You certainly have a point, but I suppose I'm just pretty sick of being called a misogynist by faceless internet goons that don't even know me.
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RPS ambushes Blizzard director for objectification of women in Heroes of the Storm
- Thread starter usea
- Start date
You certainly have a point, but I suppose I'm just pretty sick of being called a misogynist by faceless internet goons that don't even know me.
I couldn't disagree more. When someone says the time is running low you don't go off like that guy did, specially when you are looking for the answers he was.
P.S. that study is shit. And you know the sample size is small when the study itself lists - Some limitations they listed are the lack of statistical power (i.e. not enough participants)
... Dustin Browder is the lead designer of Heroes of the Storm (as well as the StarCraft II trilogy).
LOL at thinking he's just some "PR guy".
Moral Panic
Member
You wanna elaborate?
Welcome to the internet. Words like misogyny, racist, sexist, etc. have virtually no meaning any more and are just catch all terms for "I don't like this, so I'm going to give it the worst label I can think of" and "if you disagree with me you're a horrible person". Take solace in the fact that anyone who calls you any of these things based on a forum post or two probably isn't worth having a discussion with in the first place and can be easily written off.
So who is supposed to be MLK? PreMecca Malcom Xs are everywhere. Nah, Juan Williams. Nah, with that much self insertion, Nathan is best approximated by Tyra Banks.
Nathan's self-insertion detracted from the article and his timing (waiting until pr motioned that time was running out to mention alt Nova) was deplorable.
Moral Panic
Member
If you say racists things on a forum, I'm gonna call you a racist. If you say sexist things on a forum, I'm gonna call you sexist. You'll also probably find yourself off this forum so no one has to deal with filth, so you won't have to worry about having a discussion with us.
Rape by its definition is an act of violence wherein sex typically also occurs and it's explained in the article why this is the case.
Wow is about my only response to this. http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/01/prostitution-where-sexism-and-racism.html
Yes; people want to be depicted humanely. Don't know why this seems to be a foreign concept.
And this is changing the subject away from the conflicting representations and arguing that because she's "not human," despite having distinctly human characteristics, that it's ok to treat the character however the character creators want.
Except he's not just talking about this, he's talking about the state of character representation generally as being poor. Which extends outside of sexism itself and into a larger institutional problem of not making interesting characters as a general rule for videogames.
Representation and portrayal are interwoven and they don't exist in a vacuum. One informs the other naturally.
You do also realize that heroic character types almost typify sexism, given that they are literally driven back thousands of years into a male-dominated mythology that is in its very creation sexist and that by continuing those representations it seeks to reinforce male and female tropes while also asserting male dominance, right? It misses the point of design entirely because it is lazy. I state that the design is lazy because it contracts the possibility space of a character. A character cannot escape those representations and it's extraordinarily difficult for them to escape once they've been thrust upon them. They spend more time attempting to break out of their artificially imposed shell than actually being characters in their own right.
http://fangirlblog.com/2012/04/the-heroines-journey-how-campbells-model-doesnt-fit/
If I must. Have you linked it without reading it?
They had 3 groups. People who didn't play anything, people who played a sexualized lara croft and people who played an unsexualized lara.
First, they don't disclose how they selected their participants, their age, or if they regularly game or not.
Second, they didn't take any steps to hide the purpose of their study. They told the participants that their play time wouldn't be recorded and wouldn't matter. And both groups that actually played something played 2 different levels, instead of playing the same one.
Third, while they randomized the groups, they had no way or didn't try to measure the participants self esteem before hand.
Forth, they used Lara Croft a pretty well known video game character even to people who don't play video games.
Fifth and to your earlier point. The whole big thing they got was the women who played the sexualized lara croft had lower self esteem afterwards. The only results they have listed are the sexualized vs the people who played nothing. And they did this head to head based on total score of the whole questionnaire and not specific questions.
Honestly the biggest thing to come out of this study is the fact that - Men held unfavourable attitudes towards women in terms of physical capabilities, regardless of group condition (no-game, sexy or not).
Anyway I could keep going, but this is a little study and would need a lot of work to really publish solid numbers.
That's more or less exactly what I was going to say in response. His position seems to be if the media is not a PR branch for publishers then the media cannot exist.
