Neoriceisgood
Member
Not exclusively, but often enough to matter I'd say.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Tropes versus Women in Video Games
- Thread starter Kodiak
- Start date
- Status
Not exclusively, but often enough to matter I'd say.
Eh, it's cool. I see your point well enough even though I disagree in that Bitch means much more than what you described (which it can mean those things).
I'm not really going to dive in to things too deep because...I don't want to end up hating both genders. =)
oh, definitely.
Oh, I know.
I said "When bitch is used as a gendered slur," after all. I don't think it is always used that way, but I agree with Neoriceisgood that that usage is significant enough for it to matter - and ultimately the source of what makes it "work" as a more general insult.
charlequin
Banned
Well, people do. Almost every well-known success story in the niche/indie comics field over the last twenty years (Sandman, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Fables, Y: The Last Man, etc.) skews female in its audience, and the manga boom was driven primarily by female readers. The problem is that the "core" market (which itself isn't much bigger than the indie/niche market these days) is so far gone along the path of teen-males-uber-alles that there's not much to be done in terms of rescuing it, and that's definitely the point many of us would like to stop the core gaming market from reaching.
Not just men, no. Again, it's not coincidental that X-Men has spent most of its publication history being one of the most successful superhero comic franchises and the one with the largest proportionate female readership.
It's certainly true that many of these tropes are not literally 100% gender-exclusive, but the predominance of their applicability to a single gender is so great that they can't be truly seen as "gender-neutral." WiR is a great example here -- male characters who exist solely to die and motivate others in the process certainly exist (Uncle Ben, Cedric Diggory) but they are wildly outnumbered by women filling the same role. It is trivial to list literally hundreds of films, books, TV shows, and games that use female characters in this way
Which has been taken by the mainstream film industry as absolving them of the need to continue even the minor representation of blacks in their films, producing an endpoint where films aimed at black audiences cover only a very thin swathe of possible subjects while "general audience" films are whiter than ever.
People taking it upon themselves to create work that they'd like to see, targeting the markets they're part of, is a necessary step in improving the media landscape, but by no means a sufficient one.
DragonGirl
Banned
There's also the simple fact that to aim something at a male audience, it is not in the slightest necessary to denigrate, belittle, or objectify the female characters who might be involved. The simple act of not doing stuff in your game to insult women won't drive away male gamers and may even attract female gamers. I certainly want more good female characters, but I don't need them in a game to enjoy it. The simple act of not insulting me can gain my interest in a game that's technically aimed at guys or rather, the audience is assumed male.
What about the "If you're gonna do it badly, don't do at all approach" which would result in little to no representation of particular minorities. I wonder if that's less repulsive or just as bad.
RpgN
Junior Member
In a sense, it is a good solution that takes the problem straight away. It would be possible to create any avatar you feel comfortable with. I feel like if it is applied to all games, then it will affect the games in many ways, such as making the story light and not very deep. Maybe they can find a way to make the story more involving with avatars, but it would also be nice to see a life of a father, a princess etc.
Games designed as loot games or ones with a silent character is where we have it mostly applied, though I still find not all games having this option. Not sure if Heroes of Ruin demo is representative, but you can't choose genders and that surprised me. It needs to become more of a standard with the games it works with.
Yeah, I'm not all against stereotypes. I like when a princess is rescued or you see a feminine side of a female, but all of it is skewed and doesn't feel balanced/appropriate.
I'm kind of happy there are few trans* people in games because it's not going to be handled correctly.
DragonGirl
Banned
While not always appropriate, I advocate the "create a male character first, then flip the gender without changing anything else" approach to creating female characters if you happen to not know how/be comfortable with/have a lousy track record of creating female characters. Chances are you'll make a good female character when you stop trying to make a female character.
A simple anectdote about the culture of video games in my experience: Within the practitioner's field of video game development there just aren't many people who are sufficiently critical of the cultural ideals displayed in contemporary gaming. It is often that I meet pre-dominantly white males in their 20's-30's within the industry (or aspiring to join it), who don't pay attention to what embedded values their games represent, whether it is ethics, gender, or minorities.
I had always figured that my peers would subscribe to the same critical stance and approach the future of games with a more mature and nuanced world-view. Unfortunately from my experience, there is still a significant majority of white male gamers who neglect or even reproduce the detrimental stereotypes often seen in the medium.
Meanwhile, some of the female players I've met either don't mind the tropes or they choose to grow accustomed to the way their gender is portrayed. Obviously there still exist female players who luckily protest and make their voice heard, but the whole targeted audience of video games present a huge cultural problem to me, both in an esoteric and exoteric sense.
