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 Alfndrate wrote:

 Palindrome wrote:

 kronk wrote:

There are a ton of female board gamers out there. A little forethought from game designers would go a long way to sell their game.

Given the state of the male characters in Gears of War just imagine what a female character would look like.....

They're not too bad...

Those aren't far off from the Reaper Miniature I'm painting for her.

 Alfndrate wrote:
They're not too bad...

The coifs and the subtle make-up are just divine.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Should I point out the irony inherent in the presenter lamenting female gender signifiers such as ear rings, eye shadow, pastel colours, pony tail, and enhanced eye lashes when she has chosen to present herself in the same way for all of her videos?

No, Tu quoque is not a valid argument, table turning and saying "Well you do this" just doesnt present an argument.
My problem is Anita is thee she just doesnt listen to opposing arguments, she is stuck in her own world where every piece of media is sexist.

Dreadclaw69 wrote:Should I point out the irony inherent in the presenter lamenting female gender signifiers such as ear rings, eye shadow, pastel colours, pony tail, and enhanced eye lashes when she has chosen to present herself in the same way for all of her videos?

Which, of course, could not possibly have anything to do with the presenter being "the girl next door" as opposed to an action heroine in a warzone we ought to take serious as a warrior.

Ninjacommando wrote:you linked duke nukem which is an over the top game about an over mucled man who goes around killing aliens and sleeping with tons of women because thats what his character is all about and no one should ever take that series seriously.

I linked Duke Nukem because that was the first of the examples in his quote, followed by you asking:
"Are the females in those games being opressed and put into their "place" or are they there taking names and kicking ass?"

Ninjacommando wrote:what about her? She kicks your ass in hand to hand, After your character gets tortured she helps you out because your to weak at the moment. Is she being opressed by the male lead?

Probably not - from the way you are describing it anyways.

Note that nobody in this thread claimed that every game would feature a sexist and undermining portrayal, though!

Ninjacommando wrote:Yes because its shown all the time, he is tortured for information, mutliated, etc

Generally, I am opposed to any kind of gratuitious torture/mutilation scenes in gaming and believe they're an atrocious and socially harmful development.

In terms of gender politics, however, I don't see why a game should make a difference between men and women, even when it comes to such scenes. If a developer really believes they have to include this in their games, then by all means, equality should apply there as well!

I'd rather the developers would keep such stuff limited to threats and hard beatings a la that interrogation scene in Deus Ex HR, tho. I just don't see any advantage in going further (though this is probably a topic for a different/new thread).

Ninjacommando wrote:If we went with a WW2 game would you want to see red army soldiers raping german women as they advance on berlin?

As already hinted at above, no. I also wouldn't want to see men being raped, though.

kronk wrote:First time out of the box: "Why aren't there any female characters?" I don't know. Maybe there aren't any in the video game. Maybe they just made the most popular 4 characters and that's it. Still, to get around it, I'm painting up a Reaper Miniatures Chronoscope figure for her. I shouldn't have to, though. If I hadn't already owned the game before I met her and she knew there were no female characters, we might not have bought it.

There are a ton of female board gamers out there. A little forethought from game designers would go a long way to sell their game.

Did you mail them about this? I have a feeling it might actually help. Maybe not immediately, but the more people voice such kind of feedback, the more likely it is we see a shift in the industry.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
found this:

I think this bears reposting with the video displayed; it may have slipped by some of you. It is so far the best and most thought out refutation of the Damsel in Distress video I've seen, it only slightly tinges on personal attacks, and stays pretty on topic.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Should I point out the irony inherent in the presenter lamenting female gender signifiers such as ear rings, eye shadow, pastel colours, pony tail, and enhanced eye lashes when she has chosen to present herself in the same way for all of her videos?

No, Tu quoque is not a valid argument, table turning and saying "Well you do this" just doesnt present an argument.
My problem is Anita is thee she just doesnt listen to opposing arguments, she is stuck in her own world where every piece of media is sexist.