You'll find lots of feminists who are against prostitution but also a whole bunch who are pro-prostitution. The issue isn't as clear as you might think.
I'm also not sure why you choose to post an article that connects the whole issue with racism
TheContact
Member
I love Browder's responses. Perfect.
Cartoon games being overly sexualized are nothing compared to everything you see on cable TV, including morning "family" shows
Cartoon games being overly sexualized are nothing compared to everything you see on cable TV, including morning "family" shows
Amazingly enough I see people who get called racist, sexist, etc. on this forum all the time and they aren't getting banned. You think it's because the mods allow that shit or because the people calling them those names are morons?
Of course there are people who overtly do these things, and yes they get gone quickly, but the overwhelming amount of people that get labeled as such aren't, which is why we are still around.
I was going to make this same point, I've been called a misogynist and a bigot on GAF before, but the only thing I've ever been banned for was thread whining.
I would like to think that it's because the accusations weren't legitimate.
Moral Panic
Member
Theres a difference between a "shit study" and one that isn't conclusive. They chose undergraduate students and explained why (although I think that it is simply because they are easily available). They randomly assigned people to each group, so the difference between the two groups is what matters right? In any case my point was to refute the idea that there is no evidence that this stuff matters in real life.
The problem is that there is no real evidence if you cannot determine status before playing the game, correlation between playing the game and later actionsetc.
This is more inconclusive than the various 'videogames make people more violent' studies.
Wolves Evolve
Member
I don't much like the character designs and think they are sexist garbage, but I would have asked the questions differently to get a more useful response out of Browder, knowing the PR person would swoop in. I think he wanted a cheap shot and he could have teased out the bigger problem, which is that the art in the game is shithouse all around, its misogynist lazy women characters being one byproduct.
I would have gone with something like: "Something that surprises us about Heroes of the Storm is that the character design and artwork is quite old fashioned and not really up to Blizzard's usual finish - especially in regard to cheap sexualised art of women characters - is it a conscious decision not to compete on the character design front, or simply not a focus of the company anymore?"
I would have gone with something like: "Something that surprises us about Heroes of the Storm is that the character design and artwork is quite old fashioned and not really up to Blizzard's usual finish - especially in regard to cheap sexualised art of women characters - is it a conscious decision not to compete on the character design front, or simply not a focus of the company anymore?"
Race is an integral part to a great deal of prostitution, given that prostitution is oftentimes a marginalizing aspect of various cultures (and regardless of what people think, sex as a general construct is marginalizing given the myth of male dominance in sexual situations to begin with). I'm aware of the pro-prostitution stance, but the problem with prostitution and the pro-prostitution stance is that it only rarely calls for legal reforms which encourage prostitution as a respectable way to live rather than a way to live forced upon those who are prostitutes or on a culture at large (when it is, and has been, a normal part of society for a time dating back millennia, though the problems with it now are as old as its origins, largely marginalizing women as objects which men have sex with for a price, rather than two human beings engaging in a natural act). The other problem of course is the general cultural stance that anyone who has sex for money is somehow subhuman, which is a falsehood committed by the people who engage prostitutes, not the prostitutes themselves. It is this dichotomy in thought that problematizes prostitution and oftentimes works its way into slave and sex trades around the world. Which are, unsurprisingly, often connected with prostitution given that these cultural views are widely held.
Dougstyles
Banned
Hasn't it been shown that playing video games has a negative impact on the self-esteem of both genders? I thought someone posted a study about that back during the whole Dragon's Crown nonsense.
staticneuron
Member
No in the article they understand what robbery is but doesn't explain how they obfuscate the term to meaning rape.
Rape has nothing to do with money being exchanged. It is the silliest thing I have ever heard of.
Rape is specifically about the intercourse and whether it was consensual or not. The robbery aspect is specifically about the money.
Whoo boy, already I see Radical Pro Feminist, in the URL. This is going to be fun.
Alright this is worse than I thought. Do you understand the central conceit of the link that you posted? That link is about exploitation and not prostitution itself.
Prostitution is one of the oldest professions ever and there are both male and female prostitutes. Not all the situations in which the profession arises may be even keel. There are incidents of trafficking, exploitation and slavery that is tied to some prostitution rings but that doesn't mean that ALL prostitution is an example of that. Prostitution by itself isn't sexist.
Nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with trying to identify with a female nazi killing vampire and then getting upset that she doesn't create a reasonable role model for a rational modern day human female.
And why is it not?
Only in one direction. One has to be represented first to be portrayed in any manner. And if a character isn't representative of anything that can be considered realistic then any assumptions or associations hoisted on portrayal of that fictional character will be equally flawed.
Not at all. The heroic type design is an artistic guideline on the physical body alone. There is no representation of personality, ability or even dominance that can be captured in the physical form alone. As a matter of fact if you were to make an assumption about the gender role of a female/male alone simply by looking at their bodies, that would infact make you as an individual, sexist.
Kadayi
Banned
This isn't a longitudinal study, though. It's an attempt to measure short term effects of exposure to sexualized stimuli on attitudes, and does not address the influence of such stimuli over long time periods.
It's not really controversial that, say, exposure to violent stimuli increase short-term aggression, but that this aggression fades rapidly after exposure ceases, and we've been aware of this for quite a while and we've by and large come to the reasonable conclusion that this doesn't mean that media is a causative agent of violence. What the debate about the potential malefic effects of media exposure fundamentally centers around is whether or not media can have a measurable impact on the incidence of transgressive behavior when said behavior is not temporally proximate to the time of exposure, and this study makes absolutely no attempt to address this.
Moral Panic
Member
You look at the difference between the groups, the women in the group that played the sexualised version had lower self-efficacy than the group that didn't. Groups are randomly assigned, no reason for one group to be statistically different from another. There is real evidence.
Hm? That's basically the only pro-prostitution stance I can really find. Nobody is in favor of human trafficking or stuff like that. People are hoping that legalization would reduce all those negative aspects.
And I wouldn't even say that it's necessarily objectifying. If the women is literally sold to you by some guy,then yes, but when it's a free sex worker offering a service? I don't see much difference between someone offering a massage and someone offering a handjob.
Moral Panic
Member
Doesn't really change anything unless you are saying that lowering women's self-efficacy is OK as long as it's only short term. RPS states so as well:
How they ran the study is why it is a shit study. These numbers and results they give are not good evidence. I'm sorry, I'm not even arguing that this stuff doesn't matter, but this study is not good.
Liquid Helium
Member
I'm glad RPS is confronting developers like this, and I think the reaction of the guy is super interesting. It seems like women are portrayed in games like they are because it's just not an issue on the developer's mind to really think or care about and so they just keep the status quo, at least that's the impression I get from the interview. It seems like the best way to improve the portrayal of women in games then would to do what is currently happening, confronting developers about it, talking about it a lot, making it an issue that developers can't just ignore and are forced to think about.
What I mean when I say a respectable way to live is that the reforms need to be of a cultural and not just legal significance. By legalizing prostitution the greater problems of the cultural impact of prostitution is not reduced. You still have to tackle a culturally male-dominated world and tell them that while prostitution is now legal, they must also culturally respect the choice women make. This is simply something that will not occur by mere legalization. While I support the legalization of prostitution, I am deeply worried about how men would then treat the occupation. Which is to say that legal does not make it safe, and that generally prostitution gives men the illusion that whatever it is they do to the prostitute is acceptable. Is "legal."
I can say that I don't support prostitution morally, but I definitely support it legally. It is an occupation that I can respect if it is by choice and not by force (which it currently often is).
What do you mean by this? The latin root of rape is to "conquer or seize by force," its sexual terminology emerged later (the latin root also implies objectification, as in what is being raped is treated as property, i.e. not human). Rape is not just about sexual violation.
This is how I read the article too. Regardless of RPS' tactfulness, it's easy to see from this exchange how unaware Browder is concerning the visual direction of women in Blizzard's games. It's like so far from his mind that I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first time he's confronted the issue. Super sexy action girls is, apparently, his default mode of thought.
I think the developers know exactly what they're doing when they design these characters. They just don't expect to be asked questions about it in a vast sea of similar gender portrayals in other games.
Thing is, threads like this (and associated ones that pop up every week) are proof enough that many people aren't even ready to discuss this, let alone acknowledge that there is an issue (even if it doesn't bother them personally).
