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 LordofHats wrote:
Should probably mention that damsel in distress doesn't just exist in video games (oh right I said that pages ago).

Do you always point out things that are obvious and should be assumed?

Yes. It's a talent.

 Monster Rain wrote:
So what if one simply chooses to interpret these early games as cheeky pop-culture references?

I think that can hold up in a vacuum: if you take Donkey Kong, for instance, and treat it as a game no one heard of that went nowhere then yeah it's just a reference back to King Kong. But when you look at it going forwards, as the founding moment for objectification of female characters in video games such that

 Cheesecat wrote:
it becomes so common that it becomes "to be feminine is is to be weak and helpless"

then the "cheeky pop culture reference" angle is obviously inadequate.

 Monster Rain wrote:
The use of a trope is interpreted as misogynistic

I for one am not saying that these games were designed to hate on women. The point is not motive. The point is consequence. The consequence appears to be self-perpetuation where, as Cheesecat mentioned, female characters are objectified by default. Female characters with agency are the exception.

 Amaya wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Should probably mention that damsel in distress doesn't just exist in video games (oh right I said that pages ago).

Do you always point out things that are obvious and should be assumed?

 LordofHats wrote:
Yes. It's a talent.

Well played.

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
So what if one simply chooses to interpret these early games as cheeky pop-culture references?

I think that can hold up in a vacuum: if you take Donkey Kong, for instance, and treat it as a game no one heard of that went nowhere then yeah it's just a reference back to King Kong. But when you look at it going forwards, as the founding moment for objectification of female characters in video games such that

 Cheesecat wrote:
it becomes so common that it becomes "to be feminine is is to be weak and helpless"

then the "cheeky pop culture reference" angle is obviously inadequate..

I'm not sure that the success of the game is relevant. There are plenty of games that used the damsel trope that went nowhere, and many that did not that were successful. If you try to make the point that Galaga is somehow misogynistic you will hear me laughing whereever you happen to be. I think you're ascribing far too much cultural impact to Donkey Kong, Billy Mitchell notwithstanding.

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
The use of a trope is interpreted as misogynistic

I for one am not saying that these games were designed to hate on women. The point is not motive.

On the contrary, I think the entire point is motive. The term "misogyny" has been thrown around here quite a bit, and attributing it to the overuse of tropes (I think it would be better in this case to use the word "cliche") implies a certain level of malevolence that I think would nicely encompass an intent, or motive, to engender further, to use the literal definition of the word, hatred of women.

 LordofHats wrote:
I said on page 1 of the thread that I didn't see much point in being critical of an excuse plot. I think the thread has hashed out that the trend is worth discussing, even if the individual games themselves are not. Likwise, the idea that a violent game will drive someone to violence is a stupid concept (in the same way that I doubt playing Super Mario World ever made someone stand up and declare their eternal hatred for women). But it does say something about how violence is viewed in society and how we interpret it.

I agree with you about both the violence and the Mario bit.

My question is more to those who think that using these tropes is perpetuating misogyny. If misogyny in video games begets more misogyny, why shouldn't we wonder the same thing about violence, drug use, sex with and the subsequent murder of Vice City prostitutes, stacking comically large hamburgers, etc?

 Manchu wrote:
The consequence appears to be self-perpetuation where, as Cheesecat mentioned, female characters are objectified by default. Female characters with agency are the exception.

This was confirmed by my link earlier, where producers often refuse to back a game because it has a female lead-- and the ones that do get only 40% of the marketing funding of ones with male leads on average. It's part of the culture of video game developers/producers, without actually being reflective of reality outside of that culture.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I'm not sure that the success of the game is relevant.

Sure it's relevant. If it is successful, it will be copied. As was apparently the case.

 Monster Rain wrote:
attributing [misogyny] to the overuse of tropes ... implies a certain level of malevolence

Not at all. Misogyny does not exclusively connote active hatred. As used in this thread, it refers to a largely unconscious default viewpoint about gender -- again, a consequence rather than a motive. I don't think game designers use the damsel trope in a scheme to hurt female characters much less women generally. Nonetheless, the pervasiveness of the trope has arguably limited the role of female characters generally in video games. The assumption I am trying to break you of is that a feminist critique necessarily implies a specific "solution" or even a specific problem. So let's turn to your question about violence in dealing with that:

 Monster Rain wrote:
My question is more to those who think that using these tropes is perpetuating misogyny. If misogyny in video games begets more misogyny, why shouldn't we wonder the same thing about violence, drug use, sex with and the subsequent murder of Vice City prostitutes, etc?

