Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Fuck the creators, I need to see this shit myself.

I believe we're done here.

And they can tell their story however they want, just like I'm entitled to my opinion on it.

Yeah. Not the point to the article, though.

EDIT: More examples why diversity in a consumer industry is a good thing: http://www.cracked.com/article_20122_6-ill-advised-marketing-campaigns-that-backfired-hilariously_p2.html

edited 5th Dec '12 6:34:03 AM by KingZeal

First of all, that's not what I said at all. Second of all, what I was talking about had nothing to do with perceived creepiness or morality. I would not personally have done what I proposed as a scenario. I never said it was ok. Not even close.

It was all about the law and perceptions of responsibility for consent. My point there was that the law can't only take a woman's feelings into account while discounting a man's state of mind. Lest we forget, it's legal to be creepy/racist etc. It doesn't make it ethically correct, but you're allowed to hold such views as long as you don't act on them. Let's leave that discussion in the other thread, please.

To push this thread along, what about inviting women to speak at game centered conferences? I once saw an article about how yes, it was possible to set up a panel of mostly or equally represented by women but the panel organizer had to put in a lot more effort in order to do so. I don't believe in the "qualified people" argument here, because chances are there are a ton of qualified panel speakers for either gender.

So, does the responsibility fall to women to "man up" and grab the opportunity to speak, or is it a case of societal sexism that hurts women and they legitimately need special consideration in order to fix this issue (at the very least more quickly) now and in the future. Should panel organizers be expected to reach out to women harder, or just given an extra pat on the back if they do?

http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/

edited 5th Dec '12 7:06:47 AM by Hapo

I'd like to point one thing out about that Bioware story:

None of the male writers picked up on the issue. If they'd actually explained what the plot element was, there's a 100% chance that there'd have been a whole group of entitled guys angry in the comments section that a "harmless" scene got taken out because of a bunch of women, whether the scene was harmless or horribly, horribly skeevy.

Bioware make lousy romantic subplots and this is apparently news now.

Not to stir shit (of course that is what will happen) but when guys see things like this◊You can see where some of the anger comes from.

Ugh ... you know, between that and #1reasonwhy, I don't want to read anyone complaining about misogynist comment sections anymore. Frankly, when article writers themselves are this dismissive of men, they don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to saying "omg gamers leave such sexist comments".

I'm sorry for bringing this back to men but I disappeared to play The Sims 2 for six hours and when I came back, the Males Of Games thread was locked. What the heck happened? It looked like everyone started insulting someone (Thorn, I guess).

Thorn said something about what happened to him somewhere on the internet and things escalated from there.

How did that 1reasonwhy thing start anyways? I only heard about it being mentioned tangentially after this well-known comic book artist went into a rant about "fake nerd girls" and then hearing a podcast about it but not really saying how it started.

A guy on Twitter asked "why are there so few lady game creators". And then ... ??? ... and after that, phenomenon.

I imagine someone high-profile gave an answer to his question and then a ton of other people did after that. That's how these things generally work, right?

Okay, I probably used a bad choice of wording. So I apologize. My point, though, was that you were proposing it as a possible example of how someone may not be culpable for date rape. Let's assume that some writer, somewhere, felt the same way and has a sympathetic protagonist do this. The story is released and suddenly, everyone is up in arms about the "rape scene" in the story.

If he has no contrasting opinion to challenge him, he may push the idea through.

I still don't see anything in there which is dismissive of men. At most, it says that some problems (such as body image) are worse for women than they are for men and that straight white males are a terrible social movement. Everything other than that didn't even seem critical of men at all.

If he pushed the idea through and there was a controversy about rape, the ensuing debacle would likely at the very least make him reconsider his stance, if not even perhaps change his stance. Not having an opposing viewpoint in the creation process is balanced by him being the pinpoint target of any criticism when it's released. The only difference is when the discourse about happens, and not every creator has the resources to bring in multiple views. If his work gets boycotted, that's a powerful message that that was not ok.

It might not create a product that's as welcoming as possible, and that's a wonderful argument for diversity of opinion in the creation process. However, I don't see the release in itself as problematic.

Uuuhhh... I think it's better for EVERYONE involved that controversies like that get nipped in the bud.

Wait, seriously? Because the wording is totes going "Guys problems are totes irrelevant, yo."

edited 5th Dec '12 8:18:45 AM by EviIPaladin

I agree. I just don't think it's uniformly possible. Not every game developer is huge or has a ton of resources.

Thankfully, for those that don't and still publish something horribly unethical, they'll still get theirs. And they won't have anything to hide behind when the finger's pointed.

edited 5th Dec '12 8:43:26 AM by Hapo

I don't want to go into this too much, since an accusation of derailing the thread might come my way again, but judging the people making the argument rather than the argument itself seems like a very questionable thing to do.

Although I learned elsewhere that it came from Jezebel, a very misandric website, so it doesn't really have any relevance here and that's all I'll say about it.

Oh, I don't disagree that it's very unfortunately titled and very confrontational. I just don't see how this gives anyone a free "STFU" Card when talking about misogynist comments. Because I still plan on facepalming every "tits or GTFO" comment I come across—Jezebel or no.

Jezebel is misandrist? How bad is it in comparison to A Voice for Men?

Worse by a mile. I wouldn't even compare the two, because there is no comparison between a woman recommending rape of men and a site of both men and women with some controversial statements.

Ummmm. You just did compare the two.

Yeah, I could have phrased that better.

Semi-relevant: Here's a good summary◊ of why people are tired of Anita Sarkeserpderpdywhogivesashit's BS.

I wish I could have said it that well.

Her grasp on the realities of being a woman in gaming have been considerably overestimated.

I never really got the whole "She manipulated people" thing. She got a lot of harassment and she mentioned it. If this was legit criticism she was dismissing than it would be fine. But we have nothing to indicate she isn't working on the series.