Anita Sarkeesian’s latest:
I haven’t played enough of those kinds of games to be able to judge personally, but she makes a good case, and it’s just plain weird — gamers are focused on women’s hind ends, and are averse to viewing men’s equivalent? There’s got to be a psychological study in this.
gamers are focused on women’s hind ends, and are averse to viewing men’s equivalent
I am sure that the evolutionary psychology folks have a plausible explanation!!!!
PN 03
I’ll just leave this here.
My ex really like Metal Gear Solid in part because it was one of the few series that had the camera actively focused on a man’s butt.
In the Arkham games, the Batman of the Future suits don’t have capes and I have spent many hours of play staring at that muscle butt. Or any time you get to play as Nightwing. Also any Spider-Man game. No matter how bad the rest of the game is, you can tell a lot of time and money went into the physics of Spider-Man’s butt.
This isn’t a “both sides” argument. These are just my recommendations as a gaming man-butt connoisseur.
Lara Croft’s body looks off. All the proportions look weird. Her calves are bigger than her thighs, and her waist is too small
And her knees are strange
In addition to the ledge climbing move shown in the video for the first Tomb Raider game (1996), there was another animation where she would do a sort of handstand when she got to the top. That move required her to first stick her butt stright up in the air and then arch backwards onto the ledge. If I recall correctly, there was no purpose for the 2nd method beyond the opportunity to stare at her body.
On the bright side, however, I’ve played a few games in that series and Lara Croft is a pretty kick-ass protagonist. A big part of those games is solving puzzles so she’s portrayed as smart and resourceful and frequently has to save male characters.
They also gave her a lot more clothing in the 2013 release. In the Tomb Raider 2013 cover art, you can’t even see her butt and her arm is in front of her breasts. Looks like they went the same way for the 2015 release. I just searched through a bunch of screenshots and there were very few where I could even see her butt.
I see why the anti-feminists are so scared of people like Anita Sarkeesian, companies are actually starting to listen. For me, ridiculous outfits on women take away from the immersion of a game.
The new Tomb Rider is a lot less sexualized and seems to explicitly target a diverse audience: http://store.steampowered.com/app/203160/
I agree with Anita Sarkeesian’s point of view but as the axiom goes, sex sells! Game developers get cheeky because their core audience responds to bouncing buttocks. The bottom line is the all mighty dollar and scantily clad ladies help that bottom line.
Objectifying women, or men for that matter, is wrong but it’s so embedded in our society it will be next to impossible to eradicate it. Part of the problem is we don’t communicate. We have the most advanced communication mediums ever and what do we do? We spit out 140 character messages in Tweenglish. To paraphrase comedian Arte Johnson, “Mr. McCluhan, what’re we doin’?”
And female butts are sex, but male butts are not sex? That’s a very picky axiom.
The bottom line is the all mighty dollar and scantily clad ladies help that bottom line
Then why aren’t they selling a version where you can watch a scantily clad lady (version 1) or a scantily clad guy (version 2)? Seems like that would sell even more/better and all the game company would have to do is produce one more texture/mocap/geometry set.
Bottom line my ass.
It’s the developers’ attitude that video games are predominately played by horny males that is the problem. My elderly mother (who admittedly wasn’t a gamer) once cheerfully told me she watched the football on TV mainly for the guys running around in tight shorts. So yeah, a sensible game developer would cater for all kinds of sexual attraction.
Now I’m trying to imagine what playing Mass Effect would have been like if the camera had spent as much time paying attention to Garrus’s butt as it had to Tali and Miranda’s.
Bethesda and Zenimax have been really good about equal-opportunity eye-candy and the like.
“Sex sells” is a shoddy goddamned excuse for gratuitous T n’ A if ever there was one. It “sells” because, after decades of just throwing it out there, people are either too lazy or frightened to NOT use it in case it DOESN’T sell. That or they just plain ol’ LIKE throwing in nicely rendered eye-candy and are more than happy to excuse their (or their customers’) virtual perving by re-marketing it as an economic necessity.
Buuuut…sex doesn’t sell Borderlands, in which you don’t even see your protagonist/s (same goes for any FPS); it doesn’t sell racing games, in which the only arse you’re staring at is that of the car you’re in (or the car you’re following); it didn’t sell Batman: Arkham Asylum, which had no playable female characters; it doesn’t sell puzzlers, endless runners, flight sims or Portal; it doesn’t sell Zelda; it didn’t fucking sell Pac-Man, Mario or Parappa the Rapper and it sure as buggery isn’t selling Angry Birds.
Sex sells, yes – it sells itself. It sells itself as a way to sell non-sex things. But it’s bollocks.
Biggest film franchise ever? Star Wars. No sex. ONE film with a bikini-clad woman. Sold its fucking brains out.
Except, actually, it doesn’t.
And if it did, all this would still say is: go away ladies (and gay men). We don’t want your money, because only people can spend money and we don’t think you qualify. But you make nice visuals in our games.
Could it be down to the fact that if men were portrayed in a sexy rather than macho way many gamers would become … confused … and stop gaming?
It would be intriguing to see the marketing research on these things.
I agree with Aita Sarkeesian’s premise that the butt action isn’t evenly distributed between male and female characters, but why draw the conclusion that no butt should be on show? Lets see all types of butts on all types of characters. Often characters aren’t even human but if that is doing it for someone then so be it. How weird would it be if video games were a no butt zone?
TeH GayZ are icky?
Still, she managed to spend over 6 minutes talking about butts and “strategic” cameras placing in video games without mentioning JRPGs… That’s like talking about doping without mentioning China’s olympic swim-team.
***
“Let’s make Lara look like the idealized female form as imagined by a 15 years old who’s only seen naked women in the porn he watches in secret” meets the old Playstation One’s graphical limitations.
***
Well, the postulate that expensive to make “AAA” games are predominately played by horny young males is not entirely wrong: “hormonally rich” young adults (of both genders) with upper-middle class parents are the demographic which has the most interesting amount of disposable income and time and therefore a very desirable demographic for peddlers of overpriced plastic toys.
***
Turian males don’t have butts: they’re all reach and no flexibility, remember?
Of course, the problem with these humourless feminists is that –
Oh wait, she just laughed? Is she not taking this seriously?!?! RARGH! GAMES ARE SRS BZNZ!!
~ahem~
So, yeah, I’m sure people will whine about the fact that she didn’t make this video all about the five or six games that deviate from this norm, but I’m not sure there’s much argument to be made against her point in this one. For pretty much as long as I’ve been laying games, I’ve picked the female characters when they’re available, and there’s really no denying that there’s a pretty serious shift in focus between male and female characters. Male characters get the shoulder focus, female characters get the butt focus, and it’s really annoying. Even in Golden Axe, where there appears to be parity on the buttitude (granted, the view doesn’t zoom in on butts in that side-scrolling fighter, but still…) – Ax Battler (what a name!) is just in his pants of course, but they’re decent coverage, while Tyris Flare’s stuck with a thong. At least they both got a bit more coverage in 2 – him in his miniskirt, her in a loin cloth – definitely better, but not exactly great.
@microraptor
Ooh, Garrus, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind. Hey Garrus! Uh, uh, hey Garrus!He does… uh, have a very supportive waist.
I really don’t mind sex in games, or in any media. There are actually a number of instances where I’m in favour of it. I just wish that, if devs feel that they need to include it, they would actually do so – stop skirting around age ratings and make legitimately mature games with healthy relationships, and believable intimacy, love, lust, and sex, rather than just panning the camera slowly over boobs and butts at every opportunity.