First, let's distinguish between acts and values. Regardless of whatever studies by whoever, every reasonable person who has played violent video games knows those games do not directly make people who play them violent. Why? Because reasonable people know the difference between real violence and pretend violence. Similarly, playing a video game that uses the damsel trope in its story line will not directly make a reasonable person objectify women by trying to save them from whatever conundrum -- for the same reason: reasonable people know the difference between a real human being who is a woman and Princess Peach.

But there is a less obvious difference between values expressed in video games and values expressed in "real life." This is because values are expressed narratively in every medium, whether in video games or in "real life." Broadly speaking, the values expressed in a video game story line are not pretend values. Values in video games are certainly exaggerated, simplified, and otherwise distorted but they are nonetheless distortions of real rather than make believe phenomena. There is a much closer connection between our sense of right and wrong in video games and our same sense in real life, which is exactly why so many video games capitalize on allowing players to either follow or willfully violate their own value systems. In any case, we learn our values from stories -- religious stories, stories about our own or family members' lives, and stories we experience in popular media, etc.

But we don't learn lessons from every story we experience. We are ideally critical of stories that try to inform our values. Think about how you react to the missionary on your doorstep (on the rare occasion you actually answer the door): you don't just buy into everything the missionary says. You either ignore what he says altogether or argue against it, in either case establishing boundaries between his values and yours. My theory is that the less critical you are about a story, the more likely you are to be unconsciously influenced by it in the context of repetitive exposure. Getting back to violence in popular media, I think this what is often called "desensitization." Playing CoD doesn't make a person go on killing sprees -- but it can, especially if it is not critically evaluated, affect that person's view of violence. The same goes for uncritical, repetitive exposure to the damsel trope.

In this light, you can see that the trope itself isn't really the problem. A feminist can play and enjoy Donkey Kong or Super Mario. The problem is doing so uncritically. Again, back to violence, it is important to remember that CoD is just a game and the values it entails regarding violence should not be anyone's model. But you can only get that far by actually admitting that CoD does entail values.

Instead of fisking that post I think I'll just reply in generalities here, Manchu.

As to the success of Donkey Kong and its success, I think you'd have a hard time proving that any games using the damsel trope were directly influenced by Donkey Kong instead of the centuries of entertainment that came before it.

On our parsing of the word "misogyny" I don't actually think you are as much of an extremist on this issue as others seem to be. I think that marketing demographics have more to do with the lack of female protagonists than cheap plot devices, but we're on the internet so we have to pretend that marketing isn't actually a thing.

Regarding your interesting thoughts on video game violence as it relates to the discussion, as well as the earlier mention of whether or not a critique implies a problem or solution, I can only once again agree that there's nothing wrong with thinking critically about anything and everything.

The fact that Donkey Kong fits into a larger pattern leading backward and forwards in time is exactly what we are talking about as pervasiveness.

Misogyny seems to be a default viewpoint that can "sharpen" to active hatred when it is challenged. Women speaking about video games seems to be just such a challenge. In the face of this "sharpening," it's clear why people use terms like misogyny in increasingly radical ways.

Yes, critical thinking is always good. There is a prejudice against it in our culture, however -- and especially against speaking critically: again, I actually agree with Sarkeesian's video and thought she did it respectfully (importantly, those are entirely separate points). At the same time, even I still felt confronted by a hostile viewpoint while watching it.

Pervasiveness of the trope, to me, doesn't equate in all cases to a desire to deprive females of agency. Again, I agree that the trope is pervasive. We part company at attributing it to a cultural devaluing of women.

It equates to, at worst, lazy storytelling.

 Monster Rain wrote:
Pervasiveness of the trope, to me, doesn't equate in all cases to a desire to deprive females of agency. Again, I agree that the trope is pervasive. We part company at attributing it to a cultural devaluing of women.

It equates to, at worst, lazy storytelling.

I don't quite agree with that, but I also don't agree entirely with the sentiment that it is entirely free of misogyny either. The same goes with almost all misogynistic parts of games. I don't think very many of them are done intentionally to devalue women. I think a lot of it is done without thinking.

The same has been true of racism. How many racists have hated people they've never met, met someone of that race (I hate that term, it is inaccurate), and realized how stupid their racist beliefs were?

 Monster Rain wrote:
Again, I agree that the trope is pervasive. We part company at attributing it to a cultural devaluing of women.

