[Mr. Vega]

This article is a another great example.

Radfem is on a page so far away from every other critical sociological discipline it had might as well be on another planet; it's certainly not a true representation of the feminist perspective.  When I read pieces by radical feminists who uncritically talk about the proliferation of the female sex after the male sex has destroyed itself because it's evil or something, I decide that (1) I have better things to do, and (2) some people really need to lay off the hallucinogens.  I don't think Sarkeesian comes even close to radfem - for one, she can make a cohesive and compelling argument with no evidence of frothing around her mouth - but she does fall into a similar trap where she risks having her work dismissed as irrelevant and trivial.  For that matter, I think it's beyond risk and actually happening.  She makes a number of excellent points, but she also loses credibility on the quibbling points that she raises.

I fall back to something I learned writing lengthy critical analyses in my university courses while listening to other people watch CSI:  when one has a smoking gun, a confession, a videotape, and DNA evidence, one need not include the circumstantial evidence of carpet fibres, shoe prints, and the eyewitness testimony of the schizophrenic drug addict down the back alley.  It seems odd that Sarkeesian has gotten as far as she has without learning that lesson.  Then again, she comes from an entire school of thought that hasn't collectively learned that lesson, so it's not that surprising.

[EDIT]Ok, reading your post carefully this time, I see what your point is. But I still think your assessment of her is incorrect.

Mind you, I agree with one thing the radical feminists believe, which is in rejecting our culture's idea of the "female brain." Maybe there are innate differences that mean something, but we have no ability to distinguish them from the developmental effects of steering a child with a growing, plastic brain into activities that fit our cultural beliefs of what they should be doing. I don't think this should be called a radical notion, either. In fact it should be obvious to all.

[karajorma]

I don't think that article depicts the viewpoint of mainstream feminists but unfortunately there are lots of people who do.

I mentioned the nail polish thing because that is definitely going to cause some backlash against feminists.

[Mr. Vega]

The amount of people who are actually dumb enough to attack the polish is likely an extremely small number. Some of them are just venting about yet another likely-ineffectual method of protecting themselves. But weird things do begin to happen when the base of your movement isn't composed of enough heterogeneous groups that are in good communication with each other so they can keep each other honest and in perspective.

[deathfun]

id rather you beat up strippers in a game than in real life. its not the job of game developers to dictate morality. trying to force ones views on someone with a gameplay mechanic sounds kind of like propaganda.

Yes, we don't want to brainwash people into thinking killing strippers is wrong.

If we started down this road, most games would end up off the market.

Good.
Then we'd get more games with a brain in them like Papers Please instead of a bunch of AAA Michael Bay wanna-bes.

Tackling this whole line of thinking here because for starters, games are a simulation and most people know the difference of right or wrong when they're going in there. These people are also *supposed* to be of a certain age and aren't subject to being "brainwashed" by what they know isn't real life. The problem here is that we've got young children seeing these games without a full understanding of what is supposed to be conveyed

I drive on the sidewalk in GTA. Does that make me a bad person for laughing hysterically as the physics is awesome and I start to admire just how great the physics engine is?

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.

They had a fascination killing female sex workers *in game
When they translate that into real life, let me know as that'll give your interpretation some heavier weight

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.

I fantasize about killing strippers, hookers, random strangers, fat people, cops, black people, white people, zombies, aliens, countless other things. Does that make me misogynist, racist, discriminatory, bad, alienating (see what I did there, with the aliens?), not open to discussion (zombies) and a slew of other titles that don't mean anything?

I've streamed my shenanigans in limbo where I purposely killed the kid several dozen times for ****s and giggles because it amused me. The way he died amused me. Am I bad person for taking enjoyment out of mine or other people's deaths in games?

causes one to question why they went through the trouble of recording and uploading themselves doing this thing.

Given how little effort it is to do that it isn't really much of a feat
I can stream a game and then upload what I streamed without so much as breaking a sweat.

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

I did that in a gay bar in GTA Ballad of Gay Tony. Reason being is because damn was it awesome when they all rushed to the door and then got blown up by the C4 I had planted there. They flew *everywhere*. It was beautiful

I would totally share that with people time and time again because holy **** it's amazing

Does anyone hate you in Hitman if you kill the strippers? Does anyone mention it at all? Does anyone come after you?