@mclarenm23, 20
Um… did she draw that conclusion? I’ve only watched through the video once, but it was just now and I didn’t catch that.
Love Anita’s new hair!
@Athywren #23
“equal opportunity butt display is definitely not the answer, rather, the solution is to de-emphasize the rear end of female characters so that players are encouraged not to ogle and objectify these women but to identify and empathize with them as people. This is not an impossible task given that game designers do this all the time with their male characters, its time the started doing it consistently with their female characters too.”
It is the last part that seems odd, we have just been shown by Anita that game makers go to weird lengths to cover the butts of male characters and then she says we should do the same with the female characters. Why not show the butts of all characters, or at least not worry about having to cover them with shoe horned capes and funky camera angles. You can avoid being prudish without objectifying characters with a fine butt. As I said in the previous post, lets celebrate the butts of all types of character.
@mclarenm23, 25
Given how funny she seems to find the “strategic butt covering,” I’d guess she was referring to the Nathan Drake style of de-emphasised rear, rather than calling for the Wayne Tech No Butts™ cloak technology to be rolled out to all games.
@11: “And female butts are sex, but male butts are not sex? That’s a very picky axiom.”
No, it’s a conclusion derived from empirical evidence. As soon as male butts start to sell you can predict what will happen. Check some perfume advertisements for an equivalent. Or compare Donna Summer singing “Love to love you” with Phil Collins’ female audience when singing “Paradise”.
Fortunately I already understood as a teen that Donna Summer’s “sensual” singing was only meant to separate me from my little pocket money. So I never fell for Tomb Raider either.
@Athyren
PS This is very true and would be an interesting new aspect of gaming.
“make legitimately mature games with healthy relationships, and believable intimacy, love, lust, and sex, rather than just panning the camera slowly over boobs and butts at every opportunity”
As soon as male butts start to sell you can predict what will happen.
A lot of privileged males will start complaining volubly about how they’re being objectified and expect to be taken seriously? And they are taken seriously?
Ag, blockquote fail. Try again:
A lot of privileged males will start complaining volubly about how they’re being objectified and expect to be taken seriously? And they are taken seriously?
Lol. Someone’s been living under a rock.
Athywren – This Thing Is Just A Thing
Must be the years of work on his calibrations.
Sarkeesian seems to never say anything crazy. It’s pretty much common sense stuff once it’s been pointed out.
When she said that you cannot tell a person’s character from their butt, I had to check if “butt reading” exists and sure enough, according to wikipedia Jackie Stallone does butt reading (rumpology) and claims to have predicted outcomes of presidential elections and Academy Awards from the butts of her dogs (dobermanns).
If we’re going to get into sexism with appearance of the character and focus on certain body parts, I’d like to throw this out there, though I’ll try and not make it too crass:
During mating, it’s VERY common for a male to go from the rear entry (not necessarily anal, but “doggie-style” is popular) and as such the male really enjoys the sight of the female rear in that context. For WOMEN however unless they’re doing kinky stuff with strap-ons, almost all positions will give them a view of other things (chests, or the ceiling/bed). So the sight of a butt can be a strong turn-on because it’s a common sight to a nice memory. (trying to keep this clean here, not easy!). A woman would almost never see the butt during that time though. Their connections tend to be more emotional and you can’t do emotion at a glance easily, only through dialogue.
Men are also primarily VISUALLY turned on while women get turned on differently (note primarily…obviously some women get turned on by visuals as well, just not their main focus), so if you’re going to objectify anything, women would be the natural default simply from a visual point of view. Objectifying females is simply easier for the developer, since objectifying males is almost pointless to many women.
Unless you find a way to remove sex from the minds of humanity (which you cannot), this will continue forever, and so will the arguments from women. Maybe balance isn’t the issue here, and removing sex appeal is counter to humanity’s desires. So this argument will go on…and on…and on until the end of time, and it’s impossible to resolve.
Yes, I said impossible. You could have an exact 50/50 balance of objectification and BOTH sides will find something to complain about, and you know it. Or you could remove objectification completely and the people will feel something’s missing as the HUMANITY of the games would be gone. (sex appeal is natural and human after all). You can’t win the sexism roulette game, ever, so why even try? Hence they don’t, and the developers will continue to do exactly what they have been doing, and the cycle continues…
mamba, @34: So, what you seem to be saying is that women aren’t really sexually interested in what men look like, and in particular aren’t really interested in looking at men’s butts, because of a bunch of half-assed (pun very much intended) reasons you just made up?
I have to ask… Have you ever actually met any women? Maybe talked to them about what they’re into? Because I can assure you, there are many women out there who have a great deal of appreciation for a shapely man-butt… To the extent that it’s a frickin’ cliché.
Welcome to Planet Earth, by the way. I hope your studies of our cultures and behaviour ultimately prove rewarding, but I think you’re going to need to be a bit more thorough than you seem to have been to date.
Athywren:
This has always been a glaring difference to me – you have women in situations where they are in jungles, climbing mountains, caving, fighting this horde and that horde, and they are all running around in thongs or similar, because a thong is perfectly suitable for doing all those things, oh my yes! (Sarcasm included.)
mamba @ 34:
Oh FFS, that’s pure bullshit with idiot sprinkles on top. Objectification has nothing at all to do with humanity, humaneness, or viewing people as human. Rather the opposite, y’know.
Caine @ 36
Apparently human female gluteus maximus will overheat from exertion if it’s covered.
The humanity of video games depends on ridiculous levels of completely unnecessary sexualization of women.
Haven’t heard the before. Hats off for originality, mamba.
Yikes, that should be
One “funny” thing about the butts is that as an independent game developer, you’re likely to buy ready-made characters. Your choice of non-T&A female characters is highly restricted. Once you have enough money to outsource the work to an artist, you can start to be a bit pickier, but until you really have an artist on staff it’s going to be hard to defeat the default aesthetic of huge barely-covered breasts, swaying hips, and spherical buttocks.
I hope Sarkeesian’s work triggers a change there.
Oh, fun, the first evopsych guy to show up. Now please tell us why men also like to look at boobies.
Actually, please don’t. You’ve spewed enough dehumanising shit.
Ice Swimmer @ 37:
Apparently so. A more subtle approach that I missed until I watched Anita’s video – I noticed that when a female character is actually clothed, wearing a top and jeans, as she’s running (viewed from behind, natch), her ass is overtly highlighted, with two large white ovals, while every male character dressed in jeans, seen from behind, lacks that highlighting. If that blatant highlighting alone was removed, I doubt most gamers would even notice, yet it would have the effect of emphasizing the character, rather than her ass.
@34: Wait, what? People only get turned on by the sights that they see while actually having sex? No one ever got turned on by the sight of, say, a well built male butt at a dance?
It’s really noticeable when you swap a male character for a female one (another example.) Also darkly hilarious. (Original of the second one.)
Ray @ 44:
Those were fab. Thanks!
@44 Ray Ingles
That is the best thing i’ve seen in ages.
@34 Mamba
For such a load of made up horseshit, it sure stinks like if it was real.
Ray
Thumbs up!
+++
Also, yes, the way men think women move ist something that drives me up the wall. No we don’t. No, we don’t sway our hips 50% to each side. No, we don’t always pull our shoulders back so you can see our tits for no apparent reason.