I had always figured that my peers would subscribe to the same critical stance and approach the future of games with a more mature and nuanced world-view. Unfortunately from my experience, there is still a significant majority of white male gamers who neglect or even reproduce the detrimental stereotypes often seen in the medium.
Meanwhile, some of the female players I've met either don't mind the tropes or they choose to grow accustomed to the way their gender is portrayed. Obviously there still exist female players who luckily protest and make their voice heard, but the whole targeted audience of video games present a huge cultural problem to me, both in an esoteric and exoteric sense.
Messofanego
Banned
Kickstarter Update #5: Thank You For All the Overwhelming Support!
This is pathetic, Internet hatred always seems to go too far. Fine if you don't like her or her message, but when trolls take this amount of time to harass her, they're seriously messed up in the head. They're only proving her point.
Reminds me of the poor Bioware writer. Death threats is the limit.
I'd like to send an extra big thank you to everyone for sticking with me and especially to those continuing to back this project amid the torrent of ridiculous and intense harassment. I'm overwhelmed and encouraged by the support from people of all genders. Every one of you is an inspiration to me in my determination to make this project as amazing as possible.
Wow! We've now reached over 2000 backers. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
As you can probably imagine, over the past few days I have spent the majority of my time dealing with all this harassment and trying to secure and tighten up as much of my internet presence as I can. It looks as if this type of backlash will be an unfortunate and continuing side effect of this video series as we move forward. As some of you might be aware, in addition to the threatening messages sent through, literally, all my social media channels, the wikipedia page about me was vandalized last week (*Trigger Warning* feel free not to read this, it's pretty disgusting!). There have also been a few more alarming incidents over the past couple of days but I don't want to publicly disclose them for safety reasons (don't worry I'm still totally okay!). At the very least, this story is being picked up and sparking some "discussion" on a few gaming blogs like Destructoid, Kotaku, and The Escapist.
All your support and pledges in the past couple of days have gone above and beyond my wildest imagination! We also want to thank you for your comments and suggestions about possible additions to the project. We have some exciting plans and ideas for how Tropes vs Women in Video Games is going to evolve from here. I'll be sure to post more details as soon as I have a moment to catch my breath!
This is pathetic, Internet hatred always seems to go too far. Fine if you don't like her or her message, but when trolls take this amount of time to harass her, they're seriously messed up in the head. They're only proving her point.
Reminds me of the poor Bioware writer. Death threats is the limit.
I hope she plays and analyzes Heather from Silent Hill 3. That particular female character is rarely mentioned when it comes to gender debates (at least in the range of teenage age) within the context of video games. Although she relies on a male father figure throughout the game, Heather still displays remarkable independence and character development for a teenage character without relying on typical gender tropes. She is probably the most well-realized female teenager within the context of an "adult" dreadful horror theme I've seen in a video game. (disregarding the fact taht some of the game's marketing apparently relied on hypersexualizing the character in order to appeal to "male" gamers)
Isn't that just a function of most main characters being male? The most important relationships with a mainstream heterosexual male character would be skewed female. Relatives would be relatively neutral (Father/mother, brother/sister), which leaves romantic relationships which would be female.
I don't think you can say authors go 'oh lets kill a woman, that'll be more fun because they're cute and pink and girly'. More like 'lets kill his girlfriend because it'll be dramatic'.
So if there is a problem its that the main characters are primarily male. other things cascade from that
Amazing post.
YES! I love you!
I basically wrote the same thing in the Lara Croft thread. Someone understands.
THE ALL-TOO-FAMILIAR HARASSMENT AGAINST FEMINIST FREQUENCY, AND WHAT THE GAMING COMMUNITY CAN DO ABOUT IT
On my phone so too lazy to fix those caps >_>
On my phone so too lazy to fix those caps >_>
faceless007
Member
Yeah but everyone gets called racial slurs on Xbox Live all the time so women don't have it any worse.
DragonGirl
Banned
Lurk more, oh clueless one.
I definitely think this is subject matter that needs to be discussed and it will be interesting to see what she comes up with.Someone posted to the articles on my twitter. Oddly enough I have just been playing through Batman Arkham City and everytime I get to Catwoman I can't stop thinking to myself what god awful writing and portayal of a character.It's like every lines out of her mouth is some sexual innuendo it's beyond tiresome at this point. Hope it changes before the end.
faceless007
Member
I guess this is Poe's law. I was sarcastically exaggerating the opposite argument.
Thank goodness I didn't reply. I was really furious!
DragonGirl
Banned
And that is why we use /sarcasm tags, because your statement is exactly what is said with 100% seriousness far, far too often just in this thread alone, and ad nauseum elsewhere. It's no exaggeration at all. Heck, it's mild.
