It is also important to note that representation issues aren't limited to overtly sexualized designs - female characters are often in other ways treated poorly; existing not as characters, but as plot devices to be violently discarded to force an emotional punch or move the story forward. Some examples that jump to mind;
Talion's wife in Shadow of Mordor only exists to be immediately killed to provide Talion with a motivation. In Watch_Dogs, Aiden's niece getting killed is why any of the plot happens in the first place. Aiden's sister is only in the story to get kidnapped, and hacker ally Clara is killed off purely to force an emotional moment. All of Batman: Arkham Knight's prominent female characters must at some point be saved by Batman - Poison Ivy in her plant panties, Catwoman with her catsuit zipper always half open. Barbara Gordon is treated especially poorly in that game - one scene depicts her getting shot by Joker in a flashback (which only serves to create extra drama between the Commissioner and Batman), another shows her apparently committing suicide for no reason other than shock value, and another yet sees her used as a bargaining chip by the villain and then tossed off the rooftop anyway. Tomb Raider features that pointless rape-y scene at the start and a bunch of overly graphic, excessively violent, almost fetishistic death animations for Lara. Lady Igraine in The Order: 1886 has a cringeworthy scene where she basically tells a throwaway NPC how much of a though female character she is - which is followed by her getting her back broken in her first (and last) real on-screen fight, and her 'arc' ends in a cliffhanger with her being irrationally angry at the male main character due to a misunderstanding. Quiet in Metal Gear Solid V 'breathes through her skin' because she gets burned alive and falls out of a window in the intro of the game, after which she is involuntarily subjected to cruel treatment. When she is tortured later in the game, the camera still lingers on her chest.
You wrote a great piece and I wish I had time to reply to all of it, but I'll pick this one section to discuss.
A loved one dying to provide motivation, plot advancement, or an emotional moment isn't limited to female characters. It's really just a writing trope. I think it's perhaps easier to find examples for you because of there being so many straight male main characters, thus they have female loved ones for bad things to happen to to advance their plot. There are plenty of examples of "men being treated poorly to move the story forward".
- Ezio's father and brothers being executed in front of him in Assassin's Creed II
- Joel
being injured at the end of Spring so that Ellie takes over for the Winter section and DLC
- Rost
being killed at the start of Horizon Zero dawn to spur Aloy towards revenge and finding the Eclipse cult
Also re: "All of Batman: Arkham Knight's prominent female characters must at some point be saved by Batman",
Poison Ivy saves Gotham and Batman from the Scarecrow's Cloudburst/Fear Gas. She sacrifices herself to do so, so I suppose it's a wash by your standards. (though she remains as an orchid, so it's hard not to see her returning to life via some comic book bullshit, but that's neither here nor there.)
I also think singling out Tomb Raider for its now infamous death animations is kind of silly. Video game heroes in general suffer horrific deaths.
Should Lara Croft (and female protagonists in general) have less violent death scenes than their male counterparts?
The answer to this question is simple, yet amazing in it's difficulty: make the people involved in game production reflective of the populace, not the perceived "hardcore audience" who are predominantly young men.
The amount of women, and minorities in the gaming industry is frankly shameful. You can usually tell the games with at least one female lead because the representation of women is usually better, same with people of different ethnicity also.
Also Vibri: Sexualisation and objectification are two totally different things. The separation is not always clear but it is still crucial to understand that the former does not require the latter.
Most games with sexualised content are content are made by men creating their fantasy of women. Including women equally in the process will end up in portrayal of women and men in ways that actually not only make more sense, but are if anything more powerful sexually speaking because frankly most men can't get past juvenile titillation when it comes to creating this sort of content.
I will preface this by saying I've read the mod edit.
Now, let's take a deep breath... my first reaction, as a man, is to say: I don't care.
Wait. Bear with me.
"I don't care" doesn't mean "I don't care about how you feel, I don't care about your issues".
"I don't care" means "I'm fine either way".
I don't feel offended or bothered by many of the things that are mentioned in the OP. I dislike gross sexualization, I'm strongly annoyed by pandering (the entire thing is making it increasingly more difficult for me to enjoy japanese games, for example, and I grew up thinking japanese games were almost universally superior to western ones), but I probably notice one tenth of the things that legitimately bother the OP. Maybe that's on me, the fact that I don't care enough, and maybe that's something I have to work on. I'm sure that as I face the challenges of educating a daughter I'll pay more attention to these things.
But "I don't care" mostly means that I don't care about the things that progressiveness and representation "threaten" to take away from me. I don't care if the next big Star Wars movie has a female protagonist. I don't care if the next Batman is asian-american. I don't care if the main character in the next big Bethesda game is female.
And I think that's an achievement. I think that means that all the work made in the last years to create good female characters and generally simultaneously divorce the role of protagonist from the archetype of the young white guy and the role of the woman from that of the prize/sex object kind of... worked. Because a few years back I would have probably minded. A few years back I would have said "I'd rather play a guy in Horizon". Finn being black would have been something that I would have irrationally questioned (not because of racism, but because of completely irrelevant and obnoxious "consistency" reasons with the lore). Today? Today I appreciate I have less issues (as in, no issues) with Nadine mopping the floor with Nate than my sister does (my sister, ironically, actually practices martial arts and she's annoyed when women are portrayed that way because it's inconsistent with her actual struggles in real life, but that's for another discussion). I loved that Apollyon, the main antagonist in For Honor's lackluster story mode, is a woman (and what a woman!). Heck I sort of feel like in Wolfenstein: The New Colossus:
not letting BJ die and replace him with a black person was a total waste of the potential of the premise of the game; ever since you cross the KKK guys during the nuke mission I kind felt they should have gone there.
So I think "I don't care" is a good platform to start from. Because maybe even if I won't fight your battles with you (and again, I probably should, there's no denying that) you'll find no resistance from me. And in a way I'm the proof you've won. You want to normalize the world by altering the way media present different genders, ethnicities and diverse backgrounds of all kinds. And I'm passively finding out that I like what you're selling. I prefer what you're selling to the hollow representations and exploitations* I've been used to. So keep doing what you're doing, because I'm directly benefiting from it. And probably I should get off my ass and start working with you, eventually.
* I do have some issues enjoying some examples of black culture... as in, I'm not sure I'm allowed to enjoy it as much as I do. Am I supposed to enjoy, say, Black Dynamite as much as I do? Do I have the right to blast Superstition on my way to work? My favourite review channel on YouTube is HeyItsGMC, and well, it's bloody obvious that he's tackling issues I cannot possibly identify with.
Writing all of this makes it seem like you do care, and for a variety of reasons. So why not just say, "I'm happy as long as we're moving forward."? Saying, "I don't care" right from the start, inside a thread full of people that obviously do is confrontational. So why do it when it seems like you don't have a problem with positive changes in the representation of characters in game media? This post seems full of contradictions, most of which seem to be self-inflicted. You don't need to feel bad for liking things - the OP is very clear about that.
And Vibri, please read the OP. Basically all of what you're talking about has already been gone over.
I don't think prescribing what other people should or should not feel is attractive is going to go far. Plenty of people found 2B attractive, as was the creator's intent. Where's the shame in that?
This angle of the conversation is a zero sum game in a world with thousands of individual tastes and preferences. How do you include all of them in one product?
Can you point to where in the OP that frames this conversation this 'angle' is raised? It isn't.
My point is: you can't. And so the solution is not to stifle expesssion, but to increase its variety to a point where every viable market feels represented.