Well, I'm going to presume that in Hitman if you do that and anyone sees you, things happen. So I watched the video and saw that people curl up into a ball and don't run away.

That's just lazy programming on the part of the devs. Why the hell wouldn't they I don't know... run the **** away? That's generally what people do when someone gets shot or dies around them. They run the **** away.

If you love blowing the heads off virtual hookers and also feel ashamed of it, it's a lot easier to pretend that the games aren't about those power fantasies than it is to confront why you feel that love/shame.

I take great amounts of pleasure doing things in games. I like to milk whatever I can out of an experience and find new ways to make the game fun. I don't feel shame or sadness because it's just a game. Unless the game is supposed to provoke a reaction such as Army of Two: The 40th Day where each choice you make in that game has this aftermath graphic novel presentation of what happens because of it, I don't give it any thought.

but I do think "no you can't simulate killing children in our game" is the better message to send.

I disagree. Take how you train someone for example. When you're training someone for a position, you can just how explain how things are and just to follow that because that's just how things are. Or, you can also tell them the reason why things are like that. It develops a larger and more intricate understanding of right or wrong when you don't just tell someone how it is, but why it is.

So, I say kill the children, dogs, people, whatever, and then give the player a consequence showing just why that's not a good idea to do.



Little sidenote: I was behind on a lot of posts and just needed to say stuff

[Nuke]

the first time i went hunting, i was concerned that i would hesitate on the trigger. now when i got that spike in my crosshairs, all i could hear from my brain was 'KILL IT!'. it was easy, i just pretended it was a person.

[Mr. Vega]

Aaand we're back.

[Hades]

clearly because I always figure out if windows are breakable in games and go out of my way to break them means that I have a prejudice against windows and it's not a far cry to assume that I'll oppress them in real life as well

[Nuke]

oppress all the things!

[Meneldil]

Am I bad person

in order for us to do this i'd need a diploma and you'd need to pay me, so



As for the topic in general there's a huge difference between wanting to hurt: someone, people in general, or prostitutes. But the fact is when a man fantasizes about hurting a woman, chances are he is in fact fantasizing about hurting a woman, and I'm not inclined to believe otherwise. I mean every misogynist worth their salt will tell you they don't want to slap that ***** just because she's a woman, but because of how bossy and *****y she is, really.
And anyway, even if you do a playthrough of you beating up and killing everyone and everything regardless of how prostitute they are, please don't upload your stupid (not actually) prostitute killing spree video on youtube because it looks misogynist and therefore for all intents and purposes is (this is an important point).

So, I say kill the children, dogs, people, whatever, and then give the player a consequence showing just why that's not a good idea to do.

Yes please! do go make a video game all about how bad of a threat for women sexualized violence realy is I support you 100% man.
Or were you thinking more in line of a game where when you kill a kid you get 31 bad karma point + various bonuses for execution?

What I'm trying to say is that Skyrim's an arguably fun game about absorbing dragon souls and collecting vegetables and stuff, I don't think it'd be a good game about killing kids and it really doesn't need to be.

[666maslo666]

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.

Very bad example. If you call for killable NPCs but to have a special exception for strippers, then that is sexist and a double standard! It implies women or sex workers are powerless poor creatures that need to be protected by ad hoc game mechanics. Are women the equivalent of children??

With children it is at least partially true, but I am still uneasy with Skyrims way of doing it. Breaks immersion, and I did install killable children mod during my playtrough. Which isnt morally wrong at all for an adult to do.

[deathfun]

But the fact is when a man fantasizes about hurting a woman, chances are he is in fact fantasizing about hurting a woman,

This sentence doesn't make any sense. You've said the exact same thing twice
Are you saying that killing people in games is a fantasy being played out, and they're actually in real life like that? Or are you saying that if they're doing that in the game, that makes them like that in real life by result of what they're doing in game?

Yes please! do go make a video game all about how bad of a threat for women sexualized violence realy is I support you 100% man.
Or were you thinking more in line of a game where when you kill a kid you get 31 bad karma point + various bonuses for execution?

