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[Dice]

I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the article. Conflating the article with where you can take it conversationally does not change the inherent quality of argument that it made.

As for the sex selling thing, again you are ignoring the difference between targeting and designing for wide appeal in regard to my statements. I'm not saying that targeting is definitely the very best way to sell a game for the purpose of making money out of all means available; I'm saying that when people do it, it is because they are focused on maximizing profit off the particular target demographic they had in mind. For example, exploding heads does not appeal to wide audiences, so you won't see it in Disney family films. However you will see it in something targeted to a particular interest group that receives it well, like The Expendables.

Do you see what I mean? I'm not trying to make a case for what is best, I'm merely explaining why developers do it when they do. You seem to be trying to make a case for a change of sales focus. Great. The author did not bother trying to make his criticism constructive in that manner. That is the point of what I am saying. You can infer and presume where to go next from what he complained about, but the fact is he neither substantiated his criticisms nor went anywhere useful with them.

For further clarity as to precisely what I mean:
-Your comment about other changes in Halo is a constructive example of what makes alternatives more beneficial. You brought that to the table, not the author.
-You say comparing to other poor elements, they are still better and "that says quite a lot" but what you mean is that it says a lot to you, because you infer it, because it is already in your mind; the article did not actually give it to you. Someone who disagrees and designs a game otherwise is clearly coming from somewhere else, and so instead of alluding to what can potentially be inferred yet was obviously missed, how about actually saying the "a lot" of things if addressing those game makers?
-You mention the goals of inclusion and helping to mitigate rampant sexism in the industry as backing reasons for making these changes. The author did not. Since he provided no social purpose, but merely expressed distaste of sexuality not presented in meaningful narrative, I think it comes off as partially some puritanical hangups. With the same information, you have interpreted him differently, presuming actual substance and purpose for the distinctions he declared acceptable without providing any reasoning for it. That's okay, you're free to give him that benefit of the doubt, but it is something you are bringing to him, not something actually in his article. And I would further argue that the fact he seems okay with a blatant admission of "because it's hot" as a worthy reason to include such elements in a game as making his potential feminist motives for his distaste of lame pseudo-intellectual excuses all the more ambiguous.

 

[Crossing Eden]

I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the article. Conflating the article with where you can take it conversationally does not change the inherent quality of argument that it made.

As for the sex selling thing, again you are ignoring the difference between targeting and designing for wide appeal in regard to my statements. I'm not saying that targeting is definitely the very best way to sell a game for the purpose of making money out of all means available; I'm saying that when people do it, it is because they are focused on maximizing profit off the particular target demographic they had in mind. For example, exploding heads does not appeal to wide audiences, so you won't see it in Disney family films. However you will see it in something targeted to a particular interest group that receives it well, like The Expendables.

Do you see what I mean? I'm not trying to make a case for what is best, I'm merely explaining why developers do it when they do. You seem to be trying to make a case for a change of sales focus. Great. The author did not bother trying to make his criticism constructive in that manner. That is the point of what I am saying. You can infer and presume where to go next from what he complained about, but the fact is he neither substantiated his criticisms nor went anywhere useful with them.

-When the market itself is heavily changing the people spending all the money funding multi-million dollar projects change to accommodate. Cartoons for instance used to be a lot less subtle about sexuality until children became the target audience. But this is the video games industry, pandering to the crowd that wants to see poor portrayals of women has pretty much run it's course, even more so when you consider that the more women than ever want to play games. So the financial incentive there is to make something much more appealing to the larger audience and not a niche.

-We already know why some developers still hold to their ways. And the reasons why are pretty..well abhorrent.

The article does substantiate it's claims btw.

Game developers have got to stop trying to find the “smart” way to exhibit nude female forms. I understand the desire. The last several years have seen a lot of discussion about how women are portrayed and game studios want to do better or at least appear to do better. However, they seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to flash some sizzle at a presumed straight male gamer audience while at the same time give feminists an art reason to dissect so it doesn’t feel boorish.

It’s not working. It’s never going to work.

The following paragraphs all use examples from the three games mentioned in the OP. Could it have been a better multi page article, yea, but it makes a good springboard for forum discussion.

