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 Melissia wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
To answer your question, I suppose I would have to say that an actual "leader" would be a good thing.

Feminism, as it exists right now, focuses a great deal about giving women more freedom and control over our own lives, which sadly we still don't have, or at least hte freedoms we do have aren't very well respected. Feminism having a "leader" would be rather hypocritical of this.

To put it another way, having each individual feminist able to focus on where they feel they can make the biggest impact, or where they feel most strongly, is a great deal of the point of the current generation of feminism. The common goal of equality is there, but each person's voice is their own, not some echo of a "Grand Arch-Feminist"-- with the goal being that the best, most coherent ideas will rise to the top. A marketplace of ideas, and goals, and efforts, and struggles, hopefully adding to one another and reinforcing each other perhaps, but still distinctly separate.

To be authoritarian like you suggest would probably just be replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, and in spite of what some people on this forum believes, most feminists don't want that.

Ah ok.... well I'm fethed for a good idea then.

I don't think its necessarily "authoritarian" to have a leader though, like almost everything in life has a leader. Be it the police department, political party, business, almost anything. You need someone to take on the mantle if you want to have a well-led and cohesive... well.. anything!

Its like I said, people naturally pull away from the thought of "being told what to do" but I bet it hamstrings their attempts. They say that its famously hard to mobilize secular people for that reason, like "herding cats" and yet groups like the Catholic Church enjoy great success thanks to having a bloke at the top organizing everything and directing everybody's efforts.

But tell secular people to form a church in order to get something done together, and they'll flip you the bird and call you a jackass-- and I only exaggerate a little bit, there

I think the current method works actually. Some of it is actually a backlash to get AWAY from the leader-centric ways of the previous generations of the feminist movement, especially the racism, homophobia, and transphobia many of them showed. Certainly it's a flawed method, but I kind of struggle to think of an alternative that would really work with the current generation.

 Melissia wrote:
Sports games could easily include female sports stars in them if they wanted to, the devs don't want to, however.

I mean if you can have a sports game where the Detroit Lions have a chance to win the superbowl, it's not much harder of a stretch of believability to have the most impressive three IWFL teams cross over in to an NFL video game.

I think they'd run into licencing issues, mainly.

Unless you're talking about create-a-player functionality, which I am assuming most sports games have? (I don't play them, generally)

I know at least the hockey ones do, and have had more create-a-player fucntion than other sports games have for a while now. Not sure how recent the female characters are though.

If it's built in from the start, I can't see how gender select in sports games that already have create a character would be a problem to implement. If Soul Calibur has it, can't see why they don't.

Clipping might be an issue, but so would a height slider allowing extremely tall or short players.

I'm not a dev though, so I could be completely wrong in thinking it's straightforward.

 Melissia wrote:
Sports games could easily include female sports stars in them if they wanted to, the devs don't want to, however.

There's that word:

"Easily".

It's easy to do so is it? To make a sports game and include female characters? Sure. No real issue there. To gain the likeness rights for every female player across a league? Multiple leagues? Profession and college?

That "easily" is looking smaller and smaller every passing second.

 Chongara wrote:

Sofia Lamb from Bioshock 2?
Does SHODAN count?

Not familiar with these examples. However if we're asking what counts I'd set the metrics along these lines:

-The character is in control of, or is themselves the primary force the player is working against for the majority of the game.
-The character is not a monster, robot, computer, or vague disembodied natural force. I guess you could count a ghost if it was a woman's ghost.
-The character is present in some capacity for a meaningful part of the game. They're not a giant space flea from nowhere that shows up with no explanation at the very end.
-They're a villain not an anti-hero, sometimes-ally or temporary protagonist on a regular basis.
-The protagonist "wins" or the story reaches a climax in the form of some conflict with the character in question.

Tons and tons and tons of men from games I've played pass those metrics pretty easily.

EDIT: I think Ultimecia from Final Fantasy 8 would probably qualify. It's been so long since I've played that I forget how involved she was in the plot before the final dungeon. I'll count it. That's one. Keep wracking my brain see if I can remember any others.

Miss lamb would count. SHODAN would not because she is a computer.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Sports games could easily include female sports stars in them if they wanted to, the devs don't want to, however.

There's that word:

"Easily".

