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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Is anyone threatening to burn Kojima's apartment down if he doesn't put clothes on his female characters? I'm pretty sure it's just people criticizing his work. And that's perfectly fine, criticism is not a bad thing, and Kojima should feel flattered that people have high expectations of his work (I personally don't, lol).
No no no
This is really completely something I won't try to even get a little close with, this statement of yours.
Kojima probably loves Quiet. And so do I. We love women. Literally.
Racism is about hatred and disgust.
Don't get this so twisted man, come on.
Spman2099 is correct in the fact that even if it is the case that the primary demographic of video games are young white men, does this mean they should be fed sexist and racist and homophobic products? Are young white men not multifaceted and wouldn't they exactly benefit from a more diverse mediasphere that actually reflects reality and the complexity of identities?
E.g. women should not just be represented because it benefits women, they should be represented because it benefits *all* consumers of games. Putting the responsibility of representation on marginalized audiences is not fair, and it leaves out the other identities who also benefits from more and better representation of non-default identities (those who aren't US, white, young men)
The capitalist logic of looking at representation from a purely market-oriented perspective reduces the complexity of group identities, it ascribes traits to consumers that they don't necessarily have (young white men want sexist and racist media), and it also justifies bigotry as long as it makes a profit (which is what SPman2099 was referring to). In Adrienne Shaw's research and book Gaming at the Edge she writes based on her interviews with marginalized US consumers:
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I'm about to blow your mind.
Sexism is also about hatred and disgust in the form of a lack of respect for women.
Loving women as objects isn't love, it may not be hate, but it sure as hell isn't love. You can't actively disrespect someone and say that you do it out of love. Not genuinely, at least. At the very least that is an incredibly warped perception of love.
There is no problem with an artist making something to cater to a specific audience. That's perfectly fine and good. Like I said before, I don't mind games that sexualised character provided it is done in an honest manner or that it serves an honest purpose, whether that's to emphasise the character's sexuality or just to give blatant fan service. That is perfectly fine.
But there is a problem when you make something that is clearly meant to be blatant fan service like Quiet. A crystal clear sexualisation of a character ogling pleasure and say with a straight face:
That's what I have a problem with. Not Quiet herself, she's eye-candy for consumers and that's fine, every industry has that. But that blatant deceit is something that everyone should collectively frown upon.
Developers and designers should not have a carte blanche to sexualise anything they want and hide their intent under the guise of artistry. It's disrespectful towards consumers in my opinion.
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Kojima and I and others who love Quiet are not that kind of persons.
We love women. Our mothers, our sisters, our girlfriends and wifes and daughters and women in general.
You really are wrong if you think Quiet comes out of a brain filled with "hatred and disgust in the form of a lack of respect for women."
Couldn't be further from the truth.
I have said enough here.
Good luck
The way you frame it in your post, with the finishing remark of saying you didn't want to reply to my posts anyway, gives me the impression instead of arguing in "good faith" it was just about digging your boot in as you didn't like my posts. If you're overly hostile to someone, personally, of course they are going to read into your statement and think this isn't simply someone wanting to engage in a fruitful debate. You quoted me and decided to word your post the way you did, that's just some feedback from me.
As for QF, yes, it's all listed here as well as their sample bias https://quanticfoundry.com/the-v23-sample/
It's still a large surveyed number of gamers, and 18% is still 43,200 responses around interests in gaming from female gamers.
If SPman2099 wants to direct me and others to some racist video games I'll be more inclined to respond more openly. As I said to them above Lime the way their whole post was worded, especially finishing with the below doesn't quite have me believing they wanted a sincere conversation about that question. It was more of a rhetorical fallacy of "hey Audio, you must defend racism in games because you are so neutral!". As I said to them, we've not been talking about racism so to try and set that argument up for me in such a rhetorical fashion was pretty easy to see through.
As for your capitalism remark, eh, somewhat up for debate. At the end of the day, games need to sell and make profit or else studios don't continue to operate. Of course, there's room for many different types of games, and things like Horizon and TLoU 2 (presumably) will show that female leads can sell millions if the game is good. Sometimes studios are too risk averse, when they really do not need to be. Make a good game and people will buy it. That doesn't defeat "capitalism" though, it's still true that you need to sell and make a profit and some ventures can end up flopping. As I said, I do somewhat agree with you, but I'm not adverse to "capitalistic logic". Some of it is just marketing common sense, whether you want to say it's capitalism or not. As I mentioned quite a bit earlier, try and get 100 writers to go fully in on male romance novels and ask them how their financial success goes? Such is life sometimes with genres and products. They might not sell a lot no matter how good you make them.