 

[Palculator]

-It should be obvious that game characters don't have the choice to wear sensible clothing when they're designed by the opposite gender. That distinction should be incredibly obvious. Bringing up causes it to become a springboard for further discussion, which has happened in this thread.

The complaint was that it's so obvious it doesn't need to be brought up and the article fails in exploring the more interesting dynamic between art and author, bringing it up again isn't helping in this regard.

-Even the elements that have poor inclusion usually have more thought put into them than the design of a female character who's meant to titillate, that says quite a lot.

This is patently false, especially for one of the games in question. MGSV, and Metal Gear in general, is chock full of plot elements that have similarly "poor inclusion" as you assert Quiet's to be. MGSV alone has worm holes exist as a tool in 1984, a robot arm from a totally different franchise, a recruitment programme based on ballooning people into the sky, and a bunch of other things I could list if I bothered to continue (or branched out into other entries of the series.) Such elements have been essential part of its narrative style for 27 years and Quiet's inclusion is absolutely given more thought than other non-sexual elements. Furthermore, I fail to see a general trend of the opposite in other games that you claim there to be.

All of which ignores Dice's original complaint about lack of justification for why sexualisation is being singled out as such an element that can only be put into a "deep and meaningful" context.

And no, expecting more than a flimsy excuse doesn't make one puritanical, puritanism accusations generally have nothing to do with the argument, wanting inclusion and more respectable female protagonists, which makes gaming more inclusive overall AND helps when it comes to putting a stop to the rampant sexism in this industry, doesn't make one a puritan.

These arguments contradict each other. You're trying to say yours is not a puritanical attitude, yet you call characters being sexy for sexiness' sake not "respectable" and only reinforce Dice's impression that you would only allow sexiness in a "deep and meaningful" context.

-We already know why some developers still hold to their ways. And the reasons why are pretty..well abhorrent.

More unsubstantiated judgement you just consider to be objective and self-evident without actually providing any convincing arguments. Which, again, ignores the post you were responding to:

If you are judging pointless things, judge pointless things. If you are trying to explain why it is socially unacceptable or unethical to include certain things, actually make a case for it, don't just rely on it being self-evident when it clearly wasn't to them while they made the game. If you think it is especially stupid compared to all the other stupid stuff in games--enough to tell them they really need to change it--you should make your case for what exactly makes it stupid aside from just you thinking it is stupid, because they know damn well that some people don't like it when they do it, so they need to be provided with more reasoning. If you can't do any of this, and judge the mere appearance of it without raising actual substantiated criticism, and yet say it'd all be okay if they found some narrative way to justify it in a way acceptable to you, it does indeed make me think you're a bit puritanical and you need all displayed sexuality to be deeply meaningful or relational in some way. That is an option that works for a lot of people, but if you want to push others to follow that option when they have other inclinations, you should probably provide good reasoning, not just that it seems more appropriate to you and they should follow your idea of what is appropriate for their creation rather than their own inclination.

Dice made good points, I'd like to see them actually addressed by people opposing them.

 

[Dice]

-When the market itself is heavily changing the people spending all the money funding multi-million dollar projects change to accommodate. Cartoons for instance used to be a lot less subtle about sexuality until children became the target audience. But this is the video games industry, pandering to the crowd that wants to see poor portrayals of women has pretty much run it's course, even more so when you consider that the more women than ever want to play games. So the financial incentive there is to make something much more appealing to the larger audience and not a niche.

Yes, I do think we'll continue to see larger projects learning to appeal to wider audiences and become more inclusive. We'll also see some studios stick to what they do and not give a single fuck what naysayers are saying. We'll have Spielbergs and we'll have Tarantinos. My whole point is in view of this fact, and the fact we have seen it in every other medium of art and entertainment. To some extent, we'll have to be real with the fact the world won't be perfectly what we want it to be. This is important because needing 8 billion people to be your idea of acceptable is just striving to lose your mind.