It's easy to do so is it? To make a sports game and include female characters? Sure. No real issue there. To gain the likeness rights for every female player across a league? Multiple leagues? Profession and college?

That "easily" is looking smaller and smaller every passing second.

Besides, don't the vast majority of professional sports segregate the sexes? Games like Fifa strive for realism, by accurately portraying real world sports "men" (INB4 someone calls me sexist for using the "Male as default" trope), teams, and leagues.

Having the England's women's football team go up against the French men's football team, or Venus Williams go up against Andy Murray, is self evidently absurd in a game that is supposed to be an accurate reflection of a real world sport that segregated by gender. And it strikes me as somewhat petulant to demand that developers inject a degree of fiction into these games and smacks of tokenism.

In an arcade mode, or a less realistic sports game like Fifa street that isn't supposed to be an accurate reflection of a real world sport, sure, why not have women's teams going up against men's teams or even mixed gender teams.

These games are a case of "Art reflects life". Demanding/expecting male/female sporting matchups in a pseudo realistic game is effectively demanding that the "Art" be changed to suit your pre conception of what life should be. At which point the game in question is no longer an accurate portrayal of the real world.

Wouldn't a better and more realistic solution just be more sports games based on women's sports, sports leagues etc?

E.g.
-a spin off Fifa game about Women's football.
-Or Different modes and leagues within Fifa games for women's leagues

But of course, that would raise questions over whether such a women's sports focused Title would be commercially viable - is there sufficient market demand?

By all means, if there is, then let's have more women's sports titles to cater to that demand.

Or let's have more arcadey games that don't aspire to be an accurate portrayal of the real world sport, or arcadey modes within existing titles, that mix the genders in sports.

But please, let's not twist beyond recognition games that are supposed to accurately reflect the real world sports that do segregate by gender.

"Realism" is a rather lazy excuse for rather lazy game design.

 Chongara wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Chongara wrote:
Thinking on it I can't actually recall even 1 game I've played where the primary villain is a woman. Maybe a handful of female monsters like say mother brain, but I can't think of any women in the sense of being both female and vaguely human-like. Lots of 2nd fiddles and more than few that are part of villainous teams but like no female BBEGs.

Bioshock 2?

Maybe. I've never played any of the bioshock games. I'm hardly claiming my experience is exhaustive. However for most of my life games were my primary form of entertainment. I've played tons, it says something that I can't think of any like women that are also the big bad. You'd think I'd have blundered into at least one in some 20-odd years.

EDIT:

Sofia Lamb from Bioshock 2?
Does SHODAN count?

Not familiar with these examples. However if we're asking what counts I'd set the metrics along these lines:

-The character is not a monster, robot, computer, or vague disembodied natural force. I guess you could count a ghost if it was a woman's ghost.

Tons and tons and tons of men from games I've played pass those metrics pretty easily.

EDIT: I think Ultimecia from Final Fantasy 8 would probably qualify. It's been so long since I've played that I forget how involved she was in the plot before the final dungeon. I'll count it. That's one. Keep wracking my brain see if I can remember any others.

Well, that rules SHODAN out.
Sofia Lamb fits everything else though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
"Realism" is a rather lazy excuse for rather lazy game design.

Would you have jet packs and a cyborgs in a game that's trying to be somewhat faithful to World War 1?

 Melissia wrote:
"Realism" is a rather lazy excuse for rather lazy game design.

There's nothing lazy about it.

It's a deliberate design choice to accurately reflect a real world sport.

If you inject female players and teams into a sports game that depicts real world sporting leagues (e.g. the Premier League) that are in fact segregate by gender, it would devalue any sense of realism the game has. At that point we might as well start adding powerups, and anthropomorphic animals.

What we need are more women's sporting titles, like Fifa women's football 2015, or w.e... not Feminist power fantasy propaganda.

Really, your demands for video game reforms grow ever more absurd by the week.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
"Realism" is a rather lazy excuse for rather lazy game design.

There's nothing lazy about it.

It's a deliberate design choice to accurately reflect a real world sport.

If you inject female players and teams into a sports game that depicts real world sporting leagues (e.g. the Premier League) that are in fact segregate by gender, it would devalue any sense of realism the game has. At that point we might as well start adding powerups, and anthropomorphic animals.