I said that I was just pointing out the irony. I wasn't using that as a basis to say that what she has to say is inherently incorrect or should be discounted just because her appearance is the same thing that she is criticizing.

Anita has made a point of ensuring that she doesn't listen to opposing perspectives.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lynata wrote:
]Which, of course, could not possibly have anything to do with the presenter being "the girl next door" as opposed to an action heroine in a warzone we ought to take serious as a warrior.

Which funny enough a lot of the female characters were/are until their circumstances changed based on the plot being advanced

It is regrettable that there are not more female main characters in games that are not a "me too" of a prior successful male character.

What few there are usually a bit ummm... exaggerated in behavior or looks (Lara Croft springs to mind).

I personally like to treat everyone as gender neutral as possible just for the utility of it (good habit for keeping married men out of trouble).
I have found when getting on good "friend" terms with ladies at work they have commented that being nice but not responding to flirtation upset them to no end.
They thought I was gay at first and some of the guys thought so too when I did not take part in the "manly man look at that woman" moments.

Everyone wants to be included and treated "special" in a nice way and do not like to be treated like everyone else.

Women still lag behind in being paid equally for the same job of a guy: the culture especially in business has not caught up just yet.

I personally want "differences" between sexes to be minimized in being pointed out or ignored altogether but you cannot treat a woman as a man or a man as a woman so in some small ways you cannot really win in making all things equal unless you treat both groups different than they are used to.

X-com, you are "commander" you could be he or she, the troops: I swear I get more women than men.
Mass Effect I think did well to create a consistent male and female persona for the games.
I like that some of the highest rated games are inclusive in interest to either sex which shows they are getting a clue that there is money to be made if you can make it interesting for anyone.

I am worried of "over adjustment" where the "equality" striven for goes too far and shifts the balance the other way.

I am getting a little sick of seeing so many shows and yes, games that portray the man as a "meathead" where the long suffering smart woman has to help him navigate this confusing world so some turnabout is being felt.

I think that the most irritating thing for women is that men make many assumptions about women and implement things without getting further information and irritating them to no end because it is not even intentional.

Got a Roman Catholic background so Sisters of Battle: power armor nuns is an incredibly scary concept.

 Ninjacommando wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
]Really now? When his first example was "Duke Nukem"?

I guess you could call it a "First World Problem" in that people might regard it as less important than "Third World Problems" like widespread famine and civil war, but from the sound of it you were aiming for a less serious connotation - which kind of only reinforces the problem we have right now.

you linked duke nukem which is an over the top game about an over mucled man who goes around killing aliens and sleeping with tons of women because thats what his character is all about and no one should ever take that series seriously.



what about her? She kicks your ass in hand to hand, After your character gets tortured she helps you out because your to weak at the moment. Is she being opressed by the male lead?

echo is my favourite female character in video games, just surpassing Kat from halo reach

OK!!!!!! Having watched the video here is my Argument of why it falls short.
Nearly, Excluding the Mass Effect example, are all children games of games made for a younger Audience. Kids work Mostly Off visual cues, that is why aesthetics of the games often are simple but unique. The reason there is a need for kids to quickly and succinctly know "That is a female" when they look. So they use obvious visual cues. This also comes to thee "girls are one personality" part of the video. Well yeah, so are most games, Sonic is Rash,Knuckles is strong, Tails is Naive and Rose is a caring GF worried about sonic. Those are all readily visable personalities, if you look you will see most games are like that.
Now to the Mass Effect Example and why it falls short. You will see many games that allow customization STILL need a person to put as the face of the game. It just what you need. That shepard has no personality, it is a blank, same with the female.

Talizvar wrote:
Women still lag behind in being paid equally for the same job of a guy: the culture especially in business has not caught up just yet.

This is no longer true. Of course, there are a lot of variables involved. Many traditionally male jobs involve risk that traditional women's jobs do not, and many women drop out of the workforce for years to handle child-rearing responsibilities, and these account for some of the differences. Comparing the wages of a part-time waitress to a full-time auto-mechanic is going to show disparity.