Melissia posted an explicit example of how female characters are devalued by the video game industry: publishers, whether at accurately or not, believe that games with female leads are less lucrative than ones with male leads. It's becoming increasingly apparent that this isn't because only boys like video games. Looking at the portrayal of female characters, we find that the industry is also more comfortable with female characters who lack agency, that is who cannot be leads, and has been pervasively for a long time. Whether you these things are ultimately connected, it cannot be simply dismissed.

 Manchu wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
Again, I agree that the trope is pervasive. We part company at attributing it to a cultural devaluing of women.

Melissia posted an explicit example of how female characters are devalued by the video game industry: publishers, whether at accurately or not, believe that games with female leads are less lucrative than ones with male leads.

Wanna post me a link? There's a... reason I haven't seen that link, though my hypothesis is that this is, still, due to market analysis and not an institutionalized hatred of women. We'll see how my educated guess holds up, if you feel like indulging me.

If there's this huge market waiting out there for the type of game that you're suggesting, I would suggest writing the data from your research on the subject into a proposal and pitching it to someone who makes these decisions.

Video games, like all(?) art, transmit culture, and exposure to that culture can inform our view of the world. Someone isn't going to play a video game and then immediately do something misogynistic, just like someone isn't going to play a violent game and then do something violent as a result. That doesn't mean those ideas don't influence us to an extent.

Regarding violence, I'd point out that almost all the violence in video games is either:

1. presented as Wrong by context; if a villain hurts an innocent there are likely to be cues there that the villain should not be doing this
2. considered absolutely acceptable by broader society. When you play a soldier and kill other combatants, you're doing something that (I believe) most people will agree would be acceptable and proper in the real world. When you are flying your space ship, defending the planet from alien invaders trying to wipe out/enslave humanity, general consensus would probably be that this is an okay thing to do.

It's rare for a video game to present indiscriminate or otherwise unjustified violence uncritically, just like it is in broader culture; the views on violence transmitted in these games tend to be in line with society's views. I think it's likely that they do, in turn, mould the viewer's ideas (and this isn't as simple as violence = good, at the very least it's that violence against combatants is fine and violence against non-combatants is wrong).

And of course, none of that is to say that we're blank slates for video games to write on, but saying "nobody is influenced by media at all" is a weird position to take that I think would probably be wrong.

 Monster Rain wrote:
my hypothesis is that this is, still, due to market analysis and not an institutionalized hatred of women.

Likewise. I don't think that companies balance their books on how much they oppress group X, and shareholders seem to prefer their dividends in cash and not Patriarchy Points

 Monster Rain wrote:
Wanna post me a link?

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/remember-mes-surprising-connection-to-facebook-and-why-its-protagonist-had

 Monster Rain wrote:
If there's this huge market waiting out there for the type of game that you're suggesting, I would suggest writing the data from your research on the subject into a proposal and pitching it to someone who makes these decisions.

The industry does not need me to author a study. There have been reports on women making up large portions of the gaming market and even more particularly the console market for about a decade now.


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 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:
my hypothesis is that this is, still, due to market analysis and not an institutionalized hatred of women.

Likewise. I don't think that companies balance their books on how much they oppress group X, and shareholders seem to prefer their dividends in cash and not Patriarchy Points

Well hopefully we can put those strawmen to bed then, right?

 Manchu wrote:
Well hopefully we can put those strawmen to bed then, right?

Strawman? I was just trying to lighten the mood just a wee shade with some humour. I hoped that the Orkmoticon would have made that apparent, I know know badly sarcasm works on the internet

I saw. But it is reinforcing the same wrongheaded argument that the feminist critique of video games is not relevant because the specific goal of game developers is not to hate on women. That is a strawman and it has plagued this thread. Again, something doesn't need to be intended to be a consequence.

