Off-Topic Discussion > Gaming Discussion

Female characters done both wrong and right.

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Nightmare:
Well it's the kind of usually pointless discussion where both sides exchange arguments, of course fail to convince the other side, and hence continue with more or less personal attacks. :doubt:

Spoon:

--- Quote from: MP-Ryan on January 11, 2019, 12:19:56 am ---Edited for clarity and to revise some text that may have come across as snarky myself
--- End quote ---
I was going to point this out to you, but I'm glad that you're starting to catch on to the fact that for all the complaining you've done about how I'm supposedly nothing but whining and being snarky, you've pretty much been constantly snarky and complaining while doing it. It's a bit ironic, really.


--- Quote from: MP-Ryan on January 11, 2019, 12:19:56 am ---I AM actually discussing the topic, including the fact that both yourself and Lorric are being quite vocal and complaining about critiques of games without actually making an argument besides a vague notion that critique along these lines is bad because see above.
--- End quote ---
Aaaah, okay, I see. So you can just dismiss literally every post I've made so far as 'complaining' in a single sentence without actually engaging with any of it. While in the same breath saying that you on the other hand are totally discussing the topic.
Yeah, that's an interesting argumentive strategy you have there.

What's also interesting is that you consistently make this claim that I'm "complaining about critiques of games" which is consistently not what I've been doing. And I'm kind of puzzled why you've even come to this conclusion. But it seems to be your running theme of trying to diminish me, rather than what I've actually said so far. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


MP-Ryan, buddy, come here for a moment, listen. I'm going to run you through a few things, take you back a few steps into the thread. Then I'll clarify and restate my positions and arguments in all of the nuance that you desire. (And then you can just quote one part of it and reply with "Nah." because that would be a funny own). Because you're almost starting to catch on here:

--- Quote from: MP-Ryan on January 11, 2019, 12:19:56 am ---Now, I expect that your thoughts on the subject are actually somewhat more complex than that (EDIT:  and in fairness, there's a glimmer of that showing in reply #43)
--- End quote ---
I mean, so far you've just trying to paint me as a simpleton who does nothing but complaining, but hey, let's put that aside for a moment...

--- Quote from: MP-Ryan on January 11, 2019, 12:19:56 am ---if you don't feel like actually discussing it, then fine, but save us the snarking contentless crap
--- End quote ---
Ah ****, here you go again. I was discussing things just fine, but I guess it's just too hard for you to resist that sweet temptation of dismissing all of my posts completely like that.
But let's push past the bits where you repeatedly accuse me of not having a discussion while you're strawmanning my actual position on any of this and take you back to:


--- Quote from: Spoon on January 09, 2019, 06:54:22 pm ---I didn't bother replying to you because as I said before:
--- Quote ---That's not a good point to start these kind of discussions from.
--- End quote ---
that applies both to the article and my first post telling Iain how much I didn't like his article.
--- End quote ---
Clearly you didn't actually seem to understand what I meant with this. So let me elaborate on it:

Iain's article is a 'flawed', dime in a dozen, preachy and behind the times waste of space. I fully stand behind everything I said in my first post about it. Did I make my post while being angry? Yes, obviously. It's clearly a subject I have a strong opinion on.
But while I was hammering on why I think these kind of poorly written one-sided articles are terrible, you came in with an effort post, in which you immediately dismiss everything I've said as "completely off-base" without actually engaging with anything I said up until that point. Instead, you actually go off onto a different subject, not discussing the article itself (which all of my arrows had been aimed at) but wanting to discuss the subject of the sexualized visual design of women, and the history the games industry has had with them.
Not something I was particularly interested in pursuing at that moment, because as I quoted above, my first post and Iain's article doesn't set up for a very good discussion starting point for it and what you actually ended up writing in the body of post was nothing new to me.
But yeah, I found your way of just declaring me 'off-base' off the cuff like that, a tad annoying. So I retaliated in kind. Which clearly, you found a tad annoying too.
Off to a good start.


--- Quote from: Spoon on January 09, 2019, 06:54:22 pm ---Ah, but you did reply to me.  If you don't want to discuss it fine - then don't reply.  Don't give the discussion some utterly pointless sarcastic **** that contributes nothing to the actual discussion going on except extra scrolling space, especially if you're going to continue to double-down on arguments you've already made, which you've continued to do on this page, that were addressed earlier.
--- End quote ---

I'd just like to point out that your post here, is basically telling me to **** off because I didn't engage specifically with the subject you specifically wanted to discuss. While not actually contributing anything to the actual discussion that had been going on until this point, just adding extra scrolling space. You didn't discuss with any of the other posts&posters up until that point and when you made another post on page 7, it was just full of mischaracterizations and misrepresenting my points and stance. But you get very irked with me that I reply to you, specifically, with a lot snark.