Variety would be a great start. However, if some of those 'expressions' and 'tastes and preferences' include ridiculous sexualisation and blatant objectification, I'm not convinced that those particular tastes need to be in huge mainstream games aimed at the broader gaming audience. The male audience that looks for that stuff knows where to find it and it's continuing presence in huge games from Japan (like Xenoblade or Metal Gear) played by teenagers isn't a wonderful thing. Not all 'tastes and preferences' are equal when some literally reduce half the audience to being objects. To look at it in another medium, I'm not convinced that interests and preferences of film fans interested in A) sexualised body horror and C) adventure both need to be equally represented by film studios making summer blockbusters if their aim is a wider audience for a broader box office take either.
I'm interested to hear thoughts on other constructive solutions though. Just trying to make one thing appeal to everyone is never, ever going to work.
That doesn't mean that a large chunk of the industry making one thing that is laser-focused on a fraction of the audience is good business sense either.
Then why are people still equating sexuality with objectification? That's one of the core semantics being thrown around and it's distracting time and energy from finding real solutions.
Then why are people still equating sexuality with objectification? That's one of the core semantics being thrown around and it's distracting time and energy from finding real solutions.
Do you understand the difference between an attractive character oozing sexuality, a costume design, plot events and camera treatment that sexualises the character, and objectification of a character?
The former assumes the character has agency. Nothing wrong with it at all. Loads of people are sexy. The second is another party adding a sexual element, the latter is the character being treated like they are just a piece of meat.
What distracts time and energy in these discussions is continually having to explain that there is nothing at all wrong with sexy characters or outfits, and the difference between sexuality and sexualisation meaning that nobody wants the former to disappear. You seem to conflate the terms and it's exhausting as people constantly hide behind it, arguing as if people want to remove their sexy female characters as opposed to limiting the almost default sexualisation of them whether it makes sense in context or not.
I genuinely can't think of any character deaths more graphic than Lara's in the action-adventure genre. Like, I don't recall there ever being a horrible death scene in an Assassin's Creed game outside of cutscenes (i.e., the player jumping from a high height that you would die from doesn't trigger a gruesome animation of the character hitting the ground). The developers put a lot of time, a ridiculous amount of time, into creating a lot of highly ridiculous death sequences in the Lara Croft reboot games. For reasons that... I can't really explain, aside, again, from the fetish stuff. Also, these problems aren't left behind if there's some sort of gross parity with death scenes.
As for whether or not characters should stop being used as cheap motivation for the player/protagonist to take action? Yeah, that would also be nice. It's pretty much lazy writing that is as old as writing itself. That said, there's also a tremendous difference in the amount of agency the male characters display versus the female characters in every example you've provided, so even in situations where males are dying, they're still dying for a purpose, rather than plot convenience alone. This was discussed in the OP.
Then why are people still equating sexuality with objectification? That's one of the core semantics being thrown around and it's distracting time and energy from finding real solutions.
Mostly it's historical context. Abuse and subjugation of women is far more frequent as a means of reinforcing patriarchal roles than the reverse. It's similar to how it's not okay to paint your face black to look african, but it'd be fine to paint it green to look like the hulk.
This is very selective observation of historical context, though. Linking violent, gruesome deaths of female characters to patriarchal oppression is essentially similar to, say, if I'd bring up war horrors (stepping on land mines and the like) being a reason as to why Leon and Isaac's deaths are excessive and in poor taste, considering it's overwhelmingly men who've faced the brutal battlefield throughout history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but patriarchy has little to do with graphic death depiction in Tomb Raider, unless it features a disproportionate amount of scenes where men are the direct cause of her injury and death. Like TLoU, it's not quite a survival game, but it is a game through which the threads of survival and perseverance run. Nature is cruel, and random accidents can happen in the wild. The game seems to be deliberately framed as such.
I'd also add that Resident Evil and Dead Space lean more towards being horror games where such things like gore and body horror are expected, whereas Tomb Raider is action-adventure. You wouldn't expect to see Nathan Drake or Link get decapitated or have their head explode or be struggling, impaled on a spike before expiring, so it seems a bit odd to apply it to Lara.
The discussion is really about trends rather than one specific issue- we can analyse any specific example to our heart's content (and there's nothing wrong with that) but would you agree she has a point with her list of female characters being used as window dressing then violently discarded?
Tomb Raider conveys a different tone from those games, which is ok. You wouldn't see those other characters die graphically because they target broader, more diverse audiences. Kids and young adolescents are part of their target demographic.
I wouldn't agree that there's a trend of women being used as window dressing before being violently discarded, if we're talking about relatively recent Western characters like Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite (she endures pain and torture, but it's part of her character arc), Tomb Raider, or TLoU 2 (we know what to expect from the quality of ND's usual narrative output). Their suffering elicits feelings of sympathy, rather than a fetishistic pleasure.
Tomb Raider conveys a different tone from those games, which is ok. You wouldn't see those other characters die graphically because they target broader, more diverse audiences. Kids and young adolescents are part of their target demographic.
Just to clarify, I agree with you about Link but you're suggesting that Tomb Raider targets a different, more mature audience than Uncharted here? They are both action-adventure games aimed at late teens and adults, aren't they? I don't think you can really say Uncharted is for kids anymore than Tomb Raider is.
Great OP. This is going to be a rambling post, not quite sure how to post something coherent!
It's been tough reading through this thread, it really strikes me how little empathy some people seem to have. I don't know if it's partly due to the fact that these conversations are held over the internet, but it blows my mind that responses such as "but I can't just make myself get bothered by it" can be so prevalent. I can't imagine anyone responding like that in a face-to-face conversation (though I'm sure it happens all the bloody time).
I think one of the reasons people get so flustered by these discussions is that they conflate criticism of a product with criticism of themselves. If I was to point out that character x was sexualised, it's taken as an assault on their character. Just because I think character x is an objectified design, doesn't mean I am calling you a misogynist. It just means that I think that character could've been designed differently (better).
One of the things that I have been thinking about lately is that most of the media I consume at the moment is produced/helmed by men. I generally don't listen to music by female artists, most movies I watch are directed by men and the majority of games I play are produced by men. It gets even worse if I look at race or sexual orientation. In future I really want to make a conscious effort to start consuming media produced by people from all walks of life.
The issues we see with representation of people in video games are by no means unique. These issues are prevalent throughout society. That DOES NOT mean we should just let it slide, or not bother to talk about them. Threads and discussions like this are imperative. The more these issues get talked about, the more people become aware of them. The more that people become aware of them, the more inclusive society becomes.
I genuinely can't think of any character deaths more graphic than Lara's in the action-adventure genre. Like, I don't recall there ever being a horrible death scene in an Assassin's Creed game outside of cutscenes (i.e., the player jumping from a high height that you would die from doesn't trigger a gruesome animation of the character hitting the ground). The developers put a lot of time, a ridiculous amount of time, into creating a lot of highly ridiculous death sequences in the Lara Croft reboot games. For reasons that... I can't really explain, aside, again, from the fetish stuff. Also, these problems aren't left behind if there's some sort of gross parity with death scenes.
As for whether or not characters should stop being used as cheap motivation for the player/protagonist to take action? Yeah, that would also be nice. It's pretty much lazy writing that is as old as writing itself. That said, there's also a tremendous difference in the amount of agency the male characters display versus the female characters in every example you've provided, so even in situations where males are dying, they're still dying for a purpose, rather than plot convenience alone. This was discussed in the OP.
I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it also has something to do with them not reading the OP.
Assassin's Creed is chock-full of violent deaths so I don't know what you're on about there.
"Also, these problems aren't left behind if there's some sort of gross parity with death scenes." Are you saying that if male protagonists die as violently as female protagonists then it's still a problem? What?
"That said, there's also a tremendous difference in the amount of agency the male characters display versus the female characters in every example you've provided, so even in situations where males are dying, they're still dying for a purpose, rather than plot convenience alone. This was discussed in the OP." I don't know what you mean by this, it would be great if you could clarify.