Still, controlling for some of the variables, college-educated women between 20-30 are actually out-earning their male counterparts these days (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/income-gap-women-make-more-men_n_1368328.html)

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Nearly, Excluding the Mass Effect example, are all children games of games made for a younger Audience. Kids work Mostly Off visual cues, that is why aesthetics of the games often are simple but unique. The reason there is a need for kids to quickly and succinctly know "That is a female" when they look. So they use obvious visual cues.

Exactly the reason why this series of videos is so insidious, because it cherry-picks things like this and tries to use them as representatives of the whole, ignoring context and history in the process.

If you ignore context and history, you can use anything to prove anything, and if you can't, you just move the goalposts. I cannot stand her videos for these exact reasons.

I'm all for female characters in games - if given the choice I almost always play as a female character. I play games to relax, have fun and be something else (a dragon fighting hero, a skilled assassin, a plumber with a massive moustache, etc...); playing as a female is about as far from being "me" as you can get without being some kind of alien character with a significantly different gender system to mankind.

There are plenty of games where you could replace the main character with either a male or female character and have pretty much no impact on the gameplay or story... but why would you bother in something as shallow as most games are? Most games you play as "generic warrior A" fighting against "evil enemies B", solving "puzzle C" - there is pretty much no role for gender in those games; the example of the super hero cube Claire exemplified this - the fact that the cube is female is completely incidental if one ignores the quite obvious attempt at the commentary on male/female representation in video games and focuses on what it actually is - a video game.

What I do like to see is a game like Mass Effect, where a well told story unfolds (ok, aside from the ending ) and develops a character in depth, creating a bond between the player and their character and really putting you in their shoes and in their story, allowing you to play as male or female, do good or bad, have romances or none at all. I would love to see more games like this.

A game featuring a female protagonist who has a distinctly female story? I'm not really sure what kind of game this would be, since women can certainly have unique takes and actions in a more generic game (such as ME - though I would have loved to see more of a distinction between the genders in some aspects of the game) but I can't really think of an arena/plot where it would not be possible to have a male character and only a female would be possible... I would certainly give it a go though if it looked good

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I said that I was just pointing out the irony.

It isn't really ironic, as she isn't lamenting those things but lamenting that they oft repeated, lazy fall backs for the designers. She even says that those things in and of themselves are not a problem.

Dreadclaw69 wrote:Which funny enough a lot of the female characters were/are until their circumstances changed based on the plot being advanced

And what makes you think that those are the focus of the criticism as opposed to ... y'know, female characters who don't actually look like sensible/serious fighters, but are clearly supposed to function in such a role?

hotsauceman1 wrote:Nearly, Excluding the Mass Effect example, are all children games of games made for a younger Audience. Kids work Mostly Off visual cues, that is why aesthetics of the games often are simple but unique. The reason there is a need for kids to quickly and succinctly know "That is a female" when they look. So they use obvious visual cues.

Actually, the way I'm perceiving your argument, it's the other way around. Children are being raised and taught to put people in prefabricated boxes based on their visual appearance. You're basically telling children what girls and boys have to look like.

Some would say this is part of the problem.

Reminds me of that article lately where a waitress didn't get tipped because the customer didn't like how she had short hair.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/dayna-morales-marine-tip-gay-lifestyle_n_4273801.html

hotsauceman1 wrote:You will see many games that allow customization STILL need a person to put as the face of the game.

Though I wouldn't really agree about this being a "need" (ironically enough, BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic was entirely gender neutral in its portrayal of Revan on the box art and in marketing) ... don't you think a case could be made about the prevalence of "white male 30-something faces" as opposed to anything else?

Redbeard wrote:Still, controlling for some of the variables, college-educated women between 20-30 are actually out-earning their male counterparts these days (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/income-gap-women-make-more-men_n_1368328.html)

Deception.

The "male counterpart" would have to have be a 20-30 college-degree holder as well. As the article shows, however, these women are out-earning the men because they are better educated, and on average have more degrees.

