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 LordofHats wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Ignore my previous comment. Dear lord.

Really, there is no need to refer to me as your dear lord.

You can all refer to me as dear lord. In fact I demand it, I killed a lot of Hats to get this title. I've earned the right to be addressed as suck!

Sure thing, suck.

Foiled by typing again!

And that's how you get a callsign.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Hyper-sexualised"? Where do you get that from?

It is worriesome that (at least) two board members cannot understand why stripper archetypes are hyper-sexualized but I guess the rest of the thread contextualizes this.

 Chongara wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
Looking at the achievements for Hitman I see an achievement for "Killing something beautiful", with an icon that depicts a woman in underwear and heels in the middle of removing her bra, supposedly attained for killing a character named Layla. In contrast to the achievements for killing the male characters, this seems to call a great deal of attention to the character's gender and sexuality.

Well, Anita should have mentioned this rather than misrepresenting something from the game. I mean, if you are loosing point for killing the girls, you are not encouraged to do it, clearly.

That's a stronger statement than I think can really be made. Points are one reward the game can offer, so is just advancing the plot, letting you see near new areas, or doing these things in an easier or faster way than you could otherwise do. In order to be able to definitively say that the game discourages doing something it, that thing really has to fail on all those metrics, or at least on enough of them that a player would not see the action as more desirable than another within the framework of the game mechanics.

Like, if you get more points for letting some enemies spot you, but you can get through the level faster by killing them the game is encouraging you to kill them over not being spotted if your goal is expedience.

Having not played (and having no desire to play), a Hitman game I can't definitively make statement of how it works in those regards. However, from a design standpoint the things that can encourage players are somewhat complex. Speaking very broadly for games in general: For any given action simply docking the player in a single scoring metric within the game for taking that action is not sufficient to say that your game is not encouraging that action.

Hitman as a series encourages you to be as stealthy and as discreet as you can. You get the most points for killing your target in an accident without anyone noticing and that is drilled into you in the previous games. (I beat blood money with a silent assassin rank. ) HM;A has issues outside of the ones it has with women and this is actually one of them. Well the series drilled in the idea of being sneaky, HM:A brakes that formula and forces combat in a lot of places. It also has that AAA problem were they in a way force everything because they really want you to know everything you can do. (See assassins creed for another example.)

 Manchu wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Ignore my previous comment. Dear lord.

Really, there is no need to refer to me as your dear lord.

You always used to love me calling you names D:

I am just...ugh. I lack any sort of understanding for this given example and a few others. I mean...this isn't cherry-picking. This is picking a cherry, eating the pulp and then splitting the core in half.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Ignore my previous comment. Dear lord.

Really, there is no need to refer to me as your dear lord.

You can all refer to me as dear lord. In fact I demand it, I killed a lot of Hats to get this title. I've earned the right to be addressed as suck!

Sure thing, suck.

Foiled by typing again!

*claps*

Very nice.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Implying that they chose "thing" because it's a woman is batty.

So why change "barely" to "bearly" again?

 Manchu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Hyper-sexualised"? Where do you get that from?

It is worriesome that (at least) two board members cannot understand why stripper archetypes are hyper-sexualized but I guess the rest of the thread contextualizes this.

In that case, it's not GTA "hyper-sexualizing" certain females, but accurately representing them.

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
the capability to attack and kill hyper-sexualized female characters and then manipulate their corpses

ALSO -- considering many prominent women (including Sarkeesian) have been the target of threats to this effect, I think it is reasonable to bring up that a video game allows the people to simulate carrying them out. The developers of Hitman were not forced to make hyper-sexualized female characters nor to make them potential targets of violence and desecration. These were choices. Someone had to say, "the players should be able to do this if they want to."

It's a game about killing people, you have 20 missions to go through, yet Anita and yourself just want to focus on one small part of the game where if you watch the videos of the play through no one kills them. Why address something that is not a problem and no one does it?

They were not hyper-sexualized, they looked like strippers, and most strippers are hotter than the two in the game.

To be fair though... In an age of "trophy hunting" in video games, this necessitates multiple playthroughs of most games. And when it comes to the Hitman franchise, there's definitely a plathrough where I am the "grim reaper" and at the end of the mission, nothing/no one in the mission area is left alive.