“make legitimately mature games with healthy relationships, and believable intimacy, love, lust, and sex, rather than just panning the camera slowly over boobs and butts at every opportunity”
That’d take work. Relationships and stuff mean .. acting. And plot. And narrative structure and interactions more complicated than “boom boom chop pew pew pew pew!”
What has always bothered me about gaming media is that (with a few rare exceptions) the storytelling is just bad. I mean, most game plots make a Vox Day novel look like Shakespeare. “Oh, before you can enter the town gates you must first find Lady Gaga’s pet chicken, Roofus.” What? Huh? And – since I am ranting here – the most head-explodingly bad part, to me, is the ontology of ‘evil’. I quoted evil because games don’t seem to even understand what ‘evil’ is: the bad guys do bad guy stuff because, uh, they are bad guys. Why do they attack you on sight? Why do they want to take over the world? What is driving them? How do their leaders get their mindless minions to charge in endless waves so they may be slaughtered? Where do the endless waves come from? Why do bad guys just want to kill stuff? Are they all nihilists? Then how to their leaders band together so many nihilists?
My conclusion early on* was that game designers are generally not very good story tellers. If you look at the ones that are considered “good stories” it’s because they often get real authors involved, instead of letting the game ‘designer’ (Here, I am looking at you, Hideo Kojima) make the mistake of thinking they are movie directors. With the kind of money that is in gaming, they ought to be able to do vastly better. I can only conclude it’s just laziness: it’s laziness to throw some pew pew pew and T&A with jiggle physics at a game than it is to create a world with characters that make sense and that you feel connected to. This ought to be obvious to anyone who has ever played a computer adventure game or two, or read a book, or watched a movie — I can only believe the gaming industry knows that they mostly suck, and has decided to shrug and say, “well, no plot no content lots of pewpewpew and car chases and explosions works for Michael Bay, let’s try it.”
I hate to even think about this because I love gaming. I’ve been a serious gamer my whole life, it seems (well, since 1974 when I discovered Avalon Hill’s “gettysburg”…) The fact is that a Michael Bay movie is generally vastly better in terms of plot, camera-work, and even character development than most games. I want to puke when someone in some game review talks about Lara Croft having a much better developed personality (as opposed to the polygon count on her breast shelf) than before, and I think of Breq in Anne Leckie’s ‘Ancillary’ novels and I want to cry. I know what writers make and there are great writers out there who could actually make a great plot for a great game. They’ll even add pewpewpew where it advances the plot, if you tell them to. Instead we get stuff like Hideo Kojima’s idea of how to tell a story: endless badly emoted cut-scenes that would make Stanley Kubrick wrench his eyeballs out to avoid having to watch. I’m not saying “hire people like Stanley Kubrick” but dang it, game companies, for every Quentin Tarantino that makes it big, there are 20 that almost make it but don’t — you’re just too fucking lazy to find them. And let me tell you this: as soon as someone does get some budding Orson Welles to script a game, it’s going to shine the glaring light of obviousness on the weakness of gaming companies’ current offerings and then y’all got a problem in gaming-wood.
(* Hey, I was there when games went from ‘heck we can barely make this work at all’ to complex branching story lines .. and then collapsed from that back into what they are now: graphics laden monstrousities that have vestigial plots)
The face of gaming is changing and game developers are starting to realize it. The problem comes with the “old guard” who doesn’t want change if it takes the spotlight off what they want. I’ve seen this problem a lot in nerd culture. I go to a few sci-fi conventions and while I am seeing more diversity in attendees and more women, there’s still issues with people who are upset they are no longer the focus.
As a white male, I welcome diversity because I know my hobbies can’t survive in the long term unless we continually bring new new people.
Gilliel @#47
Also, yes, the way men think women move ist something that drives me up the wall. No we don’t. No, we don’t sway our hips 50% to each side. No, we don’t always pull our shoulders back so you can see our tits for no apparent reason.
Now I want to hack one of these game engines and swap the character geometries and do some videos of a male ‘badass’ character walking using the motion rules for one of the females. Gotta admit that’d be pretty darned great to see, for the lulz.
Imagine batman walking like catwoman, with catwoman walking like batman next to him. Imagine nourishing yourself on the distant shrieks of ‘alpha males’ and ‘hardcore gamers’ … aaah, so sweet.
@Ray, that makes the point, butt good.
@50
Shut up and take my money!
Oh, and since I am ranting, let me drop this here:
http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ESA-Essential-Facts-2015.pdf
It’s a great thing to keep in your back pocket if you find yourself talking about games with a reactionary male who has theories about ‘hardcore gaming’ and starts saying “gamers like ${this}” or “gamers think ${that}” It’s a great big bunch of whacking delicious facts and it’s got a lot of stuff you wouldn’t expect. Stuff that is important for any discussion we have about gaming. And it’s really well presented.
Like:
– Women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (3%) than boys age 18 or younger (15%)
– Women make 41% of game purchases
– 39% of games are social games (the largest percentage)
– Action games hold only 5% of the handheld (phone, tablet) market, which is the fastest-growing segment and is generally dominated by social games (30%) and puzzle games (14%)
– 91% of parents feel controls in game content are useful
– 39% of parents play games with their children ~6hr/week
My analysis is what that means is:
– game industry, you have a serious disconnect from reality and are ripe for getting wiped out.
– “hard core” gamers play Candy Crush and Words With Friends
– the gaming industry has a huge gap in its offerings in terms of cooperative play, which has historically been filled by meta-gamers via things like World Of Warcraft guilds, raid teams, and co-op play leveraged onto social gaming media. New generation games for co-op play like Ingress could completely overturn population dynamics in the gaming community.
tl;dr: the gaming industry is in a position similar to hollywood. Now, hollywood knows how to make Michael Bay blockbusters and will swing at the fences – meanwhile streaming media companies are going to eat their lunch with things like Game of Thrones that are story-driven and cost-conscious, well-acted and actually kinda interesting. The gaming industry and hollywood are both in “swing for home runs” mode while they risk having all the oxygen of their market sucked out by smaller players that aim for satisfyingly good at a reasonable price and lots of it.
Mamba @34:
Booooogggguuusss! All of it. But this part, especially:
So, removing the humanity of a character gives the games more humanity?!
Achievement Unlocked: Newspeak Noob!
females are often portrayed with “bubble butts”, while male butts are often hidden in shapeless trousers. While personally, I like the appearance of bubble butts over shapelessness, I don’t get the objection of practicality, that pants are better than thongs, functionally. In terms of motion, a thong is nonrestrictive while pants are not. Still, it is a reasonable observation that female characters are portrayed for their visual appeal while male characters are more “gritty”. Why is “beauty” the first qualification for female characters? Not just in games, movies included. Pointing this out may nudge those industries to qualify talent first with beauty an incidental feature.
British ABC (not the american network) highlighted this by naming their lead character in The Avengers as Emma Peel. A snide respelling of “M appeal”, meaning Diana Rigg would appeal to all the (M)ale viewers. Have we not grown in 50 yrs? The answer is obviously, “not yet”.
To kind of riff off of Marcus @53, I present some soothing Anecdata *dun dun dun*
So took the YOBling to GameStop* so she could spend some of her Christmas present money. YOBling (12 yo budding nerd grrl) is browsing the games. I’m giving advice and trying to get a sense of what she’s looking for. The looks of disgust at some of the box art was epic. Eventually figured out that she prefers games where the PC can be female, lots of avatar customizability, more RPG than pew pew pew, and (when possible) multiplayer. Also, the box art HEAVILY influences her decision and not in a good way (for the sellers).