Just to clarify, I agree with you about Link but you're suggesting that Tomb Raider targets a different, more mature audience than Uncharted here? They are both action-adventure games aimed at late teens and adults, aren't they?
Yeah, you're right. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Uncharted specifically goes for that T rating, and is insistent on portraying Nathan Drake as that affable, charismatic dude. Tomb Raider is M and tries to be more serious, though I'm not sure how effective that ended up being.
Do you understand the difference between an attractive character oozing sexuality, a costume design, plot events and camera treatment that sexualises the character, and objectification of a character?
The former assumes the character has agency. Nothing wrong with it at all. Loads of people are sexy. The second is another party adding a sexual element, the latter is the character being treated like they are just a piece of meat.
What distracts time and energy in these discussions is continually having to explain that there is nothing at all wrong with sexy characters or outfits, and the difference between sexuality and sexualisation meaning that nobody wants the former to disappear. You seem to conflate the terms and it's exhausting as people constantly hide behind it, arguing as if people want to remove their sexy female characters as opposed to limiting the almost default sexualisation of them whether it makes sense in context or not.
Wait, what? Please do explain the difference. Because right now it seems like you're prescribing something from your own viewpoint, when someone else's personal taste could imply the diametric opposite.
My wife loves 2B, completed the game multiple times. She finds nothing threatening about her. Is she wrong? No. Are you wrong? No.
Get my point?
My goal here is to try and get away from the circular and fruitlessly subjective "I like it!/I don't like it!" argument which is needlessly binary and prescriptive - and move towards the question of what actual solutions can make people feel more effective. A greater variety of content was my suggestion. Let's talk about your solutions?
You're never going to get all women - let alone everyone in the world - on your personal same page. Who sets the benchmark for what is OK and what isn't?
This user was banned for 1 month for this post. We do not condone any discussion or defense of content sexualizing underage children.
The reason a lot of people get so defensive and upset whenever this sort of thing is brought up is because the people who criticise the current state of representation in popular media inevitably ignore a wide variety of examples of it being done extremely well -- particularly when those good examples are Japanese in origin.
Modern Japanese games as a whole are widely misjudged to be pandering otaku bait. For sure, some absolutely are -- and there's nothing wrong with that at all, some moe moe fluff with pretty girls is just what the doctor ordered when you're feeling down in the dumps, at least for me, and sometimes there's nothing quite like a good nukige to tune out to -- but in other cases, they are fundamentally misrepresented by both the media and commentators who make broad generalisations based on just a narrow sample, often without being properly informed about some of the things they're commenting on. At other times, the use of sexual content is demonised without considering why it might be there in the first place.
All that is a problem, particularly when we start making statements like "we need to do better". We already are doing "better"; it just doesn't get acknowledged.
Let's take Senran Kagura as an example. This has been widely shat on by a variety of commercial mainstream publications by writers who, in most cases, admit that they haven't spent more than an hour or two with the game. Take any time to engage with it, however, and you'll discover that the series as a whole features a large and diverse cast of female characters, each of whom have their own unique backgrounds, personalities and ways that they engage with other people. Some (many!) of them are gay. Some have relatable issues such as concerns over their body image, or worries that they might get kinkshamed for their tastes, or simply feelings of inferiority when compared to their peers. Over the course of the Senran Kagura games to date, each and every one of these characters has been explored in great, great depth, but this aspect of the series never, ever gets discussed because mainstream sites spend an hour with one game and go "lol, it's about boobs".
Let's take another example: Amane from the Grisaia series of visual novels. Amane is a highly sexualised character with by far the greatest amount of H-scenes in the 18+ version of the game, including probably the most "extreme" one of all of them. Grisaia is pretty vanilla on the whole in terms of its H-content, but Amane's strongest scene of this type sees her wanting to experiment with bondage, and it unfolds from her perspective rather than the protagonist's; it's a fascinating look into how another character perceives a particular situation, and an inversion of how H-scenes are typically presented in visual novels. But I digress; the point with Amane is that her sexualisation and sexual content is integral to her personal story; for those who haven't read Grisaia, I won't spoil the exact context here, but suffice to say there is a real and plausible reason for why Amane is the way she is, and the all-ages version of the game suffers without this content.
Or how about the Neptunia series? Another all-female cast of highly capable women (arguably except for Nep herself, who is a joyfully adorable idiot, though she steps up to the plate when it counts and her charisma could be argued to be her most "capable" aspect), some of whom enjoy same-sex relationships with one another, and none of whom need men to support them or approve of what they do? So strong is the Neptunia cast in terms of characterisation and personality that they've transcended their original genre and medium; since the original PS3 game, they've appeared in traditional RPGs, beat 'em ups, management sims, strategy games, action RPGs and I have no doubt there will be plenty more enormously varied titles in their future.
Criminal Girls is another great example, too; in this game, the sexualised S&M-style content is used as a reflection of the game's core theme of trust -- trust between the party members, trust between the individual girls and the protagonist, and trust between the characters and the player. Everything about the game reinforces this, including the incidental dialogue, the narrative as a whole and even the combat mechanics; it's a much more clever game than people gave it credit for on original release.
Or Dungeon Travelers 2, a game in which the male protagonist is literally useless for anything other than "sealing" monsters after the all-female vanguard party have defeated them. And each of these party members have their own personality, unique events, interactions with one another and the protagonist, history, backstory and skills, giving them considerably more depth than both your typical characters in dungeon crawlers and the actual protagonist of the game.
And this isn't even getting into the matter of otome and BL games, both of which we're starting to see a lot more of in the West thanks to outfits like Aksys, IFI and MangaGamer. In both of these cases, we're talking about male characters designed to appeal to female players -- a philosophy FFXV's core cast was also designed around -- yet again, this aspect of gaming tends to get largely ignored unless they're a Western indie darling of the week like Dream Daddy.
Point is, look a bit more broadly than the triple-A mainstream (which I'd argue Xenoblade doesn't really fall into, for what it's worth; it's still a JRPG, which is still a somewhat specialist-interest genre, but that's another discussion) and you'll find all manner of interesting things going on with characterisation and representation.
This is very selective observation of historical context, though. Linking violent, gruesome deaths of female characters to patriarchal oppression is essentially similar to, say, if I'd bring up war horrors (stepping on land mines and the like) being a reason as to why Leon and Isaac's deaths are excessive and in poor taste, considering it's overwhelmingly men who've faced the brutal battlefield throughout history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but patriarchy has little to do with graphic death depiction in Tomb Raider, unless it features a disproportionate amount of scenes where men are the direct cause of her injury and death. Like TLoU, it's not quite a survival game, but it is a game through which the threads of survival and perseverance run. Nature is cruel, and random accidents can happen in the wild. The game seems to be deliberately framed as such.
Tomb Raider conveys a different tone from those games, which is ok. You wouldn't see those other characters die graphically because they target broader, more diverse audiences. Kids and young adolescents are part of their target demographic.
I wouldn't agree that there's a trend of women being used as window dressing before being violently discarded, if we're talking about relatively recent Western characters like Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite (she endures pain and torture, but it's part of her character arc), Tomb Raider, or TLoU 2 (we know what to expect from the quality of ND's usual narrative output). Their suffering elicits feelings of sympathy, rather than a fetishistic pleasure.
The way the camera creepily lingers on every death Lara experiences is definitely not normal of the genre, or normal for games generally. Patriarchy has a lot to do with those death depictions, because the people who were in power that made the decisions to create those animations were males. Maybe females would have made similar decisions, put in the same situation, but I'm going to say I highly doubt it. More than that, they present the character in a completely disempowered state that can only be for the player to watch. The player has no agency, the character has no agency.
