Why Do We Gloss Over Discriminatory, Prejudiced Content In This Industry?

[eyeball_kid]

So if this game scored lower and was criticized more for this aspect you would be fine with it existing and potentially having a sequel with the same content?

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How did you get that out of "it's past time that we have and uphold a higher standard for creative works in this medium"? I'm not suggesting that, nor am I even suggesting that P5 or other works get low scores solely for having discriminatory attitudes. But should they be lauded as the best games of the year for having these damaging attitudes? What I'm saying is that these awards are a barometer for the level of acceptance, or I should say the level of tolerability, in the industry for these attitudes as long as the game is still good.

This is not just a rhetorical question I'm posing. I'm calling everyone to account, including myself. We need to stop giving studios who produce this kind of content the message that it's okay to continue producing it. If you had a gay son or daughter who is struggling with their identity and place in the world, would you want them playing a game that tells them that the core of their sexual identity is repulsive and a joke? It's counter to everything that I believe is positive about games as an art form.

 

[Deleted member 249]

Yeah, every time I bring up how the blatant homophobia in the game (among other issues) really sours my opinion of it, I am immediately told, "It's not a big deal or a deal breaker, get over it."

Uh, as a gay man, a game trying to stereotype me and people of my community as sick pedophiles who chase around and hit on straight men all day is a major deal breaker and unacceptable. Also how it goes out of its way to mock and ridicule Lala Escargot for not conforming to gender norms.

It's pretty clear that these characters were only put into the game to make jokes at their expense. There are good things about the game and I finished it, but this turned me off so much that I am actually considering not buying any more Atlus games after this.

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Okay, I agree that it paints gay men in an awful light, but when exactly has the game ever mocked Lala?

 

[Deleted member 7462]

I mean, movies that were overtly racist, sexist, or homophobic would get crushed by the critics, generally. Same with TV shows. Games just haven't cultivated that type of criticism, likely because it's easier and more fun to focus on the immediacy of how good or fun the gameplay is rather than the overtones of the narrative or of character development.

 

[Filament Star]

Ann's objectification happens throughout the entire game.

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And unlike the OP example, this is a debatable point that you can't reasonably expect everyone to agree on.

 

[Stryder]

I own Persona 5 and haven't quite beat it yet. Can someone explain to me what exactly OP is talking about? Which part of the game had this situation and what was the scenario

 

[VAPORxDYNE]

I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to do that, in fact I'm doing it right now. It's kinda like how I'm not white but there are tons of white people with pro-diversity messages. Are you saying they're not allowed to speak on my behalf? "Everything isn't about you." You should probably take your own advice.

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Don't bother with that sort of people. They take a hard stance that they'll never budge on and then resort to call you a Nazi/racist/homophobe etc. if you try to pick at their defense.

Anyway, people don't really gloss over stereotypes in games anymore, do they? I actually think they get called out pretty hard these days. However, it seems that people involved with games don't find it fair to give a game an automatic 0/100 for having some tired stereotype sprinkled in there. People like Kevin Spacey sure as hell aren't helping.

 

[Zatoichi]

I will put it bluntly, most don't care.

They don't see the problem or if they do then they don't care as it does not affect them or diminish their enjoyment.

"Their" games are fine, and they being it would seem the majority of the games buying public. Its unfortunate for minorities and I can empathise with your exasperation.

 

[RoboPlato]

Japanese games always make me feel like I need to brace myself for exceedingly poor handling of women and gay characters. It's really disappointing and I hope we start seeing more of a shift soon. I know a lot of that is tied up in the culture differences but considering these games are international products, I would hope that someone starts to take note and tries to be better.

 

[balb]

The press is pretty uncritical as far as that stuff goes. If a game ticks a few narrative boxes and is presented well, that's enough for most as far as game stories go.

 

[Deleted member 13250]

I don't remember any of these press outlets even mentioning the homophobia in the game as they showered it with praise.

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How did you get that out of "it's past time that we have and uphold a higher standard for creative works in this medium"?

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probably should have just quoted that part of your message. i simply didnt wanna have to reply with your whole op in my question.
Im not suggesting you are saying we should take out that part of the game. my question was if this game was more criticized for this aspect and had received a lower overall critical praise would you be fine with this game still existing. it would seem your answer is yes.

 

[Kyuur]

The game covers tons of other excellent subject matter and does so well for 100 hours, so its easy to forgive a single short misstep.

