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I think my problem was thinking more deeply about this than was warranted.

Only you can say.

FWIW, I think the topic deserves some serious thought and I think FemFreq did a good job getting the ball rolling. A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?

I wouldn't say that at all. Hate on Nintendo for imprisoning peach, but Samus is a badass from the same era.

Damsels certainly outnumber Samuses. That's actually a pretty ridiculous understatement.

What ratio of damsels to Samuses would be acceptable, then?

And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media. Rambo 2 springs immediately to mind.

Why, trying to work out a cap and trade solution?

Female characters in video games are objectified along these lines far more often than not. The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison is actually a pretty good place to start when considering whether the damsel trope has limited female roles otherwise, i.e., she's the exception that proves the rule.

She doesn't stand alone at all, bro! You're kidding, right?

She doesn't stand alone, but there aren't many to keep her company.

 Monster Rain wrote:
And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media.

I really don't think your problem is overthinking. The issue isn't that certain males are sometimes objectified in this way; it's that this pervasive portrayal of female characters as damsels conveys the idea that part of being female is not having agency. In Rambo 2, there may be a male damsel. But there is also a male rescuer. Rambo 2 does not contribute to the worldview that men are helpless.

 Monster Rain wrote:
She doesn't stand alone at all, bro! You're kidding, right?

 Manchu wrote:
The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison

It's also not that you're reading too carefully ...

 Manchu wrote:
A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?

I'd argue damsel in distress is a symptom, not a cause. Ignoring that and the role of women in video game's has definitely expanded since the hay day of damsel in distress games back in the 80's and mid 90's (maybe it hasn't expanded as much as women want, but we definitely see more women now than we did 20 years ago). Some thoughts I have or others have had and I will repeat:

Male demographics remain the target audience. Not going into whether men are the majority of the demographics, it's hard to argue that they're not the primary target audience. Games have long been associated, and still are, primarily with young boys even as statistics show the average gamer is getting older (cause no one pays attention to statistics apparently). Publishers and developers have been happy to adapt themselves to their aging audience with more mature games and content, but they still haven't picked up on making games targeted at girls. I think this plays into the perception that girl gamers are tomboys, reinforcing that video games are a boys thing. The assumption then becomes that a girl gamer will like what boys like.

And that leads me into my next point: Modern marketing practices. We've all been to toy stores, clothing stores, w/e stores. Most of them have defined sections for boys and girls. With video games starting out as a boys market, marketing continues to focus on this. To a large company, the idea of building a girl's market would entail making girl games. We do see stuff like that every now and then but usually they're targeted at little girls under the age f 12. Modern marketing practice separates the genders, and developers/publishers in this mentality, think of girl games as something no one does. If some girls buy their games that's great but they see no value in building a 'girls' market. Rather than making games to appeal to men and women, they just make them to appeal to men and think of it as a one thing or the other. This is true of most media, where tv shows, books, movies, and even music at times, tends to be marketed towards men or women with only a few pieces intended to breach both markets.

Add to this that Save the Princess was so prolific during the golden age of 8-bits. Most games had an excuse plot back then, where the player was sent off to get some MacGuffin, and often times that MacGuddin took the form of a female character. Rose tinted glasses being what they are, many people probably look back on those days fondly. So they keep using damsel in distress (even if it ceases to generally be an end goal). This is reinforced culturally, as damsel in distress goes back thousands of years so the trope is very present in the cultural mind and continues to be prolific because it is so easily recognized. If one were to sit back and just think of simple plots, damsel in distress is likely one of the ones to pop up.

Next:

Developers are primarily men. Since most game makers are men, they make games that appeal to men. This obviously entails male main characters, depictions of men and women that appeal to men, plot lines in which men get center stage. Since men tend to be judged on their ability to act culturally, a game about a man would be about his ability to act. This focuses the industry from it's inception on action which we still don't associate with women culturally. This is especially true of action games, obviously.

I don't think developers really understand what women want (and I think Mel had a sig about this a long time ago). I personally think this one is important. There were complaints going all the way back to the turn of the decade in 1990 from men and women. This got reflected by the growth of more female characters in game's, but because the developers were men, and men were the target audience, not much thought actually went into those characters. Today, usually the girl characters in many games are just token characters. They're there to be there and not much else (and the games that tend to break that trend are RPG's, horror, adventure). Women want to see strong women in games, so the developers literally put in action girls, but still put no real thought into the characters either because they have no interest, don't think its that important, don't have the time to spend, etc.

EDIT: As for Samus, I'll just say what most people said when Metroid's ending made a spash. She was probably made a girl as a joke. I don't think Nintendo ever really intended for her to be the girl game icon she became.