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The issue is sexualisation. Is that really as offensive as a racial stereotype? If that's your mindset do you also take huge issue with something like the Playboy?
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Surely I'm not alon in that I never try to superimpose myself on the characters I play in video games in all my time gaming. It makes it so I don't have any insecurities no matter how many handsome/sexy men with perfect bodies I see in games. I just enjoy looking at things that are pleasing to my eye, and more often than not, it's cool/sexy designs.
Kojima took an otherwise kickass female soldier and reduced her to nothing more than tits and ass because he wanted to. That's objectification that comes from an obvious lack of respect for women. He could have put more clothes on her, kept her badass status, and made her an all-around awesome character that both genders could identify with. But he didn't.
A person doesn't have to outright say they don't respect women. Actions are enough.
I feel the issue with DoA is that the characters and art style have so little personality, that if you took away their sexualization there would be nothing left. Like seriously these are some barebone ass character designs,the sexiness is the only notable aspect, they really would have to retool the series aesthetic.
Cindy's outfit is cringe and unnecessary for sure.
FFXV has a big female fanbase. The main cast are appealing pretty boys, especially Noctis
No, it doesn't. You have Hot Ryu (which was officially an accident, Capcom said he wasn't intended to be "hot") and that's it. There's ONE dude wearing a thong, and he's of course a creepy butterface (please note how there are never female butterfaces, unless you count older NRS fighters :P). Ed does NOT wear revealing clothes (even his boxing outfit is not any less tight than an actual MMA outfit, and it's actually much less revealing) and... that's it.
DOA5 is on an entirely different dimension when it comes to sexualized male characters.
This is nonsense.
Quiet was not 'reduced to nothing more than tits and ass'. She had the best character arc in that game. She was a brilliantly implemented gameplay mechanic whom you would bond with as a sheer result of the amount of times she'd bail you out. She's the best in-game 'buddy' character I've ever seen implemented. So, amazing gameplay mechanics and good character arc = nothing but tits and ass? No.
There were plenty of different facets to Quiet in MGSV. The fact that she was ALSO a highly sexualised character used as explicit soft-core porn fanservice doesn't change that. I don't understand the whole 'reduced to nothing but sex' aspect. If anyone is reducing her in that way, it's you, by stating so, and refusing to view her holistically.
And most importantly, I don't think you can make any deductions on whether someone respects real women or not based on whether they decide to sexualise fictional characters in a product designed to sell copies and make money. That's a crazy reach.
It's because they're told, from all directions including the media (like videogames), that they need all those things to be a 'real man' or whatever. There's no actual rule about what men need to be. Anywhere.
Media and culture affects how we see the world and what we think is right or wrong.
How do you feel about the bolded? Especially in the context of the game's generally grimly realistic universe.
I wish I could put my thoughts in words as good as you can in English
And your last alinea is exactly what I tried to say
What makes it extra stupid is that it doesn't even fit within the game's own lore. Quiet's "breathe through her skin" is the same as The End's and you don't see him in a speedo-like thong in Metal Gear Solid 3. Furthermore, even if we accepted his ridiculous theory, that still would not excuse the helicopter scenes and that one shower scene.
I like to separate Quiet's gameplay validity and even her storyline from how she's represented in the game.
There's a massive disparity between A) legendary soldier who was experimented on (like many MGS characters), B) amazingly useful resource in the field (like many MGS characters), C) the only character in MGSV with any actul arc, and D) highly objectified sex object (for no reason).
Aspects A-C do not excuse or make up for aspect D, which is left-field and unnecessary. Like, these things do not negate the fourth problematic one. It's on a different track.
There's a massive disparity between A) legendary soldier who was experimented on (like many MGS characters), B) amazingly useful resource in the field (like many MGS characters), C) the only character in MGSV with any actul arc, and D) highly objectified sex object (for no reason).
Aspects A-C do not excuse or make up for aspect D, which is left-field and unnecessary. Like, these things do not negate the fourth problematic one. It's on a different track.
I really don't want to derail this thread with DOA talking so I'm not gonna dive much into it but I disagree.
Leaving Honoka out because her design is horrible due to being an amalgation of fetishes, IMO designs like Hitomi or Mila are cool and stand themselves without the need of being sexualized.