With all of that pointed out, I will now give you my thoughts on the thing you oh so desperately want to discuss. Fictional women and games. Not because I really wanted to, but since people now seem to think that:

--- Quote from: MitoPL on January 11, 2019, 12:24:32 am ---It looks as if you're personally offended by anyone who feels like not every piece of women nudity/sexualisation in games is a good thing.
--- End quote ---
this is all my thoughts amount to, I'm going to elaborate on it.

But first let me preface it by saying that all of what I'm going to say is just strictly my personal selfish view as a straight white dutch adult male. It's the purest form of giving my opinion. I don't represent anything or anyone other than myself. I'm not very fond of people trying to speak for a whole minority or fandom or trying to clump 50% of the world's population into one monolithic opinion, so I'll try my hardest to avoid that.

This is such a stupidly broad subject that has many nuances, so it's tricky to even pick a point to start. Let me go with this thing I've seen brought up a couple of times in this thread a few times.
"Men designing games for men".
Whenever this is brought up, it's always with this seeming connotation that this is 'bad', somehow. But is it, though? The only way that I this is 'bad' is when this kills all diversity completely. But that has historically never truly been the case. Despite the gaming industry being build up by an overwhelmingly male crowd of developers (why precisely that is, I'm not sure, it's probably a combination of 'natural interest' (men have more of a tendency to like things, while women have a tendency to like people more) and social/cultural norms), the games we've had the pleasure of playing over the many years have been staggering diverse in its genres and themes. From RTS to FPS to RPG to Puzzle games to Simulators of all shapes and sizes. A lot these games are fairly 'gender neutral' and can be enjoyed by everyone.
And while it could have done 'better' with presenting the players with more diverse options for their avatar in certain genres, that was/is not always an option, due to all sorts of reasons. Technical limitations, budget restrains, the story, the type of game etc.

As someone who is a bit of a game designer myself, my entire thought process while making WoD has been this: "I'm going to make a game that I would like to play myself." which you can also translate as "A man making a game for a man." In my case, I just love to see anime girlies shooting pew pew lasers in a space sim. I'm very blatant in liking anime titties (they are objectively great. Real life boobies are also prrretty good) and the female form (it's very nice). While I also attempt to make an effort to have these girls be actual characters. A lot of game designers are probably like me in this regard. They want to make a game about something they're passionate about. Not trying to blatantly chase after a certain one type of audience with the explicit goal of excluding the rest. (Unless you're just in it for the money, in which case you gotta chase after that mystical 'wider audience'.)
Now you can tell me this is 'bad' and 'objectification' (which mind you, nobody has actually done so far) but I wouldn't get you if you did. The word 'objectification' is a pretty hollow word to me. I just don't see people or fictional characters as objects and I have this amazing super power called common sense, which allows me to make a clear distinction between fiction and reality. A super power I suspect quite a few people possess. So when I'm presented by a female character who is 'overly sexual and skimpily dressed' I don't suddenly start thinking less of real life women and I don't take kindly to some moral busybody telling me that I can't look and enjoy the view, because it makes me a women hating monster who 'objectifies' women.

But with that being said, we're currently in an kind of amazing period for games. On one hand you've got the AAA games industry who is churning out ****ty yearly releases* and employs incredibly shady predatory practices with lootboxes and the like. While on the other hand, the indie market allows for all sorts of people to enter the game development side of things. With multiple engines being readily available for cheap/free and distribution plaftorms like Steam (with all of its many many flaws) and GoG being easy to enter into and getting your game out there. The indie market is manging to churn out 'darling' after 'darling' with games like Celeste, Meatboy, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire alongside countless other really neat and enjoyable games.
The diversity amongst the games and devs themselves are at an all time high. If you don't want "Men making games for men" then the opportunities to start making a game yourself or to help fund those that do are legion.
 
(*And the occasional rare gems like for example the recent God of War)

Now I personally don't even play AAA games anymore. The most recent one I've played was CoD: IW, because Battuta likes it, because it does everything SQ42 will never do and because I was looking for a bit of inspiration for my own work. I'm all about indie games and the AA japanese releases these days.
Big AAA publishers are leaves that blow in the wind. They make their games with the seemingly singular goal of making as much money as possible. Appease the shareholders. Collect all of the money. They design their games by committee and focus groups, and considering the overwhelming majority of 'core' players are male, it's only a given they'll pander to them. If the gamer interests shifts to another new fad or suddenly only starts buying games that feature crippled chubby asians in wheelchairs, you can safely make a big bet on what the AAA industry will focus on next.