To get her money, it is not enough to simply have female characters. If the characters are big boobed, scantily clad contortionists…back on the shelf they go.
Her favorite games, so far, (after Minecraft, of course because you know, Minecraft!) is Fable III and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. For some reason, she likes it better than Skyrim. *shrugs*
* with a stop at the Friendly Neighborhood Games/Comic shop. Her idea. *sniffs, wipes single tear away* So proud. :)
Then again, if you swap Quiet with D-Dog, the same scene manages to be both ridiculous and dawwwwwwww-who’s-a-good-puppy-inducing: more proof that pooches make everything better.
Since it’s impossible to discuss this without offending anyone, I won’t worry too much, but if you believe me, I actually feel bad about it. I know there’s no point in this duscussion, nor do I expect anyone to actually try and think about what i said, and I still stand by my point of “it’s pointless to factor this”, but it’s lunchtime, so here goes:
#35, Dunc, No that’s not what I’m saying at all. Read again. I said the PRIMARY reason that women are attracted to men isn’t physical. I got this information BY talking to a lot of women, reading studies on sexuality from scientists, etc. They all said the same thing…men are sexually visual and women are emotional, with LOTS of exceptions as is the nature of humanity. If you care, this puts women as BETTER than men relationship-wise, as it’s based on a deeper connection. of COURSE both like physical appearance, it’s the order of impotence that’s at issue. heck, a lot of this comes from WOMEN’S magazines written BY women FOR women on the subject of sex, and again from talking to actual females. I can’t remove bias any more than that!
#36, Caine. Go ahead…show me a story world without ANY sexual context at all. None whatsoever…no fashion senses, no flirtations, remove any and all appearance and sexuality from the world completely. Oh and make it appropriate and interesting above the age of 10 so kids shows don’t count. Then I’ll believe you. But you probably can’t because it will be heartless because humans love other humans, and that means they will always see them as beautiful or not. it’s not even a bad thing…it’s what passion and love is built on. And yet this is wrong? I’m genuinely asking why. with this clear caveat: you must see the person as something OTHER than this as well…as an example Lara Croft is beautiful, AND intelligent AND capable. commenting on the first does NOT take away form the other 2, and yet here we are debating exactly that. To me that’s silly.
#38, Saad, missed my point completely. See what I just wrote please. I know that people want to hate what i wrote before they even try to think about it, but at least take it in the context I wrote it. Like I said at the end of the post, nothing can ever change as long as people are hung up on sex…all this does is prove it.
#46, see #38.
#54, pretending that humans are not attracted to each other removes their humanity. Focusing on ONLY their appearance removes their humanity. Acknowledging both does NOT. I’m talking about both, yet replies refuse to notice that I’m still appreciating the other qualities. I’m just refusing to deny that attraction exists. See the lara croft example just written if you need nuance. But I can’t get this across ever…because people immediately see it as “defending objectification for pure titillation sake” as opposed to “seeing a character in ALL their aspects, including sexuality”. And yes, that includes the visuals of butts too…which I was led to believe is mostly for males because they are visually turned on in general by them. Would you prefer that all male characters have sexiness enhanced to high levels as well? If yes, then you’re a hypocrite, and if no then you want to pretend that sexuality does not exist. That’s why this debate will never ever end…there is no middle ground that’s acceptable to everyone.
Anyway back to lunch. and I recommend you play games with only aliens that resemble animals as it’s literally the only way you’ll ever get over this. If a human is in the game, male OR female, they will be made to be attractive to the standards that society sets, and this will annoy a lot of people, and that’s a proven fact.
Caine@42:
You can take a rigged model and remove the textures so it’s just a black form, and you can make the camera angle focus on their neck, but as long as the rest of the body is visible you’ll still get your attention steered to tits and ass. The animations and the shape guarantee it.
As giliell@47 points out, women don’t actually sway that much (except on the ballroom dance floor) and they don’t tend to stick our their chest that much.
Wow. It’s really sad that in Mamba’s world, according to their posts here, sexuality absolutely requires the grossest of objectification. In Mamba’s world, without objectification of the most crass kind, there simply can not be any sexuality, and thus the whole human race will die out from women being so uppity.
Luckily, the real world doesn’t actually work like that.
Nope, sorry, you are profoundly and multiply and utterly wrong. Because a) these are not the only options (duh, I mean come on, that is so blindingly obvious you have to be kidding), and b) because not wanting any characters to have sexiness as far and away their most determining characteristic does not mean all characters have to have sexuality=zero. And not least because it is possible to prefer that both male and female characters have the same levels of (fictional) personhood and agency, and the same range of levels of sexiness (high or low).
You honestly seem to think that there’s no alternative to either games-as-semi-interactive-porn (for straight men only, naturellement) or as pure geometric puzzles.
Oh shit, someone call David Icke. According to mamba, we’ve discovered at least one non-human group infiltrating every level of our society: Asexual people!
@58. Lord of the Rings was a pretty good story without needing T&A. I’m sure I could think of dozens more if I wanted to spend any more time replying to you.
mamba, #58
*scrolls up and reads your post again:
mamba, #34
Yeah, we are all just jealous of your science skillz, mamba…you are just too deep for this world.
Most of the people here are very sex-positive but sure, go ahead and imagine that the fact that you have completely missed the fucking point means that we are all just prudes with loads of hang-ups that want to see all sexuality removed from the world. You are good at imagining shit and pretending it’s real, after all.
@Mamba
Sex. You may be doing it wrong. Seriously, ‘chest, ceiling/bed’ are the viewing options for women? That is it?
Female whats?
My favorite is games where the male character is appropriately armored, ready to withstand swords, arrows, and bullets and the female character is facing the same weaponry but with her body almost fully exposed. Oh, actually, she does have some padding on her shoulders. And boots. Usually there are big boots.
The comedy of that is only topped by the lengths to which dudegamerbros will go to try to justify it while trying to hide that they’re misogynistic asses.
Okay but real talk fuck the implication that asexual or sex-repulsed people are inhuman.
Soooooo, because humans can be attracted to one another and are sexual beings, that means that game portrayals of men in dusters and women in butt floss is not only totes OK but is impossible to change anyway so why try.
:/
That is not a society I want to be part of.
I thought that was a bit odd, too. Mind you, that’s almost the least of the Rong here.
#60 Yes, it’s kind of sad, these archaic and biblical notions of sexuality that Mamba holds should’ve died out a long time ago, not getting updated with pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo. And if you speak up against it, it must because you’re totally anti-sex and want women to cover up. *sigh*
That said as more general note:
No, I am not against sexiness in games. I do enjoy looking at pretty people and the occasional glimpse at a nice body parts – but you can have pretty people on screen without making the focus about their rear ends! It should about a character who does things, who grows and evolves and shows us how the story affects them and who is somewhat unique.
What does it say about people who insist that a huge portion of the time the character is on screen must be devoted to butt shots and/or behaving in a sexual manner?