It's also really not supposed to paint gay people as dangerous sexual predators. The characters are in what amounts to an old red light district with tons of people trying to usher anybody walking on the club into seedy clubs. The (poor) joke here is Ryuuji is mistaken for a gay person so they drag him off despite his protests.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I own Persona 5 and haven't quite beat it yet. Can someone explain to me what exactly OP is talking about? Which part of the game had this situation and what was the scenario

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This is a beach scene where two gay guys start harassing the boys in the party and try to get them to strip naked, then chase after them. There's an earlier scene in Shinjuku which is even worse, where the same gay guys basically kidnap Ryuji and make sexual threats.

 

[Kilic95]

I own Persona 5 and haven't quite beat it yet. Can someone explain to me what exactly OP is talking about? Which part of the game had this situation and what was the scenario

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The beach trip, on the 8/29. After Futaba joins the group.

I almost confused you with Dadasch... You both have the same avatar.

 

[aerozombie]

I'd like to believe our industry is just intelligent enough to know that the quality of a game is not impacted by whether or not you agree with its social views. Also in many cases people are mistaking lazy writing/design as prejudicial.

 

[Tygre]

The number of LGBT people in the games press is minuscule.

The number of women in the games press is minuscule.

The number of black, hispanic, or other minority ethnic people in the games press is minuscule.

The white men that make up the overbearing majority of the games press have shown, for the past 30 years and more, that they in general do not give a fuck. Those that even try to give a fuck still have massive blind-spots.

Thus, games can largely get away with being casually homophobic, transphobic, misogynist and diet-racist without much push-back. As long as their is some thin veneer of plausible deniability (in P5's case pick one of: tiny part of the game / just a joke / didn't read as homophobic to me / aren't you just happy there is gay representation in the game / Japanese culture / any of the other tired arguments trotted out to defend it in this thread) then that shit will be brushed under the rug.

 

[Poutine Runner 2049]

Less than 5 minutes out of a 100 hours may have ruined the game for you, it didn't for most.

 

[Deleted member 29464]

I think most people these days care about the reactions to discrimination than discrimination itself, something like this can be glossed over when it doesn't affect you but people will typically react negatively if you point it out. I imagine people don't want to point this stuff out to not stir the hornet's nest. The result, people don't make a big deal out the shit in Persona 5 but will if a prominent journalist draws attention to it. At that point, their thing has been attacked and they feel under attack.

I also feel it's partly because people try to judge games relative to the country they are from. They can see something like Nier and Emil as encouraging in relation to other games from Japan and in cases like Persona 5, accept (or believe) that things are like this because they aren't as progressive as first world Western countries when it comes to this stuff.

 

[rochellepaws]

La La Land was highly celebrated and yet also widely considered to have many problematic aspects, I think you're giving other mediums far too much credit if you think questionable elements exclude works from praise in other mediums.
Persona 5 was a 100 hour game which addressed many social themes and topics the bulk of games avoid such as the impact of bullying, suicide, depression and loss but unfortunately I rarely read praise for the writers bravery on that front coming from era. I did find the two brief scenes with those characters based on a harmful stereotype to be deplorable but it was isolated and absolutely shouldn't be used to define the game by. I also found that most reviewers acknowledged this scene as troubling but also that it was not within the tone of the game so I don't think anyone was attempting to gloss over it, it's a black mark on an otherwise incredible game.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Less than 5 minutes out of a 100 hours may have ruined the game for you, it didn't for most.

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"There was only one drop of nerve toxin in that jug of water"

 

[Iva Demilcol]

I read your exchange with other users but I'm going to talk about this part only:

Im a homosexual, do not tell me what is or isn't homophobic. They are gay predators preying on underage boys multiple times in the game, both with heavily exaggerated and effeminate mannerism and which are reacted to with terror as if they were freaks.

Even if they weren't clearly predatory, they are still exaggerated gross and toxic gay stereotypes that I'm sick of and are homophobic.

Ann is objectified by the game itself with Ryuji at multiple points skeeving on her by looking up her skirt(literally right after her ordeal), the MC and Ryuji forcing her to strip for Yosuke, and Ryuji looking down her shirt.


I was super interested in P2, but then the writer of that came out and said it was an experiment to attract fujoshis/yaoi fans and not actually for gay people, and I immediately lost any interest in that writer's works.

I'd rather just no gay mentioned at all than what they've given.

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Those two NPCs appear only in two scenes of a 100 hours game. After that they are basically part of the background; compare that to P4 where Yosuke -a part of the main cast that according to the game director voices both himself and the main character- keeps making homophobic remarks towards a character that isn't even homosexual and... well, you can see why people were kind of expecting those two scenes in P5.