Aside from the very vague 'some people may be influenced by video game content', which is something that is obvious, no.
Not really.
As I said, as much evidence as the ' violence' studies.
Even the people who made the study can't claim it proves anything. Their own words:
Which means little to nothing. If they had overwhelming evidence or proof they'd say as much.
I recommend everyone, on all sides of this debate, read:
http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/
Hilarious and enlightening.
http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/
Hilarious and enlightening.
staticneuron
Member
This all depends on where you live and reside. I reside in America. There are some areas that allow prostitution but whether or not it will be culturally accepted is more tied with the moral and religious beliefs of the nation as a whole. I doubt it will ever be culturally accepted as the norm any time soon.
And also Rape, has a very specific dictionary and legal meaning here. So probably that is where we come at a differing points of view.
Characters like Spiderman and Nightwing have made just as suggestive poses in skintight costumes.
Won't even suggest dressing all women like Namor.
I want to be clear that I'm not implicitly arguing for the validity of the study's conclusions. But science works by slowly assembling evidence across many different studies, each of which have their own weaknesses. It is not reasonable to expect a single study to be a flawless masterpiece of internet-debate-ending "proof".
All I'm saying is that that study reports results regarding short-term influence of sexualized stimuli that are consistent with the findings of studies regarding short-term influence of violent stimuli.
My interest in engaging in a discussion of whether these studies mean that such stimuli are "OK" in some nebulous sense is nil.
This is my general feeling about the discussion as well. I feel like we're still in the denial stage of this discussion as opposed to the state where most everyone is willing to admit that there is a problem and is willing to start a discourse about what can be done to work towards resolving the issue.
shanshan310
Member
Nice to see journalists asking these kinds of tough questions to higher ups.
Indeed.
Like I said before, when people try to sweep the issue under the rug by claiming:
a) It's good business! Why wouldn't they?
or
b) Romance novels objectify men!
they miss the point entirely. These discussions never go well because they get buried in a sea of strawmen, imaginary conflicts, and other deflections - anything to take the focus away from the actual issue at hand.
One of the hardest activities for most of humanity is to articulate themselves well when being ambushed with loaded questions from a interviewer with a clear agenda. Your supposition could very well be correct, but it can equally likely that the interviewee is not skilled in such situations. Considering he is a game developer and not part of the PR, being flabbergasted isn't really indicative of guilt as you see it.
This is a complex topic so making insane accusations and conclusions like Cyrano should be avoided. (Cyrano...inane blog posts founded on persecution complexes doesn't make your arguments stronger...it's just reducing your argument to the level of a Fox News pundit discussing a secular Christmas or the ACA.)
Dabookerman
Member
Whenever this comes up, my argument is always the same.. An artist has the right to design and create whatever creation he or she wishes to create. That is their right as an artist. The audience will decide on whether they like it or not.
Ok, that's a sensible point of view. But it's kind of weird that you chose to respond with "Wow is about my only response to this." when someone said that he doesn't think that prostitution is inherently sexist
I'd like to make a general point about this whole debacle, which is confusion over matters of scale.
1) It is not wrong for any one person to want to make a sexualized female character, as long as they are aware of what they're doing and the alternatives that exist.
2) The problem arises, however, when everyone is doing the same thing, to the detriment of both the creators and the audience. It's a feedback loop, where the objectification creates a norm that is adopted by the audience. The norm shows up on market research, which influences more creators to use the same methods of objectification. Alternatively, you can think of it like this. These same creators themselves were once audience and are now perpetuating the same norm that existed when they were in a consumer's role. See: Comics -> Browder
3) Change, no matter how wide scale, has to start with the individual. You might think it's unfair that RPS "ambushed" Browder, but who is a good target to "ambush"? Is anyone? Should we just not confront this issue at all and let time solve it? No, I don't think so. Eventually, someone has to take the initiative if change is going to come in a timely manner. And, to be honest, I think Browder is a much better target than most other developers, because of his veterancy and pull within Blizzard, which produces so much of the gaming content that falls into the categories of "objectifying" or "sexist". It's sad to see how uncomfortable he was with this line of questioning, however, and I'll doubt he'll change his mind about it in the long run.