They're regular women , yeah, but this is good also. A design can be good with just being a normal looking person, it doesn't need to have that "thing" that makes it stand.
I see this debate in a lot of western vs eastern aesthetics, where a lot of people don't like western because it looks "too normal" hence boring for them. I can understand but I don't agree. For me, I want more Milas and Hitomis and less Nyotengus and Honokas in DOAs.
He could have put her in proper clothing and kept everything else about her. Why did he design her outfit, then, if not for sexual gratification? Your point holds no weight because of that. There is no point to her design, in the grand scheme of the narrative. That fact alone outweighs everything else about her because she has become nothing more than a sex symbol for boys to fap to.
I agree with you, and I totally see the problem with Quiet. But 'reduced to nothing but tits and ass' is what I don't agree with. If it was 'a great character is spoiled for me and many other people by out-of-context over-sexualisation that goes way over the top' I'd be on board. Personally, I love Quiet's visual design, and I don't take the story of MGS seriously at all - I think it's best at its most absurd because Kojima is a fucking hack whose best ability as a writer is unintentional comedy. But I totally understand the other side of the argument.
I simply disagree with you. Is she a sex symbol for boys to fap to? Absolutely. Is she also so much more? Absolutely. That's all I'm saying.
Yes, Kojima clearly designed her visual design for sexual gratification. No doubt. But that doesn't invalidate my point at all - the fact that the visual design is only a part of her character IS my point.
I think if you asked Kojima in an honest moment he'd give you a similar answer. I think he probably has a lot of care for the character beyond what she looks like, he probably put a lot of time into her story and is proud of how she operates on the battlefield mechanically. I very much doubt he sees her solely as a sex symbol, and I very much doubt that that's all she was intended to be.
Right. But now onto:
We absolutely can, especially because Kojima himself kept going on about how there was hidden depth to her and a reason for her being naked and that we should all be 'ashamed' when, in the end, there wasn't, there isn't, and we shouldn't.
Whatever Kojima thinks makes a great female character is based on some weird one-dimentional metric of what women are and what's important about them/to them. 'Not respecting women' isn't necessarily an active thing - in his head, Kojima probably does believe he respects them. But as I said that "respect" is clearly one-dimentional based on how he thinks he represented Quiet vs. how he actually represented Quiet. Which was not a 'respectful' representation at all.
Another nail-in-coffin for the whole argument:
A great point I never even thought of.
Buddy you should look at nofap and incel forums if you want to understand just how much something like Quiet is based in actual, literal frothing hatred of women.
Yeah I don't want to derail this thread so I'll end my point here, but I feel SNK kind of does this better with their designs, being realistic while also being stylized enough to be memorable
He did it for me.
For Bán.
For my mates.
For maybe a couple million more players.
Why aren't we allowed to have a great character that is also hot?
Please let u be. Why aren't we allowed to have this escpecially made for us?
Quiet is such an unbelievably small part of all gaming, that maybe you can think hey, you know what, let those guys have their Quiet.
You answered your own question. I don't think anyone will disagree that the reason Kojima dressed Quiet as he did was for sex appeal/his own sexual fantasy. He said as much around cosplay as well
https://www.polygon.com/2013/9/4/46...rs-more-erotic-encourage-cosplay-hideo-kojima
Even going as lewd as he did, cosplayers obviously still responded by dressing as Quiet
I think what Ban is trying to argue is what I've been talking about for posts. Why, if, sexualised characters that are also empowering/bad ass/kick ass do they end up the most popular with male gamers? Quiet objectively isn't anywhere as close to just tits and ass as Cindy is in FF15. Or all the ladies in a DOA game. Like it or not, Quiet does have a bigger role in MGS5 than Cindy does in FF15, and she is like Bayonetta from the point of view shes overpowered and is a single person killing machine. Quiet herself can pretty much auto-complete some MGS5 missions.
Cindy exists to wash your car and offer a store-front prompt of changing car parts. That's really it. Quiet gets more attention though as her outfit is one of the skimpiest around. Besides those pole dancing DOA Xtreme 3 outfits.
Well this gets at the nature of "offense" and "annoyance".
I mean, should developers walk on eggshells and try to avoid offending as many people as possible or should they go all out trying to appeal to what they think will be most well liked by the persons they are trying to sell the game to.
This gets at my opinion that outside of hateful messaging, your "offense" at the content of a game should have a result of you not being interested/ignoring that game and instead spending that money/time on what you prefer to enjoy.