The same can be said about Ann. People usually mention how she's "uncomfortable" with her own attire, but part of her characterization (which is optional to see) in her SL implies that she actually likes the femme fatale archetype.

Anyways, my point isn't that these scenes aren't bad, when I watched them for the first time I knew people on the old site would find them problematic, but I basically tossed them under the rug and kept playing because in the end, compared to the previous entry and the general theme of the whole thing, those scenes have almost no impact, even if they bother other people.

 

[Abylim]

White people trying to tell you how something that is clearly racist isnt racist is what you are doing right now dude. And people like you are adding to the problem, giving blind defense and turning a blind eye. Which makes you homophobic.

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He didn't blindly defend anything. He explained himself and now you're calling him homophobic? Jesus.

 

[Deleted member 13250]

The white men that make up the overbearing majority of the games press have shown, for the past 30 years and more, that they in general do not give a fuck. Those that even try to give a fuck still have massive blind-spots.

Thus, games can largely get away with being casually homophobic, transphobic, misogynist and diet-racist without much push-back.

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So I would say in this case it would have to be representation. If there were more minority groups who reviewed games maybe these issues would be more closely covered. I don't visit the big game websites anymore as all my game content i get from youtube.

Heterosexuals(or any non-homosexual) are not allowed to determine or interpret what literally every homosexual has complained about being homophobic as not.

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As in this example if homophobia can't be determined from a heterosexual point of view then point in fact there needs to be more gay reviewers.(in this case)

 

[MusclesAreGirly]

I'm bisexual, so I find it rather annoying, along with a lot of other common tropes. But I'm also an otaku, and it can be kind of hard to be picky in terms of JRPGs.

 

[rras1994]

I think most people these days care about the reactions to discrimination than discrimination itself, something like this can be glossed over when it doesn't affect you but people will typically react negatively if you point it out. I imagine people don't want to point this stuff out to not stir the hornet's nest. The result, people don't make a big deal out the shit in Persona 5 but will if a prominent journalist draws attention to it. At that point, their thing has been attacked and they feel under attack.

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I'll be honest there's some stuff I've never mentioned that bothered me about really popular games as I know I'd be attacked for being too sensitive, even if I say it's a good game otherwise, even if I say it's only based on how it comes off to me. It's not just critics, it's everyone. Discussion gets silenced cus "sure it's only ten minutes" or "I don't see it that way, I think you are making too big a deal out of it".

 

[Giudecca]

What's the end goal here? Even if reviewers take the writers at Atlus to task, what makes you believe they are going to change anything based off Western criticism? It's a Japanese game, made for a Japanese audience. Any change has to come from within Japanese society, and that won't be for a long time.

 

[MetalBoi]

Great work can be, and often is, problematic. We can recognize that and still consider them great.

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Yep. Same thing happens with a lot of musical artists who do questionable things, glorify bad, anti-social behavior etc.

 

[1000% H]

The game covers tons of other excellent subject matter and does so well for 100 hours, so its easy to forgive a single short misstep.

It's also really not supposed to paint gay people as dangerous sexual predators. The characters are in what amounts to an old red light district with tons of people trying to usher anybody walking on the club into seedy clubs. The (poor) joke here is Ryuuji is mistaken for a gay person so they drag him off despite his protests.

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1) That's not a good look in any case.
2) They make another appearance at the beach and it's pretty much the same thing.

 

[Deleted member 873]

That's just such an infinitesimally small part of the game that even though everyone might acknowledge it as bad not everyone thinks it's worth dwelling on or docking the game for.

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I mean, yeah. If it works for you. I don't like being made fun of by the same director that didn't give a character the chance to discover himself as gay just an entry ago. This tells me something about what he thinks about people like me.

But sure, one can enjoy its "amazing" plot and "amazing" dungeons and ignore that the game has two gay characters and they are both stalker paedophiles.

 

[Aters]

Because in a 100 hour game, it bothered me for five minutes.

 

[Khanimus]

Ann's objectification and sexual harassment are presented as awful things in the game, because they are awful things in the real world. I'm not sure having two homosexual characters presented as a joke would qualify as homophobic, but that's just from my perspective. All they did was casually flirt with Joker and Ryuji to try to make them uncomfortable, they might not have even found them attractive and we're just goofing around. That's actually how I took that scene.