Now for the historically "problematic" female character designs. Frankly put, I don't have an issue with them. Now I prefer character designs that make sense for the setting, or designs that mesh well with the overall style that the game has going, whatever that style may be (example: Golden Axe). But even characters with silly outfits like for example Bloodrayne should have all the rights to exist. And what mostly gets me riled up is when prudes try to make a case that these kind of characters shouldn't exist because of vaguely defined reasons like them being unfriendly to women or think of the children. If this bothers you, then you are probably not the intented audience and instead of trying to get everyone to conform to your standards and sensibilities, it's better to just play one of the thousands of other games that exist already. Or as stated above, make your own, or help fund something that more appeals to you.

Now what I'm not saying, but for some dumb reason MP-Ryan repeatedly seems to think that'm saying, is that I think you can't have these kind of discussion or write these kind of articles. I actually very specifically stated so earlier in the thread:

--- Quote from: Spoon on January 08, 2019, 04:15:15 pm ---I despise people telling me what I can and cannot enjoy in game. Following that same line of thought, I would never be so arrogant to tell other people what they can or cannot have discussions about. Absolutely feel free by all accounts to have well thought out discussions and write well written articles about these kind of subjects.
--- End quote ---
He also repeatedly liked to state that I "only seem to think that critiques about these kind of character designs are 'only' driven by prudeness." While seemingly vaguely implying that prudeness has nothing to do with it. Utter tripe of course.
1. Prudeness undeniably plays a part in these kind of discussions.
2. A desire to want to sensible character attire and design is of course another facet.
There's also no doubt other 'concerns' but all in all these two things are pretty connected. Trying to dismiss one while claiming it's only about the other seems like folley.

Let's take Lara croft's design as example, since Iain put it into his article. I actually think this is an great example in how you can lose a lot of character by reducing the stylization and making the design more realistic.

The old design.
Instantly recognizable as Lara. Exaggerated body proportions, impossibly slim waist, prominent but very possible chest, teal/cyan shirt and two guns.
Poorly equipped for tomb raiding, yes. But games were kind of limited in their polygon count back in 1996. Lara's ingame model was 230 polygons in TR1. There's simply no technical budget left to add all these tools and elaborate clothing, tools which she wouldn't be using ingame anyway.
There has a lot been said about her design. One of the first prominent female characters, strong female character, a sex symbol, etc etc.
(You know who also released in 1996? Duke nukem 3D. If you were to ask me who would be a 'worse influence' for men, I'd answer with Duke without hesitation)

Her 2013 redesign.
Kind of bland and generic is the first thing that comes to my mind. She shows less leg skin, has an more 'inoffensive' chest size. Nothing stands out when I look at her. She lost her iconic dual pistols. Has a bland grey tanktop shirt, and is still very poorly dressed for actual tomb raiding. The only difference being that she now has a axe tool for it. Yes, she is more realistic looking now. But I think she lost a lot of instantly recognizability and overal I'd would say her new design is just worse for it.


More choice and options are always good. Character customization is fantastic. Games that feature only a single protagonist are cool too, everything should exist. Very sexual characters? Cool, yes please. Very modest and realistic characters? Nice, add them to the list.

Has the games industry had a history with 'low quality overly sexualized' female characters in certain genres? Yes, there have been a few. Was this a problem or bad?
Only in that there was a period in which not a whole lot of other options existed to offset it somewhat. Because few options = bad. Sexualized characters = not by definition bad.

Games have this amazing luxery of not having to conform to reality and being able to stylize all the things. It's great, game devs should keep doing that.

I'm sure there's more ramblings and thoughts to give, but who the **** cares. I've covered the most basic points, I think.

Colonol Dekker:
I'm a dawn fanboy and she's not overly sexualised.


(More's the pity)

MP-Ryan:
EDIT:  This is a very long, rambly, and in place repetitive post and I have to apologize in advance for it.  I'll try to be more concise in future responses.

Okay.  I'm going to respond to both FrikgFeek and Spoon here.

Spoon, first off, my original post was a direct response to your first response to Iain that contained a lot of "this article isn't good" but not a lot of "here's why."  You mainly nitpicked his examples rather than engaging the broader argument  Since then, it's like you see your name (and your position is explicitly not the only one I've responded to in the longer posts!) and immediately take it as an attack on your person and all you hold dear; made to "diminish you."   An introduction like "completely off-base" and here's why is not usually considered a reason to go to Defcon 1 and start the nuclear launch sequence. I think you're partially wrong in your assessment, but none of that was an attack on you.  As for the statement that I've ignored everything else you've contributed, no, I haven't.  But everything else amounts to a few lines - your main explanatory content was still (until today) confined to page 1.  At any rate, I'm not and never have been interested in a bunch of sniping, so let's move onto the content.