I do admit at first I thought that it wasn’t wise of Anita to use Batman from Arkham City as a “you can’t see his butt” example, because it’s not true (I got the screencaps to prove it ;) ) The thing is, yes Batman is very well trained, athletic and handsome man that a lot of women and some men would find very attractive and his butt a glorious sight BUT it’s such a minor part of the game, that you can play it and never really notice it, because the emphasize is on what he’s doing, him solving problems, running around saving people. Compare that to Catwoman in the game, where everything about her – the clothes, the poses, the movement and the dialogue is overtly sexualiuzed. She basically propositions Two-Face, flirts with convicts who want to rape her and then fondles a Batman who seems to be disinterested in her physical attentions. Honestly I didn’t get much vibes for them as a couple, I am not saying woman shouldn’t go around and be overtly flirting if they enjoy doing that, it’s just apart from a few moments when she talks about her loot, she’s not doing anything else.
At first I really enjoyed fighting with her, but it got old really fast, because it’s too much with too many problematic moments (like the flirting with convicts who talk about about raping her … yes it’s not serious flirting, it’s just her kissy kiss fight move but it’s nonetheless there).
Yes, that is just one specific game but one where the male character gets all the story with almost zero empathize on his sexuality while the female character you play is the exact opposite. The solution is certainly not to dress Catwoman in a Burka or give Batman a thong outfit* … although people always talk as if that is what all feminist suggest. “Wahhh they are coming for our fap material.”
*and it wasn’t Arkham Knight either, but that would be a long, long rant for another day, as it disappointed me on a lot of levels, but if I wrote it down I probably cause someone to get an aneurysm ;)
@opposablthumbs,
Oh, I know. It was just a tiny oddity sticking out of the steaming pile of refuse that I couldn’t unsee.
@mamba
Does foreplay and general cuddling not exist?
Gods, the wrongness and bullshit coming from you are amazing. We could fertilize the entire country with the amount of shit you’re spewing.
Given that mamba thinks that doing doggie style will give the person in the back a good look at the other’s butt, what’s the likelihood they only know it from porn?
@69 Vivec
You are absolutely right to point that out. I find that even the suggestion that an individual might not be interested in sex at any moment, with pretty much whomever offers it, particularly while male, is frequently met with incredulity or even accusations of not being “normal” and assorted dehumanising shit.
Personally i think this is feigned shock, as i think it’s part of the sexist “men want sex all the time” because macho, horseshit bravado, which isn’t actually real, just imagined to be because of ridiculous ideas of hypermasculinity.
Which is linked to the idea that we should have some totty on everything to keep the males (primarily) happy and focused, which is not only mysandric as fuck, it’s also just not true.
YOB, you’re doing good work with that one.
Great Giliell, now I’m imagining the ‘guy’ in the doggy-style scenario contorting into truly painful positions in order to be able to see the butt.
Hey, mamba?
Many of the people you are talking to here are scientists, so coming in and saying “Science says X” doesn’t cut it. What science? Which papers? Which authors? When?
If you read this blog you’ll find that PZ posts a decent amount of evo psych, and almost all of that is critical. Much of the science involving how human sexuality involved is festering with bias, hidden assumption, poor methodology, and bare-faced sexism. (You might notice from other articles on this site that sexism is a problem in the STEM fields)
If you get your science from pop literature – the magazines and tech blogs – you won’t know that, because articles that say “Men evolved to stare at womens’ butts and cat-call” turn out to be really popular with a certain sector of doods. Those doods don’t generally question the findings, either, because it confirms their biases.
tl;dr: The science of “men like big butts and they cannot lie” is bullshit bad-science used to fund researchers with tech magazine dollars. Please correct me if I am wrong on that, everyone, it isn’t my field!
something’s missing as the HUMANITY of the games would be gone
Is that your HUMANITY in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
@76
I find a lot of this pseudoscientific evopsych shit to be dehumanizing and offensive, mamba’s just scratching the surface.
Case in point, I had a mixed-discipline course about how sexuality has changed over time, and the evopsych “”””professor”””” taught us that couples that involve overweight people or cannot reproduce are objectively inferior relationships.
Granted this was also a class with a fairly prominent geneticist who is very open with his support of gay reparitive therapy and denying trans people surgery so -massive fucking shrug-
@81
And, in my immediate googling of said geneticist’s name, I have discovered that he is also in support of transgender conversion therapy.
Oh also – sorry about triple posting – but most of the prominent women’s magazines are owned by male-run companies.
For example, Comsopolitan is owned by Hearst, whose leadership is overwhelmingly male. Glamour, Vogue, and Allure are all owned by Conde Nast, which also has a male leadership.
Saad@#68:
the female character is facing the same weaponry but with her body almost fully exposed
That makes my head explode. Pretty much nobody who thinks for more than a fraction of a second is going to want to go into any kind of kinetic warfare without armor. Everywhere that’s possible. As light and flexible as possible.
You know what the female spartans in Halo would look like? You’re in powered armor, you all look like a suit of powered armor.
I was watching a promo for ‘The Witcher’ and there’s one scene where the guy, who has a great big scar on his face to make himself look tougher* – later in the reel he’s fighting a couple other people with swords and he’s got no helmet on. Hey, there’s a connection! Clearly the hero rolled low on his “intellect” stat. Taking a cut like that to the face is usually a permanent fight-ender; during the heyday of samurai culture there were whole monasteries full of blinded or otherwise permanently crippled samurai. Swords are fucking serious.
The big mustache I wear is not because I’m a fan of Nietzsche, it’s to hide the scar on my upper lip from a very very light “just the tip” grazing blow from a danish-style long-axe. F’in Norman helmets nasals aren’t long enough.
(* Tough is not having scars on your face. The guy who came through Heidelberg academy without saber scars: that’s the Bad Cat right there.)
Since it’s impossible to discuss this without offending anyone
I’ve noticed that when someone suddenly switches to worrying about whether or not they’re going to offend me. They’re usually going to decide to run that risk, and almost always say something exceptionally stupid.
I wonder if evolutionary psychology has identified a situation where that kind of cowardice wrapping a fleck of boldness has some kind of survival value?
YOB@#56
The looks of disgust at some of the box art was epic
Someone needs to do a video of interviews with 12 year olds regarding game cover art. Of all genders. I’m guessing it would result in a hysterical beat-down of game marketers.
@84
Witchers are like fantasy versions of the “genetically altered super-soldier” trope made to hunt monsters, where a helmet really won’t really help you. When you’re sword fighting like, a van-sized griffon, a helmet won’t do much to block any damage, so they opt to keep their vision/movement unrestrained instead of wearing irrelevant armor. They’re also really hard to kill and super-fast, so mundane sword fights with dudes aren’t really an issue.
That’s a watsonian explanation, anyways. As far as the doyalist explanation, “looking badass” was indeed probably the reason.
Marcus@86
That’s a cool idea. I would LOVE to see something like that.
To expand on it, it might be very interesting to do the same with 15, 18 and 25 year olds then compare the four result sets.
Numenaster@77
I’m trying my hardest. :)
I have to pick out one more thing from this:
mamba, #34
Explain who you mean by “the people”…
I kind of want to respond to Mamba’s claim about what people are seeing during sex, but it’s probably a little personal, and I’m slightly worried that it’d be taken as an argument in favour of burkas. I have to admit, though, that I do have memories of being aroused by the sight of physically attractive people quite far in advance of having any experience of seeing-while-sexing, so I’m not sure it really holds too well to suggest that our horny triggers are shaped by that quite so much as was implied.
I’m also wondering why, if we all want to deny the existence of sexuality here, has nobody called me out for saying that I’d be supercool with a game that actually involves legit porniness (although I guess I didn’t say so in those exact words) so long as it was done in a believable and deep fashion? It seems like the only responses I’ve had are in favour or neutral, which doesn’t seem to fit the model being presented. I dunno… that just seems a little odd to me.