But, as she wants to point out some crazy notion that Hitman is somehow sexist, what bout GTA, where you can not only kill hookers/strippers... but you can PAY them for their "services", and THEN kill them

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
So essentially, it should just be normal females and males you kill and desecrate?

Let's be clear -- pointing out that a developer made a choice and that choice has problematic implications is not the same thing as saying "games should be like X instead."

It's more of a curiosity, considering that they are strippers working in a strip club, would you have preferred the setting to be changed? Them to be in normal garb (Which would be as out of place as a stereotypical tourists garb in Mecca)

It's more of a thought to see what would have made it less of an issue, or what could have been done with that setting.

So why change "barely" to "bearly" again?

Because it's made to be a pun, do you really not understand this?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Because you can't.

Actually the problem here is that linking someone else's argument in the form of a video and saying "respond to that" does not induce me to want to respond. I have no problems with responding to posts people have made.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As the video says, it's black and white

Oh look the video says that it is correct. What a shocker.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
She cherry-picked a tiny segment out of a much larger game

Regardless of how tiny you assert that the segment was, it was still a problematic segment. To use another example, someone can easily be banned in Dakka for a very tiny section of their post, because that tiny section-- even the use of a single word-- is problematic (and, in this example, violates the rules).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
misrepresented the way that part of the game is played (killing the women and dragging them around, something you're explicitly not meant to do so much so that there's a built in disincentive)

Just because there is a disincentive to do that doesn't mean that it works, or that it is thus no longer a problem. The fact that it is in this hypothetical situation allowed in the first place through the gameplay can still make it problematic.

It's like if the Sims allowed you to make your character sexually assault another Sim. Even if, every single time, you got arrested and thrown in jail in-game, the fact that it allowed such an action in the first place makes the game worse and is generally awful if they had done so.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
and claimed that the game "reinforced" the stereotype of "women as decoration" as a result when in reality what's shown in her video is vastly removed from how people actually play the game.

Do you have actual evidence of this latter assertion? I have seen videos of people doing exactly what she described, going "hurr hurr killin' me sum hoz" all the while.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's dishonestly, and she does it constantly in her videos.

It's neither dishonesty, nor have you proven she supposedly does it constantly.

 Sigvatr wrote:
You always used to love me calling you names

I'm just not used to them being so polite!

 Sigvatr wrote:
I lack any sort of understanding for this given example and a few others.

That is probably literally true but I think you really mean you lack sympathy for the example. And like I said, this example is just a molehill and not a mountain. It's the huge amount of molehills out there that makes any one of them worth bringing up.

 jreilly89 wrote:
I have made several points with evidence and you disagree. You have made several points with little evidence and I disagree.

Actually, I made brilliant points backed by incredibly accurate date that proves how awesome I am as a man, and you wrote random babbling nonsense. Truth.
Well, maybe…

Just because there is a disincentive to do that doesn't mean that it works, or that it is thus no longer a problem. The fact that it is allowed in the first place through the gameplay can still make it problematic.

It's like if the Sims allowed you to make your character sexually assault another Sim. Even if, every single time, you got arrested and thrown in jail in-game, the fact that it allowed such an action in the first place makes the game worse and is generally awful if they had done so.

Except for the fact that this is a game about killing and hiding dead bodies, it'd be out of place if you couldn't kill. If we had some sort of Hardcore Sims that featured all sorts of violence, abuse, sexual assault that may be more of it's thing.

So yeah, not comparable at all.

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
So essentially, it should just be normal females and males you kill and desecrate?

Let's be clear -- pointing out that a developer made a choice and that choice has problematic implications is not the same thing as saying "games should be like X instead."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

sirlynchmob wrote:
They were not hyper-sexualized, they looked like strippers

Really?

Yes, really

exhibiting unusual or excessive concern with or indulgence in sexual activity

What sexual activity was going on there? they were just 2 girls putting on makeup. If you think that's hypersexualized, then you might want to have that checked out.

^in a strip club. Which is about men/women being hyper sexualized for their audience.

 Melissia wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Because you can't.

