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You know I would like to see some of the excuse for bad armor used logically to make a character. Like your a wizard, you have magic so you don't have to wear armor. Heck you can wear what ever you want because your the bloody wizard. How would someone dress if they could dress however they wanted.

I'd just like to not see bad armor, including most fantasy stuff. Including Dragon Age designs.

 Lynata wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Apparently, magic makes you weightless.

The lack of heavy armour allows the warrior to make full use of her agility instead of being burdened (= dragged down) by weight. Don't you see? It's science!

Speaking of Dragon Age, I have to say that those games had some cool nice and bulky armour designs.

Spoiler:

- Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard


- a female Templar


- possessed Warden-Commander Sophia Arlessa Dryden

Those are some neat designs. It's shame Dragon Age grated on me so, the setting just really wasn't my cup of tea.

 Cheesecat wrote:
Oh, I'm a fan of Chell and Alyx Vance too. Also this is a pretty cool pic of Samus.

Spoiler:

I've seen that somewhere. Was... was that from a Nintendo Power from some 15-16 years ago?

Holy crap, it was.



20 years ago even.

I think that Smite video does a pretty good job at summarizing the problem with women portrayal in video game in less than 30 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeHoc7NsBY&feature=youtu.be&t=4m58s
That might not be on purpose though .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I think that Smite video does a pretty good job at summarizing the problem with women portrayal in video game in less than 30 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeHoc7NsBY&feature=youtu.be&t=4m58s
That might not be on purpose though .

Or as usual with that topic, God's don't think much of mortals

I mean Nu Wa Created man kind, they are objects to her in the first place.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I think that Smite video does a pretty good job at summarizing the problem with women portrayal in video game in less than 30 seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNeHoc7NsBY&feature=youtu.be&t=4m58s
That might not be on purpose though .

What's the issue?

So, uh, she gives some woman as a pet to some soldier to cheer him up, and your conclusion is “Gods don't think much of mortals”? That is an interesting one. I also fail to see you reasoning about creating. I mean, even if bypassing normal procreation, you were to create a clone, or any other kind of sentient, living being, would you consider him/her/it an object because of it?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So, uh, she gives some woman as a pet to some soldier to cheer him up, and your conclusion is “Gods don't think much of mortals”? That is an interesting one. I also fail to see you reasoning about creating. I mean, even if bypassing normal procreation, you were to create a clone, or any other kind of sentient, living being, would you consider him/her/it an object because of it?

You mean the same gods that regularly rape, kill, and destroy vast swaths of mortals out of spite or just uncaring?

I mean people remember Zeus right? Regular Rapist god? And then his wife Hera attacks the mortal instead of Zeus out of spite for his cheating?

I mean Nu Wa literally created humans out of clay itself, is the value of something higher because it's now 'sentient' to a god who deals with the heavens?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
You mean the same gods that regularly rape, kill, and destroy vast swaths of mortals out of spite or just uncaring?

In Smite? Because certainly you are not suggesting that Smite has any real connection with the actual lore of those Gods ?
Anyhow, I still think it works pretty good as an unintended allegory .

Pets? I saw her giving out companions. Someone wanted a... sheep (was it?), another one wanted a wife, and the final one wanted a big cat to play with.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So, uh, she gives some woman as a pet to some soldier to cheer him up, and your conclusion is “Gods don't think much of mortals”? That is an interesting one. I also fail to see you reasoning about creating. I mean, even if bypassing normal procreation, you were to create a clone, or any other kind of sentient, living being, would you consider him/her/it an object because of it?

I wonder if it is too much of a leap to try and compare that attitude to the attitude that players have about NPCs in video games. Yep. Tottaly.

The idea of objectification takes on a whole different element when your talking about objects doesn't it? Then you get how NPCs in a video game kind of tap dance along the line of objects and people. You have some NPCs that are basically tools of the player. (See AC2) Then you have some NPCs with agency of their own. (See most video game enemies.) Anyone ever think about that at all?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I saw her giving out companions. Someone wanted a... sheep (was it?), another one wanted a wife, and the final one wanted a big cat to play with.

If you see nothing cringeworthy here, well, good for you, I guess.

nomotog wrote:
I wonder if it is too much of a leap to try and compare that attitude to the attitude that players have about NPCs in video games. Yep. Tottaly.

The soldiers and the woman are both NPC, but their treatments are… quite different .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I wonder if it is too much of a leap to try and compare that attitude to the attitude that players have about NPCs in video games. Yep. Tottaly.

The soldiers and the woman are both NPC, but their treatments are… quite different .