What we need are more women's sporting titles, like Fifa women's football 2015, or w.e... not Feminist power fantasy propaganda.

Really, your demands for video game reforms grow ever more absurd by the week.

That a mixed men and women's sports league modeled on real players in the same realm of implausible fantasy as anthropomorphic animals and power-ups is absurd. Certainly it is a bit of fantasy, but ultimately we're talking about people who actually exist and could actually play sports against one another. This line of thinking is just silly and really rather telling about where your objections are coming from.

EDIT: This is doubly true given every sports game put out these days has a "Create a Player" feature. A strictly imaginary character spun whole-cloth from the character's imagination is at least as much fantasy as mixed-gender player and making that player an avatar of yourself, your best friend is just as much if not more so a power fantasy.

I'd certainly agree that such a game probably wouldn't be feasible but that's all to do with licensing and fanbase overlap. Presumably if you're making such a game that covers both male and female athletes, you'll have the rules and models available for each. Maintaining realism is as simple as having two sets of toggles

"Men's League"
"Mixed League"
"Women's League"

for player rosters and

"Pro-Men's Rules"
"Pro-Women's Rules"

to set the standards for the balls, field/court markings, and scoring standards.

Since the game would already have all these mechanics in place, the development overhead on setting these toggles should be relatively low. If they really wanted to go all out, you could make individual rules such swappable such that you could have like markings/scoring standards from a men's game, and the penalties and equipment from a women's game.

If the game can already support both male & female players, you're not gonna lose "Realism" because you can always just choose to select the options that emulate that if you want. They could even be made default if making the mixed features opt-in rather than opt-out is super important for the realism crowd.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

It's a deliberate design choice to accurately reflect a real world sport.

If you inject female players and teams into a sports game that depicts real world sporting leagues (e.g. the Premier League) that are in fact segregate by gender, it would devalue any sense of realism the game has. At that point we might as well start adding powerups, and anthropomorphic animals.

Slippery slope is slippery.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Sports games could easily include female sports stars in them if they wanted to, the devs don't want to, however.

There's that word:

"Easily".

It's easy to do so is it? To make a sports game and include female characters? Sure. No real issue there. To gain the likeness rights for every female player across a league? Multiple leagues? Profession and college?

That "easily" is looking smaller and smaller every passing second.

They seem to easily be able to do it with a whole LOT of men though.

 Chongara wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
"Realism" is a rather lazy excuse for rather lazy game design.

There's nothing lazy about it.

It's a deliberate design choice to accurately reflect a real world sport.

If you inject female players and teams into a sports game that depicts real world sporting leagues (e.g. the Premier League) that are in fact segregate by gender, it would devalue any sense of realism the game has. At that point we might as well start adding powerups, and anthropomorphic animals.

What we need are more women's sporting titles, like Fifa women's football 2015, or w.e... not Feminist power fantasy propaganda.

Really, your demands for video game reforms grow ever more absurd by the week.

That a mixed men and women's sports league modeled on real players in the same realm of implausible fantasy as anthropomorphic animals and power-ups is absurd. Certainly it is a bit of fantasy, but ultimately we're talking about people who actually exist and could actually play sports against one another. This line of thinking is just silly and really rather telling about where your objections are coming from.

It's called hyperbole. But whatever. Psycho analyse and make assumptions about my motivations all you like, it still not a valid counter argument.

In a game that's supposed to be an accurate reflection of real world sports, injecting a fantasy into it would rather defeat the point.

For arcade / non career, modes, or non realistic sports titles that don't aspire to be an accurate reflection of the real world, realism is not an issue and so mixing genders wouldn't destroy the immersion.

EDIT: This is doubly true given every sports game put out these days has a "Create a Player" feature. A strictly imaginary character spun whole-cloth from the character's imagination is at least as much a power fantasy as mixed gender play.

I'd certainly agree that such a game probably wouldn't be feasible but that's all to do with licensing and fanbase overlap. Presumably if you're making such a game that covers both male and female athletes, you'll have the rules and models available for each. Maintaining realism is as simple as having two sets of toggles

"Men's League"
"Mixed League"
"Women's League"

for player rosters and

"Pro-Men's Rules"
"Pro-Women's Rules"

to set the standards for the balls, field/court markings, and scoring standards.

