Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Asherian Command wrote:

nomotog wrote:
The big dumb action women. I don't think I have seen that yet. We do have action women, but they tend not to be big and they tend not to be dumb. It's kind of interesting to look at these gender swapped tropes and compare them because most of the time they don't simply change the gender. They change a few other minor aspects as well. Looking at the other changes that go along can reveal some neat stuff.

Final Fantasy
Metriod Prime the Other M
X Blade
Heaven's Sword
Ninja Gaiden

There you go enjoy stupid action women.

Are you talking about the first final fantasy?

nomotog wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

nomotog wrote:
The big dumb action women. I don't think I have seen that yet. We do have action women, but they tend not to be big and they tend not to be dumb. It's kind of interesting to look at these gender swapped tropes and compare them because most of the time they don't simply change the gender. They change a few other minor aspects as well. Looking at the other changes that go along can reveal some neat stuff.

Final Fantasy
Metriod Prime the Other M
X Blade
Heaven's Sword
Ninja Gaiden

There you go enjoy stupid action women.

Are you talking about the first final fantasy?

No The newest ones. The older final fantasy actually has some of the strongest females in RPGs. Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy tactics, to name a few have some of the strongest females, because they just said hey look its a female, eh okay, holy molly, she can kill dragons and she wears armor like a regular soldier!

Another good example I like to mention is Tomb Raider 2013 and the TV show Arrow, which premièred at around the same time (actually, in the UK, Tomb Raider sponsored/had adverts before Arrow).

Different genders, different overarching storylines, actually different starting personalities too and yet, both characters journeys and development on the island is remarkably similar.

For example, Lara hunting the deer (first time she killed) and Ollie's reaction when he's expected to wring a birds neck and cook it for food.

While I do know that these aren't typical examples at the moment, but they're the sort of thing that I think should be the aim. A characters gender shouldn't influence events in a game/film, unless, you know, it's a situation where a characters gender must.

Tomb Raider 2013 was a brilliant game. I liked how the character was actually realistic portrayed, rather than the sexed up caricature of previous games. And I say that as a 22 year old guy.

My only gripe with it was how little time you actually spent Tomb Raiding. As a fan of Indiana Jones and other stories with a pseudo- historical/archeological setting, I was hoping for more ancient Tombs and history. Too much time is spent fighting a Cult's goons.

Hopefully they tone the combat down in any future sequels, and emphasise the Tomb Raiding again.

I just wish new lara would stop jumping into dirty water with open wounds. That bugged me so much that it's still the first thing I think about when I think of the reboot.

Meh, the new Tomb Raider also had a massive problem with keeping Lara consistent when switching from Plot to Gameplay.

In Cutscenes, even killing a deer would cause her to have an emotional trauma, not even mentioning how she reacts to killing humans. Cue in 5 minutes later and you're gunning down baddies with a shotgun. I think the term for that was cognitive dissonance.

Dont get me wrong, the game is cool and I like Lara as a Character. But it made the whole thing silly here and there.

I don't think it was just killing the deer that gave her a bit of trauma, it was going up to it and slicing to pieces. Though they didn't show that part so it can be forgiven that you forgot.

The first humans she killed were obviously scum, murderers, potentially rapists, well, one guy anyway. I also like how when you first get to use the pistol in normal gameplay the reticule swings around the screen. Then when it's over the burden on her mind is clear. The next time a fight breaks out she's shouting out to the enemies that they don't need to fight. Though there might be some dissonance here if you skillfully snipe a couple with your pistol as she's talking.

Also you don't get the shotgun for quite a while, just sayin'

Ludonarrative Dissonance

Meh, for me it's a combination of things.

For one, I don't care at all about the plots of modern military shooters and the likes. I buy them for the multiplayer, and the multiplayer only. I don't care about the campaign, and I'd still buy it no matter how absurdly offensive the campaign was- well, because I don't care about it and the multiplayer's fun.

The time I notice or actively care about tropes is games that attempt to tell a quality story (I say attempt because damn it's a small number that were successful) and I buy it for that story. Which is safe to say hilariously infrequent. The games I buy are either fun for their multiplayer (so I rarely even encounter these tropes), for their singleplayer gameplayer/RPG aspect (I'll laugh at anyone that claims a female Dragonborn I once ran was 'weak'), or for their actual story.