Some time ago (early October 2015), The Grauniad published a toungue-in-cheek article about the mostly-exposed women often wearing only chain-mail bikinis nonsense, Breasts: the ultimate weapons: “Female comic and video game characters often engage in combat while wearing outfits that are very revealing, particularly around the breast area. This is because the scientific properties of breasts mean they’re formidable weapons which shouldn’t be concealed”.
@Mamba #34 via Saad #89,
I didn’t notice a particular word choice until Saad quoted it:
Humanity doesn’t require objectification. Attractive characters (in games, movies, etc.) aren’t necessarily objectified. In fact, objectification means that their humanity has been subtracted, turning them into an object. They can still have flirting, romance, sexual tension, etc. None of this requires objectification.
When I used to play WoW, it took away from the immersion of the game to see the female characters strutting around in useless armor to maximize exposed skin. By contrast, Elder Scrolls Online used virtually the same art for male and female armor and I didn’t feel that any “Humanity” was missing. Some of the races had fairly minimal outfits (e.g. wood elves) but both sexes wore it.
I’m even fine with a subset of games aimed at people who want to masturbate while they play (I guess with one-handed controls), but it shouldn’t be the default.
Heh heh, yeah, Mamba’s thoughtful disquisition and many of the comments under the original video are priceless. The opening sequence of Saturday Night Fever….ummmm…..the multi-million dollar salaries of matadors in Spain and Mexico…..the popularity of ballet danseurs among metrosexual women….Robert Redford’s trousers as the Sundance Kid and Bob Woodward….pretty much 3/4 of the footage in Ladies And Gentleman The Rolling Stones (Mick’s butt was the star, in case you haven’t seen it), or every Springsteen video since 1978…..I could go on…..but yeah, I’ve got a feeling that women like nice butts on men. But women only play Tetris, so, well, there you have it.
mamba #58
[actual citations needed]
(The Naked Ape doesn’t count)
Golgafrinchan, #92
Yeah, mamba doesn’t seem to know that objectification is a bad thing. It’s not the same thing as sexual content, which it seems is what they’re confusing it with.
@55, Mamba
Women’s mags are a terrible source for analysis of sexuality and what women find attractive. See the (NSFW) Cosmocking posts on The Pervocracy and you’ll see why — They are more about training young women rather than catering to them.
pervocracy.blogspot.com/search/label/cosmocking
Sorry, I meant the comment at 58.
#92 Heck, you can have blatant sex, nudity, etc. and not have it “objectifying”, its about why its being done, not that its being done. The problem with these things is the same as it is with every other trope. Its a girlfriend in the fridge thing. Not done with the intent to show the character liking, enjoying, having a damn good reason to be doing, any of it, but because someone thought, “Heh.. I think this needs a gratuitous scene in which the player gets an extra 50 xp for mostly undressing (but not really) and sort of making out (but not really, since they never really get naked), with a prostitute, whose whole existence is, ‘To be there so we can hint at the character having got some sex time in.'”
I mean, heck, what if the story had the women you just banged notice you dropped something, which getting off, and you spend 30 minutes going through a story line, which advances things in some useful way, to get it back to you? Or, something, anything, which implies they have a life outside of standing around waiting for you to show up and make them, “The blond I did after I banged the red headed elf in the other room.”
And, heck, even that wouldn’t always be a problem, if it wasn’t for the fact that this is ***always*** what they are. Just NPCs, without a DM, so you can’t even, like in a table top game, spend 30 minutes talking to them about the city, or where they grew up, or anything else, when the poor DM expected you to leave, go down the street, two doors, to inquire about the suspicious person, who is actually a vampire, and you are expected to kill. You can’t help but make “everyone” in a PC/console game, which isn’t part of the story a “prop”, and that makes some of this unavoidable. But.. then there isn’t much attempt to make any of it unexpected, non-prop either. And, if the brothel worker is *always* a prop… Yeah…
Same goes, to an extent, with the main character, and camera angles, etc. But, again.. There is a difference between the **only** option being a skimpy clothing, which shows things off, or if you can “decide” to pick that. Some modules, for, for example, Neverwinter, even took advantage of installing the “option” to pick such things, as ways to create other options in the story line, which where explicitly impossible in the PG version. Though, many/most of them just used it to well… Not that those didn’t have some interesting quirks and moments to them (like giving one too many sailors a BJ to get money to buy basic equipment, having lost everything prior, and being caught and arrested by the city guard for, well.. exactly what you knew was illegal in the city. Whoops!)
But, yeah, the problem isn’t that this stuff exists, its that.. its either not “optional”, or an option without modding, or, its just window dressing, like having lamps turn on and off when it gets dark or light in the city, and **only** ever as a prop, or a gimmick, or nor more or less “important” in the world you are playing in that the goblin you just killed the 56th one of, because you still didn’t get the “pristine goblin ear” some other NPC asked for 4 hours ago.
I just noticed Marcus@1 predicted mamba@58.
This is something I’ve seen quite often in MMORPGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft. A given piece of armor will look different depending on the race and gender of the character, and almost always, the female version will be significantly more revealing than the male version. A male character puts on chainmail bottom and top, and it looks like he is wearing waist-to-ankle pants and a full shirt. Put the very same armor on a female character, and suddenly it becomes chainmail panties and bra.
@100
Not to mention that even the most bestial races have very shapely humanoid females. Male orcs, dranei, tauren, and trolls are big beefy monsters with accordingly monsterous features and proportions. Meanwhile, females of said races are curvy hourglass bombshells with delicate features. The trolls in particular had a far more monsterous female model in alpha, but alpha testers couldn’t get a hard-on from it and complained until it was changed.
It’s something I really have to give the Elder Scrolls credit for: their orcs have orc features regardless of gender, and everyone’s armor is pretty much the same.
Is it weird that I now really want a game that super emphasizes the body form of all characters? All shapes, all genders… all butts.
All the butts imaginable.
Seriously, why is it just limited to the modern-day idealized version of the female butt? Assassin’s Creed should be showing off the butts of all the assassins. I want to see gadgets and blades glistening against the cloth contouring Ezio’s athletic physique*. It would be no less conspicuous than a jerk running around the rooftops in a fucking eagle-cloak.
*And not in a male power-fantasy way.
@58
If you’re talking about Cosmo, I’ve read Cosmo. If their knowledge of female sexuality is anything like their knowledge of anatomy, I can guarantee you it’s not a good source. Although, it’s hard to be more clueless on anything than they are about male sexuality. I don’t trust any publication that suggests treating a person’s genitals like a Bop-It.
Ah, Cosmo:
http://www.cracked.com/article/156_7-sex-tips-from-cosmo-that-will-put-you-in-hospital_p2/
http://www.cracked.com/article_19066_7-psychotic-pieces-relationship-advice-from-cosmo.html
It’s always very telling when people really don’t understand the difference between
A) woman dressing herself vs. imaginary character dressed by male developers
B) woman moving vs. imaginary female character moving
C) erotic content vs. objectification
Also quite interesting when people think that a character having had agency in previous scenes or incarnations means you can’t ever criticise a scene or incarnation for portraying them without any.
That might not be directly related to this particular topic, but it’s annoyingly common.