Actually the problem here is that linking someone else's argument in the form of a video and saying "respond to that" does not induce me to want to respond. I have no problems with responding to posts people have made.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As the video says, it's black and white

Oh look the video says that it is correct. What a shocker.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
She cherry-picked a tiny segment out of a much larger game

Regardless of how tiny you assert that the segment was, it was still a problematic segment. To use another example, someone can easily be banned in Dakka for a very tiny section of their post, because that tiny section-- even the use of a single word-- is problematic (and, in this example, violates the rules).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
misrepresented the way that part of the game is played (killing the women and dragging them around, something you're explicitly not meant to do so much so that there's a built in disincentive)

Just because there is a disincentive to do that doesn't mean that it works, or that it is thus no longer a problem. The fact that it is allowed in the first place through the gameplay can still make it problematic.

It's like if the Sims allowed you to make your character sexually assault another Sim. Even if, every single time, you got arrested and thrown in jail in-game, the fact that it allowed such an action in the first place makes the game worse and is generally awful if they had done so.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
and claimed that the game "reinforced" the stereotype of "women as decoration" as a result when in reality what's shown in her video is vastly removed from how people actually play the game.

Do you have actual evidence of this latter assertion? I have seen videos of people doing exactly what she described, going "hurr hurr killin' me sum hoz" all the while.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's dishonestly, and she does it constantly in her videos.

It's neither dishonesty, nor have you proven she supposedly does it constantly.

I however, DID post the main gist of the video, and there hasn't been a reply on that.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

But, as she wants to point out some crazy notion that Hitman is somehow sexist, what bout GTA, where you can not only kill hookers/strippers... but you can PAY them for their "services", and THEN kill them

She talked about that in the video too. It's rather messed up when you think about it. I think that is why that feature was slimmed down and almost hidden as the series went on.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

So why change "barely" to "bearly" again?

Because it's made to be a pun, do you really not understand this?

No I get the pun. But I am glad you brought it up explicitly. Calling a woman a "something" is also a kind of pun but it only really works if you are okay with/used referring to persons as things.

 Manchu wrote:
It is worriesome that (at least) two board members cannot understand why stripper archetypes are hyper-sexualized but I guess the rest of the thread contextualizes this.

Nope. You don't get to weasel your way out of this one quite so easily by trying to turn this back on us as something we're "missing". And to think you were the one crying straw a page back...

Your comment was:

"The developers of Hitman were not forced to make hyper-sexualized female characters nor to make them potential targets of violence and desecration."

The women are not hyper-sexualised any more than they would be in a non-virtual strip club setting. This is why I say it is not gratuitous. Everything is in context. What a person's personal views on strip clubs might be is largely irrelevant. They are not "hyper-sexualised" targets. They're not even targets. They're just people in the level like anyone else, and they fit within the context of that level because they are strippers in a strip club.

Your problem is that you seem to be singling them out, as if these two women exist apart from every other character/entity within the game. That's what Anita is trying to do as well - using two people from the game and misrepresenting (there's that word again!) them as being representative of the game as a whole.

But that's the thing: They're not. They are two characters out of many hundreds that appear in one part of one level. They are a minor aspect of the level and the game at no point encourages you to 'target' them. The ability to kill them is not separate, special or unique to them - you can kill anyone and everyone in the game - and the "desecration" angle is just hyperbole as dragging the bodies around all over the places makes even less sense (from the perspective of what you're meant to be doing) than killing them in the first place.

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

So why change "barely" to "bearly" again?

Because it's made to be a pun, do you really not understand this?

No I get the pun. But I am glad you brought it up explicitly. Calling a woman a "something" is also a kind of pun but it only really works if you are okay with/used referring to persons as things.

You've had it pointed out to you several times that it's a take off a line from Fight Club, wherein a person was indeed referred to as "something." Not a panda.

You've deliberately ignored this, or else, as I'm starting to suspect, mentally blocked it out after having read it.

 Manchu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Implying that they chose "thing" because it's a woman is batty.

So why change "barely" to "bearly" again?

Because it's a play on words. Duh.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
would you have preferred the setting to be changed?

Again:

 Manchu wrote:
Let's be clear -- pointing out that a developer made a choice and that choice has problematic implications is not the same thing as saying "games should be like X instead."

 Manchu wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
would you have preferred the setting to be changed?

Again:

 Manchu wrote:
Let's be clear -- pointing out that a developer made a choice and that choice has problematic implications is not the same thing as saying "games should be like X instead."

I am asking you directly what should have been changed, if the issue is problematic enough that you have to bring it up. Or do we just allow them to continue this?

 Melissia wrote:
It's neither dishonesty, nor have you proven she supposedly does it constantly.

"Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters."