I can think of a million ways to better present how nature is cruel, in-game, with both narrative and interactive consequences, far better than simply creating creepy death animations. Coughing up blood, being weakened from hypothermia, showing muscular atrophy as a result of wall-climbing for too long... the list goes on. Those death sequences do not present a, "nature is cruel" message to me. They present a, "these creators are weirdly focused on Lara's death."
As was already presented in the OP, there is a long history of women being used as window dressing and violently discarded. And this has been happening from the very beginning of video games. From Mario to Battletoads.
Not going to get involved as Resetera is not the place for any sort of dissenting opinion, but, I do think people should give Boogie a break. He is self evidently a very kind and reasonable person who attempts to consider an issue from different angles, does not rush to judgement and encourages people to take their time and avoid pointless conflict. He also is very open about his own personal issues (I imagine he faces significantly more personal distress that 99% of people who bully him).
He's a good guy and, rather than dismiss him out of hand, listen to what he says.
Nah, fuck Boogie. Centrists like him who ALWAYS go "both sides" enable the worst behavior, the worst aspects of these communities, by letting his audience think that it's acceptable to sit on the fence and not condemn blatantly awful behavior. The truth isn't always somewhere in the middle. Centrists are the fucking worst. It's intellectual laziness of the worst kind. Not forming a strong opinion because something doesn't personally affect you isn't brave or intelligent, it's fucking cowardly.
There is a difference between the player performing violence and the director presenting violence.
"Also, these problems aren't left behind if there's some sort of gross parity with death scenes." Are you saying that if male protagonists die as violently as female protagonists then it's still a problem? What?
I am saying that the amount of agency these characters are given in the examples we're discussing is fundamentally different.
Going to re-quote kaytee from the other thread here about how objectification affects this:
Sexual objectification is the viewing of people solely as de-personalised objects of desire instead of as individuals with complex personalities and desires/plans of their own. This is done by speaking/thinking of women especially as only their bodies, either the whole body, or as fetishised body parts.
Sexual attraction is not the same as sexual objectification: objectification only occurs when the individuality of the desired person is not acknowledged. Pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment and the representation of women in mass media and art are all examples of common sexual objectification.
The concept of objectification owes much to the work of Simone de Beauvoir regarding the basic dualism of human consciousness between the Self and the Other: the general mental process where humans classify the world into 'us' and 'them'. Women are universally viewed as the Other across all cultures, a role which is both externally imposed and internalised, and which means that women are generally not truly regarded as fully human. An important point of de Beauvoir's was that this Othering effect is the same whether women are viewed as wholly inferior or if femininity is viewed as mysterious and morally superior: Otherness and full equality cannot coexist.
"That said, there's also a tremendous difference in the amount of agency the male characters display versus the female characters in every example you've provided, so even in situations where males are dying, they're still dying for a purpose, rather than plot convenience alone. This was discussed in the OP." I don't know what you mean by this, it would be great if you could clarify.
1. Fantastic OP.
2. I'm happy that there's a place where women can post their thoughts and aren't being harrased for it.
3. I enjoy Games with female leads and good representation.
4. I must admit that a few years ago i feared that a strong armed approach for female representation would lead to the end of games with lewd/skimpy/etc. females. This was not the case. In the AAA space there're almost none of it but japanese games still has it in spades.
5. I sometimes enjoy Games with lewd/skimpy/etc. females in them. I don't want games like Dragon's crown or Senran Kagura to change. I don't play them that much but i'm glad that they exist. Dragon's crown grotesque artstyle is unique and i enjoy the lewd designs and the bare skin (female and male).
6. I really don't like the representation of Quiet or Cindy. I think they don't make sense and they take me out of the moment. But on the other hand i enjoy some of the blade designs in Xenoblade 2, especially the big breasted humonculus. Can't tell you why but i allways enjoyed the more obscure/bizarre forms.
I would want a balance of sorts to be honest. I want females to feel welcomed in our hobby but i also don't like some approaches in this thread where some people would outright destroy/ban these games if they show something they don't like. The outrage over some smal japanese titty game that'll sell less than 50.000 units total is not even on the same scale as something like Horizon or Lost Legacy.
That would be true if the complainant hadn't gone out of their way to have issue with another person's (Boogie) opinions in the first place. I'm merely pointing that fact out. It starts there. Then the internet extrapolates that sentiment into an entire social fabric, that often times (not all) differentiates from what is actual reality. The echo chamber only helps resonate this fabric.
Just let a dude have his own opinion. Is it directly affecting you? And I mean directly, not causation that you have found or created. If not, don't watch and move on. That's America. We're all entitled to our opinion. When you shut down a conversation based on difference of said opinion, you've directly gone against your own principles. In this case, claiming Boogie is this/that/or whatever means that you thought his issue was "too small to matter" as well.
It boils down to one thing for me. Live and let live. Sorry. And yes, I think a majority of today's 'issues' are in fact, trivial.
And none of this was directed at OP, merely the Boogie sidebar. I apologize for slightly derailing. I'll try to stick to video game topics only, as topics like these will only get me in trouble. Please ignore me. Shouldn't have even started.
I´m sorry, and I´m not trying to be mean, but I cannot comprehend this argument. Especially in the given context.
Again, you´re entire first paragraph works the other way around too. You´re implying that others reality isn´t real and trying to dictate what others lives and realitys are like without being them. In a crude, incredibly on the nose metaphor, it´s the same as a middle class westerner saying to starving africans that their problems don´t exist and that they´re exaggerating their "trivial" obstacles.
If we´re following the "Just let a dude have his opinion", then why are you not letting the other part in this have their own opinion yourself? You´re literally doing the exact same thing as you´re criticizing. Is this thread directly affecting you? If not, then move on. It´s America after all (what America has to do with all of this, I don´t know?) in your own words.
This is not about destroying or censoring a side in a discussion. Here´s how 90% of this thread has unfolded:
Person A: I have a personal issue with this thing, and here´s a write up I´ve made detailing my thoughts and setting up a discussion about it.
Person B: Your problems don´t exist. It doesn´t matter and I don´t care.
The above is not a discussion and calling out Person B is not censoring anybody or crushing a discussion. Equally worse is not only competely dismissing other peoples feelings about a subject, but also to fabricate false facts to support their viewpoint as some has done in this thread.
Lastly, if this is a trivial issue, then everything gaming related is trivial and I surely hope you haven´t complained about a single thing on this board as it was completely trivial and a non-issue in your own optic.
Wait, what? Please do explain the difference. Because right now it seems like you're prescribing something from your own viewpoint, when someone else's personal taste could imply the diametric opposite.
My wife loves 2B, completed the game multiple times. She finds nothing threatening about her. Is she wrong? No. Are you wrong? No.
Get my point?
My goal here is to try and get away from the circular and fruitlessly subjective "I like it!/I don't like it!" argument which is needlessly binary and prescriptive - and move towards the question of what actual solutions can make people feel more effective. A greater variety of content was my suggestion. Let's talk about your solutions?
You're never going to get all women - let alone everyone in the world - on your personal same page. Who sets the benchmark for what is OK and what isn't?
There being a difference between sexuality, what is sexy and what is sexualised isn't something I just made up, nor is there anything wrong with enjoying any of them. When the latter is a default for female characters a bit too often, it's fair game for criticism.
What I'm getting at is your use of 'sexuality'. It read like you thought people wanted to remove sexuality or sexiness from games, which is an argument often used to shut down discussion and isn't the point of the OP at all. It's the way-out-of-balance sexualisation that various posters have an issue with.
Solutions? Perhaps all of us being on the same page with the terminology used would be a good start, as it would stop conversation halting at the first hurdle when any criticism of sexualisation is met with 'they want to ban sexuality!'