I'm not really trying to villify Browder although I can see how I might've come off that way. I was thinking more about how Browder is potentially representative of a lot of senior game developers (and a lot of gamers at that), people who are ultimately products of their environment and are not so much "bad" as they are unaware of the potential damage being caused by what they think is just harmless fun. HIs comments about how "We're not running for President" is especially telling, because it seems to me that he is in denial or disbelief that he has any sort of responsibility or culpability regarding this problem, and that he's just a lowly game developer (whose vision just happens to reach millions of people worldwide) and what can he do? This "it's not that big a deal, is it?" mindset is probably one of the biggest obstacles this industry needs to overcome if we're going to get anywhere on this gender thng.
1) It is not wrong for any one person to want to make a sexualized female character, as long as they are aware of what they're doing and the alternatives that exist.
2) The problem arises, however, when everyone is doing the same thing, to the detriment of both the creators and the audience. It's a feedback loop, where the objectification creates a norm that is adopted by the audience. The norm shows up on market research, which influences more creators to use the same methods of objectification. Alternatively, you can think of it like this. These same creators themselves were once audience and are now perpetuating the same norm that existed when they were in a consumer's role. See: Comics -> Browder
3) Change, no matter how wide scale, has to start with the individual. You might think it's unfair that RPS "ambushed" Browder, but who is a good target to "ambush"? Is anyone? Should we just not confront this issue at all and let time solve it? No, I don't think so. Eventually, someone has to take the initiative if change is going to come in a timely manner. And, to be honest, I think Browder is a much better target than most other developers, because of his veterancy and pull within Blizzard, which produces so much of the gaming content that falls into the categories of "objectifying" or "sexist". It's sad to see how uncomfortable he was with this line of questioning, however, and I'll doubt he'll change his mind about it in the long run.
I'm not really trying to villify Browder although I can see how I might've come off that way. I was thinking more about how Browder is potentially representative of a lot of senior game developers (and a lot of gamers at that), people who are ultimately products of their environment and are not so much "bad" as they are unaware of the potential damage being caused by what they think is just harmless fun. HIs comments about how "We're not running for President" is especially telling, because it seems to me that he is in denial or disbelief that he has any sort of responsibility or culpability regarding this problem, and that he's just a lowly game developer (whose vision just happens to reach millions of people worldwide) and what can he do? This "it's not that big a deal, is it?" mindset is probably one of the biggest obstacles this industry needs to overcome if we're going to get anywhere on this gender thng.
Yes, it was a response made in the heat of the moment because I was being baited by a line of argumentation that was intended to incense rather than reasonably respond. At large though, prostitution is typically exploited by a male-dominated power structure and for the most part, is a sexist institution as it currently stands (it need not be of course, but reality is often very different from theory).
This could change in the future, but I culturally doubt that people will change their views easily, if videogames are honestly this polarizing with regards to the issue of sexism.
I do not believe that I was making "insane" accusations. Off the mark, certainly, but these issues are connected to larger complexes and ignoring them is also missing what makes them so insidious and often ignored.
Similarly, calling a person's claims insane without any argument as to why is not a very respectable way to address someone.
Dabookerman
Member
I think ultimately you're not gonna change the artist or the creator. Real change will come where people who feel very strongly about such things start to get involved themselves in the process. Something I'm far more in support off.
A very small minority of video game consumers have a problem with this type of sexuality depiction. And I believe that because if it wasn't small there would be no argument. This so called problem would have been corrected ages ago. The popular opinion almost always wins out. The thing is that there are both men and women out there who like tits. They love to show their tits. They love skimpy clothing. Just look at all the pop stars today. Many of them hypersexual by their own accord. There are gamers out there, both male and female, who like their girls to look like they have a nice body. They want to see them in pretty clothing. And that drives some of you nuts. That people think differently than you. You want to control the way they think. And you want to control the way artists think too. This its a question of whether artists should cave in to the demands of a few and thus kill off any artistic freedom that they should have. Why should any of these artists listen to you? That's the question. I personally feel that people should be allowed to do what they want to do. If someone want to create a game where the heroine is fighting in a g string then so be it. If someone wants to create a game where the heroine is dressed in heavy armor then so be it. Let game creators have their freedom.