In both of your (the two of you) recent posts, I see a conflation between the critique that games still suffer heavily from the use of sex and sexual objectification to drive sales, and the separate critique that games have a (yes, ongoing) history of handling female characters poorly, both in dress/design and writing.  These are two separate issues, and Iain also confronted them in the same manner as a single one which is among the reasons I said his blog wasn't all that well written up front.  To get something else out of the way - yes, sexual objectification is still relevant to purely digital creations, not because the creations are people but because objectification is an image-based process insofar as sociology and psychology are concerned and mere representations of people are sufficient to trigger the same processes, whether or not you think they are consciously capable of it.

So, first, let's talk design because I suspect we're all pretty much on the same page there.

I would posit that the problem with the design and implementation of female characters has not necessarily been their manner and state of dress, but rather the combination of their appearance and behaviour.  I said it on page one, The E said it later, and it's come up a few times since - scantily-clad characters are fine if the character is written with agency, personality, and choices.  In short, female characters should be treated with the same kind of detail as male characters, and not placeholders for titillation.  Both genders (and others) of characters should also be treated with greater diversity, because there's definitely some ideal typing of male characters going on too.  Unfortunately, consciously or unconsciously, that has not always been the case.  FrikgFeek (and The E, earlier, and Spoon in his latest post) are correct in that this is a declining trend as the diversity of game makers has increased and the access of indie designers to the broader market has increased (meaning the concentration of these problems has dropped), but it's still happening - which is why critiques are important.  As I said earlier, games themselves suffer from the same issues as film over its grown as a medium of art - a lack of diversity of main cast members.  It's getting better, but the problem certainly isn't gone.  While I think Iain picked a few less-than-ideal examples, and his article didn't engage in the kind of in-depth critique this subject needs, he also wasn't necessarily wrong.  Which brings me to the issue of objectification, which is a word I also tried to avoid but now realize is worth confronting head-on because what the hell this is a messy subject regardless.

I realize that many of the people in this thread don't see representations of women in games as objectification based on the argument that they are not real people and they claim they can separate games from reality.  That's not quite the way objectification works psychologically, however.  Objectification is an unconscious process.  This is the old adage that "sex sells."  It doesn't mean you or I go consciously walking down the street thinking that because there's a sexy lady on the cover we are going to buy that thing - rather, we're talking about an unconscious process where advertisers and marketers knowingly correlate sexual desires with objects in order to sell them.  This kind of practice runs back at least a couple centuries, and quite possibly earlier (I took a pretty interesting class on the subject, but we only covered 20th century marketing history, so I'm most familiar with that).  We are conditioned from an early age to correlate sexual desire with marketing, which is why this is literally goddamned everywhere.  TV, social media, physical advertisements - despite 40-some-odd years of critique on this subject it's still pervasive, which is exactly why it's been pulled into games.  The problem here is not that I - or virtually anyone else making this critique - am a prude that doesn't want you to ever see boobs or pretty women in a game again.  The problem is that video games have the same cultural problems that exist everywhere else, but until recently have existed in a more concentrated fashion than in broader society because of the target market of people who buy video games (which, thankfully, is changing fairly rapidly).  But, for every positive change we see where poor representation is called out, we are also seeing a backlash.  While games themselves have, as you say, become staggeringly diverse over the years, the way female characters have been portrayed generally has not.  That's changed in the last 5-10 years, but slowly.

When critics call out representations of Lara in her earlier design as an example of disservice to female characters, they're pointing out that this was a character crafted by men, for men to view, capitalizing on sexualized imagery (and yes, I agree with your point about limitations of technology).  We're doing better now.  I'd argue the modern Lara is an all-round better character because she is more human and less ridiculously-proportioned; we traded recognizeability for humanity, and I don't view that as a bad thing.  Lara has gone from a shell designed to be a subject of titillation to an actual character with actual character development.

Joshua snagged the example of Quiet earlier, and its a good one.  Quiet was explicitly designed for the purpose of objectification - literally to be made into a figure.  The explanation for her state of undress is (as is not uncommon in Metal Gear games, let's face it) laughable, and her animation behaviour is quite obviously designed simply to titillate and excite a sexual response, not for character development.

This is somewhat timely, but I got an email today about the Humble Bundle sale, and I scrolled down the page literally right after I read Spoon's most recent post:  https://www.humblebundle.com/store/search?sort=discount&filter=onsale

On my screen, I have twenty titles displayed.  Fully seven of them are using sexual objectification as an advertising technique, regardless of the games' content or gameplay.  Even World of Diving, for the love of Pete.  I'll circle back to this.