Sexualized violence implies that we're targeting them because of what they are depicted as, rather than what they actually are: Polygons
http://vsac.ca/sexualized-violence/

Now I can't speak for everyone by saying that everyone merely attacks them because they're just polygons for our playground of destruction, because that would be an implausible statement. Much like saying that it doesn't influence people who don't know any better *AND WHO SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING THESE GAMES IN THE FIRST PLACE*

And anyway, even if you do a playthrough of you beating up and killing everyone and everything regardless of how prostitute they are, please don't upload your stupid (not actually) prostitute killing spree video on youtube because it looks misogynist and therefore for all intents and purposes is (this is an important point).

But it's okay if I target only white people in my senseless murdering of people right?
I can't target black people because I'll be called a racist. I can't target fat people because I'd be called discriminatory. I can't kill a woman because dear god that makes me a misogynist.

Or perhaps I'm playing a game, realize it's a game, and don't in any way reflect real life behaviour in that game. Afterall, I don't really want to run around running people over

...Or do I DUN DUN DUN
The point there is that unless you ask these people, you don't really know why they're doing what they're doing

I am also a believer that kids who are still highly impressionable should not be playing these games. Afterall, the ability to kill without repercussions in a game might translate to them as being okay in real life, and that's not okay. Games like that are catering to a mature audience, and a mature audience should know what is right, and what is wrong.

[666maslo666]

And anyway, even if you do a playthrough of you beating up and killing everyone and everything regardless of how prostitute they are, please don't upload your stupid (not actually) prostitute killing spree video on youtube because it looks misogynist and therefore for all intents and purposes is (this is an important point).

Hell no. If you do a prostitute killing spree because you enjoy killing women or sex workers and upload that, then that is misogynist and possibly bad. But if you do it because you like to massacre the NPCs and upload gameplay videos of it and some of them just happen to be prostitutes, then there is no misogtyny. This is an important point.

The act of killing a prostitute in game is not misogyny or sexism in itself. That very much depends on the rationale and circumstances of doing so.

[zookeeper]

I've never played Skyrim myself, but I did read about and watch videos of the unkillable children back then and it was just such a ridiculous thing.

They made a game where you can massacre soldiers, old ladies, animals, you name it, but made children the sole exception because killing children is a taboo. It's a clear drawing of a line where, as far as the developer/publisher/whoever is concerned, butchering anyone or anything else is fine enough to allow, but killing a child is supposedly crossing a magical threshold and going "too far", so that's where the line gets drawn. That's just disingenuous, cheap and hugely hypocritical.

I certainly wouldn't want to see that kind of solutions used in any game. If anything, it implicitly condones the butchery of everyone and everything except children, due to clearly establishing children as the only group that is not ok to kill; that would not be the case if there was no such exception.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I've never played Skyrim myself, but I did read about and watch videos of the unkillable children back then and it was just such a ridiculous thing.

They made a game where you can massacre soldiers, old ladies, animals, you name it, but made children the sole exception because killing children is a taboo. It's a clear drawing of a line where, as far as the developer/publisher/whoever is concerned, butchering anyone or anything else is fine enough to allow, but killing a child is supposedly crossing a magical threshold and going "too far", so that's where the line gets drawn. That's just disingenuous, cheap and hugely hypocritical.

I certainly wouldn't want to see that kind of solutions used in any game. If anything, it implicitly condones the butchery of everyone and everything except children, due to clearly establishing children as the only group that is not ok to kill; that would not be the case if there was no such exception.

Permitting and condoning are two different things, and given that the wanton killing of NPCs would result in fewer quests and so forth it can be argued that slaughtering entire cities is not condoned by the game at all because the player loses out on tangible rewards.

And it's funny thing, but people always ***** about not being able to kill kids in Skyrim yet in 100+ hours of play the problem never came up for me because guess what, the game never gave me reason to kill a bunch of civilians for no reason.

[zookeeper]

If anything, it implicitly condones the butchery of everyone and everything except children, due to clearly establishing children as the only group that is not ok to kill; that would not be the case if there was no such exception.

Permitting and condoning are two different things

Yes. That's what I was talking about.

If you permit everything, then you do not condone any particular in-game behavior (unless it's otherwise rewarded, obviously). If you permit only some things, or forbid only some things, then you implicitly condone the behaviors that are permissible, due to the fact that you are now forbidding things that are "not ok" to do in your game. When you do that, the only conclusion for the player to draw is that the permissible things are "ok" to do (or at least considerably "more ok"), because otherwise some of those too would have been forbidden.