Instead what we see is a lot of offense and outrage that seeks to change content created for and enjoyed by a different demographic to fit your personal preference.
Obviously real offensive content exists but as long as the developer is transparent about the content and intent, and does not use/include blatantly hateful messaging, I say live and let live, and focus on the things you like rather than those that irk you.
Honest question, are you really that dense that you don't know the obvious answer?
Empowering an oversexualized character does not negate the disrespect in its presentation. It doesn't make it okay.
Ok, then ask youself this, why is she used in an explicit softcore porn fanservice? What purpose does this serve the story? This sheer disconnect is just one of the many reasons why Quiet is so reviled because despite her having a great character arc, the game's direction makes her to be nothing more than a fanservice object half the time.
Or, to put this in perspective, does anybody take seriously Megan Fox's character arc in the Transformers movies? She goes through the best arc out of any of the characters, she is one of the best human characters by a country mile of the movies she's is (granted, that's not saying much). And yet, no one remember her for anything but as a sex object because the camera does nothing but frame as her such. Any depth in the film is rendered meaningless because the camera and direction are still important parts of the story.
And that's the problem with your defense of Quiet. You cannot segment this. It does not matter if she goes through a character arc, even a great one, if many other elements in play are actively running against the story. From the camera's leering male gaze to the lore's breaking in two (seriously, The End wasn't in a thong and that was like a decade ago), the elements of the game clash viciously with the plot. This is why, in despite of all of Quiet's positives, she is still reduced to nothing but tits and ass by the very game itself.
She worried about that because it happens every single time. Including in this very thread. Do a search for "censorship" in this thread, the results will surely depress you. Or just look at Cid's post that I'm quoting below:
How many times do we have to address this ridiculous strawman? And people wonder why the Women-ERA OT don't want to post here. I don't blame them.
Diablo 3
Overwatch
League of Legends
Dota 2
Hitman
Monster Hunter
Resident Evil
...The list goes on, and add to that pretty much every single: superhero game, JRPG, Vanillaware game, MMORPG, fighting game -- you want one of those without fanservice? Good luck.
Fanservice is so widespread and ubiquitous that a lot of people don't even notice it anymore. They see armour with cleavage or high heels and don't bat an eye because it's been so normalized.
Irrelevant and off-topic.
Addressed countless times in the thread. It's a false equivalence.
This is insulting, dismissive, incredibly condescending, and completely wrong. Feminist critique has had an effect already, it's just progressing slowly.
But all the women speaking here don't count because we're all fringe extremists on an internet forum, is that right?
Playboy is porn.
...Are you really saying that it's the female feminist critics of Quiet are the real sexists here?
I do somewhat agree, but as I tried to balance in my post I do think it's worthwhile devs and companies paying attention to people who are offended. It is often criticism worth listening to, but part of my message was people do sometimes need to learn to live with not everything in life being suitable for their interests/needs.
Can we please stop this? If you want to shit talk about individual posters in private messages, offsite or amongst yourself and friends, fine. This is a forum though, outside of the community topics which tend to be places that exist solely for groups of friends/people who think the same, the main sections of this forum are supposed to be about open debate. Too often people run to name calling, snark, us vs them and hostility whenever an opinion comes up that they do not agree with. I don't really care if you think I'm dense, but just keep it to behind the scenes, please. That way I don't need to see it.
As for the rest of your post, I was attempting to explain why someone like Ban might think how they do. As in they genuinely don't just think Quiet as solely tits and ass. The concept of "okay" is what the debate is all about in here. Some people obviously have different goalposts for okay, and we're all debating that with each other and how we feel.
He did it for the same reason he let the player force themselves into a shower occupied by a 14 year old sexualised girl in Snatcher.
Because he has gross views on women.
heh. it's 2017 and dudes are still extremely Not Mad about basic feminist criticism.
bunch of intellectually dishonest bullshit in these last few pages. and despite many people going out of their way to assuage through fragile egos of men they still come in here and whine about not being allowed to enjoy things.
bunch of intellectually dishonest bullshit in these last few pages. and despite many people going out of their way to assuage through fragile egos of men they still come in here and whine about not being allowed to enjoy things.
What I mean is that there's an inherent difference between sexualisation and racial stereotypes because a racial stereotype isn't suddenly going to be considered non-offensive if you switch genres.