I actually can't think of any game I've gotten for it's story. I just don't view videogames as a mature medium yet and thus are stuck in a single niche and haven't successfully gotten out of it. For example, Bioshock Infinite has an interesting plot with some interesting moments and questions left with the audience, but it just doesn't hold a candle to the best, it's an average that I should expect, not be surprised by.

The only game that I really desperately want and I think really stands out of the medium as incredible is the Stanley Parable for it being a slap in the face of the games industry and the player, and feels like a call to action of us to all wake up.

That and Marathon from the 90's, that stands out especially for pioneering the idea of AI and the concept of rampancy and what a sentient AI would do (besides the derpy actions of Skynet). Along with other classics like System Shock and Deus Ex.


I just really feel that this whole 'women tropes' in W40K is a bit overblown and not a gigantic problem. Rather an annoyance resulting from Videogames pretty much being Hollywood action blockbusters, and the number of intelligent, serious, thinking games being fairly small compared to those we get from movies or books. The industry's just been locked into this single line of thought with nothing else deviating that are major companies like EA or Activision, with it only being indies taking the big steps forward.

Of course, this weird jumble of words also just results from my game selection being fairly different than most. I don't often even encounter the negative female tropes. They're more of a rare sight for me rather than a regular occurrence.

Stuebi wrote:
Meh

 Wyzilla wrote:
Meh

Meh, plenty of the tropes annoy me. But the one that annoy me the most that I have to call out is when females die with little to no agency while men die valiantly. Even Halo Reach and it's gender equal Spartans, the Smurfette (who is actually blue) goes down without a fight but the guys go down blowing up aliens.

Girls bleed to death in someones arms, guys bleed with a grenade in their hand.

Wait, is that even a trope or did I just make that up? It feels like a Trope and I've seen it happen plenty of times but I can think of a few exceptions, though most of the exceptions were just male villainous tricksters/traitors... maybe it's not a trope, just a common recurring pattern.

EDIT: this is in reference to deaths of characters that's meant to evoke 'feels' of some variety.

Smurfette (who is actually blue) goes down without a fight

Its her fault for forgeting to turn her shield on #failedattemptatcreatingtragedyinwarendsinstupidness

 Lotet wrote:

Stuebi wrote:
Meh

 Wyzilla wrote:
Meh

Meh, plenty of the tropes annoy me. But the one that annoy me the most that I have to call out is when females die with little to no agency while men die valiantly. Even Halo Reach and it's gender equal Spartans, the Smurfette (who is actually blue) goes down without a fight but the guys go down blowing up aliens.

Girls bleed to death in someones arms, guys bleed with a grenade in their hand.

Wait, is that even a trope or did I just make that up? It feels like a Trope and I've seen it happen plenty of times but I can think of a few exceptions, though most of the exceptions were just male villainous tricksters/traitors... maybe it's not a trope, just a common recurring pattern.

EDIT: this is in reference to deaths of characters that's meant to evoke 'feels' of some variety.

A trope is a common recurring pattern, so yes it's a trope. I think you actually the women in refrigerators and men defrosting tropes.

 Lotet wrote:

Girls bleed to death in someones arms, guys bleed with a grenade in their hand.

It doesn't always happen though... The first thing I thought of was this.

"Oh, and also... I wish to blow us all to hell."

Oh, for sure, every trope has exceptions and subversions, though I wouldn't call what I said a "Trope" anyway. If you don't think it's common then it probably isn't common. Unless you DO think what I said was common.

It's not like I did research or anything. It's just what my brain decided to retain out of my media.

Also, I seem to remember the colonel (or whatever his rank was, I forget, I also forget his name) died without a fight in that episode. TOTAL SUBVERSION!! Of my not-trope.

 Lotet wrote:

Stuebi wrote:
Meh

 Wyzilla wrote:
Meh

Meh, plenty of the tropes annoy me. But the one that annoy me the most that I have to call out is when females die with little to no agency while men die valiantly. Even Halo Reach and it's gender equal Spartans, the Smurfette (who is actually blue) goes down without a fight but the guys go down blowing up aliens.

Girls bleed to death in someones arms, guys bleed with a grenade in their hand.

Wait, is that even a trope or did I just make that up? It feels like a Trope and I've seen it happen plenty of times but I can think of a few exceptions, though most of the exceptions were just male villainous tricksters/traitors... maybe it's not a trope, just a common recurring pattern.

