Out of context it's fine. But games exist in context. The amount of objectification of women that goes on causes real harm. And Blizzard is particularly guilty, doing it non-stop with almost every female character.
I seriously can't believe people still invoke male privilege and expect it to engender good conversation.
That it continues to happen shows just how disconnected from reality these people are. Do you think an unemployed or underemployed 20-something man with 75k in student loan debt is going to give a shit about his "privilege" as it relates to video game characters? Get real.
I've never played a Diablo game. I'm not following your post. What are you trying to say?New Diablo is female.
Just thought I'd throw that out there.
edit: just realized that's not true. I played the Diablo 3 beta for a bit. It was like an hour or two long.
Is there a problem with that? I mean REALLY? They're just characters in a fictional universe. Not everything needs to be made to make a point all the time.
I think he still enjoys having a huge segment of games aimed specifically at pleasing what they think are his sensibilities, which is more then can be said for lots of, say, 20-something women with 75k in student loan debt.
This topic has come up fairly often with regards to MMOs and MOBAs in the past, and it should be worth noting:
Most women do not want the games to be completely bereft of "sexy" female designs, costume options, etc. They simply want a robust selection of non-sexualized options: female characters who are "serious business" to offset the sexualized ones. The problem is that with many games (Tera, League of Legends for a very long time, etc.) the distribution of sexualized female characters/costumes to non-sexualized ones is so ridiculously skewed that you often don't have a practical choice in whether or not to use them: every decent set of high-level gear for your character is skimpy, every female AD carry champion has a "sexy" skin, etc.
The only thing they're really asking for is options, most of the time.
Holy crap, maybe ask some questions about DESIGN and GAMEPLAY choices. RPS have really going down in quality lately.
Rps added to the trash
I think he still enjoys having a huge segment of entertainment aimed specifically at pleasing what they think are his sensibilities, which is more then can be said for lots of, say, 20-something women with 75k in student loan debt.
Holy crap, maybe ask some questions about DESIGN and GAMEPLAY choices. RPS have really going down in quality lately.
RPS doing real journalism, gets called out not doing journalism. FML
Get real, these are just as important questions, if not even more important than asking what the gameplay will be like. You're just gonna get a premade PR answer anyway and until the game releases, there will be enough videos, beta impressions and interviews by other sites.
Really, this thread just tells me once again, that the topic of sexism and how it works is something we should talk more about on GAF, not less. Just scanning through the pages it is clear to me, how many people still just don't "get" what the problem really is.
Are you just trolling or do you have an actual point to make? You already said she was female. It seems like a random thing to say.Look carefully.
Diablo's got boobs.
RPS doing real journalism, gets called out not doing journalism. FML
Get real, these are just as important questions, if not even more important than asking what the gameplay will be like. You're just gonna get a premade PR answer anyway and until the game releases, there will be enough videos, beta impressions and interviews by other sites.
Really, this thread just tells me once again, that the topic of sexism and how it works is something we should talk more about on GAF, not less. Just scanning through the pages it is clear to me, how many people still just don't "get" what the problem really is.
Finally, heres a brief profile of the manly writers of Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Enjoy.
See, this is the stuff I don't get or can't read in to.
Did you talk to the developers and that was their answer? Did any developer say "we will never have an ugly fatso on our list of heroes"?
Make no mistake, I'm interesting in hearing your side but it's such a big leap of logic based off what could be considered circumstantial evidence. It might even be a fallacy even.
"Because x happen a lot, y then must be true." Correlation does not imply causation.
I think the PR guy made it obvious they're not sending any messages. They're just designing characters they like.
Sometimes I just want a game developer to say "we know you want these boobs so that's why we made them for you" instead of giving us the standard "don't hold me accountable for anything, it's just games!"
This comes off reasonable. RPS comes off as demanding the end to sexy characters across the entire medium.
Why can't American games just make all the guys look like this:
Sometimes I just want a game developer to say "we know you want these boobs so that's why we made them for you" instead of giving us the standard "don't hold me accountable for anything, it's just games!"
That's what I like about the DoA team. They know what their fanbase is interested in, and have no problems admitting their pandering. And there's absolutely no issue with that.
I know people hate the capitalist argument, but that's what it is. Video games target men in both content and advertising because men make up a vast majority of the market. Why is this a problem?
They're wasting an opportunity to ask real questions in order to bait someone into drumming up fake controversy.
I think someone like Geralt from the witcher series (who is muscular, but anything but a meathead) is much more of a male power fantasy than Marcus from Gears of War.I also find it somewhat insulting that people claim that buff dudes are a power fantasy rather than also objectification. I mean I really don't give a damn either way because I personally find there's nothing wrong with sexualisation. It happens in the animal kingdom, general human life and all forms of media, sex isn't a bad thing and neither is sexualisation.
The only thing I hate is the way devs don't ever try and deviate from the generic bald space marine for all their male characters. Atleast there's many variants of female characters of all different shapes, sizes and races.