Since the game would already have all these mechanics in place, the development overhead on setting these toggles should be relatively low. If they really wanted to go all out, you could make individual rules such swappable such that you could have like markings/scoring standards from a men's game, and the penalties and equipment from a women's game.

If the game can already support both male & female players, you're not gonna lose "Realism" because you can always just choose to select the options that emulate that if you want. They could even be made default if making the mixed features opt-in rather than opt-out is super important for the realism crowd.

That's exactly what I suggested. More women's sports titles, or modes within existing titles with options for women's sporting leagues.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Some of that I can agree with. But still some of it is BS there are tons of games were female characters are hero/villain (though the usually have fantastic bodies but then again haven't seen a CoD with a overweight male) Honestly being harrassaed on online gaming suck but just mute people I guess I dont know im conflicted with some of there points but i do understand what they are trying to get at...

"Nothing is more badass then treating women with respect!"-- Mr. Torgue

Your avatar is... unique. Where does Mr. Torgue come from?

Borderlands 2, which is a legitimately great game, and floating on and off sale right now on Steam during the holiday shopping season. The first one should be played first.

Putting women's teams in Madden is really the wrong fight here.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

That's exactly what I suggested. More women's sports titles, or modes within existing titles with options for women's sporting leagues.

So if I'm understanding you correctly having a women's league mode in your standard-sports-game-of-the-year-re-release-edition, is totally fine but the moment you add an option to mix the two rosters (in an alternate "career"-mode) your entire ability to enjoy the individual modes on their own merit is obliterated due to the lack of realism in an option you aren't even using?

 Manchu wrote:
Putting women's teams in Madden is really the wrong fight here.

You're probably right on this and it's certainly not feasible for any number of reasons. The realism line of arguing on it is just annoying because of how weak it is. Like if you're gonna object, object because the brand-conscious professional sports leagues probably don't want their star players possibly losing to female teams, or being perceived as rough-housing the female teams, or conflicts between sponsors, or the amount of detail you put into what franchises. These are huge expensive brands that have already locked into a particular model of doing things, they wouldn't budge easily.

 Chongara wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

That's exactly what I suggested. More women's sports titles, or modes within existing titles with options for women's sporting leagues.

So if I'm understanding you correctly having a women's league mode in your standard-sports-game-of-the-year-re-release-edition, is totally fine but the moment you add an option to mix the two rosters (in an alternate "career"-mode) your entire ability to enjoy the individual modes on their own merit is obliterated due to the lack of realism in an option you aren't even using?

No. You answered your own question there.

An "alternate career mode" is by definition not supposed to be realistic.

For arcade / non career, modes, or non realistic sports titles that don't aspire to be an accurate reflection of the real world, realism is not an issue and so mixing genders wouldn't destroy the immersion.

What I'm saying is that a game that purports to accurately reflect Premier league football (Fifa) should not be injecting fictional and fantastical elements by having mixed gender teams/games.

Alternate, non realistic game modes are fair play.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:


What I'm saying is that a game that purports to accurately reflect Premier league football (Fifa) should not be injecting fictional and fantastical elements by having mixed gender teams/games.

Alternate, non realistic game modes are fair play.

I really can't understand the distinction you're making here between it being in mode in Fifa and.. being a mode in Fifa, but it's not really material. I can't help but think we're getting caught up minor semantic nitpicking at this point. Especially given just how unfeasible getting the IP for a such a project together would be anyway.

Chongara wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Putting women's teams in Madden is really the wrong fight here.

You're probably right on this and it's certainly not feasible for any number of reasons. The realism line of arguing on it is just annoying because of how weak it is. Like if you're gonna object, object because the brand-conscious professional sports leagues probably don't want their star players possibly losing to female teams, or being perceived as rough-housing the female teams, or conflicts between sponsors, or the amount of detail you put into what franchises. These are huge expensive brands that have already locked into a particular model of doing things, they wouldn't budge easily.

Why is it weak? You need to back up that assertion with an actual argument.

Games like Fifa strive toe be realistic, in that they're an accurate portrayal of the Premier League, etc. Injecting token women players and teams into said Premier League is not realistic, because in the real world women don't play in the Premier League.