Okay, so, the other thing is there's often hostility to critiques of objectification because, well, let's quote this one:


--- Quote ---. The word 'objectification' is a pretty hollow word to me. I just don't see people or fictional characters as objects and I have this amazing super power called common sense, which allows me to make a clear distinction between fiction and reality. A super power I suspect quite a few people possess. So when I'm presented by a female character who is 'overly sexual and skimpily dressed' I don't suddenly start thinking less of real life women and I don't take kindly to some moral busybody telling me that I can't look and enjoy the view, because it makes me a women hating monster who 'objectifies' women.
--- End quote ---

Thing is, this isn't an issue of anyone judging you.  Or anyone individually, for that matter.  Objectification isn't a problem of individuals, its a problem of society.  The word itself has gotten a bad reputation due to misuse, but the issue here is that people are being used as objects to sell everything from - I **** you not - toothpaste to paperclips to motherboards.  You consciously may not think of this as objectification.  In fact, you're right - very few people consciously ever think of another person as an object.  But unconsciously, this affects our attitudes, emotions, and behaviour.  The point of this is to sell you **** (in many cases, stuff that is very much ****) and to do it in a way that you don't think its being used to sell you ****.  It's an insidious psychological process, but the problem is it extends beyond selling us all **** to influencing - subconsciously - attitudes.  Women in particular are heavily objectified even today, and it reflects in their broad treatment throughout society, even within advanced societies striving towards equality.  And every image used in this way, whether real or not, reinforces those unconscious processes in our brains that make deep correlations that we don't even think about, and which subsequently influence our collective behaviour and attitudes in society more generally.  THAT's why objectification is bad.

But wait!  Does a sexy female form in a game equate to objectification?  **** no.  I have't played WoD (and despite not being much of an anime fan it IS on my list including the NSFW package because why the hell not), but I daresay from what I've heard of it at least that objectification isn't going to be a problem I'm critiquing as I play through it.  Witcher 3 contained some very lovely (and naked, periodically) women, but (unlike its predecessors), they were treated as fully-formed characters with personality, choices, desires, attitudes, and will.  Does the fact that we may see Geralt getting it on with some pretty women mean the Witcher 3 objectified them?  For the most part, not really.  It certainly contained some sequences - the brothel, mainly - that were definitely there more for titillation than any actual gameplay purposes, but in general it managed reasonably well (it has some other diversity-related issues, but nothing's perfect).  On the other hand, let's take my new friend from the Humble Sale, World of Diving.  The cover art consists of a female diver in a full top and.... a weight belt?  I mean, that doesn't look comfortable, but let's look a little closer and see... oh, the gameplay is predominantly first-person, with appearance customization options. So yeah, here's an example of a marketer who decided the best way to sell their game was to get some skin on the cover.  Notably, she isn't even actually diving on the cover.  Interesting choice.

Circling back, though, does critique of female portrayal or objectification mean anything with this problems shouldn't exist or be made?  Well, not really.  The whole point of critiquing art is to discuss it and make it better, for everyone.  Female portrayal in games - and the wide variety of games made about, by, and for women - has exploded and gotten better over the years because of gender-based analysis and criticism.  That makes the art richer and more varied.  Objectification, as I've tried to dissect about - is a broad social issue in which games are just one small part.  Commenting about objectification in games doesn't make the industry bad or mean suddenly we can't have pretty, scantily-clad women (or men) in games anymore, and it doesn't mean gamers are bad people - it just adds games to the broader conversation about the way society uses sexuality to influence behaviour and the negative results of that and their repercussions generally.

Anyway, that's enough of a wall of text.  TL;DR:  Serious critiques (and Iain did try) about portrayal of characters and objectification in games, and female portrayals and objectification specifically, don't stem from prudishness, "think of the children," or some moralizing drive.  These critiques exist to treat games fully as an independent art form like any other, and equally deserving of constructive improvement to better serve a broader proportion of society even while narrowing into specialized markets.  I don't think any less of people who argue they want games with sexy women (or men); I think in many cases they're just missing a part of the larger issue that the industry as a whole has been having a fragmented conversation about.

sammicurr:
Sorry for necroing. I want to add a female character from other video game.
Lara Croft from the rebooted "Tomb Raider" series. She evolved from the original series where she was mostly known for her physical appearance, into a more realistic and gritty survivor who's capable and relatable. The focus on her survival skills and intellect, rather than just her looks, made her more of an icon for modern gaming.

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