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Ann's objectification is most definitely not presented as bad. During the first dungeon, sure. But then the next arc has Ryuji practically pushing her to pose nude for Yusuke, has him leaning over to look up her skirt as she's trying to sleep until she has to shoo him away, and even later when they're riding in the van and it's super hot, he's looking straight down her shirt. When she calls him out on it, his best defense was "What? It was a great view!" with a winky face and the game moves on. The camera continuously leers at its female characters in such a way that's pretty fucking hypocritical.

And the only gay characters in a game being based off some shitty fucking gay panic tropes is gross as shit.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

Plenty of movies with shitty stances get awards, I don't get this comparison unless your singling out homophobia and the very recent years.

 

[MusclesAreGirly]

Also, there are a lot of comments people have made on this side I would deem transphobic, or at least trans erasing.
Penis = boy. Vagina = girl is said many times on this site.

But I choose not to bring it up or make anything out of it, because I make enough waves and rock the boat as it is.
A lot of game reviewers probably feel the same way. And would rather overlook things like this in games than take a stand.

 

[Deleted member 873]

Plenty of movies with shitty stances get awards, I don't get this comparison unless your singling out homophobia and the very recent years.

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Will we have a Moonlight? Or Persona 6 dunking on homosexuals again (or Catherine on trans people - again)?

 

[Kilic95]

Persona 5 was a 100 hour game which addressed many social themes and topics the bulk of games avoid such as the impact of bullying, suicide, depression and loss but unfortunately I rarely read praise for the writers bravery on that front coming from era.

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Right, then they sexualized Ann several times, and portrayed a gay couple as child rapists... Twice.

Why be consistent at all~

 

[Khanimus]

What's the end goal here? Even if reviewers take the writers at Atlus to task, what makes you believe they are going to change anything based off Western criticism? It's a Japanese game, made for a Japanese audience. Any change has to come from within Japanese society, and that won't be for a long time.

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It's not for a japanese audience, atleast not exclusively. If that were the case, they wouldn't be selling it internationally. And it's not like Japan doesn't have gay people. They clearly do, and this game treats them like shit.

 

[MetalBoi]

Ann's objectification is most definitely not presented as bad. During the first dungeon, sure. But then the next arc has Ryuji practically pushing her to pose nude for Yusuke, has him leaning over to look up her skirt as she's trying to sleep until she has to shoo him away, and even later when they're riding in the van and it's super hot, he's looking straight down her shirt. When she calls him out on it, his best defense was "What? It was a great view!" with a winky face and the game moves on. The camera continuously leers at its female characters in such a way that's pretty fucking hypocritical.

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I'm not condoning their behavior, but isn't that a natural thing for boys to be curios about females in high school?

 

[RexNovis]

Japanese games always make me feel like I need to brace myself for exceedingly poor handling of women and gay characters. It's really disappointing and I hope we start seeing more of a shift soon. I know a lot of that is tied up in the culture differences but considering these games are international products, I would hope that someone starts to take note and tries to be better.

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Yea... Its what has made me hesitate to recommend Yakuza to other folks despite the questionable objectification parts being mostly side quests it just feels so skeezy. I don't understand why basically every game coming out of japan has to include some amount of fan service or questionable stereotyping. Its just really sad to see as someone who likes so much of what they have to offer otherwise in game design.

 

[KennyL]

Passport to Pizza in Yakuza 0 is stunning haha. Had me reassess the game with deep cynicism after this.

 

[Giudecca]

It's not for a japanese audience, atleast not exclusively. If that were the case, they wouldn't be selling it internationally. And it's not like Japan doesn't have a gay people. They clearly do, and this game treats them like shit.

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Overseas sales are very much a secondary market to them. The creators were interviewed a while back and were incredulous that there were so many overseas fans because of how Japanese it is.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

Greatest influence is how it simply doesn't matter to the vocal majority in this industry.

Furthermore, a lot of these off-beat (so to speak) moments and characterizations are generally not related to an overt thing the game's supporting and is more of an undercurrent/subtle stereotyping, so they get dismissed as "heh heh SJWs being snowflakes heh heh".

But I mean, those scenes bugged me too. I thought Lala in P5 was LGBT (or at least implied to be), though, so I thought that mitigated it a little.

Ann's characterization, however, is outright self-contradictory in how she's both portrayed as a sexually self-confident femme fatale (and an ardent fan of the archetype), only to be portrayed as weak and uncomfortable in many, particularly in sexual respects after the first Palace. It would've been perhaps unrealistic but at least self-consistent to have her go full ham on owning and expressing her sexuality, as it is, her discomfort with being sexualized only makes many fanservicey/humorous scenes awkward at best and downright sexist at worst.