When will people learn how to properly chop up quotes. I wonder if that is a thing. Like if female NPCs are done differently then male NPCs. Ya it's likley a thing, but I'll pose it as a question because I can't answer it yet.

Copy-paste gone wrong, sorry. And I meant in this short sequence.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
The better games let you play any class with any sex.

That's a strikingly colossal generalisation. What determines how good a game is is often, y'know, the game itself (gameplay, mechanics, story, music, graphics), not which gender you can choose.

Yes, it is a generalization, it happens, "many" games, "many" I liked (better) allowed your protagonist to be either gender.
I am not saying what made the game "good" was that option, many games I would deem "good" happened to have that option.

That specific quote was in reply to an observation that certain types of character classes were tied to a given gender while I was pointing out games like Diablo 3, Torchlight, Mass Effect let you pick what you want.
So a bit out of context dude...

We sometimes like to identify with the character we are playing so to dress it up however you want can become a form of play all in itself. A guy friend of mine ALWAYS plays female characters in games if given the option. I have made a point not to ask why...

I would argue that in Diablo 3 and Torchlight, you don't get to pick a gender. You get to pick the illusion of a gender. You HAVE no gender in those games, because it has no applicable difference in the game I've been able to discern. It's a cosmetic choice.

That might be the wrong answer, since it implies that gender is nothing but social construct, but that really is a glaring portion of it that can't be ignored. It's like claiming that nethack was the original gender-inclusive game because it let you pick whether your @ was male or female. Except that nethack probably actually had crazy nuanced ways in which that it was actually significant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gah, fething nethack:

Gender (whether you are male or female) is relatively unimportant; the only real difference is that females can lay eggs if polymorphed into a suitable monster, and males can't. It also has the cosmetic effect of influencing whether incubi or succubi will try to seduce you.

Still a more complicated and better written game than Diablo 3.

 daedalus wrote:
You HAVE no gender in those games, because it has no applicable difference in the game I've been able to discern.

It makes no difference in the game because logically, within the adventures you go through in the game, it should make no difference.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

It makes no difference in the game because logically, within the adventures you go through in the game, it should make no difference.

And now we've hit that impasse where it's all important, yet unimportant. I just feel like if you have a choice you can make, it SHOULD have some impact on a game, however minor. Otherwise it's about as relevant as what volume I play the game at. I don't know, maybe I play games wrongly, but those just don't feel like those are important features. I'd rather you have one character, if you have to make it female, then make it female, but make it INTERESTING that I'm this person. Diablo 3/Torchlight don't even have characters, at least in any way that I can recognize. They have a manifestation of well defined powers and measurable skill numbers that dictate what they are and what they do. They ARE the graphical representation of @ from nethack.

So, we should just be "people" or is gender distinction something we need to cling to?

I swear if I was a developer I would let the player "seed" the game by asking "Do you find men or women attractive?" and configure NPC's in the game accordingly.
Allow for also "No preference" and randomize.
Done.
Those looking for a fight can go elsewhere.

 daedalus wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

It makes no difference in the game because logically, within the adventures you go through in the game, it should make no difference.

And now we've hit that impasse where it's all important, yet unimportant. I just feel like if you have a choice you can make, it SHOULD have some impact on a game, however minor. Otherwise it's about as relevant as what volume I play the game at. I don't know, maybe I play games wrongly, but those just don't feel like those are important features. I'd rather you have one character, if you have to make it female, then make it female, but make it INTERESTING that I'm this person. Diablo 3/Torchlight don't even have characters, at least in any way that I can recognize. They have a manifestation of well defined powers and measurable skill numbers that dictate what they are and what they do. They ARE the graphical representation of @ from nethack.

If you listen and read the journal entries for the characters in diablo 3 you can see they each have their own personality in their own way. It's just not "Shown" outright as other characters in many others, for example the Witch Doctor felt sadness over killing the spider queen and was disappointed in her death, while the Wizard's are quite arrogant but yet they seem to have a healthy respect for things.

Diablo 3's characters aren't spoon fed to you, you have to listen to them and read what they write to see their personality.

It gets more complicated than that though because then to have any depth beyond "I hit it with my $ADJECTIVE longsword of $VERB" you have to then have multiple variations of conversation and interaction with any other characters based upon that choice, which quickly makes for vastly increased complexity, and we're only even considering "traditional" genders here.

I mean, if the point is just to hit it with the sword, I guess that's fine for people who think it's fine. It's not for me, but then again, very few games are.