There is a difference between the player performing violence and the director presenting violence.
I am saying that the amount of agency these characters are given in the examples we're discussing is fundamentally different.
Going to re-quote kaytee from the other thread here about how objectification affects this:
Again, it's related to agency and objectification, see above. Women are treated as props, rather than full human beings.
I don't see how Tallion's wife is less of a "prop" or has less "agency" than Tallion's son who is executed in the same scene (along with Tallion).
Secondary characters are treated as props to advance the plot in all media. My disagreement is that I feel that women are not treated worse than men as secondary characters, it's that women need to be brought out of secondary roles and into central roles.
Ok, but we weren't talking about the Middle-Earth games until just now, and I'm not familiar enough with them to speak to what their treatment was like with regards to the violence inflicted on the characters you mention (also, this wasn't an example we were discussing before).
Secondary characters are treated as props to advance the plot in all media. My disagreement is that I feel that women are not treated worse than men as secondary characters, it's that women need to be brought out of secondary roles and into central roles.
Well, a) I think we'll agree to disagree as I believe women are generally treated worse than men, whether as secondary characters or primary characters, due to larger systemic problems, and b) I agree that women need to be in central roles more often.
Thank you for that writeup, OP. Very interesting. There's things in there I'm trying to keep in mind while writing female characters, as well.
For the life of me, I can't imagine how people can get upset at a female main character like Aloy, or the Nate's daughter thing. How can you be that insecure about your masculinity, that even the very idea of playing as a female character is insulting?
No, they're not the worst. Of course, as you suggest, it *can* be cowardly. It can be wilfully avoiding the issue due to a lack of courage. Moreover, it could be even worse - perhaps someone actually thinks something unpleasant and doesn't want to admit it, so cloaks themselves in the robes of even-handedness. But that's simply a judgement call we all have to make as individuals.
There are far too many internet wallies around at the moment who despite having absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of 20th Century history like pretend they're living under the Third Reich circa 1941. It's embarrassing. And as Yeats suggested, 'the worst are full of passionate intensity'.
The reason a lot of people get so defensive and upset whenever this sort of thing is brought up is because the people who criticise the current state of representation in popular media inevitably ignore a wide variety of examples of it being done extremely well -- particularly when those good examples are Japanese in origin.
Modern Japanese games as a whole are widely misjudged to be pandering otaku bait. For sure, some absolutely are -- and there's nothing wrong with that at all, some moe moe fluff with pretty girls is just what the doctor ordered when you're feeling down in the dumps, at least for me, and sometimes there's nothing quite like a good nukige to tune out to -- but in other cases, they are fundamentally misrepresented by both the media and commentators who make broad generalisations based on just a narrow sample, often without being properly informed about some of the things they're commenting on. At other times, the use of sexual content is demonised without considering why it might be there in the first place.
All that is a problem, particularly when we start making statements like "we need to do better". We already are doing "better"; it just doesn't get acknowledged.
Let's take Senran Kagura as an example. This has been widely shat on by a variety of commercial mainstream publications by writers who, in most cases, admit that they haven't spent more than an hour or two with the game. Take any time to engage with it, however, and you'll discover that the series as a whole features a large and diverse cast of female characters, each of whom have their own unique backgrounds, personalities and ways that they engage with other people. Some (many!) of them are gay. Some have relatable issues such as concerns over their body image, or worries that they might get kinkshamed for their tastes, or simply feelings of inferiority when compared to their peers. Over the course of the Senran Kagura games to date, each and every one of these characters has been explored in great, great depth, but this aspect of the series never, ever gets discussed because mainstream sites spend an hour with one game and go "lol, it's about boobs".
Let's take another example: Amane from the Grisaia series of visual novels. Amane is a highly sexualised character with by far the greatest amount of H-scenes in the 18+ version of the game, including probably the most "extreme" one of all of them. Grisaia is pretty vanilla on the whole in terms of its H-content, but Amane's strongest scene of this type sees her wanting to experiment with bondage, and it unfolds from her perspective rather than the protagonist's; it's a fascinating look into how another character perceives a particular situation, and an inversion of how H-scenes are typically presented in visual novels. But I digress; the point with Amane is that her sexualisation and sexual content is integral to her personal story; for those who haven't read Grisaia, I won't spoil the exact context here, but suffice to say there is a real and plausible reason for why Amane is the way she is, and the all-ages version of the game suffers without this content.
Or how about the Neptunia series? Another all-female cast of highly capable women (arguably except for Nep herself, who is a joyfully adorable idiot, though she steps up to the plate when it counts and her charisma could be argued to be her most "capable" aspect), some of whom enjoy same-sex relationships with one another, and none of whom need men to support them or approve of what they do? So strong is the Neptunia cast in terms of characterisation and personality that they've transcended their original genre and medium; since the original PS3 game, they've appeared in traditional RPGs, beat 'em ups, management sims, strategy games, action RPGs and I have no doubt there will be plenty more enormously varied titles in their future.
Criminal Girls is another great example, too; in this game, the sexualised S&M-style content is used as a reflection of the game's core theme of trust -- trust between the party members, trust between the individual girls and the protagonist, and trust between the characters and the player. Everything about the game reinforces this, including the incidental dialogue, the narrative as a whole and even the combat mechanics; it's a much more clever game than people gave it credit for on original release.
Or Dungeon Travelers 2, a game in which the male protagonist is literally useless for anything other than "sealing" monsters after the all-female vanguard party have defeated them. And each of these party members have their own personality, unique events, interactions with one another and the protagonist, history, backstory and skills, giving them considerably more depth than both your typical characters in dungeon crawlers and the actual protagonist of the game.
And this isn't even getting into the matter of otome and BL games, both of which we're starting to see a lot more of in the West thanks to outfits like Aksys, IFI and MangaGamer. In both of these cases, we're talking about male characters designed to appeal to female players -- a philosophy FFXV's core cast was also designed around -- yet again, this aspect of gaming tends to get largely ignored unless they're a Western indie darling of the week like Dream Daddy.
Point is, look a bit more broadly than the triple-A mainstream (which I'd argue Xenoblade doesn't really fall into, for what it's worth; it's still a JRPG, which is still a somewhat specialist-interest genre, but that's another discussion) and you'll find all manner of interesting things going on with characterisation and representation.
Y'know, I don't really like clowns. They creep me the fuck out. But I don't have a problem with clown lovers. I don't have a problem with circuses, clown clubs, video games or movies about clowns, clown focused magazines with clown center folds. Those things are clearly marked as products aimed at the clown audience, for clown lovers. If you like yourself some clown action, it's easy to walk into a store and grab your product, and it's easy for me to say hell naw and stay the fuck away from it. But imagine a world...where 80% to 90% or some other way too high a number of media...had clowns in it.
Imagine looking through games at your preferred game retailer and a game figuratively speaks to you – Hey! you like sci-fi?
Yeah I do.
- You like explorin' expansive alien landscapes of eye melting beauty?
You bet!
- You like driving around giantass transforming mechs?
Hell yeah!
- Then this game is pertinent to your interests!
So you get home with your latest purchase and everything seems great then first boss and fucking clown out of no where. Why is this boss a clown?! This game has shit to do with clowns. It's just sorta' there so whatever you send it packing and the game goes back to normal...until you meet the alien species populated entirely by mimes. Why are they mimes? It doesn't make any god damn sense but there they are. Then there's the clown themed costumes and that random clown in a cut scene that ruins the mood and drags you out of the game's immersion cause you can't stop staring at its giant jiggling balloons, and you aren't even into clowns but it's just so fucking distracting!