I haven’t played the later Fallout games, but in 1 and 2 you pretty much had the same clothing for either gender and if that was power armor then you looked like a person in power armor, regardless of gender. Also, I can’t remember any romance more intricate than a couple of sleazy characters attempting to flirt with you (again, they did that with either gender.) So not only can it be done, it can be done with a game that’s considered a classic.
“objectifying”
I think using objectification terminology is bad strategy. If you start digging at what it means, you discover it’s typical Satrean existentialist bloviation. I’m afraid people where the “object…” in “objectification” and think there’s something “objective” about it. In point of fact “objectification” comes from Satre’s example of the waiter living in bad faith, who is struggling because since everyone is “objectifying” them as a ‘waiter’ they are becoming more waiterly. That’s … ughhh… bullshit. I’m not sure who first lifted the existentialist term into use, but it’s bad strategy because it really appears to be not much more than a label that can be thrown at something to demonize it.
There have been some social ‘science’ experiements* that indicate that learned helplessness can be affected by others’ attitudes. While those studies have carried some weight, I think they’re probably bullshit; a better study would attempt to tease out how biassed choices affect a subject’s outcome, and whether that’s a dominant factor or whether it’s the subject’s self-expectation (influenced by ‘objectification’)
When we use objectification language with regards to a video game (for example) we’re really saying something like that the in-game character is not being treated fairly in terms of the emphasis on that character’s story, character development, attributes that make that character appear to be an interesting and worthwhile being deserving of rights. See, I just elided “objectification” entirely? It takes a little more work but it makes your argument much stronger because your interlocutor can’t argue (as some people have in this thread) that the effect of this “objectification” doesn’t matter, etc. Bypass the objectification and jump to facts and analysis. I think Sarkeesian does really well with this, she doesn’t just say “so and so is objectified” it’s “so and so is objectfied and has fewer lines of spoken dialogue but 5 times the polygon count in their derriere.” Ah, those are facts** and those are harder for our opponents to argue with. That’s good strategy.
(* Probably all bullshit due to sampling bias, since they were using students..)
(** I just made them up as examples)
Marcus Ranum
I’m calling bullshit. The language is not the problem. People who want to understand what this about pretty quickly get it while people who want to be a pain in the ass and temper tantrum throwing crybabies will forever intentionally not get it. Same as with “privilege” or “performativity”. Terms of art art terms of art and at a certain point you can’t avoid them when you want to have a discussion even at the 101 level.
It’S like saying “evolution” is a bad term because them people think that an individual evolves, you know the bullshot creationists are tuting
Just some fun random quotes from mamba. Yes, the second is a typo, but it’s a very interesting one (from comment 58).
Also, all that focus on visual stimulation and visual attraction being stronger in men therefore somehow emphasizing women characters’ butts’n’boobies is okay? Completely erases the woman game-player from the picture, who might want to play a character who, you know, looks kinda like her. And making sure that all other men players will be ogling her ass and her tits? You know… somehow I’m not comfortable putting myself into a body that will be experiencing the same kinds of sexual microaggressions that I already experience in daily life. Somehow I’m not comfortable in becoming the butt of unwanted overly sexualized innuendo and imagery in my free, fun time. I don’t always go out with the intention of being sexually attractive to all the men I might pass along the way (okay, I’ll be honest: pretty much never!), why would I want to play a game where I know that’s how I’ll be perceived? Yah-no.
Just wondering – is the woman character in the originals of the swap-over links that Ray Ingles posted back at #44 a playable character? (Because who wants to play the puppet in some bloke’s soft-porn fantasy? Seriously revolting. I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like for straight men to have that kind of pandering be commonplace mainstream fare – no wonder the gamergaters and their ilk are such a bunch of tossers).
Anyone ever see that old film, Take it like a man, ma’am? (It’s a sort of extended AU in which all the typical gender roles are swapped, just because that was so unimaginable – so as to get people to look with fresh eyes; the little things were some of the most telling).
I saw it once many years ago, and I remember thinking it would be so out of date by now … but it’s really not out of date at all, sadly. Today’s equivalent might be a totally genderswapped mainstream game – even for people to play just once, would make-strange so much of the weird sexist shit that gets taken for granted, and show how shitty it really is.
Wait, opposablethumbs, are you telling me that’s not the way you usually shower, especially when you’re in a cage surrounded by men ogling you?
I mean, if you think about it, if you actually were in that situation, in a cage, forced to shower with all the dudes around you, you’d possibly hunker down and try to make them forget that you’re actually a woman…
That’s rape culture par excellence…
I am in no way expert on sexual attraction and relationships, quite the opposite, but even I happen to know that the whole sexual attraction, arousal etc. happens before bodyparts are inserted into orifices, rubbed against oneanother or otherwise stimulated. So there really is no reason why women should not enjoy looking at shapely male butts. And even I met a few women who expressed vocaly their liking of such.
Even if women are less visually stimulated than men, as some popsci articles I recall seem to imply, then the evopsych explanation is not necessarily correct. Both men and women are from childhood accustomed to looking predominantly at scantily clad women so there is a non trivial cultural conditioning.
I seem to recall that there were a few women in pharyngula comments a few years back who expressed their liking of gay porn. I would really, really like to see evopsych explanation of that.
Seems a bit like those games are written by the same dudes who insist a woman should be flattered if she’s catcalled (or worse), ’cause we wimenz needz the menz to validate us *urgh*
But how dare we point out that having those scenes in video games leads to some players having weird ideas about the opposite gender. It’s not like those games exist in a vaccuum, other media perpetuate the same weird ideas in similar or different ways just as much.
It’s not just going one way: romance novels tend to paint abuse as something normal and sometimes even romantic and that leads women to actually believe that and hinders them to get out of abusive relationships (If I just stick by my men, love will win out in the end etc etc)
Not saying that is the only reason but it provides a thought frame work that makes it even more difficult to escape. Which I could find the damn link to that study I recently read …
When 300 came out, the imdb.com message board was full of two major freak out themes: the people complaining about people pointing out the racism and people losing their minds about a lot of women expressing their enjoyment of all those scantily clad hot Spartans …
While I am not into watching Porn, I love reading and visualizing it and I am getting turned on by slash as well as het … my mind is strictly NSFW ;)
Is it just me, or is mamba doing the gender-based equivalent of defending racism by saying “Well, that’s just the way lots of whites think about blacks – deal with it!”
Or am I missing some nuance there…?
You’re missing all the nuance, because all the nuance is missing.
And yet mamba is saying such controversial-yet-unequivocally-true and new things! Much daring! So nuance! WOW!
I think the nuance you’re missing is the implication “…and that’s because it’s only natural for whites/men to think of blacks/women that way.” As in, “don’t blame me, it’s just nature”.
I started playing XCOM recently and have been looking at it through a feminist lens and (based on my understanding of feminism) it gets pretty high marks. Granted, this is a resource management and squad tactics game, so no real story, plot, or character development but there were still ample opportunities for the devs to fuck it up.
– The models have butts, yes, but they are normal and not highlighted.
– The armors (so far, still playing through) are pretty much the same on either.
– The game is played with you in first person, so there is no player avatar gender.
– The head scientist is a woman that wears a lab coat and is modeled fairly nondescriptly.
If I was going to be very nit picky, the following criticisms might apply:
– The male troopers are big and burley, the females smaller and more petit.
– On one of the armors (of the armors I’ve unlocked), the female trooper has a black panty-like thing over her crotch that the men don’t have. ( I only noticed it because I was really looking close, so it’s not real obvious.)