EDIT: this is in reference to deaths of characters that's meant to evoke 'feels' of some variety.

No agency? The weird thing is I always see a female death always treated as an important event, while men just die in droves in the video games without a word being said.

Referencing back to the death of Kat in Halo Reach and ignoring the silliness of a Spartan forgetting to turn her shields on. Kat's death is (failingly) treated as a tragedy. The deaths of Emile and Carter comparatively are treated as expectations. No dramatic music or slow mo. Just some 'I'm gonna die now later yall!" EDIT: And then Geoge's death, while accompanied by music, is treated as a heroic sacrifice that makes him exceedingly noble, pun intended, so in his case the expectation of sacrifice is reinforced on par with Kat's tragic demise.

It don't think that's a question of having agency but rather the cultural associations of death. Being killed by a sniper is taken as an impersonal death with no chance to resist fate, i.e. tragedy, while sacrificing oneself or dying fighting are expectations culturally expected of soldiers and are unsurprising.

The gender of the character's can either be taken as a coincidence or a subconscious association that a woman's death is unexpected and tragic, while the death of men is expected or even required. Both the later sentiments are sexist (by that I mean the sentiments on the deaths of men and women, not coincidence).

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
No agency? The weird thing is I always see a female death always treated as an important event, while men just die in droves in the video games without a word being said.

Agency as in having control of their fate or the fates of others, being cried over isn't as preferable as defeating a few more enemies, unless you're a healer or something. I also meant only important events. From what I've seen, when important male characters die in games they typically go down fighting, aside from sneaky traitors and such. I didn't pay much mind when fighting female soldiers in Tales of Vesperia aside from their uniform design. But I already dislike slaughtering waves of enemies for petty reasons. Defending your planet? Good enough no matter how bad your planet is, even if your opponent is Space Jesus. But Uncharted 2 had me killing soldiers because my buddy decided to run off with the heist reward. Really? Killing people for this? When I died against some soldiers, I just stopped playing.

 LordofHats wrote:
The gender of the character's can either be taken as a coincidence or a subconscious association that a woman's death is unexpected and tragic, while the death of men is expected or even required. Both the later sentiments are sexist (by that I mean the sentiments on the deaths of men and women, not coincidence).

Indeed, but what influences my decision of whether it's a coincidence or an association is if it happens in many different stories. I've already said that I find my case to be common. In comics, ARGH! I know it's common, I have no doubt about this, no wait, I have a doubt that it might have changed this decade, I wouldn't know. In Video Games however, it might just be my games.

For all I know Heroic Sacrifices (or Dying Moment of Awesome) is just more common than frail deaths and male characters are also more common so it seems like they get more heroic deaths. So coincidence, like you said... maybe. But I can only think of 1 male dying in someones arms (who didn't go down fighting), a character in Saints Row 2, which a lot of people thought was really sad apparently.

 LordofHats wrote:
noble
noble
noble

All this talk about sexism or whatever, augh, I'm annoying myself. What I really want to know is if other people have seen the pattern I've seen so it's not just me. Like I've already said, I can think of exceptions so you can to. But even with the examples that go against what I said earlier, is my view still the more common way events happen?

I dunno. I suppose it's less a question of, "is it more common" or a case of, "is it proportionally more common compared to the number of male heroes vs female ones?"

I'm not entirely sure if it is a particular gender trope to be honest.

Here's probably one the biggest examples of them all.



It, however, has made me think I need to watch my copy of the Starship Troopers: Invasion film to refresh my memory of something...

For all I know Heroic Sacrifices (or Dying Moment of Awesome) is just more common than frail deaths and male characters are also more common so it seems like they get more heroic deaths. So coincidence, like you said... maybe. But I can only think of 1 male dying in someones arms (who didn't go down fighting), a character in Saints Row 2, which a lot of people thought was really sad apparently.

That's the thing, I somewhat overlook that because of the whole 'Male characters are common'. The thing is most male characters are used as villains, eager to kill and cause bloodlust or terror because they just want to. When a female villain appears its usually accompanied by a tragic backstory, or she's been tricked by the villains, or something to humanize her to the audience that she wasn't a true 'bad girl.' by choice, and she will get a poignant death scene while her male villain allies will get barely a word and or 'deserve it' not to mention they will often times die in far more horrible ways then a female.

Men are the default protagonists, but at the same time are the default villain's who are irredeemable and the only one's capable of killing and having bloodlust in their hearts..