I guess I'm just asking that we don't go dressing up a game that has an extra model and a flag to indicate gender as somehow better, because it trivializes the significance of any interaction between characters that show zero difference between the two. I'm not saying we should treat men and women differently, I'm saying that people treat other people differently based up EVERY difference of appearance, and neglecting to make characters that do that is making characters that are flat and robotic.

Have you looked at that damn thing:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/55370/
Have you seen how fine-grained the customization is? How much work it implies from the dev'? I am pretty sure aesthetic-only choice are not unimportant!
(Not even talking about those games that makes their money only from selling special skins…)

No, I gave up on Saints Row after I got 2 for the PC and it didn't run stable on a brand new current-gen computer at the time. I hear they're quite good though.

I am aware of the effort required in customization. I ask you though, does it actually make a difference when you're actually PLAYING the game?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


Diablo 3's characters aren't spoon fed to you, you have to listen to them and read what they write to see their personality.

So then they have triggers which cause audio to play and different quest text based upon the character. Does that change anything happening in game? How does that affect the world? Does that make them have to express choices as factors of their gender? Are any of those things factors of the gender, or factors of the class?

 daedalus wrote:
I ask you though, does it actually make a difference when you're actually PLAYING the game?

Yeah. Just the same difference as playing with lovingly painted and converted miniatures versus playing with only untouched bases.

 daedalus wrote:
So then they have triggers which cause audio to play and different quest text based upon the character. Does that change anything happening in game?

Not anymore than any other story part of most games.

 daedalus wrote:
So then they have triggers which cause audio to play and different quest text based upon the character. Does that change anything happening in game? How does that affect the world? Does that make them have to express choices as factors of their gender? Are any of those things factors of the gender, or factors of the class?

Why would gender matter?
Other than the player to identify more with their "avatar" on the screen?

"Problems I would have with how women are represented in games."
My problem is that how they are represented should not matter.
The role could be a guy, girl, transgender or a bug-eyed alien and they are there to further the plot or supply XP points and their sex or lack thereof should mean squat.

 Talizvar wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
So then they have triggers which cause audio to play and different quest text based upon the character. Does that change anything happening in game? How does that affect the world? Does that make them have to express choices as factors of their gender? Are any of those things factors of the gender, or factors of the class?

Why would gender matter?
Other than the player to identify more with their "avatar" on the screen?

"Problems I would have with how women are represented in games."
My problem is that how they are represented should not matter.
The role could be a guy, girl, transgender or a bug-eyed alien and they are there to further the plot or supply XP points and their sex or lack thereof should mean squat.

Then what does it actually matter what the gender of the character is, if it doesn't matter what the gender of the character is?

 daedalus wrote:
Then what does it actually matter what the gender of the character is, if it doesn't matter what the gender of the character is?

Sometimes games like to reflect reality.
Usually our gender is somewhat apparent.
The dialogue, or situational moments in a game should not require gender of the NPC or player to determine or hinge on what happens.
That is my first stab at defining how the gender of the character "should not matter".
Feel free to take another run at it and see if I have to think a little harder...

 SneakyMek wrote:


Anyone is of course free to provide facts that proves that there where female soldiers in the front like during Waterloo and during the Russian expedition.

It's not quite proof (as I cant remember exactly where I read it online), but one of the historical publications that I regularly read online has found, due to new DNA testing technology that as many as half of all warrior graves in the "Viking region" were that of women. As in, around half of the fighting force were female. But then, when you look much deeper at scandinavian society from the 700s-1100s they were VERY progressive compared to much of the rest of Europe.

 Talizvar wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Then what does it actually matter what the gender of the character is, if it doesn't matter what the gender of the character is?

Sometimes games like to reflect reality.

Oh, okay. Reality, right. I'm tossing fireballs, swinging swords at daemons, and I'm the descendant of some race of demigods or some gak, but if I can't do the exact same thing as a female, that's where reality sets in?

Usually our gender is somewhat apparent.

You'd think, and I agree completely. If it's so apparent, why does no one in game seem to notice?

The dialogue, or situational moments in a game should not require gender of the NPC or player to determine or hinge on what happens.

Not always. In my day to day interactions with people, at the workplace, at the bar, wherever, I feel like the fact that someone is male or female comes up at least once a day or two. I'm not saying it has to happen. I'm just saying that it trivializes the choice by it not. Might as well let the person be male, female, or a textureless white cube devoid of apparent feature. It's not BAD, it's just not immersive. Then again, we're discussing Diablo 3.

That is my first stab at defining how the gender of the character "should not matter".
Feel free to take another run at it and see if I have to think a little harder...

I feel like you're getting snide.