One doesn't get to make a game where you're expressly allowed to carve up every living thing you come across in graphic detail, and then remain intellectually honest while forbidding one group of NPC's from being killed because killing of those NPC's would be sick, morbid or inappropriate.

And just before anyone draws real-life parallels: I'm talking in context of games.

[Flipside]

It's identifiably that is the weird turnkey of this conversation, after all, there should really be no difference to who you ran over/shot/garotted etc, why should everyone get annoyed about the prostitutes, but not worry about it happening to black youths in gang regalia etc, it's the same 'crime' in the same game.

The difference I think with things like Skyrim over GTA is the fact that in GTA people are identifiable as people who live and work around us right now, people whose roles in life are a part of our own. After all, I've never had to tell someone not to go somewhere after 10pm because it fills up with Necromancers, but I have told people to avoid popular prostitution areas.

Once you remove the 'real world' aspect of it, you can do a lot more.

[Phantom Hoover]

I note that this discussion has essentially become the same as the moral panics over violence in games that were so common in the decade before last, in which case the question of actual evidence of real-world harm is pretty central.

It's also pretty orthogonal to the issue of gender representation in gaming.

[MP-Ryan]

Permitting and condoning are two different things, and given that the wanton killing of NPCs would result in fewer quests and so forth it can be argued that slaughtering entire cities is not condoned by the game at all because the player loses out on tangible rewards.

And it's funny thing, but people always ***** about not being able to kill kids in Skyrim yet in 100+ hours of play the problem never came up for me because guess what, the game never gave me reason to kill a bunch of civilians for no reason.

True.

Though I do think the taboo on child murdering was mishandled.  I'd have preferred more of an in-world mechanic, where if you, as Dragonborn, murder a child, you are struck dead by Akatosh on the spot and the game tells you that.  Or eaten by Aldiun.  Or a myriad of other game-ending consequences that make sense in the context of the game world.  I point back to Dishonored again, mostly because its the most recent example of a game I've played where they took the care to do this.  Sure, you can kill pretty much whomever you want, but there are game-ending consequences of killing essential characters.

Developers often seem lazy in how they prescribed game limits, particularly in more open-world titles.  From invisible walls, to invulnerable NPCs, it just speaks to an inherent lack of creativity and the fact that they don't seem to truly care if they break immersiveness.

herein lies my fundamental opposition to arguments like Sarkeesians concerning the prostitutes and the way women are sometimes treated in games:  women are sometimes/often/frequently treated this way in real life.  If you are making an authentic game experience, you can't tiptoe around that.  I think there is a value in including real-world sexism in real-world games, because it exists, and its wrong, and hopefully if its presented in a respectful way, people seeing it in game will make that connection in their lives as well.

It's like the gigantic ****ing cop-out of the 'rape' sequence in the new Tomb Raider.  It's pretty implicitly sexualized and implied that Lara is going to be raped if she doesn't fight back... yet if you miss the sequence, the game doesn't take the opportunity to continue that implication and present the very message that sexual violence is neither exciting, nor OK, nor suitable for viewing because you thought you might intentionally avoid the good solution and watch a video game depiction.... nope, instead if goes "ha!  just kidding!  he wasn't actually going to rape her, but just kill her flat out instead, because that's much more socially acceptable!"  BULL****.  The developers had a very real opportunity to create a social message and inspire shame in those people who intentionally missed the game-continuing sequence to see a sexualized female character get raped, and instead of taking that approach (tastefully, this is not me advocating them rendering a rape scene, but rather staying true to their message and creating a social message aimed at douchebag players) they just went "whoops, yeah, not going there" and flipped the tone.

Games can be tools for social change.  Many developers are too chicken to try it, and I fear some critique like Sarkeesian's make them less likely, not more.

[deathfun]

It's also pretty orthogonal to the issue of gender representation in gaming.

It was more a discussion as to whether or not you having the ability to kill strippers makes you someone who begins to think that it's okay in real life
Then it became a talk of whether uploading your shenanigans of killing those hookers brings misogyny to the table
It all started here
"Yes, we don't want to brainwash people into thinking killing strippers is wrong."


Gender representation being tangential? I agree. The way we depict women in games has nothing to do with you deciding to pile all of their dead bodies into various positions.

[Phantom Hoover]

OK but it's now moved onto this whole thing about invulnerable children and this idea that allowing representations of abhorrent acts in a video game is in itself morally unacceptable.