So why is it okay to have a male idiot as character (because based on your quote: you don't notice it anymore that he is a freakin idiot while playing - ah no, I sure notice badly written characters - for example I hated Monkey from Enslaved - although I don't take it personal, he is just badly written like most characters in games) - but if I play say Lara Croft in one of the previous Tomb Raiders, it's not okay, because I am supposed to notice all the time, how "sexy" she is?
And in fact - I played through every single Tomb Raider game. Not because I'm playing "sexy" Lara Croft. Not because I'm playing a woman. I could play Indiana Jones, I don't care. I'm playing an adventurer. You may look at her ass the first few minutes, but then you won't. You will just play the game. And at least for me it doesn't matter, if I'm playing Nathan Drake or Lara Croft (well Nathan is an asshole, so actually I prefer Lara Croft).
I mean Chloe from Uncharted 2/3 has a nice butt (and Drake has one too I guess), but do I care about that when playing the game? Hell no, I don't. I actually play the game.
One of the better female characters is Rachael Townsend from Binary Domain. She gets shit done and also doesn't look like a super-model (not even close), which I find much more important - a soldier won't look like a super-model in any case. Of course Binary Domain has also the not-so-typical love interest "Faye Lee", but she gets "shit done" as well. And all this despite that I guess not one female gamer will ever touch that game.
Still I don't really get why it's important that a character "gets shit" done. Let's think about "Monkey" from Enslaved. He is an idiot. He gets enslaved by a woman. That's totally against his will. He is actually used as a tool by this woman. And he even finds that okay after a while, although he gets his head blown off, if he gets too far from that woman. "but" he is packed with muscles (something I should think about as a positive? Or I guess I shouldn't even notice all this crap while I'm playing the game). And he is topless - which serves no purpose - in fact it's stupid to be topless (unarmored) in battle. And all this doesn't matter anyway, because he "gets shit done"? As man I should consider this character highly offensive. In fact I don't like that character at all. But why should I complain about his gender? Trip on the other hand - the actually evil female - takes advantage of him - enslaves him - is quite intelligent (definitely much more intelligent than brain-dead "monkey") - and uses tech toys. So in theory this is the exact opposite of games that women complain about, right? And strangely I never read any male gamer complain about Monkey at all. I mean I complain, but I complain about the stupid character, not about his gender. And if we replace the genders of those 2 characters, all the gender-based critic would work perfectly. Trip would be hot and sexualized and dumb and the slave of the player character.
I mean I understand much, but some people seem to forget that gaming some years ago was almost male-only grounds. Actually male gamers were even called (insulted) nerds back then (which is/was another form of stereotyping). That's why in most games you play a male (because the player back then had that gender and could identify himself with it) and that's also why some games feature the rescue of a female. That's the most basic cliched children story one could think of. I mean for example: Donkey Kong: A male (italian stereotype) rescues a female (princess stereotype) from the terror of a monkey (terror stereotype?). Complaining about that point is like complaining about Twilight series written with a female audience in mind.
Okay this is probably idiotic to post, but I was wondering what examples of "sexualized male characters" there really are in video games. The basic answer I came upon was this (maybe slightly NSFW).
Overall the answer would probably be "bishonen", but I'm not sure what really would evoke the same feelings in women that men get from Bayonetta or the Dead or Alive characters. Any females in this thread want to chime in?
Overall the answer would probably be "bishonen", but I'm not sure what really would evoke the same feelings in women that men get from Bayonetta or the Dead or Alive characters. Any females in this thread want to chime in?
RoboGeorgeForeman
Banned
I agree that this is a legitimate issue, but I'm not paying money for some random person's opinion on the internet. Hell, I don't even pay money for supposed "expert opinions" (outside of school and textbooks). I don't understand how any of this warrants a kickstarter (which I don't really support for the most part for reasons I've already stated). If people think this is worth her asking price that's fine, but I won't support this.
Honestly, I'm curious about this as well. Could anyone from attracted-to-males-GAF enlighten us?
plagiarize
Banned
at least one male lead character was designed for fuckability, namely the guy you played as in Clive Barker's Undying. originally, the lead was this tattooed muscular badass guy, and when Clive Barker got involved, he vetoed that and changed the main character into someone he'd want to sleep with.
just thought that'd be an interesting aside here.
http://www.clivebarker.info/undying.html
just thought that'd be an interesting aside here.
http://www.clivebarker.info/undying.html
Devolution
Member
There are problems with how both genders are portrayed in games.
There are more problems with how women are portrayed.
Why are these two statements still being debated as if they're mutually exclusive?
There are more problems with how women are portrayed.
