[zookeeper]

I just find it weird how people get so bogged down in arguing the specific examples and details of her videos. I've found her videos to be pretty helpful in learning to recognize unobvious and subtle sexist representations and tropes. It doesn't matter to me that the examples she uses are probably 99% unintentional and non-malicious and just a result of dudes making games for dudes without expressly giving thought to gender representation. I'm mostly just interested in learning to better detect implied sexism so that I can better avoid it if I ever happen to author something, and her videos are as good as any for that; I treat her points largely as food for thought than straight arguments for why thing X in game Y is sexist and bad and should be avoided.

I might be more willing to argue the details if she slammed my game/book/show/whatever for something I don't think it contains, but as long as that doesn't happen I'll just try to grab what I can and leave the controversy to others.

[Nuke]

the solution to the stripper issue is obvious, have male strippers as well as female strippers that you can beat up and kill. should get more feminists to play it. then of course that makes the gay rights people angry, now games have 4 kinds of strip clubs. 5 if you dont want to offend transgenders. games need more strippers anyway. really its the anti murder people i dont want telling me how to play my games.

[Lorric]

I don't think it would work the way you think it would Akalabeth.

Even today we've seen developers playing it safe. Imagine if you introduced restrictions that would wipe most games off the market. You'd end up with a bunch of sanitised, cotton wool encased cookie-cutter games. Closing down options closes down creativity and people wouldn't push boundaries with the risk of their game being wiped off the market for violating some standard.

For every piece of art, there's uncountable pieces of trash.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Re Hitman: what, exactly, is the 'correct' way to do things, then? Not have strippers in the game (strip clubs do, after all, exist, and do contain strippers)? Make the strippers immune to bullets? Instafail the player for harming one? To me, one of these solutions is a cop-out and the others are really jarring to the mechanics of the game. The line of reasoning that having violent mechanics in a game and allowing them to be used on women somehow promotes violence against women (even when it's mechanically and narratively disincentivised!) is completely broken.

Create a game where strippers are believable, empathetic characters and where acts of violence against such characters come with realistic, long-term consequences.

Or hell, just create a game where crime is realistic and not glamorized.

You'd end up with a bunch of sanitised, cotton wool encased cookie-cutter games.

Some would argue that this is the state of the industry already.
Just not in the way you're inferring.

[Phantom Hoover]

Uhh Akalabeth what you're opposed to is, it seems, basically the entire concept of escapist fantasy. That is so far outside the scope of the current discussion it's not even funny.

[Meneldil]

Sure, you can find people beating up and killing the strippers in videos too, but there's nothing wrong with playing a game like that, and you're not a bad person for doing so

wow

Explain. Please.

I honestly don't know, I feel like I'd need an explanation for what you wrote first, but alright.
There's a difference between playing generic videogames you kill people in, and uploading a video of your character beating up and killing prostitutes. The first usually implies a silly fascination with being a hollywood blockbuster superhero, the second implies fascination with beating up and killing female sex workers.

[Phantom Hoover]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

[AdmiralRalwood]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

[Aesaar]

Well, this thread went toxic in a hurry.  Sorry I said anything.  Clearly shouldn't have.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Uhh Akalabeth what you're opposed to is, it seems, basically the entire concept of escapist fantasy. That is so far outside the scope of the current discussion it's not even funny.

That depends upon how narrow your definition of escapist fantasy is.

Did anyone imagine doing paperwork as a border-customs guard to be escapist fantasy? And yet it exists


What about a game where you play a Bouncer in a strip club? And its your job to ensure the comfort and safety of the club's assets, namely the dancers. And your failure or success depends upon your success in doing your job. That would be both a real life situation, and one where the player as Bouncer could get to know the stories, probably repetitive stories, of the various dancers which end up in the club. Some getting out, some falling in, maturing or changing into different mind-sets, etcetera. The contextual consequences of a dancer getting hurt, the problem of gangs moving in and taking over the club or threats outside of the club, dancers falling into drugs or prostitution, etcetera.

Howabout creating a game where the player cares and feels something when a stripper gets hurt or killed.