Yeah, marketing reinforces gender roles, maybe even helps develop and assign them -- now you're getting further than I was, coming up with the argument as to why pervasive damseling is socially harmful.

Getting to developers, it's not just that they are men -- it's that they are men who begin and end their work not thinking very hard about female characters. That is to say, they came from video games that didn't do this and are making games for a market that they perceive, accurately or not, as not caring about this.

So it's kind of important that women actually be able to say, "hey we'd rather not play games like that all the time."

The damsel trope explains some of that, why developers in large part continue to think its okay to objectify female characters and why they still don't listen to women very carefully: "it's always been done and girls don't like video games anyway."

If we just remove the perception that we are making games for boys only, then we are 99% there.

Take an exalt, Hatlord. Even if I don't entirely agree with EVERYTHING you said, you said it very well.

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media.

I really don't think your problem is overthinking. The issue isn't that certain males are sometimes objectified in this way; it's that this pervasive portrayal of female characters as damsels conveys the idea that part of being female is not having agency. In Rambo 2, there may be a male damsel. But there is also a male rescuer. Rambo 2 does not contribute to the worldview that men are helpless.

 Monster Rain wrote:
She doesn't stand alone at all, bro! You're kidding, right?

 Manchu wrote:
The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison

It's also not that you're reading too carefully ...

I'm reading carefully. Even with the qualifier Samus isn't "basically alone".

You also seem to be contradicting yourself. I thought you had established that this was a thought exercise without any wider application, but now we are back to video games reinforcing gender stereotypes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nomotog wrote:
If we just remove the perception that we are making games for boys only, then we are 99% there.

They make games marketed to girls specifically.

nomotog wrote:
If we just remove the perception that we are making games for boys only, then we are 99% there.

If they'd remove the perception of making games for any specific gender they'd be there.

Although it'd probably piss marketing off-- marketing, as a collective group, has a tendency to cling to overly simplistic and often insulting viewpoints because it's easier than understanding people as actual people. See: Della and the ePad Femme as great examples of the failure of modern marketing. There's some examples of really good marketing as well, but as a whole it has a lot of baggage.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm reading carefully.

I disagree. To wit:

 Monster Rain wrote:
I thought you had established that this was a thought exercise without any wider application, but now we are back to video games reinforcing gender stereotypes.

And yet here is what I said:

 Manchu wrote:
I don't think the prevalence of the trope supports the conclusion of institutionalized misogyny but then again I don't think that is necessarily the point of the damsels vid. I think the point is that the damsels trope is pervasive in video games. She didn't prove or IMO even attempt to prove that its prevalence has a negative effect in wider society. If the damsels phenomenon does indeed make video games less welcoming or even more hostile to women then that will have to be proved or at least addressed in a further video. The argument at issue here is that female characters are objectified, that is, they are denied a great deal of agency, in a great number . And her argument on that point is reasonably persuasive.

I'm not sure what you mean by thought exercise but I guess it something like "does not actually matter at all." So we should probably abandon that term to the extent that it's a dismissive weasel word. Moving along, as I mentioned in the text immediately above, FemFreq's basic argument is that (1) the damsel trope has been pervasive in video games and (2) the damsel trope objectifies female characters. I said that anything more, like whether the trope has wider consequences in video games or society at large are further questions to be addressed. And then I posted:

 Manchu wrote:
FWIW, I think the topic deserves some serious thought and I think FemFreq did a good job getting the ball rolling. A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?

And, yes, Samus, is basically alone in comparison to the huge amount of disempowered, objectified female characters in the medium.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
it's easier than understanding people as actual people

It's not about what's easy. Marketing is not about understanding people as people. It's about understanding people as investors and consumers. There is obviously a lot more to a person than the facets of their personality that contribute to how they spend their money. But marketing doesn't care about that and I'm not sure that it's fair to expect marketing professionals to do so. Now, at the same time, I'm not saying the video game industry has done a great job of understanding the market -- especially the female demographic -- just that whether they're doing a good job of it or not is not about "understanding people as actual people."

That depends on how you define"understanding people as actual people".

Even when you're looking at demographics, you still have to understand that there are often things that people of almost any demographic want. For example, a good, well-written storyline, and interesting antagonists, are both wanted by just about everyone. Trying to pigeonhole entire demographics in to "what do they want that no one else does" oftentimes leads marketing to do incredibly racist and misogynistic things.

Things which backfire and cause the product to fail.