Why are these two statements still being debated as if they're mutually exclusive?
plagiarize
Banned
people love to do that. it's always annoying. just as they like to say 'oh but Y is a bigger problem than X is a problem' like it stops X being a problem.
personally, i think the problem is how limited the range of female characters are, not that there is something inherantly wrong with designing a sexually appealing lead. many people, of both sexes, want to imagine they are sexually alluring. it just shouldn't be one of the only options. it doesn't offend me that Undying was designed with a sexually appealing lead, but if that was all you could choose from, it may well bother me.
Devolution
Member
Sexually appealing isn't the problem, which AM and some others have mentioned plenty. The problem is frequency. The problem is this being the norm. The problem is characters that have depth and aren't sexual aren't numerous enough. Sexy is fine if it's not the overwhelming majority and the pinnacle of a character.
Also:
probably NSFW: http://i.imgur.com/bxM5z.jpg
(yes Sheva has also sexualized skins, but that's not exclusive to her in RE5)
And the Prince in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is also topless at least on the cover (which is even more of a point, because just look at the topless shots of the actor that plays him in the movie). The Prince in PoP 2008 is also quite sexualized. I mean there is no real point in showing us his abs or muscles.
The main character of NIER is also a possible candidate. Never played the game (not yet), but at least he is quite topless as well.
Devolution
Member
Do you or the people like you making these arguments realize what a male power fantasy is? Because there is a definite disconnect happening in this thread when it comes to sexual objectification and power fantasies.
I don't understand that question.
You are telling me that I secretly wish to look like Chris in the picture above?
RpgN
Junior Member
Ugh...Do we really need to go through this again?
Who said everyone is okay playing with a stupid male that gets shit done? No one is saying that, they're only saying that male characters have OTHER redeeming qualities that makes a stupid character easier to overlook. Not to mention that there are a lot of alternatives to find for males besides the blow shit up stereotype. 80-90%of female characters are used as sex objects only.
Just because you can name an example as a female character that you think is well portrayed, it doesn't mean we can pack in and go home. The decent examples are no where near the amount of quantity of the terrible examples out there. You can count the good examples on one hand (okay, maybe two or three hands).
The example with Enslaved is a good one. I can see males not liking a manipulative witch who uses the guy as a slave. Can you name me more examples similar to this? Because I don't see many examples where this happend. I can guarantee you if 90% of the games had this you will have guys complain to death about it. Because it's such a rare occurrence, it is seen as a different take that can be considered as a one-time experiment. You're lucky you can name rare examples.
Get some perspective people!
Devolution
Member
No but that it's made with that idea in mind because it's certainly not designed for women. We as a demographic get ignored. That's another problem with the industry.
I think the problem is that society at-large is built upon sexist ideology. It is only reasonable to expect video games to be influenced by this. Attractiveness in the media for males and females are quite different. Traditional sexually attractive images of males are associated with power while women are often portrayed in very little clothing or in submissive positions. Video games are not exclusive or even the biggest offender of using these tropes to attract people to their products. In order to make any kind of change in this are you would have to change the norms in our society greatly. The entire English language and history is catered to males. Shouting at video games to change will not be an effective approach. In order to make any lasting change it needs to be applied to the bigger picture.
I think it is good that lately blogs and sites have made people question what has been normal for society to tolerate for quite some time, but reading the website that posts messages women read or receive on XBL isn't really a very telling thing. You can find those hateful messages in any place where anonymity is provided. It is a problem with our overall cultural norms not just video games. Labeling it as a video game problem diminishes the cause.
I think it is good that lately blogs and sites have made people question what has been normal for society to tolerate for quite some time, but reading the website that posts messages women read or receive on XBL isn't really a very telling thing. You can find those hateful messages in any place where anonymity is provided. It is a problem with our overall cultural norms not just video games. Labeling it as a video game problem diminishes the cause.
Devolution
Member
There are game specific problems and yes a lot of it is a problem with anonymity in general. But there is no reason games can't pave the way. It's more than a copout to say well other forms of media and the culture also reinforce negative stereotypes. Yeah. And? People want games to evolve, you certainly won't do it by providing a bunch of excuses as to why the portrayal of women sucks.
CountAntonius
Member
That was sexist he was doing it to rescue a poor defenseless woman.
plagiarize
Banned
that's pretty much what i was getting at.
it's like skinny models... they become a problem when they are the norm. if they were part of the whole range of *attractive* models, they wouldn't cause a big problem. many women choose to play as sexy women given the choice, because many women would like to be sexy, but that's more of a happy accident, and it in no way excuses it being the only choice in most cases.
dinazimmerman
Incurious Bastard
This all stems from the fact that certain games are played primarily by adult males, so the people who make these games, who are also males more often than not, lack a strong incentive, and perhaps even the necessary perspective, to create realistic, female protagonists.
ehh popping pills and avoiding ghosts then.. or defending earth from aliens.
CountAntonius
Member
lol I was just joking around.
- Status