How would this be a fun game? That's the challenge. But one of the most popular games out there is Wolf Among Us, basically a guy going and talking to people, including strippers. So the challenge is undoubtedly not insurmountable.

People say it would be the loss of escapist fantasy, yet at the movies action flicks have become more realistic and comic book movies have likewise adopted a real-world slant. Yet many of these movies are still fun, just like pure escapism like Pacific Rim is also fun.

[Lorric]

Sure, you can find people beating up and killing the strippers in videos too, but there's nothing wrong with playing a game like that, and you're not a bad person for doing so

wow

Explain. Please.

I honestly don't know, I feel like I'd need an explanation for what you wrote first, but alright.
There's a difference between playing generic videogames you kill people in, and uploading a video of your character beating up and killing prostitutes. The first usually implies a silly fascination with being a hollywood blockbuster superhero, the second implies fascination with beating up and killing female sex workers.

Well for what I wrote, simply put, there's a difference between playing a game and reality.

Why would you think someone had a fascination with beating up and killing female sex workers? Why not simply the fact they did it because they were there in front of them and they felt like it at the time and they like uploading their gameplay videos to Youtube?

Now if they had a channel dedicated to similar videos, then I'd start to feel uneasy.

However, I feel the uploading of a video isn't really what we need to be looking at, it's a distraction. Doing anything in a game is completely harmless. It harms no one. Even those virtual victims don't stay dead.

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

What of it?

[Phantom Hoover]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

the importance of that part was getting a bit ambiguous (but yes, you shouldn't 'be a lorric' about it)

Uhh Akalabeth what you're opposed to is, it seems, basically the entire concept of escapist fantasy. That is so far outside the scope of the current discussion it's not even funny.

That depends upon how narrow your definition of escapist fantasy is.

Did anyone imagine doing paperwork as a border-customs guard to be escapist fantasy? And yet it exists


What about a game where you play a Bouncer in a strip club? And its your job to ensure the comfort and safety of the club's assets, namely the dancers. And your failure or success depends upon your success in doing your job. That would be both a real life situation, and one where the player as Bouncer could get to know the stories, probably repetitive stories, of the various dancers which end up in the club. Some getting out, some falling in, maturing or changing into different mind-sets, etcetera. The contextual consequences of a dancer getting hurt, the problem of gangs moving in and taking over the club or threats outside of the club, dancers falling into drugs or prostitution, etcetera.

Howabout creating a game where the player cares and feels something when a stripper gets hurt or killed.

How would this be a fun game? That's the challenge. But one of the most popular games out there is Wolf Among Us, basically a guy going and talking to people, including strippers. So the challenge is undoubtedly not insurmountable.

People say it would be the loss of escapist fantasy, yet at the movies action flicks have become more realistic and comic book movies have likewise adopted a real-world slant. Yet many of these movies are still fun, just like pure escapism like Pacific Rim is also fun.

who you sound like right now

[Meneldil]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

Yes, that's also relevant. Everyone'll think about hitting someone up at least once in a lifetime, but uploading a video of your character beating up someone and calling it "me beating up and killing my boss" is decidedly unhealthier.
But even just fantasizing about beating up and killing prostitutes is necessarily misogynist in itself, uploading it just takes it further into the "bad person" territory.

[Akalabeth Angel]

who you sound like right now

I'm honoured.

[Lorric]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

Yes, that's also relevant. Everyone'll think about hitting someone up at least once in a lifetime, but uploading a video of your character beating up someone and calling it "me beating up and killing my boss" is decidedly unhealthier.
But even just fantasizing about beating up and killing prostitutes is necessarily misogynist in itself, uploading it just takes it further into the "bad person" territory.

Why?

As long as you don't do it for real, there's nothing wrong with that. The video isn't being shoved down anyone's throat either. They know what they're coming into.

[AdmiralRalwood]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

What of it?

If it were "what someone does by themselves in their own free time", nobody would (or should, anyway) give a ****; sharing it with the world is what causes one to question why they went through the trouble of recording and uploading themselves doing this thing.