So fuck this game, play another. So you're blazing a trail of death and destruction through some bald guy shooter, taking out the terroristnazicommies when the elite badguy squad shows up and it's clowns. They come at you juggling their balls and making faces and the camera can't seem to stay out of their back pockets, making sure you get a real good close up of their polka dots and squeaky noses and why the fuck are they clowns? What do they add to this game? Who bought this game for the clowns? There are so many better choices for clown lovers that focus on clowning. Nobody bought this for the off chance of clowns yet here they are.
So fuck that game too but as you continue your search you steadily get this sinking suspicion that you can't escape. Games about clowns aimed at the clown loving audience aren't enough. Clowns are everywhere. Even those games you think are for you still dedicate a chunk of their content to the clown fandom. Doesn't matter if the game isn't really aimed at that audience, that audience might look in and so they must be pandered to. Doesn't matter if the clowns fit the theme, if they're out of place, the clowntaku are the ones that count most so fuck everybody else.
Thank you for that writeup, OP. Very interesting. There's things in there I'm trying to keep in mind while writing female characters, as well.
For the life of me, I can't imagine how people can get upset at a female main character like Aloy, or the Nate's daughter thing. How can you be that insecure about your masculinity, that even the very idea of playing as a female character is insulting?
It honestly makes me feel sick, surprised, baffled, offended all at once that men actively won't play as a female character. It blows my mind this is an actual attitude. It's real.
How has humanity progressed so far and yet backwards attitudes like this persist? I don't understand.
This may have already been noted, it's a long thread and I apologise if it has, but the use of women as a plot device and only a plot device has a term in the comic boom community, that I believe is common outside of it now, called Women in Refridgerators. The original blog was written by Gail Simone. An extremely good writer for DC.
It was coined after the new Green Lanterns girlfriend was murdered and shoved in the fridge. She had no character development. She existed for several issues (maybe not even that long) and was murdered and shoved in a fridge. She was not a person. She was not a character. She was a plot device. Nothing more and nothing less.
If you have played Dragon Age Origins as a male elf you will see an example there in the male niece. She is raped purely to show how bad the villains are.
I would also recommend having a look at TVTropes which lists just some examples of this concept. Yes there are male examples of this, but nowhere near the level of female characters.
I started my 2nd playthrough of sunset overdrive and I picked a black woman. My 1st I picked a black man. i like that I can represent my colour in games it will always endear me to the character, whether they are male or female gay or straight or alternative.
I still fail to understand people who won't at least try to enjoy a game from someone elses perspective so maybe I cannot contribute massively to this thread, so I wanted to say great OP, people need to better.
No, they're not the worst. Of course, as you suggest, it *can* be cowardly. It can be wilfully avoiding the issue due to a lack of courage. Moreover, it could be even worse - perhaps someone actually thinks something unpleasant and doesn't want to admit it, so cloaks themselves in the robes of even-handedness. But that's simply a judgement call we all have to make as individuals.
There are far too many internet wallies around at the moment who despite having absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of 20th Century history like pretend they're living under the Third Reich circa 1941. It's embarrassing. And as Yeats suggested, 'the worst are full of passionate intensity'.
Yeah, they're the subject of this thread. Can you believe that some gamers are so offended over the someone having a criticism for a game? Pointing out sexism means you want to censor the artist, it's wild. How does one make the leap? Glad this thread was cleaned up though.
Somehow I doubt you meant that though.
Also Boogie uses homophobic slurs on 4chan as 'terms of endermeant'. And gets offended by 'fat shaming' Seriously? Both are bad but he's a hypocrite. I'm supposed to see this guy as a centrist after that? He gives actual centrists a bad image.
I don't know why I didn't see this thread yesterday. Sorry for reading it late.
About the OP, all I can say is "BRAVO!!" to Llyrwenne for all the work she took writing the OP and explaining everything clearly.
About Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that is mentioned, At the beginning I wasn't purchasing this game because I totally hated the designs of the blades and how sexist they are, and I have a new reason right now: blades are women used as objects. They game is good? Fine, but playing this goes against my principles.
It's really annoying to read all those shitty comments in this thread. I don't understand those guys, and as a guy, all that lack of empathy they have make me feel ashamed of my gender. And the situation is even worse: they want everyone to respect their disrespectful opinions, opinions where they show they have no respect to nobody. This takes me out of my nerves.
There being a difference between sexuality, what is sexy and what is sexualised isn't something I just made up, nor is there anything wrong with enjoying any of them. When the latter is a default for female characters a bit too often, it's fair game for criticism.
What I'm getting at is your use of 'sexuality'. It read like you thought people wanted to remove sexuality or sexiness from games, which is an argument often used to shut down discussion and isn't the point of the OP at all.
I read the OP but there's 12 pages of discussion since then. The OP presumably was raised to encourage discussion, not lay down the law.
If you read that subsequent discussion, many posters are precisely taking issue with sexuality and conflating this with the intent to objectify. I don't agree.
Actually, with so much at stake in modern game development - I'd argue that in the current environment game developers are now extremely cautious in their representations of their characters. If they make sexy designs, it is typically, well, by design. Which we've established is fine?
"When the latter is a default for female characters a bit too often, it's fair game for criticism."
By who's standards are you judging this, and what makes that the authority?
Let's get away from this vagueness and focus on what can be done.
re: boys love games, I like 'em but their continued rise means little to me as a queer man and they aren't a panacea when it comes to representation. Personally I find it pretty demeaning that the easiest place for me to find queer male characters is in a game where their affection for each other exists to be objectified by straight women, and as such there's a homogeneity in the character design, there's a reductionist and voyeuristic view of queer relationships, and the queer content is handled as titillation for straight audiences. The reason Dream Daddy got my attention in a way that other dating sims I've played didn't isn't because it was western, it's because I got to play as a queer man and the romantic options were varied in age, body type, sexual orientation and race. It wasn't perfect but it felt more queer than boys love and less weighed down by the straight gaze.
This is also why queer women in games designed to be sexy for straight men is not necessarily "doing better" in my eyes, because they still exist for the purpose of being observed by straight men rather than to actually represent or appeal to queer women - in some cases, they're lesbians simply because that's what men want. And all that aside, even where things are getting better (and the general trend, I like to believe, is towards progress, so they are), better isn't something that you reach and are done with. We have to always be doing better, and ensuring that we stick to those guns.
re: FFXV, I appreciate that its men are designed to be appealing (though I guess not specifically to me), and I love me some Gladio, but its offerings are still pretty weak in this regard and I don't remember any of the male cast being objectified or sexualized the same way the female cast were.
Y'know, I don't really like clowns. They creep me the fuck out. But I don't have a problem with clown lovers. I don't have a problem with circuses, clown clubs, video games or movies about clowns, clown focused magazines with clown center folds. Those things are clearly marked as products aimed at the clown audience, for clown lovers. If you like yourself some clown action, it's easy to walk into a store and grab your product, and it's easy for me to say hell naw and stay the fuck away from it. But imagine a world...where 80% to 90% or some other way too high a number of media...had clowns in it.
Imagine looking through games at your preferred game retailer and a game figuratively speaks to you – Hey! you like sci-fi?
Yeah I do.
- You like explorin' expansive alien landscapes of eye melting beauty?
You bet!
- You like driving around giantass transforming mechs?
Hell yeah!
- Then this game is pertinent to your interests!
So you get home with your latest purchase and everything seems great then first boss and fucking clown out of no where. Why is this boss a clown?! This game has shit to do with clowns. It's just sorta' there so whatever you send it packing and the game goes back to normal...until you meet the alien species populated entirely by mimes. Why are they mimes? It doesn't make any god damn sense but there they are. Then there's the clown themed costumes and that random clown in a cut scene that ruins the mood and drags you out of the game's immersion cause you can't stop staring at its giant jiggling balloons, and you aren't even into clowns but it's just so fucking distracting!