Which, if you analyse the situation further, only reinforces that there is still a tradition-induced split within society: Whilst it is still considered normal for men to go working and being "the provider", only a small part of them achieve higher education. However, many women probably don't go onto the job market in the first place unless they are certain of getting into higher education, and otherwise simply opt to stay at home and raise a family.

So, contrary to what you were insinuating, women actually still earn less - if you actually compare them on a 1-on-1 basis and in the same field, rather than as apples (college-educated women) and oranges (average man).

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/womens-earnings-and-income

I don't fully understand the whole 'women make less' argument. I always thought it meant women make less money per hour but I don't think that to be true at all. Also it seems to be true that women don't prefer jobs in some areas I think. I heard of a factory with all women where they were over-worked but I also am currently in a different factory with mostly men and a couple women. Only perhaps one or two women in my whole year and a half of being there has held a job which was strenuous and they were daughter and mother. It's just really weird as the jobs are mostly (but not fully) sexually split in the factory. Women work in the front office and men work in the factory (with the exception of one woman in the factory and the boss being in the office sometimes). If it makes any feel better my wages are still near minimum so I don't know if they get paid better or worse but it's still crap. I'd probably prefer working in the office sometimes.

Anyway I don't see a huge problem with different job choices and having women more often raising the kids. If the problem is women get paid less for raising the kids then I suppose the men can raise them. I see a problem with it being a societal gender assigned role though but that'd be more the issue than women getting paid fair wages and it's just a lifestyle change really. Just different things I guess.

Oddly enough my brother-in-law cooks a lot which is not a gender assigned task in society for men. My full sister has also made more money during any point in her career than I am making now. My full sister basically gets to go to gaming conventions or used to at least. I'll tell you I am so jealous of her being able to do that and the most she ever really plays on the xbox 360 is some dancing game. Ugh.

I have absolutely no problem with the way women are currently portrayed in video games, but I do have a problem with the ways they aren't portrayed. Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Dead or Alive, the character Whisper in MGS V whose appearance drew controversy, that's all perfectly fine with me, but what's not fine is that there are basically no opportunities to play a female character whose strength and independence aren't balanced by a giant pair of breasts, or who isn't just a male caricature but with long hair and a thinner waist.

So I support what Tropes vs Women is trying to do. I don't necessarily like Sarkeesian, and I really don't like the videos themselves (because they're badly presented and terribly boring), but agree that there's a problem that needs to be discussed.

 iproxtaco wrote:
Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Dead or Alive, the character Whisper in MGS V whose appearance drew controversy, that's all perfectly fine with me, but what's not fine is that there are basically no opportunities to play a female character whose strength and independence aren't balanced by a giant pair of breasts, or who isn't just a male caricature but with long hair and a thinner waist.

A few problems here:

1. Look at the most recent Tomb Raider game. Her strength and independence are at no point ‘balanced’ against her breast size.
2. Bayonetta’s blatant sexualisation is part of her character. It’s something she chooses to do herself (that old “agency” chestnut). Her strength isn’t balanced against her overt sexual nature – her strength is often derived from that sexual nature. She revels in it.
3. Dead or Alive? Really? You’re going to choose that game as a benchmark for strong independent women? Even when there are games like Infinite and Last of Us out there?

 iproxtaco wrote:
So I support what Tropes vs Women is trying to do.

I would too if not for the screwy methodology that goes into its creation – the cherry-picking, the removal of context, the disrespect or blatant ignoring of history and the constant goalpost shifting. I’d much prefer an objective look at how tropes are applied to women rather than the inherently bias feminist look at how tropes are adversarial to women (ie. the use of ‘vs’ in her title).

The other thing to remember is that Sarkeesian both states that women are robbed of their strength in video games yet with the next breath says that women who show strength are just pretending to be men.

Or, in other words:

Weak woman = Heteropatriachy dominance.
Strong woman = Heteropatriachy dominance.

There is almost no victory here for any counter-point because you can pretty much twist anything to fit the "everything is sexist" line of thinking.