– There are more male troopers than female
I’m a white American male, so the normal caveats apply. That said, from my perspective, it is pretty good on that front and is a good example of how to do it better.
I’d be really interested in hearing other perspectives on anything I missed, got wrong, or other thoughts.
The original XCOM had, as I recall, zero difference between women and men. It’s a long time ago so I may recall wrong, but I remember being surprised at how much it didn’t matter in-game which a squad member was.
My most harrowing battle in that game was getting a secondary base attacked. Massively outgunned, outnumbered, and unprepared, it was a hard battle, but I was clearly going to lose. Then the aliens managed to blow themselves up while killing my second-to-last soldier. My last soldier, expecting death, gingerly explored the base. She found it clear, and emerged a hero. She immediately graduated to a leading spot on my elite squadron.
That made her memorable, unlike all the other soldiers on my various XCOM squads from 20-25 years ago (whenever it came out, I forget).
Giliell@#110:
I’m calling bullshit. The language is not the problem.
Fair enough.
I’ll continue to wince when I see stuff like “objectification -> bad” or “socialism -> bad” and continue to focus on what’s bad about whatever rather than leaning on a label. I agree it’s probably a minor issue.
I’m playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Xbox 360. It came out in 2012 so it’s an older game, but am enjoying it quite a lot. A good game is a good game wether it came out in 2015 or 1988. :)
It’s interesting how my troopers have no story and no dialog, but because they have names and nicknames, I get a little upset when they die. “Nooo! They got Cpl “Diesel” Ho!” It really doesn’t take much to humanize a character when done right.
re XCOM:
OH GAAHD!!
I started a new game of Terror From The Deep recently. I’ve wept so profusely for those who have fallen in defence of their planet that I suspect I’ve pushed the average salinity of the world’s oceans up to 55‰.
I never imagined I’d miss Cryssalids.
That said, much as I do like the look of what they’ve shown so far, part of me does wish that the upcoming XCOM 2 followed the path of the originals in taking to the deep, if only so I can justify sticking Barracuda on my ingame playlists.
I’m not sure why, in these days of endless free porn of any kind you might want, people still expect basic titilation in other entertainment contexts anymore. It’s like expecting tense tragic drama when you go shopping, or hilarious comedy every time you go to the toilet.
I mean, I’ve felt a certain weird but fairly mild cultural pull from the notion myself. As a gay man (with a very healthy interest in pert male posteriors) it’s difficult to find video games with any titilation aimed in my direction. Once I’d kissed all the boys in Canis canem edit, visited the rent boys in Denerim’s brothel in Dragon Age and married the least objectionable male High Elf I could find in Skyrim, it was pretty much just making my wish-fulfillment Sims 2 boyfriends sleep with each other until they’d earned enough reward points for enough elixir of immortality to last them indefinitely. At the end of it all I felt… very little to be honest. I was mildly curious, but it did very little for me. I certainly wasn’t aroused by any of it enough to bother with. I suppose I did it because it was there and I could.
I still don’t see the point in this rampant sexualisation of everything.
Dianne @108:
Fallout 2’s relationships were primarily limited to one night stands with various characters, but you could end up in a shotgun marriage to one of two siblings if you seduced one of them (you couldn’t go after both). Interestingly enough, both characters were available to a player character of either sex, thus making Fallout 2 probably the first AAA title video game to include gay marriage. Heck, they included it before it was being seriously considered in American society.
@125 cartomancer
I honestly believe at least part of it is that it allows men to display what they believe to be manly behaviour. Manly men, specially the exclusively straight kind can be very keen on displaying their exclusively straight manliness as often as possible to whomever might be able to detect their signals. The sexualisation of females on pretty much any medium allows for plenty of opportunities for manly men to display their manliness by making comments every time such a sexualised female is presented, letting everybody know how that arouses them and how they would totally give her one, because they are so manly. Their sexuality must be broadcasted at every opportunity, that includes when they are playing games.
Which is not to say that videogames can’t be arousing…which of course they can, but most of the extravagant, out of place displays of female objectification are more about showing off male, straight sexuality rather than actually intending to arouse. I believe so, at least.
That does have a certain ring of truth to it, yes. So it’s more about providing opportunities for a kind of performative affirmation of straight male sexuality than anything else? One imagines that the majority of people who play these games (apart from the online ones, obviously) are doing so on their own, which would make that idea doubly interesting – it’s an opportunity for affirmation not in a social and societal context but a purely personal one – people convincing themselves that their straight male sexuality is somehow valid and empowering (and normal?)
Which rather makes those of us who are not participants in straight male sexuality wonder why the hell this is a thing at all. After all, straight male sexuality is not exactly something that has ever really been sidelined or looked down upon in a cultural context (okay, there has been a general Judaeo-Christian denigration of all types of sexuality, but straight male sexuality hardly comes in for the greatest opprobrium even there). Why is it straight males who feel this need to reaffirm their sexuality as often as possible to themselves – surely if any group in society would feel secure and safe in their sexual identity it’s them? Or is it that nobody really feels secure in their sexuality at all? That makes a modicum of sense, given that LGBT people have usually got their own outlets for expressing confidence in their sexuality (pride marches, LGBT organisations and such), and I hazard to guess that straight women have their own socially approved coping mechanisms too (women’s magazines? It’s not my field I’m afraid…).
Or am I projecting here? Seeing a mechanism for quelling doubt, uncertainty and fear about one’s own sexuality in this because it’s been a big part of my own experiences of coping with sexuality? Is it cruder than that – is this about brashly and overbearingly professing membership of a privileged category and (however subconsciously) perpetuating that group’s privilege by normalising it?
Dreaming #127, I think you are on to something. For these “manly men” everything revolves around them, no exceptions. They are totally the centre of the known universe. Or so they would have us think in their utter insecurity.
cartomancer (#128)
I’d bet that for most it’s less to do with self doubt and more to do with the implied threat to their supposed supremacy. They don’t need to reaffirm it to themselves. They need it reaffirmed to them by everyone and everything else. Like all privileged people, they’re hypersensitive to any potential loss of that privilege.
128-129-130@
I personally suspect it’s a combination of all of the above plus other phenomena.
As far as i can tell, however, all of it boils down to the idea that manly men must be ridiculously, extremely hipersexual. Whether this is true or not (it’s not), pretending that it is allows the individual to present themselves, or think of themselves as incredibly masculine. The motivation behind wanting to be seen as hipermasculine may vary, but the mechanism is often simply broadcasting sexual atraction at any opportunity, in any form, directly or indirectly. I don’t think this is something that’s often done consciously, it’s a learned behaviour that simply creates habit.
I’m not saying this is the ONLY reason behind the phenomenon, just that it is a component of it, one that i think is pretty significant if rarely ever acknowleged. Granted, i may well be wrong…but i can’t think of any other reason why a man watching TV in the company of other men would comment on the sexual atractiveness of every single female that appears on the screen, if it’s not to broadcast their sexuality and appear hipermasculine (which as we know is greatly aided by how females are depicted on almost any TV content), and i think sexualised females in videogames serve a similar purpose.
Oh, and just to be clear, i have no doubt that actual sexual gratification is also a component, it’s just that i don’t think it’s the most important one given that access to “better” options for sexual gratification are available at any time. It’s not like men can only get their sexual gratification if the female characters in their videogames, or on TV are hipersexualised. You could remove that entirely and they would still have access to it.