What I really want to know is if other people have seen the pattern I've seen so it's not just me.

Sexism debates get muddled constantly because it varies by frame of reference.

I don't really hide that I think the whole woman in the fridge thing is one of the most intellectually dishonest things to ever come from Feminism. When the term was first coined the woman who produced it was lambasted for the precise reason that men get stuffed in the fridge just as often if not more often than women. I can honestly think of more women writers in the past 20 years who have stuffed men than men writers who have stuffed women. But that's just off the top of my head (for some reason when I look back I read a lot more female writers than male writers). I don't read much fantasy but if you look into it women get stuffed constantly. It's a common staple of the tragic male back story.

Stuff like that varies by genre and medium, so while you might encounter it a lot in the media you enjoy other people might have never seen it because it's not common in theirs. Take the current Tropes vs Women series where many examples are older games or from Nintendo. People who never play Nintendo and weren't around in the 80's and mid 90's are far less likely to understand the examples used at all compared to others.

Well we could just do the leg work on this. Pick a few games at random where people die then look and see if we see a trend.

Well. There are characters that break from tropes. I think the problem is that designers forget to actually ask what a woman has to do with, that or a female designer makes a woman that is the direct opposite of what culture wants in a woman.

To make a successful female character you have to have how the character has some parts of cultural influence and some not, and how they react to this.

But eh. I think the game industry has grown up considerably.

I mean there are very few games in the industry that I have played.

Well except... for these three. Okay my list is pretty large for accidental and purposefully sexist....





Here is a successful female character

Myself, I'm a complete egalitarian- I believe that neither sex should receive any special treatment or privilege over the other. Really, my beef with the poor portrayal of women in videogames is less how they're portrayed and more why they're portrayed that way, and what the explanantion is.

For example, suppose we have 2 female characters from 2 different games, both of whom are quite weak, vulnerable and emotionally distraught. 1 of them is so because when she was 7 she had her entire family torn apart by insane demon-worshiping cultists in front of her, and so is utterly traumatized. Her portrayal would work equally well for a male or female character, and makes perfect sense. The other one, however, has no explanation for their vulnerability- they're just useless damsels to fill the useless damsel requirement.

Evangelion (And yes I know it isn't a game but oh well) actually plays with gender roles very cleverly- the long-suffering Shinji would probably be considered a cutesy damsel character if he was female, and Asuka fits the "hot blooded yet scarred Shounen hero" role surprisingly well. And then of course there's Rei, who is a viciously mocking parody of the "perfect woman" who sadly backfired and spawned a massive fanclub...

Yes videogames are mainly oriented towards male customers but thats due to the fact that males for years were the main purchasers of video games, same for comics and other gaming mediums. Yes we are seeing more female gamers but when it comes to a long standing proven customer base its predominatly males. I remember going to the mac expo in SF years ago when Bungie was making games predominatly for mac only and the attendees were mainly male. Even comiccon&other coventions had mainly male attendees where a woman was a rarity. Yes Japan is very sexist when it comes to the status of women and how they are portrayed. It seems like no one talks about the female characters in the Biohazard. Ada wong to Clair Redfield are all strong women. I feel the trope for for smurfette is correct due to the origins of the character and the series. Smurfette was never created to gain a female audience. orginally smurfette to destroy the happy homes of the communist all male smurf village was male looking, despised by the smurffs until papa smurf did smurfergery on smurfette. Also Smurfette maried grumpy smurf so that the infighting the village would end. The creater of the smurf is a ardent communist. Gorgamel is supposed to be a representation of evil capitalism. To Lynette on the comment of the former marine and lesbian not being tipped because of her lifestyle and short hair that story has been proven to be a hoax and a attempt to get money from people. She has a long history of lying to make a buck. Yes I think there should be more games that appeal to women. I got my girlfriend into gaming and she would like more female characters that she can play. Though she does not get upset if there is no female character depending on the story. She loves the sisters of battle and think that the eldar are cool too. She liked Deus Ex and did not say why is my character not woman. To say interactive stories like DE must have a female playable female character is like railing against Dumas for having the count of monte christo be a man. When it comes feminist movement its a broadmovement that takes different forms depending on the local of where the movement is taking place. Culture allways affects any rites movement. The maker of vids is in my opine just looking to make a buck and not bring about any real change.