This is a blatant lie. It. Is. Dishonesty.

She has portrayed that small part of the game as something you are meant to do. It is not something you are meant to do. These characters aren't even characters you are meant to interact with, just like 99% of the characters in the game. She is attempting to prove a point by perverting the evidence to show something that is out of the ordinary and not an object of the game.

 Manchu wrote:
Calling a woman a "something" is also a kind of pun but it only really works if you are okay with/used referring to persons as things.

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

They're not calling a woman "something". They are quoting a line from a movie. Don't you get that???

 Melissia wrote:
Just because there is a disincentive to do that doesn't mean that it works, or that it is thus no longer a problem. The fact that it is in this hypothetical situation allowed in the first place through the gameplay can still make it problematic.

So basically the developers should not have included a section in a strip club.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The women are not hyper-sexualised

FFS. Strippers go beyond ("hyper") run of the mill sexuality. That is the very point of stripping. That the strippers appear in a strip club is irrelevant. I am not saying that they were out of place.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They're not calling a woman "something". They are quoting a line from a movie. Don't you get that???

Does the quotation refer to the woman or not?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

They're not calling a woman "something". They are quoting a line from a movie. Don't you get that???

Don't you get that doesn't remove the implications from how the quote is being used in context? The fact it's a line from some bad movie does somewhere between, zlich, nada, and nothing to address the point being made about the implications of the quote when framed in the achievement.

All feminists want 90% of the male population culled from society, and the remaining 10% to be put into labor and breeding camps.




I could make that blanket statement and be false; only a small handful (If even more than that one woman in particular, too jaded to doubt there aren't at least two people who agree with her), and so saying that statement is nothing but dishonesty and misrepresenting the feminist population.


Why is that different from Hitman; Anita stated a claim that is wildly off base as has been proven in let's plays and this thread. It is misrepresenting the hitman game and feminist population.

This is not a difficult concept.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The women are not hyper-sexualised

FFS. Strippers go beyond ("hyper") run of the mill sexuality. That is the very point of stripping. That the strippers appear in a strip club is irrelevant. I am not saying that they were out of place.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They're not calling a woman "something". They are quoting a line from a movie. Don't you get that???

Does the quotation refer to the woman or not?

Actually, the original quote refers to a man.

*Twilight Zone music*

 Melissia wrote:
Thus, my post saying "Telling someone "quit whining" is the same as telling someone 'shut up'." That is what I have been talking about ever since that part of the conversation branched off in the first place, since the entire reason I posted taht in the first place was to raise an objection to that post.

The rhetorical trick of first trying to defend statements like that and then asserting "but I/none of us/no one never said that" remains unconvincing.

T'was no rhetorical trick. I genuinly thought you were referring to me, not GrumpyEldar, because you specifically singled me out as wanting Anita to shut up. "And thats what you said..." I defended myself, by denying it. I was not defending others nor denying that GrumpyEldar said that Anita should shut up.

if you don't want people to misinterpret your comments, then make yourself more clear instead of doubling down and responding with yet more ad hominem abuse.

 Manchu wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The women are not hyper-sexualised

FFS. Strippers go beyond ("hyper") run of the mill sexuality. That is the very point of stripping. That the strippers appear in a strip club is irrelevant. I am not saying that they were out of place.

You are entirely missing the point. What these women do or who they are is entirely irrelevant because it's entirely irrelevant to everyone in that game. There are loads of different people in that game from all various walks of life doing all sorts of jobs. The fact that some of them happen to be strippers is basically meaningless, and Anita's attempt to portray these two specific characters (and the fact that you can kill them) is a deliberate misrepresentation of the game. At no point are they targets. At no point are you "meant" to do anything with them, and the closest you get to interacting with them is overhearing a conversation they have (like many other groups of characters, male and female, sexualised or non-sexualised, throughout the entire game).

 Slarg232 wrote:
All feminists want 90% of the male population culled from society, and the remaining 10% to be put into labor and breeding camps.

Femitheist explicitly said she was not a feminist, man.

 Slarg232 wrote:
Why is that different from Hitman; Anita stated a claim that is wildly off base as has been proven in let's plays and this thread. It is misrepresenting the hitman game and feminist population.

The feminist population is a bunch of different people with very few in common. The hitman: absolution game is… well, one game. Not even a series. So, yeah, your comparison makes no sense.