 Lynata wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Nearly, Excluding the Mass Effect example, are all children games of games made for a younger Audience. Kids work Mostly Off visual cues, that is why aesthetics of the games often are simple but unique. The reason there is a need for kids to quickly and succinctly know "That is a female" when they look. So they use obvious visual cues.

Actually, the way I'm perceiving your argument, it's the other way around. Children are being raised and taught to put people in prefabricated boxes based on their visual appearance. You're basically telling children what girls and boys have to look like.

Some would say this is part of the problem.

I disagree. Children recognized simple things, so we need to find a way to differentiate between boys and girls. Kids will not understand concepts like gender identity nor being a drag queen or tomboy, they understand simple things like "Girls Wear Pink, Boy Blue" And I have a wild proposal, Is that ba the pink is associated with girlhood?

@H.B.M.C. : This is unrelated but on a more lighthearted note I think it'd be funny to think of the commissar in your avatar as having an existential moment or possibly being in a music video with unfitting music like "I just died in your arms tonight!". Perhaps it would be fitting music based on how many guardsmen he shoots to death.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Lynata wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Nearly, Excluding the Mass Effect example, are all children games of games made for a younger Audience. Kids work Mostly Off visual cues, that is why aesthetics of the games often are simple but unique. The reason there is a need for kids to quickly and succinctly know "That is a female" when they look. So they use obvious visual cues.

Actually, the way I'm perceiving your argument, it's the other way around. Children are being raised and taught to put people in prefabricated boxes based on their visual appearance. You're basically telling children what girls and boys have to look like.

Some would say this is part of the problem.

I disagree. Children recognized simple things, so we need to find a way to differentiate between boys and girls. Kids will not understand concepts like gender identity nor being a drag queen or tomboy, they understand simple things like "Girls Wear Pink, Boy Blue" And I have a wild proposal, Is that ba the pink is associated with girlhood?

I would question that on two fronts. Is it important for us to convey the gender of say a talking rat? And next can't we use other indicators then pink and bows. You have a MLP avatar. That is a kids show and it doesn't use pink bows to identify the boys and girls and it is a better show fun it I say.

Yes but they use pastel colors.....But that is neither here nor there.
And yes it is, unless you want to put boobs on a talking rat ,and NONE of us want that.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
And yes it is, unless you want to put boobs on a talking rat ,and NONE of us want that.

The skaven in warhammer fantasy might want boobs on rats. To be fair they have several ton women as their main source of breeding and most can't even get breeding rights anyway. It sucks to be a skaven :(.

flamingkillamajig wrote:I don't fully understand the whole 'women make less' argument. I always thought it meant women make less money per hour but I don't think that to be true at all.

Why do you believe so? Did you check statistics, such as the ones from the link I posted?

As I mentioned above, it seems to me as if many women in the Western world have the advantage of choosing whether they want to become a housewife or a well-educated career woman. Obviously, there'll still be many that don't make the cut and fall somewhere in-between, but if you compare this to the men's situation, how common and socially accepted is it for the father to stay at home and raise the kids? Current gender roles generally push men into finding a job, no matter what. That's why you end up with most women on the job market being so much better educated than the men - the ones that sucked at school simply "opted out"!

hotsauceman1 wrote:I disagree. Children recognized simple things, so we need to find a way to differentiate between boys and girls. Kids will not understand concepts like gender identity nor being a drag queen or tomboy, they understand simple things like "Girls Wear Pink, Boy Blue" And I have a wild proposal, Is that ba the pink is associated with girlhood?

I have another wild proposal - why insist there to be a difference at all, as if there was some sort of "law" that would dictate who should wear what in order to conform to their gender-assigned role? Shouldn't we rather teach the value of diversity and free choice, or am I really too "radical" with this opinion?

Interestingly, the colour distinction is a fairly recent thing, by the way.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672751/how-pink-and-blue-became-gender-specific

flamingkillamajig wrote:It sucks to be a skaven :(

I heard they get free dental, tho?