Do you think video games are an artistic medium? Its fine if you don't, although I disagree, but if you do and also don't think that an entire medium, an entire form of expression, being aimed squarely at one set of demographics isn't a problem then, well, you and I view things very differently
They look similar to me!
They don't really give the same vibe, at all; ZWEI has a more traditionally handsome face, half-unzipped lowcut leather pants with a bulge and feels obviously designed to be attractive to women.
Art is, like, free, man. They should be able to represent... whatever. It's just the character design. They have no obligation to push back against centuries of male superiority predicated on violence and subjugation. That's not their job. They're videogame goddamn artistes who only regurgitate the patriarchy because, like, people want to buy it. End of.
Anyway, it's not objectifying. It's just their choice to represent whole groups of people who are unlike them in accordance with the laziest, most predictable imagery possible. It's like when people drew Jews having big noses or Irish looking stupid or blacks being lazy... no one meant anything by that. And if they did, it was still, like, art man. It was their vision and it didn't suggest anything about Jews or Irish or blacks. That's all in the past now, of course. We're smarter than that now.
I mean if someone drew a picture of me as an over-privileged developed-world likely-white guy who never even had to try to understand the experience of someone who wasn't born on third base like me, I wouldn't be offended. Lighten up. They were just doing some art, man. Look, if I'm so "privileged", how come I'm so poor?
Anyway, if women are objectified, men are objectified too. All those sculpted male torsos, intended for consumption by an overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly straight audience? They're the exact same. My experience is totally equivalent with women who grow up in an unequal, unjust world that treats them as objects for lust and tends to rape them.
At the end of the day, just, an... an... artistic vision of those people. Women, I mean. And Blizzard are entitled to their vision, am I right? It's not like they're saying that women can be represented solely as sex objects, or that only sexually attractive women can be powerful. No one should have to defend their reductive, out-of-touch, sexualized, objectifying art, man. Just let the geniuses at Blizzard work. If you don't like it, don't buy it. The market will decide what's moral.
(Why do RPS have to be so smug? It makes me uneasy. I wish they'd stop.)
How do you prove a message is being sent?You don't get a choice in whether or not you send messages with art. You either have control over the message it sends, or you let go and have it say things about you that you might not have wanted to put out there. The fact that they don't "mean" to send a message doesn't stop a message from being sent.
I don't think anyone is saying that they intend to send the message "all women should dress promiscuously if they want to be important and powerful". If they're accidentally sending that message, though, wouldn't it be prudent to let them know so that they can decide for themselves whether or not that's something they want their art to be saying?
They don't really give the same vibe, at all; ZWEI has a more traditionally handsome face, half-unzipped lowcut leather pants with a bulge and feels obviously designed to be attractive to women.
How do you prove a message is being sent?
Why don't they have any women on their staff? It's a male dominated industry, why isn't their site doing anything about it other than using words? Put money where your mouth is, unless I'm missing something that they're not showing on their site.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/about/
I can't help but feel the feminist movement has become less about equality and more about insecurity.
Do you think video games are an artistic medium? Its fine if you don't, although I disagree, but if you do and also don't think that an entire medium, an entire form of expression, being aimed squarely at one set of demographics isn't a problem then, well, you and I view things very differently
Yes, you're missing that many times, they have invited female guest writers, writing exactly about this phenomenon.
I don't think you can blame a relativly small PC gaming centric website, not to have a female writer. How many applicants are there? How many pass their criteria in writing skills?
Fair enough, I just thought it was funny that on the same page two people posted pictures of bare chested, muscle built men. Both who I think can turn into animals? Just a silly coincidence really.
Also, while I really can't say being a dude, I've seen that, 'designed to be attractive to women,' scope go wrong in some other threads somewhere. People were saying that they found it somewhat insulting that their needs could be summed up with, 'muscles and a bulge.'
But again, I don't remember where I saw it, so I could of imagined it.
Dude what? Do you even know what the concept of a guest writer is? These are females who write for other homepages or work fulltime somewhere else. They don't WANT to work fulltime writing articles for RPS. That's why they only write a article every once in a blue moon, when they have the time for that.None qualified enough to be on staff? Not one women is a good enough writer for a full time spot, yet they are good enough to write the female centric articles as guests so that these guys don't look like huge hypocrites. If they have a problem with the role of women in the video gaming community, do something about it other than being an ass in interviews.
How do you prove a message is being sent?
Perhaps because society and culture (of which videogames are a small but not insigifnicant part) have, from the day they arrived on the planet, taught them that this is the principal means by which they will be attractive to and valued by a majority of potential partners?Why do women dress the way they do on Halloween or when going to night clubs?
Real questions? Like 'how awesome is your game going to be?' and 'please tell me your pr talking points?'
It's kind of self destructive behaviour, I think some feminist won't be happy until sexualised content is stopped across the board, which then would have a contradictory effect of having their rights taken from them.
Believe it or not some woman like to appear sexy and show off their bodies, just as men do.
I can't help but feel the feminist movement has become less about equality and more about insecurity.