Please stop that. Actually read the OP and absorb the information therein instead of addressing a complete strawman.
And while we're at it, Quiet is not an "unbelievably small part of all gaming", she is asymptomatic of a greater trend that is nearly ubiquitous across gaming (at the very least, games from East Asia, including South Korea and Japan, are absolutely chock full of this stuff). Take a moment to consider things from the perspective of a woman for once - how few options we have if we want to avoid stuff like quiet. We're largely reduced to Western games (and let's not give ourselves too much credit - we still have a lot of room to improve over here), Nintendo games, and maybe stuff like Dark Souls once in a while. Meanwhile, the whole of the gaming sphere is your oyster. We just want it to open up a bit and be a bit less, I don't know, openly hostile to the idea of respecting women through fictional representation.
For the whole" sexualization is bad" thing to actually carry any weight, the argument from proponents of reduced sexuality in games have to diminish the acceptance of sexualization is every single other medium. The context in which they're trying to make the argument is this:
01. The gaming industry is a boy's club.
02. There has to be more effort on the part of the industry to get women involved.
03. Because this is a boy's club, sexualization in video games must, therefore, be catering exclusively to the boys in this club.
04. By reducing sexualization in video games (because sex in video games intimidates them, makes them cringe, etc.), logically more women will get involved in the industry.
The fallacy of this argument is twofold. The first fallacy of this argument that women are incapable of enjoying sexualization, therefore by reducing sexualization in video games, games will become more welcoming. Are women incapable of enjoying Injustice 2? The counter-argument to this becomes, "No, but MORE women would be able to enjoy it." This leads back to my point 1 and 2. The goal isn't to reduce sexualization as much as it is to get more girls and women involved in gaming by any means necessary. The reasoning behind the assumption that reducing sexualization will encourage more girls and women to get involved in what has traditionally been a boy's club is that because men have traditionally been behind the creation of that sexualization, such sexualization must, therefore, be directed at men and exclusionary to women by default.
The second fallacy of the argument thus becomes apparent, as showcased by your playboy analogy, in that if we look at the wider world outside of the video game industry, sexualization is not only around us, but it is traditionally celebrated. The dissonance from this results in accusations of "whataboutism" because in a wider context this argument that women are somehow walled off enjoying video games because of sexualization falls apart. The only way they can hold the argument together that sexualization is scaring off women is by acting like video games exist in a void separate from everything else in order to ward off those comparisons. That is where the term "whataboutism" comes into play. It's an attempt to ward off scrutiny of the argument because the goal isn't to reduce sexualization as much as it is to get women into what has traditionally been a boy's club (again following my examples 1 and 2 from above).
The issue is that that the people making this argument don't really know why more women aren't into video games. It's why people were so perplexed that something like only 10% of Switch owners are women. They're taking every argument possible and throwing it at the wall to see what sticks in order to get more women into the industry. It's just that sexualization is an easy target because games with 0% fanservice in them is a more acceptable outcome than equal gender involvement and this whole thing becomes a "the end justifies the means" thing because they don't have a better answer.
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No, like....I'm not trying to shit talk you. I'm just saying, much like myself (apparently, I don't see it but whatever), you've answered your own question. It's the literal topic of this thread. But yet you feel the need to ask it anyway. As if we both already don't know the answer.
Which is my point: OP should never have to back such a common sense claim. There's no world in which Cindy or even more Quiet design can be considered good or even decent. These are bad designs. Sexist designs. Dumb designs. They make no sense in a design standview, they look downright terrible, they're objectifying women and patronizing gamers, taking them as horny teenagers who needs their dumb sexy dose.
And I'll say it again: I love good designs. Whenever they are sexy or revealing. Whenever they are not. I can understand arguing over a design that can be considered sexist but can also be considered good. But these two ? Nah. Never.
If men are wholly responsible for not only defining what they want, but defining what society says women want, then what resolution would be satisfactory here?
Ah, of course. The true victims are the millions of men, much like yourself, who can't fap in peace without it offending and alienating an entire demographic of players.
My bad.
Really? I'm no expert on porn, but I could have sworn interracial porn contained a lot of racial stereotypes...
Regardless, porn and non-porn media should certainly not be held to the same critical standards. Seems to me that this is self-evident...
What character arc ? You mean the succession of cringeworthy cutscenes and waifu fetish Kojima had with the character ? Quiet is hands down the worst character in the MGS saga. We're talking about a saga which has seen Fatman.
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