But I mean, I'd also understand if a reviewer still gave the game a 9 or even a 10. So long as it's noted, I think it's completely a personal standard in terms of how much (unintentional?) bigotry you're willing to tolerate.
...OR if someone came out and said that the stereotypical gay guys in P5 ruined the entire game and its messaging for them.
I'm privileged as fuck though so I guess what I condone or don't doesn't count for much.

edit: Also every society is far from ridding itself of bigotry, so I guess some people are more accepting of flaws in this respect because there's still a general lack of full awareness on these issues.

 

[Zacmortar]

He didn't blindly defend anything. He explained himself and now you're calling him homophobic? Jesus.

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Telling a gay man what is or isnt homophobic is homophobic yes

 

[Gold Arsene]

There's really no other answer other then that it's a very small segment of a very long game.

It's bad and I hope that it doesn't show up anymore but I literally was able to skip both scenes and miss nothing. For some people it's just gonna be one of those things you can overlook or not.

To be positive I do think Lala was handled fairly well(or at least I don't remember anything terribly offensive.) Lala was actually voted the most popular non-confident NPC in a poll so I'm hoping that might send a more positive message.

 

[Zacmortar]

I'm not condoning their behavior, but isn't that a natural thing for boys to be curios about females in high school?

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Dont need to put things that every woman deals with and shouldnt be forced to see glamorized

 

[rras1994]

I'm not condoning their behavior, but isn't that a natural thing for boys to be curios about females in high school?

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No, not like that - it isn't natural to look up a girls skirt without permission, it's not natural to push a person who doesn't want to to take off their clothes - c'mon is it really that hard to remember that girls are actually people with thoughts and wants of their owns?

 

[Lyng]

That's just such an infinitesimally small part of the game that even though everyone might acknowledge it as bad not everyone thinks it's worth dwelling on or docking the game for.

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It happened several times during the playthrough and mix in the horrible way Ann is treated there was a very real problem here.

 

[Musubi]

Its entirely possible to like parts of something and call out the things it did poorly. Now, I wouldn't fault someone for seeing the Ryuji stuff or the Ann stuff and being like okay this is too much I'm done but I also wouldn't fault someone for really enjoying the game either. Its a good game with some very unfortunate portrayals of some of its characters. Its not like these things were ignored. They are things that have been brought up and discussed quite a lot actually.

 

[LordGorchnik]

There's really no other answer other then that it's a very small segment of a very long game.

It's bad and I hope that it doesn't show up anymore but I literally was able to skip both scenes and miss nothing. For some people it's just gonna be one of those things you can overlook or not.

To be positive I do think Lala was handled fairly well(or at least I don't remember anything terribly offensive.) Lala was actually voted the most popular non-confident NPC in a poll so I'm hoping that might send a more positive message.

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Which poll was this?

 

[Abylim]

Telling a gay man what is or isnt homophobic is homophobic yes

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Except he didn't. He said it's how interpreted it. Read his post again. He didn't once tell you how to feel or if you should be offended. Chill out.

Also I don't think attempting to define homophobia to anyone is homophobic.

 

[Iva Demilcol]

La La Land was highly celebrated and yet also widely considered to have many problematic aspects, I think you're giving other mediums far too much credit if you think questionable elements exclude works from praise in other mediums.
Persona 5 was a 100 hour game which addressed many social themes and topics the bulk of games avoid such as the impact of bullying, suicide, depression and loss but unfortunately I rarely read praise for the writers bravery on that front coming from era. I did find the two brief scenes with those characters based on a harmful stereotype to be deplorable but it was isolated and absolutely shouldn't be used to define the game by. I also found that most reviewers acknowledged this scene as troubling but also that it was not within the tone of the game so I don't think anyone was attempting to gloss over it, it's a black mark on an otherwise incredible game.

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I've said it several times here and in the old site too, but many of the topics this game brings up are very Japanese in the way they are presented (It even talks briefly about sexual exploitation from parents to their own children, something that until recently was still legal); and at the risk of sounding like that "expert", many of those issues are so foreign to many of us that they end up being completely overlooked in forums like these when you read in some threads that P Studio "didn't go further" or "they backpedaled" or "the criticism was not solid enough" regarding some social issues.

 

[Khanimus]

I'm not condoning their behavior, but isn't that a natural thing for boys to be curios about females in high school?

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Teen boys being horny is normal. Noticing your friend as being attractive is normal. Unapologetically leering up your friend's skirt as she's trying to sleep is fucking lecherous.