realize you were responding to someone who was steering the conversation in that direction, and it's more on them. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm jumping down your throat.
There is no constructive argument about whether or not the games, due to their gameplay and mechanics, encourage behaviors: they are both games about killing things nonstop, they are both games that heap rewards on the players for doing so, and neither one of them are games where sex or sexism are actually factors in the actual gameplay (as opposed to, say, some of David Cage's games). The message that the
gameplay Heroes of the Storm sends isn't what's in question.
The question is purely what message the
character designs send. There are legitimate criticisms to be had regarding the male character designs in games, CoD and otherwise: they are by and large Caucasian and trend toward hetero-normative in the extreme, and there's a healthy argument to be had in whether or not they send players poor messages with regards to things like the ethnic distribution of the armed forces (America's army is actually a "minority-majority" force, despite depictions of most characters in FPS games being white), hyper-masculine behavior being unnecessarily linked with professionalism or prowess, etc.
The
character designs in CoD do not, however, encourage violence. They are (mostly) clean-shaven, nebulously 20-to-30 year old men in military uniforms. The
character designs aren't giving you killstreaks or rewarding you with slow-motion chase cams on knife throws, that's the
gameplay. The problem the journalist had with HotS is not that the gameplay is somehow encouraging or contributing to real-world sexism, it was that the character designs in MOBA games tend to send the message that only attractive, scantily-clad women can be heroic, much in the same way that many FPS games seem to think only attractive, clean-cut 20-something white guys can save the world.
It's a completely different axis of consideration when compared to the "video games influence real world behavior" problem.