So fuck this game, play another. So you're blazing a trail of death and destruction through some bald guy shooter, taking out the terroristnazicommies when the elite badguy squad shows up and it's clowns. They come at you juggling their balls and making faces and the camera can't seem to stay out of their back pockets, making sure you get a real good close up of their polka dots and squeaky noses and why the fuck are they clowns? What do they add to this game? Who bought this game for the clowns? There are so many better choices for clown lovers that focus on clowning. Nobody bought this for the off chance of clowns yet here they are.
So fuck that game too but as you continue your search you steadily get this sinking suspicion that you can't escape. Games about clowns aimed at the clown loving audience aren't enough. Clowns are everywhere. Even those games you think are for you still dedicate a chunk of their content to the clown fandom. Doesn't matter if the game isn't really aimed at that audience, that audience might look in and so they must be pandered to. Doesn't matter if the clowns fit the theme, if they're out of place, the clowntaku are the ones that count most so fuck everybody else.
Thank you for the fantastic effort you put in to this, OP.
I try and avoid these threads, not because I am disinterested, but because they're so disheartening. I think the point that hurts most is seeing so many men dismiss that women casually play console/PC games. If we play games we must not be 'real gamers' and only play mobile games, as the thought goes. I'm a dedicated 'gamer', it's a big hobby I spend a decent portion of money/time on. But I have a large group of friends, also women, who are 'casual' gamers. One friend, owns only a SNES, but plays it often and her favourite game ever is Earthbound. Another friend works at a pathology call centre, and on her off-hours plays Zelda on her 3ds. She also has an Xbox 360 and Switch. And just today I caught my room-mate setting up a Steam account for herself. None of these women are what you'd call 'gamers'. They have fairly varied tastes and interests but they all enjoy playing games. And these are just a couple of my friends I've mentioned.
Please stop dismissing women out of hand. There are at least 2 generations now of us growing up with video games. I mean, my first console was a NES. But these women are younger than me. Imagine the new generation now growing up, young girls playing a Switch; don't they deserve to see young heroines for themselves? Games like A Hat in Time or Mario + Rabbids. Give kids the option to play as a boy or girl from a young age. Let that start to become the norm. Maybe our generation is forfeit, but we can definitely do a lot for the younger ones.
There's a lot of people in this topic with the mindset of "if quiet was not objectified in the game you wouldn't like it any less, meanwhile there are those who can't even play the game because of her"
I feel for those people, I do. But I don't agree I wouldn't like MGSV any less
I mean sure, the gameplay would be the same, and it's a game so that's kind of what matters right?
But truthfully, if quiet was dressed in proper covered up battle gear, I probably would have still enjoyed her character arc but I wouldn't have been as interested in choosing her as my buddy like every mission
The idea of having this really sexy sniper in a bikini as my sidekick definitely played into a power fantasy scenario that I really enjoyed. I found myself ignoring d horse and d dog so I could bring her along on the chopper rides.
I truly feel like Quiet elevated what I would call an 8/10 game to a 9/10 game. I was dedicated to maxing out our bond level and also making sure I unlocked all the cutscenes. Hell I sat there and wasted real time hanging out in a dumpster and smoking the phantom cigar because I heard it would trigger some kind of shower scene
I can see how that would be upsetting and gross to others and again I certainly empathize.
Looking back now I wish that Kojima had defaulted to the XOF costume and maybe hidden some of the pervy helicopter poses behind unlockable buddy options or something
What I'm trying to say is that while I'm not willing to give up what I like in my games even if harmful or damaging, I think there can be way more compromises in customizing how games are presented so the customers so we can avoid people feeling like they are being excluded, I don't want that!
I also love street fighter 5 as is, and will be the first to tell you I was one of those bummed out when R Mika's butt slap was censored a bit... but for everyone's sake why can't there be an option to default all characters to more standard gender friendly designs, and hide the cheesecake stuff behind options for those who enjoy it?
I don't care if someone spent 20 bucks on a new costume, if it would bother someone every game should offer the option to hide these things.
I play almost 99% of my games solo/offline so what I enjoy isn't affecting anyone and that's why I feel comfortable with what I like.
But if I was forced to play online and I knew it was in the company of women or other genders who might find my choices distasteful, I'd definitely think twice about selecting them at that time.
I read the OP but there's 12 pages of discussion since then. The OP presumably was raised to encourage discussion, not lay down the law.
If you read that subsequent discussion, many posters are precisely taking issue with sexuality and conflating this with the intent to objectify. I don't agree.
Actually, with so much at stake in modern game development - I'd argue that in the current environment game developers are now extremely cautious in their representations of their characters. If they make sexy designs, it is typically, well, by design. Which we've established is fine?
"When the latter is a default for female characters a bit too often, it's fair game for criticism."
By who's standards are you judging this, and what makes that the authority?
Let's get away from this vagueness and focus on what can be done.
Let's start by defining the problem, although I still don't think you understand the difference between sexy, sexuality and sexualisation in my posts. It's an important distinction.
Sexuality in character design/sexy design is fine, of course it is.
Sexualised character design, as a large, almost-by-default portion of female character design, isn't IMO. Would you agree with that? Are you saying that, as a standard, is an unreasonable position? I thought me saying 'a bit too often' was pretty soft as far as descriptions go, you keep saying things are vague but I think that's a pretty clear objection. I didn't realise I needed some kind of industry consensus or authority to find something ridiculous.
The way the camera creepily lingers on every death Lara experiences is definitely not normal of the genre, or normal for games generally. Patriarchy has a lot to do with those death depictions, because the people who were in power that made the decisions to create those animations were males. Maybe females would have made similar decisions, put in the same situation, but I'm going to say I highly doubt it. More than that, they present the character in a completely disempowered state that can only be for the player to watch. The player has no agency, the character has no agency.
The death scenes in Tomb Raider are very much in line with what you see in survival horror games. In Dead Space the player also only ends up watching as Isaac get brutally dismembered while the camera lingers on the gore.
As to why this ended up in an action adventure game like Tomb Raider, the answer would be that they tonally started this game off with a survival horror direction. You especially notice this in the first hour or so of the game. The more it progresses the more it turns into an action adventure, but even then do you occasionally have stuff like a 1:1 references to a horror movie like the Descent
Of course can you blame the game for being so tonally confused, but I don't think that they did all this specifically because Lara is a woman.
The death scenes in Tomb Raider are very much in line with what you see in survival horror games. In Dead Space the player also only ends up watching as Isaac get brutally dismembered while the camera lingers on the gore.
As to why this ended up in an action adventure game like Tomb Raider, the answer would be that they tonally started this game off with a survival horror direction. You especially notice this in the first hour or so of the game. The more it progresses the more it turns into an action adventure, but even then do you occasionally have stuff like a 1:1 references to a horror movie like the Descent
Of course can you blame the game for being so tonally confused, but I don't think that they did all this specifically because Lara is a woman.
Let's start by defining the problem, although I still don't think you understand the difference between sexy, sexuality and sexualisation in my posts. It's an important distinction.
Sexuality in character design/sexy design is fine, of course it is.
Sexualised character design, as a large, almost-by-default portion of female character design, isn't IMO. Would you agree with that? Are you saying that, as a standard, is an unreasonable position? I thought me saying 'a bit too often' was pretty soft as far as descriptions go, you keep saying things are vague but I think that's a pretty clear objection.
I know you weren't talking to me, but I think if we're talking about the problem being the scale of sexualisation rather than sexualisation itself, then to really define the problem we'd have to get some kind of example of how often it occurs so we can all be on the same page.