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

Yes, that's also relevant. Everyone'll think about hitting someone up at least once in a lifetime, but uploading a video of your character beating up someone and calling it "me beating up and killing my boss" is decidedly unhealthier.
But even just fantasizing about beating up and killing prostitutes is necessarily misogynist in itself, uploading it just takes it further into the "bad person" territory.

Why?

As long as you don't do it for real, there's nothing wrong with that. The video isn't being shoved down anyone's throat either. They know what they're coming into.

For somebody who seems to have an awful lot of opinions about a video that wasn't shoved down his throat, you seem awfully inclined to tell other people they shouldn't have opinions about things that weren't shoved down their throats.

[Lorric]

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

What of it?

If it were "what someone does by themselves in their own free time", nobody would (or should, anyway) give a ****; sharing it with the world is what causes one to question why they went through the trouble of recording and uploading themselves doing this thing.

'bad person' is a pretty strong judgement to make based on what someone does by themselves in their own free time

...and then uploads to the internet for everyone else to watch them do...

Yes, that's also relevant. Everyone'll think about hitting someone up at least once in a lifetime, but uploading a video of your character beating up someone and calling it "me beating up and killing my boss" is decidedly unhealthier.
But even just fantasizing about beating up and killing prostitutes is necessarily misogynist in itself, uploading it just takes it further into the "bad person" territory.

Why?

As long as you don't do it for real, there's nothing wrong with that. The video isn't being shoved down anyone's throat either. They know what they're coming into.

For somebody who seems to have an awful lot of opinions about a video that wasn't shoved down his throat, you seem awfully inclined to tell other people they shouldn't have opinions about things that weren't shoved down their throats.

Well for the first part, people like to upload themselves playing games. I don't have the means to do this, but if I did, I would upload them to Youtube, and the primary reason would be so they would not take up space on my hard drive.

Do you think these people are trying to make some sort of statement by uploading the videos or just uploading the videos? I don't think you can take anything from it unless they actively speak on it.

Second part, show me where I said that. Show me where I told anyone they're not allowed to have an opinion.

[Meneldil]

It comes down to this: do we really need to have games in which we can walk into a strip club, gawk at strippers, and then kill them?

Do we need games with killable NPCs?

Yes, we do.

Do we need games that include a strip club?

Ocassionaly, yes, strip clubs are part of life and thus have their place in any storytelling medium, including games, if it fits the narrative.

Therefore, yes, we ocassionaly need that kind of games where we can walk into a strip club, gawk at strippers, and then kill them.

Do you see how that is not sexist in itself?

Do we need games with killable NPCs?
I agree we do.

Do we need games with children NPCs?
Of course.

Were Skyrim developers right when they decided allowing you to kill children would be gross?
Yes they were.
Now I'm sure that there too you could go find a woman you consider particularly slutty and kill her, but I won't attack the game because of that. I do however think that allowing you to walk in and kill a strip club worth of whores is the wrong decision because it's easily preventable and because it's really really gross when someone does it.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Well for the first part, people like to upload themselves playing games. I don't have the means to do this, but if I did, I would upload them to Youtube, and the primary reason would be so they would not take up space on my hard drive.

And would your videos also include portions of you killing strippers?

Do you think these people are trying to make some sort of statement by uploading the videos or just uploading the videos? I don't think you can take anything from it unless they actively speak on it.

They chose to and went through the effort to record it, and they chose to and went through the effort to upload it; it is a statement of some sort by the very nature of its existence on the internet. They found it worth their time and effort.

Second part, show me where I said that. Show me where I told anyone they're not allowed to have an opinion.

If you find the game distasteful nobody makes you play it.

I'm not sure what the point of that statement is you're not telling people to shut up about it.

[Phantom Hoover]

Were Skyrim developers right when they decided allowing you to kill children would be gross?
Yes they were.

The old Fallout games made it possible to kill children, but made it so that other NPCs would hate you if you ever did it. I don't think that's gross.

Like really, how else is the game meant to work? Do you want strippers specifically to be immune to bullets? Do you want the game to have a built in 'oo-er' mechanism that kicks in if you look like you're enjoying killing strippers?