 Manchu wrote:
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/remember-mes-surprising-connection-to-facebook-and-why-its-protagonist-had

That article links to another which looks at a much wider segment than just a single game - http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

“If you look at the first three months, with the smaller quantity of female-led games, they did not sell as well. The ones that were male-only sold better,” Zatkin explained. There are some more interesting bits here. Games that allow you to choose your gender are reviewed better than games that offer male-only heroes, but the games with male only heroes sold better. In terms of pure sales numbers, in the first three months of availability, games with only a male hero sold around 25 percent better than games with an optional female hero. Games with exclusively male heroes sold around 75 percent better than games with only female heroes. . . If you’re funding a large-budget game and you see these numbers, you see that you lose sales by adding the capability to choose a female hero, and you lose significant sales by releasing a game with a female hero. “You look at unit sales, and if you look at unit sales by platform, you can see that it holds true except on the DS,”
. . .
That’s something you can take away from this,” Zatkin said. The problem also comes from marketing departments. There is a sense in the industry that games with female heroes won't sell. “I think that there is general feeling from marketing that it’s hard to sell a mass-market game that’s a female-only protagonist,” Zatkin agreed. “This may be changing greatly with mobile and social, where you’re expanding the audience, but in core console land, there’s a lot of marketing thought that it’s hard to sell a game with a female-only protagonist in a core genre. The question is, is this something that really doesn’t happen, or do marketing budgets get gimped?”

Now reading that it does seem more likely that the primary concern for many companies is the return on their investment, rather than anything else.


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 Manchu wrote:
I saw. But it is reinforcing the same wrongheaded argument that the feminist critique of video games is not relevant because the specific goal of game developers is not to hate on women. That is a strawman and it has plagued this thread. Again, something doesn't need to be intended to be a consequence.

I'm sorry you too it that way, there was no attempt to reinforce anything.

The point of that article is that the industry a creates self-fulfilling prophecy on the issue of portrayals of females. It's not as simple as "they just don't sell."

I'd also propose that the games industry also is very bad at reading market data. Just like how they love to blame the second hand market, or pirates, they like to blame that a game sold poorly on stupid things like "there was a girl as an optional character." Never mind that the sections of the game with said optional female character were poorly designed and boring, detracting from the overall experience. The industry tends to find stupid things to blame for its failures. Like the time the head of Silicon Knights complained that they weren't get tail sales because of the second hand market, rather than the fact that their games suck and no one really wants to buy them to start with.

Agreed, LoH. I mean, we can see that the industry massively sucks in so many ways. Day One DLC, for example. And yet when this issue comes up, people seem to think publishers are sincere geniuses.

Part of it I'll bet is that the folks who market a game, have probably never even played it. They probably just get a blurp or something from the dev team with some highlights to put on the box.

 Manchu wrote:
The point of that article is that the industry a creates self-fulfilling prophecy on the issue of portrayals of females. It's not as simple as "they just don't sell."

From the article

So is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Do publishers send female-lead games out to die without proper support? “I think it might be, and I think in some cases, though this is a guess, that these games may be considered more niche, and you advertise niche games less,” Zatkin said.

 Manchu wrote:
Day One DLC, for example. And yet when this issue comes up, people seem to think publishers are sincere geniuses.

No, I assume that they're chasing the money

Having a female lead does not make a game "niche." Anyone who was chasing money in a really clear-eyed sense would realize that.

IE, you think they're sincere geniuses in the art of chasing money.

 Manchu wrote:
Having a female lead does not make a game "niche." Anyone who was chasing money in a really clear-eyed sense would realize that.

Until you have data to back that up it will continue to seem like you're stating an opinion as fact.

You're right, game companies don't need you to do their market research for them, as much as a cop out as that statement was. They have done it themselves and acted accordingly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
Agreed, LoH. I mean, we can see that the industry massively sucks in so many ways. Day One DLC, for example. And yet when this issue comes up, people seem to think publishers are sincere geniuses.

This from the guy throwing around the term "straw man"?

 Manchu wrote:
Having a female lead does not make a game "niche." Anyone who was chasing money in a really clear-eyed sense would realize that.

I'm not saying it make it niche. I'm just repeating what someone in the industry said. The fact of the matter is that with so few female leads in games its easy to see why they are described as niche. If they look at their data objectively and see that male lead games are what sells then I can understand their position (not trying to justify it). The games industry isn't exactly known for innovation, or deviating from what makes them money, hence all the Call of Duty and sports game clones. With the state of the economy and studios like THQ closing, and EA taking a financial hit then that may not change for some time.

This isn't a defense of publishers, either. It's to correct the assertion that their decisions are based on misogynistic cultural influence.

On the other hand, I've never thought it'd be unfair to say that a great many market researchers are not scientifically inclined and therefore do not realise that:

Correlation does not imply Causation.

For example, I presume one of the examples that they'd do on this is say, Gears of War sales Vs Mass Effect sales.

To come to the conclusion that it's "because ME has an option for a female lead" would be just well.... crazy.

Edit: That's not to say, that they might very well actually be crazy and / or deluded....