Let's say if you took the top 10 or 20 selling games of 2016 on each of the major formats - Mobile, Handheld, Console, PC. It would be interesting to see how many games feature sexualised female designs. I personally suspect it would be less than 30% - and that's something that always informs my discussions on this topic, the idea that most games don't actually have sexualised characters, and that it isn't actually an 'almost-by-default' position. If someone wants to do it by genre that would be interesting too. I can imagine that the presence of sexualized designs in fighting games or JRPGs is over 90%, for example.
If we're looking at not being vague then some actual analysis in that style would be very useful, imo.
The death scenes in Tomb Raider are very much in line with what you see in survival horror games. In Dead Space the player also only ends up watching as Isaac get brutally dismembered while the camera lingers on the gore.
As to why this ended up in an action adventure game like Tomb Raider, the answer would be that they tonally started this game off with a survival horror direction. You especially notice this in the first hour or so of the game. The more it progresses the more it turns into an action adventure, but even then do you occasionally have stuff like a 1:1 references to a horror movie like the Descent
Of course can you blame the game for being so tonally confused, but I don't think that they did all this specifically because Lara is a woman.
Huh, I've never considered the idea that TR 2013 was originally a survival horror game, but it totally makes sense the way you explain it here. I'm curious, is there anywhere that you've explicitly read that this was the case, or is this just an assumption you made yourself? Either way, I think I buy it.
I want to touch upon something that is a small nitpick on my part that concerns the idea that additional representation will help resolve objectification issues.
The argument that representation will resolve, or even alleviate, objectification issues is ultimately flawed. Objectification will not go away if we replace all the men in charge with women because men will still remain a consumer base with money to spend. This is true in something like a microcosm of Twitch which initially started out as a boy's club, but as more women came into the community, some actively relied upon objectifying themselves in order to draw the male dollar. I'm not arguing, or even implying, that there's anything wrong with this. You do you. Everybody's gotta' eat.
But putting women in positions of power may mean better representation of women, but representation itself will not reduce objectification because there will always to be a market for such content. That isn't to say I don't believe more women do need to be in power. They do. But anyone thinking that simply putting women and people of color in charge will rectify objectification issues is simply deluding themselves. There are billions of dollars to be made just in the Japanese marketplace between the games themselves, the body pillows, the figures, the posters, the anime, and the clothes.
Women aren't going to let that kind of money slide even if you put them into power. This specific industry was worth 1.65 billion USD in 2007 (http://www.darkmirage.com/2007/12/21/2007-otaku-market-worth-1868-billion-yen/). I can only imagine that it's grown since then, but I'll leave it to someone else to find the statistics on that. But even if the industry has stagnated at 1.65 billion dollars, those men and women buying that content aren't simply going to vanish and someone else is going to step in with products and content.
Please don't conflate this post as implying that representation is pointless. More representation is always better. But in regards to sexualized content, representation isn't going to make a lick of difference when there's this much money just sitting on the table.
Huh, I've never considered the idea that TR 2013 was originally a survival horror game, but it totally makes sense the way you explain it here. I'm curious, is there anywhere that you've explicitly read that this was the case, or is this just an assumption you made yourself? Either way, I think I buy it.
Huh, I've never considered the idea that TR 2013 was originally a survival horror game, but it totally makes sense the way you explain it here. I'm curious, is there anywhere that you've explicitly read that this was the case, or is this just an assumption you made yourself? Either way, I think I buy it.
I think this could being in part because the writting team came very late to the game, I saw a video about Rihanna Pratchett, the writer of TR2013, and she says she came very very late to the game dev process and they had like a bunch of ideas and scenes that needed a story to glue them together, so yeah the whole shift in tone could be a problem because of this
Let's start by defining the problem, although I still don't think you understand the difference between sexy, sexuality and sexualisation in my posts. It's an important distinction.
Sexuality in character design/sexy design is fine, of course it is.
Sexualised character design, as a large, almost-by-default portion of female character design, isn't IMO. Would you agree with that? Are you saying that, as a standard, is an unreasonable position? I thought me saying 'a bit too often' was pretty soft as far as descriptions go, you keep saying things are vague but I think that's a pretty clear objection.
I appreciate you trying to define this, but your definitions are still vague. What absolute standards are you using to draw a line between - in your definition - sexy/sexualized?
(Unfair question - there is none, that's my point).
Without clear definition - that are agreed by all - this entire position is meaningless beyond "I like/you like". Hence a fruitless discussion.
My wife and I can't even agree on this. Who gets to define this for an entire art form/$100B industry.
Create a standard by market, law, or society wide consensus. Honestly anything else is just semantics or at worst, whining into the void and no one changes.
I know you weren't talking to me, but I think if we're talking about the problem being the scale of sexualisation rather than sexualisation itself, then to really define the problem we'd have to get some kind of example of how often it occurs so we can all be on the same page.
Let's say if you took the top 10 or 20 selling games of 2016 on each of the major formats - Mobile, Handheld, Console, PC. It would be interesting to see how many games feature sexualised female designs. I personally suspect it would be less than 30% - and that's something that always informs my discussions on this topic, the idea that most games don't actually have sexualised characters, and that it isn't actually an 'almost-by-default' position. If someone wants to do it by genre that would be interesting too. I can imagine that the presence of sexualized designs in fighting games or JRPGs is over 90%, for example.
If we're looking at not being vague then some actual analysis in that style would be very useful, imo.
Happy to concede that my 'almost by default' is more prevelent, and thus more problematic, in some genres than others. If you mainly play JRPGs and Fighting games etc, the trends amongst western AAA games are of little comfort.
However, seeing as many of the recent AAA games avoid it and still sell loads (despite taking flak from those that don't like such a shift towards more female MCs etc) doesn't that then somewhat take away from the 'but it's what the audience wants!' argument too, if the mainstream audience doesn't seem that bothered? Perhaps it comes back around to an argument posted earlier that it's the smaller games that feel they need to focus on pandering to survive, whereas the big western games are in another league and are now interested in diversity.
Huh, I've never considered the idea that TR 2013 was originally a survival horror game, but it totally makes sense the way you explain it here. I'm curious, is there anywhere that you've explicitly read that this was the case, or is this just an assumption you made yourself? Either way, I think I buy it.
It's mostly an assumption but the first draft they had for the franchise reboot was a survival horror type of game. They eventually abandoned that project but I could imagine that there were some left over ideas that made it into the 2013 reboot
I appreciate you trying to define this, but your definitions are still vague. What absolute standards are you using to draw a line between - in your definition - sexy/sexualized? Who decides this?
Fair enough, likewise, I honestly appreciate you're trying to pin me down to something definitive. As a guy I'm probably not the person who should be defining anything here, and so I'm hesitant to start adding links to back up the terminology I'm using. Anyone else want to bail me out here, or has Vibri got me on the ropes :-)
The death scenes in Tomb Raider are very much in line with what you see in survival horror games. In Dead Space the player also only ends up watching as Isaac get brutally dismembered while the camera lingers on the gore.
As to why this ended up in an action adventure game like Tomb Raider, the answer would be that they tonally started this game off with a survival horror direction. You especially notice this in the first hour or so of the game. The more it progresses the more it turns into an action adventure, but even then do you occasionally have stuff like a 1:1 references to a horror movie like the Descent
Of course can you blame the game for being so tonally confused, but I don't think that they did all this specifically because Lara is a woman.
I certainly think this is a possibility, but I also think it might just be because the developers were responding to their perceived audience: https://killscreen.com/articles/killing-lara-croft/
Either way, it's messed up if they left it in a game whose design conceit had fundamentally changed, or if it's just because they couldn't decide what to do with it tonally.