I think a more accurate mentality is "what do they want that will get them to buy our product." Inherently, this will lead to making decisions that will make others not want the product. Making a very broadly appealing product is exceedingly difficult. Just look at any media and find me the products that break genre and demographic lines. There' really aren't that many. It's infinitely more profitable to pick a group, budget for them, and then make the product. That's capitalism for ya XD

And I'd also propose marketing isn't always about understanding what people want. It's about making people think they want it. Remember that thread a year ago about Dove's ad campaign that didn't use super skinny super models? That got a lot of praise from commentators and critics, but sadly Dove actually lost sales as a result of that campaign.

In many ways, the market doesn't actually know what it wants. So there is something to the saying that marketing is all about telling them what they want. Of course, this mentality can be applied to girls in gaming. The big issue right now is imo there isn't a large female market, so developers don't feel the need to pay attention to the one that exists because they view it as less important (and they're right in a way cause it hasn't really hurt their bottom line). We're kind of waiting for someone to get their stuff together and decide to start growing the untapped market.

I think the problematic aspects of marketing come from assuming that one demographic speaks for all others because it is the "most important." Publishers seem to think that sales of games like MW, for example, coming from outside of the male demographic are merely incidental. Therefore, to the extent that incidental sales exist, marketing toward the male demographic adequately accounts for them, too. The notion of catering to what they assume to be incidental customers is assumed to be hostile to the important demographic and therefore absurd -- why risk the base? This identity as the base, the normative standard is what's called privilege.

I disagree that this causes products to fail, however. It has been pretty damn successful.

Has the Beat up Anita Sarkeesian game been mentioned?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/06/internet-trolls-online-beat-up-anita-sarkeesian-game_n_1653473.html
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/598591

Well, that proves it! All this sexism stuff is obviously a thing of the past.

Yeah. Several times.

I'd propose though that the the blurb for the game (which is now taken down) is telling as to it's makers intent:

Anita Sarkeesian has not only scammed thousands of people out of over $160,000, but also uses the excuse that she is a woman to get away with whatever she damn well pleases. Any form of constructive criticism, even from fellow women, is either ignored or labelled to be sexist against her.

She claims to want gender equality in video games, but in reality, she just wants to use the fact that she was born with a vagina to get free money and sympathy from everyone who crosses her path.

 Amaya wrote:
Has the Beat up Anita Sarkeesian game been mentioned?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/07/06/internet-trolls-online-beat-up-anita-sarkeesian-game_n_1653473.html
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/598591

It may have been mentioned earlier on in the thread (but I don't remember an in depth discussion), but I am sure that one of the videos discussed it.

I searched the title and didn't come up with anything so I figured it hadn't.

/shrug

Dread is right that no in depth discussion has been made about it. A few of the posted videos brought it up as did several users.

@LoH: The blurb you posted sounds like what we have heard ITT.

My point in pointing it out is that the game was made (obviously) because its makers didn't like Saarkesian. They were one of the first to propose the conspiracy theory that she orchestrated the events on 4chan for financial gain and clearly were very dedicated believers. Beat um up games are common for public figures and I'd rather not have the thread get side tracked into another "is it because she's a woman" or "no it's because people don't like her not because she's a woman" debate.

We've already done that like, five times now. And nothing really useful comes from it.

As to the marketing discussion, I think this is the nail +head:

The notion of catering to what they assume to be incidental customers is assumed to be hostile to the important demographic and therefore absurd -- why risk the base?

This is a common mentality not just in games but in nearly any industry. When a formula is found to be working, people don't want to rock the boat and risk screwing it up. It's the same reason that people say innovation is dead in gaming. Why innovate when a rerelease of MW4 for the 5th year in a row will make you another hundred million dollars with near no development costs?

Yeah, people who think that Sarkesian "scammed" anyone are incredibly ignorant.

It's pretty clear that the people who made the game don't like her. Why they don't like her and how they've chosen to express this is what's relevant. No one can argue the style of the game is an accident -- the specific reason it was chosen was memorialized by its own creators: "There’s been a disgusting large imbalance of women who get beaten up in games. Let’s add a lady to help balance things." This is pure retribution. They didn't single her out for being a woman. By their own freely advertised goals, they made this game to punish her for the "scam" of being a woman who talks about women in video games.

 Manchu wrote:
So we should probably abandon that term to the extent that it's a dismissive weasel word.

You don't know what something means, and reflexively call it a "weasel word". Who's being dismissive?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment

Yeah, it's wiki, but it gets the point across.

 Manchu wrote:
And, yes, Samus, is basically alone in comparison to the huge amount of disempowered, objectified female characters in the medium.

I really can't fathom that you actually believe this. All things being equal, this is far removed from reality. I mean, I hate to use the term "weasel word" but "objectified" can mean pretty much anything, so I'm sure you can semantically distort the goalposts wherever you want them to be, but I'm actually shocked that you would make such a statement.