That's all fine and dandy, if you want a fictional game, like Fifa Street, but it's a silly thing to do in a game that's supposed to be accurate.

Just because you don't personally like the fact that these games accurately reflect the real world doesn't make it a "weak argument". It's not weak. It's a statement of objective fact. Professional footballers do not play with the opposite sex.

If gamers want women's football, then the best solution would be a dedicated spin off Fifa title.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would you have jet packs and a cyborgs in a game that's trying to be somewhat faithful to World War 1?

Why not? German (especially Nazi) super weapons are a common theme in fiction around the two world wars.

In fact, set it up around something like Turtledove's World War series, feth yeah I'll play that game!

 Melissia wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would you have jet packs and a cyborgs in a game that's trying to be somewhat faithful to World War 1?

Why not? German (especially Nazi) super weapons are a common theme in fiction around the two world wars.

Not in a game that strives to be faithful to what actually happened back then though.

 Manchu wrote:
Putting women's teams in Madden is really the wrong fight here.

I'm not fighting for it. I just gave it as an example of something that could be easily done if they wanted to do it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would you have jet packs and a cyborgs in a game that's trying to be somewhat faithful to World War 1?

Why not? German (especially Nazi) super weapons are a common theme in fiction around the two world wars.

Not in a game that strives to be faithful to what actually happened back then though.

Yeah but I don't like gakky games.

Also, by my standards, there's no such thing as an interactive video game that's faithful to WWII. Nor should there be, it'd be sucky, boring, and awful-- just like the real thing was (and yes, there was a TON of boredom in the world wars, interspaced with short, brief moments of sheer terror).

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Putting women's teams in Madden is really the wrong fight here.

I'm not fighting for it. I just gave it as an example of something that could be easily done if they wanted to do it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Would you have jet packs and a cyborgs in a game that's trying to be somewhat faithful to World War 1?

Why not? German (especially Nazi) super weapons are a common theme in fiction around the two world wars.

Not in a game that strives to be faithful to what actually happened back then though.

Yeah but I don't like gakky games.

Also, by my standards, there's no such thing as an interactive video game that's faithful to WWII. Nor should there be, it'd be sucky, boring, and awful-- just like the real thing was (and yes, there was a TON of boredom in the world wars, interspaced with short, brief moments of sheer terror).

Have you played Red Orchestra 2?

Yeah, it sucked.

Also, it wasn't very realistic, either.

 Melissia wrote:
Yeah but I don't like gakky games.

Neither do I, but there's no such thing as an objectively bad game.

 Melissia wrote:


Also, by my standards, there's no such thing as an interactive video game that's faithful to WWII. Nor should there be, it'd be sucky, boring, and awful-- just like the real thing was (and yes, there was a TON of boredom in the world wars, interspaced with short, brief moments of sheer terror).

Fine then, let me rephrase my argument: Not in a game whose portrayal of technology strives to be of a level that existed during the time period being described.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Neither do I, but there's no such thing as an objectively bad game.

E.T. the Extraterrestrial for Atari 2600.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Fine then, let me rephrase my argument: Not in a game whose portrayal of technology strives to be of a level that existed during the time period being described.

Rockets were only a few years away, it's not really unrealistic to have someone try to produce a prototype. As for cyborgs, that's what steampunk and other such things are for.

squidhills wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Neither do I, but there's no such thing as an objectively bad game.

E.T. the Extraterrestrial for Atari 2600.

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

 Asherian Command wrote:

I'm sorry to intrude on a secondary matter, but... Fight club's message is not about misogyny. That doesn't make the author earn credibility, as far as I am concerned.

Vetril wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

I'm sorry to intrude on a secondary matter, but... Fight club's message is not about misogyny. That doesn't make the author earn credibility, as far as I am concerned.

Your going to get different interpretations of a movie. One is that it's a criticism of masculinity. The funny thing is that different people see that criticism going different ways. Some see it commenting that the new men have become too weak, some see it as commenting that old school masculinity was destructive. I am not a huge movie buff, so you might want to look some of this up yourself. The tweet is basically talking about how you have media that is maybe meant to mean one thing, but it taken as another thing by it's audience.

Edit: You know really look up what other people have said. This is a very deep rabbit hole and I can't explain all of it