You know to be honest what I find funny is that some people think it's funny when a woman beats a guy in a game. Here's the thing though. As a guy i'm sometimes worried not by losing but by how i'm perceived by others if I do lose. What if I become a joke to my friends or anybody I see? Does it happen always? No. Is the guy or girl at fault? I don't think so. However the societal perception and the perception by others is the most damaging thing. If nobody would ever find out a guy might not care so much to lose to a woman esp. for me when I notice they're infinitely more experienced at something. I do however feel bad when less experienced people than me do better than me at something. That's less gender oriented though.

Na that's just a skaven trap for a warlock engineer to use a skaven as a test subject.

Warlock: "Say 'AH' *shoots death beam into skaven's face annihilating the skaven completely*. "It worked!"

 Slarg232 wrote:
Mel never even gave any "demands".

She just posted up Anitta's video and started jumping down everyone's throat without actually reading what they said.

Let's be realistic here. We know what her agenda is, it's almost the only thing she ever posts about. It stands to reason what her agenda is here because she is posting about the same thing she always does

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yes but they use pastel colors.....But that is neither here nor there.
And yes it is, unless you want to put boobs on a talking rat ,and NONE of us want that.

Well in MLP they use pastel colors for everyone male and female. They aren't using that as a tertiary sexual characteristic. Male ponies come in pink and purple too. I say that is a good thing too because it allows for a large large verity of female character and male character styles. Because your not restricting color based on sex. If your wondering why I'm talking MLP in a thread about video games it's because the issue is not exclusive to video games and character design crosses over from animation to video games and back.

I have seen a lot of big breasted talking rats. It's a related problem to what is talked about in the video. Male talking animals get to look mostly like animals, but the females get big furry breasts to make them female.

BrotherVord wrote:

 Slarg232 wrote:
Mel never even gave any "demands".

She just posted up Anitta's video and started jumping down everyone's throat without actually reading what they said.

Let's be realistic here. We know what her agenda is, it's almost the only thing she ever posts about. It stands to reason what her agenda is here because she is posting about the same thing she always does

I never get how she has so many steam friends though including some of my steam friends. She's on like every warhammer forum ever and a few others at least. She also has a whole lot of attention. She's the only female gamer I ever hear about on warhammer forums despite others being far nicer and possibly better at different things (painting perhaps). Perhaps it's because she's everywhere and is one of the only women that explicitly throws out that she's a woman at every turn by how offended she is at how they are treated in games. I also can't help but feel it's this weird image that she's one of the only girls here because she displays her gender so much that actually gives her popularity. Suddenly she seems to be the one woman on a forum filled with guys at every turn.

Normally I find women to be more laid back but melissia acts like men have somehow wronged her and destroyed her life. I'm kind of curious what caused all that hate.

@nomotog: Dude I seriously don't even want to know where you've found anything with talking rats with big breasts. I am utterly horrified by the idea and I love skaven to death!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

@nomotog: Dude I seriously don't even want to know where you've found anything with talking rats with big breasts. I am utterly horrified by the idea and I love skaven to death!

I'm not going to pull out some obscure thing here. It's chip and dale rescue rangers. I guess gaget is more of a mouse then a rat, but like that really matters much. It's not a rare thing you know. A ton of character designs involve slapping a pair of breasts on a creature that shouldn't have them. It has it's own trope you know. tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NonMammalMammaries

nomotog wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

@nomotog: Dude I seriously don't even want to know where you've found anything with talking rats with big breasts. I am utterly horrified by the idea and I love skaven to death!

I'm not going yo pull out some obscure thing here. It's chip and dale rescue rangers. I guess gaget is more of a mouse then a rat, but like that really matters much. It's not a rare thing you know. A ton of character designs involve slapping a pair of breasts on a creature that should have them. It has it's own trope you know.

Gadget Hackwrench had big breasts? What version of Chip & Dale did you watch?



Inkeyes from MTG would have been a better reference:

That rat has way too much cleavage.