However, insofar as we do criticize the art that others make, we need to substantiate our arguments, and it is more important the more publicly we make our criticisms. That is my issue with this article. I'm not saying there aren't a million arguments you can make against a main female character of a massively popular franchise mostly being how she is for nothing but shallow titillation. I'm saying that if you have those reasons in mind, they should be brought to the table, not merely presumed upon the person in some kind of social guilt trip that clearly only you are in on since they made the game the way that they did.

The reasons for doing this are more than just being proper in your argumentation. When we slack off on it, and merely pressure others who aren't on board with our vague disapproval, and it becomes a pattern and we start doing things because of social pressure rather than higher reasoning, we build the foundations of thoughtless moralism and reactionary moral panic. In that way it comes around and bites you in the ass with an environment anti-art, anti-thought, and anti-individual. Controls submitted to for sake of inclusiveness should thus always be on the basis of provided quality reasoning.

Edit: Just for fun, let's look a little more closely at the hypothetical model for such reasoning I provided earlier.

The relationship of portrayals to real life as art interacts with culture.
So here we have the realization of the basic elements in play. We have these artistic expressions which are representative of women. They are displaying certain characteristics which seem to endear some and offend others. The artist is the one who made her design the way that it is. Is the artist then responsible for the feelings people have about his art? Is the effect of the art something he is doing to them indirectly, or is it something they do to themselves? Is it merely an automatic occurrence that happens when people experience art? With human portrayals in particular, do these merely reflect the mind, or do they turn the mind? Do our responses reflect the art, or is the art reflecting the desire?

The basis of culpability upon the artist and responsibility to certain standards.
If we find that art affects us, whether it be something kind of done to us, something we do to ourselves, or something that just happens when interacting with art, does this mean the artist bears responsibility for that impact? Are there moral and ethical reasons why he should be mindful of what his creations contribute to occurring, if they are indeed proven to contribute? Or rather, should his rights to free expression override this, and each individual is responsible for upholding good conscience through the experience of his art?

The particular standards one views as established and how they are established.
If we establish that he is indeed culpable, and should thus submit his expression to certain standards, what should those standards be? Who gets to decide? Why those standards over others? Are the standards only applicable within certain contexts, like the flagship games of the industry? Would niche titles have license to be more blasé, extreme, experimental? Whatever process we use for selection of standards and contexts of application, are we certain they will not come back around and restrict something we disagree about restricting, just as he disagreed about the restriction we wanted to put on him? Like, should we let sensitive religious persons concern over blasphemy control our games to be more "inclusive" of them with their use of religious icons and themes just as women more sensitive to sexualized characterization would want changes for female attire? Are we rather looking for overall industry ratios of representation rather than control of each individual project? If so, who gets to be the exception, and who has to play to the widest crowd? Why? A lot of caution is needed here.

Why a moral/consistency/quality failure in one area is more or less important to correct than in other areas.
Clearly there are many ways a game can fall short of perfection, but there is also the reality we play them to kick back and entertain ourselves. It may always be that some parts just don't make sense, and don't need to, and are there just for fun or are just dumb because it doesn't really matter how they come about or in what form. So if that can be, and yet we find ourselves wanting to push for a concerted conformity on one issue over others, what is our basis for that?

Okay, so in these we see the nature of making an actual argument for particular character designs over others. I feel like while a lot of the first section is being danced around, nothing is really actively engaging with it on a philosophical level, which is where it really has to happen. Mere feelings and offenses do not construct a functional ethos to judge others by or instruct them to anything conscious of itself and others. Similarly, I see points being made that are taking from what would be answers in the last section; anecdotal evidences of why it is beneficial to seek more sexually neutral designs and attempt being more inclusive. These are nice, sure, but they are at the end for picking particular form of change; they have little to do with being the basis of change.

I guess I see these anti-sexy-girl arguments and while I can understand where they are coming from, they seem to have a ring to them that resonates at a similar frequency as Stalin-like control over the arts. Sure, good taste they may champion, thoughtfulness and depth of meaning they may prize, but the methodology being employed to presume right of influence over the creations of someone else is disconcerting. Yes, some of such flaws can come from being the minority speaking against frequent ugly manifestations, but if change ends up being a mere matter of a swing of power, a more reasonable world is not what it is establishing, but only a more controlled world unto one's own personal convictions.

 

[Humdinger]

Agree. The rationalizations seem pretty silly. Trying to justify = defensive. Either do it without being defensive about it, or don't do it at all.

 

[Vilix]

There's no smart reason why any hot naked woman should be in any media. But they are. And thank heavens for that.

 

[RootCause]

Bwah! Scalp breathers. 😡

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

Agree. The rationalizations seem pretty silly. Trying to justify = defensive. Either do it without being defensive about it, or don't do it at all.

An example of justification without being "defensive" please?

 

[NoKisum]

I take it this was the criticism Tecmo was referring to in regards to not bringing DOAX3 to the west.

 

[contologics]

It's like it's wrong to like naked women in video games now, lol. There doesn't need to be a reason and if a producer of such material says that's their reason then respect it! Thank God for naked women and plant naked ladies.

 

[Toxi]

Spoiler

Quiet's cool.

Not coincidentally, the Sorceress is the best of those three designs and the one with the most distinct and cohesive look.

 

[vasametropolis]

There's no smart reason why any hot naked woman should be in any media. But they are. And thank heavens for that.

Thank you for stating what everyone writing these articles should already know. If Martin Scorsese wants to put a hoard of tits in his movie, let him. The audience will decide. It's the exact same in a game and nobody has to apologize for anything. Games have grown up and can do whatever the player is willing to accept.

 

[neogaffer1]

Not coincidentally, the Sorceress is the best of those three designs and the one with the most distinct and cohesive look.

i'd say the blue woman is more distinct than the one wearing a witch costume.

 

[TheYanger]

oh my, the explanations for Quiet and Cortana are hilarious. It's like the "but she's really a 1000 year old dragon" argument for the nakedness of a character

I'll let the Cortana thing slide though just cause she's a hologram of an AI and doesn't need to care about decency. It's still fanservice, no question about that, but a little nakedness is fine. The modestly-clothed-in-the-right-places succubus trope is already annoying me quite a bit (they are literally sex demons, damnit), so I'd say that instead of banning nudity outright the developers should strive for equal presentation in games. Plus, naked men always look funny

The funny thing with Cortana...

Spoiler

You can tell who hasnt' ACTUALLY played Halo 5, since it's addressed in that campaign. She now has clothes and said it was time for a change when Chief asked why she looked different. This is Cortana now

I know it's come up in this thread before but it really does make that part of the argument a bit silly sounding now.

 

[Palculator]

Not coincidentally, the Sorceress is the best of those three designs and the one with the most distinct and cohesive look.

How is this "not coincidentally"? Do you mean there's a general correlation between an author's openness about an affinity for sexy women to the relative quality and "distinctness" (whatever that means exactly in this context, all of them are very distinct from other people in their respective games) of their designs? Not trying to have a go at either Senran Kagura or Onechanbara because I like both, but I think their designs are kind of lacklustre compared to some of those of authors not wearing their cards on their sleeves as openly as the Senran Kagura director is.

 

[WrenchNinja]

We were done with the breathing until you brought it up again. We were done with it for quite a while. Reason I keep arguing about this is because the notion that it's internally inconsistent (or less consistent than your regular Metal Gear plot, anyway) is because that's just plain false. Acknowledging that Shinkawa drew her that way because he likes hot chicks has little to do with its internal consistency, that's external. Both are reasons I can respect at the same time, because one just fleshes out the lore, the other the creative process behind the game. If you want to call her design pandering and sexist (which is presumably the bigger problem for you) go ahead, but don't base it on wrong assessments about the lore. I'd probably say the that discussion detracts from the more important issue, in this case.

No real point in trying to bicker further with you because we'd both just get into more nitpicky details as we progress, while you get basic facts wrong about how much skin she exposes in what scenes or presume objective knowledge about the proper modus operandi for soldiers breathing through their skin.

Except for the part where it's not internally consistent. You're right though, there is no point in continuing this when it's clear as day with all the excuses you're going to keep making for it that nothing about it will ever make sense.