Why video games are sexist and we can't do anything about it.

[caketastydelish]

Yes. You are allowed to denounce it as such.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm perplexed for entirely different reasons. Which is why I keep asking you about the agency of the characters, to which I don't think I've gotten a response. What I'm looking for is the harm. Which is why I asked you about sin, which is one ways people phrase self-harm that then harms others. Calling something "sin" isn't calling it arbitrarily bad, it's wrapping it in the context that self-health is community-health(some aspects of conformity too, but that's kinda the same principle-ish).

But I'm going to circle back: if the characters are attractive, and mighty, and empowered, then what, erm, is the problem? Does it only stop being sexist if elves have, on average, a BMI that matches American women between the ages of 16 and 65, on average? That's not an argument I'm making, I'm really trying to tease this out. Is the problem instead that men are not uniformly sexy enough? What's the harm? Self-confidence or something along those lines?

 

[Lexicus]

if the characters are attractive, and mighty, and empowered, then what, erm, is the problem?

There isn't one. My issue is with characters that are sex objects. That by definition means they aren't mighty and empowered.

 

[Farm Boy]

I will happily stare with open desire at a sexy, nude, strong, and capable woman in a situation it isn't creepy. Like if she's a fantasy representation of a woman. The sexiest women, in my aging experience, are women that have it together in their mid to late thirties. They have the fertile thing going on, they have the developed life skills thing going on, they have the self confidence thing going on, they often have the capable mom thing going on, oh rwar.

 

[Lexicus]

Oh my lord no. I will happily stare with open desire at a sexy, nude, strong, and capable woman. The sexiest women, in my aging experience, are women that have it together in their mid to late thirties. They have the fertile thing going on, they have the developed life skills thing going on, they have the self confidence thing going on, oh rwar.

Hmm, so I think we have different definitions of "sex object." I'm using the term to mean that a character is a one-dimensional prop serving as an object of sexual desire, and nothing else.

 

[Ajidica]

There isn't one. My issue is with characters that are sex objects. That by definition means they aren't mighty and empowered.

I'm not entirely sure about that. In The Witcher, Triss, Yennefer, and Kiera Metz are presented as both objects of Geralt's attraction but it is also made very clear they are their own person and not simply bound to Geralt's sexual urges.

 

[Farm Boy]

Are female player characters that anymore? Would it be news, anymore, that the character you beat the metroid invasion with while blasting rockets like mad was a super capable woman?

I'm not entirely sure about that. In The Witcher, Triss, Yennefer, and Kiera Metz are presented as both objects of Geralt's attraction but it is also made very clear they are their own person and not simply bound to Geralt's sexual urges.

I've often thought that Geralt, being super fine and sexy, being infertile, and being guaranteed disease-free, would be the ultimate medieval sport-<verb> for a smart woman.

 

[Ryika]

Hmm, so I think we have different definitions of "sex object." I'm using the term to mean that a character is a one-dimensional prop serving as an object of sexual desire, and nothing else.

What kind of character would fall into that category? Could you name a few examples from recent years?

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not entirely sure about that. In The Witcher, Triss, Yennefer, and Kiera Metz are presented as both objects of Geralt's attraction but it is also made very clear they are their own person and not simply bound to Geralt's sexual urges.

See post 145

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Right. So the marketing of video games clearly involves ideas held by the makers, the sellers and the buyers, which predated the existence of video games.

Absolutely. The lurid scenes on back glass and playfields of pinball machines are legendary.

 

[Mise]

Gratuitous, oversexualised representations of women in computer games just make the game crap. It's cheap fan service. I mean, I like looking at naked women as much as the next guy, but chucking a fit girl into a piece of media is the oldest and cheapest form of marketing ever. It just makes for a crap game.

So my question, I guess, is whether we're arguing about if companies should be allowed to use hot girls to market games (they should be), or whether games which do this cheaply and without any sort of in-universe explanation or good narrative for why the warrior women are all wearing bikinis are crap (they are).

This one is easy. Obviously, mithril and bikini armor are roughly equal in their protection and weight qualities, so wearer's choice is based only on physical appearance. Male warriors would look stupid in bikini armor, so they choose full plate armor instead.

All you're saying is that the armour in the game literally doesn't matter -- which makes it a terrible design choice for the game. The armour you wear ought to matter; there ought to be trade-offs. If you've eliminated the trade-offs in your RPG purely so that you can make the warrior women wear bikinis, then you've made a crap game. Unless your game is literally called "Fantasy Dress-up Party Online" then you haven't made an RPG at all. You've literally made a virtual doll dressing game where you are the doll.

 

[red_elk]

All you're saying is that the armour in the game literally doesn't matter -- which makes it a terrible design choice for the game. The armour you wear ought to matter; there ought to be trade-offs. If you've eliminated the trade-offs in your RPG purely so that you can make the warrior women wear bikinis, then you've made a crap game.

May be, but if crap game has twice more sales than a non-crap game, many game studios would rather make the former.

 

[Mise]

May be, but if crap game has twice more sales than a non-crap game, many game studios would rather make the former.

I mean that is literally the extent of my criticism. I said on the first page that a company in a free market can produce whatever game it wants, but that we can criticise those games for being crap. If the only defence of these games is that idiots spend a lot of money on them, then we are in violent agreement.

 

[Ryika]

If the only defence of these games is that idiots spend a lot of money on them, then we are in violent agreement.

I'd say the "defence" of the game is that the people who enjoy it don't seem to care about the issue that you're raising, even seem to prefer it the way it is, instead of the way it would need to be for you to enjoy it.
In a cultural sense it's not about money (although in the market-sense it of course is), it's about the audience that gets exactly the product they want.

While your personal opinion may be that the game is "crap", the audience seems to disagree, so the game achieves exactly what it is there for - to provide entertainment for its audience.

 

[Commodore]

Hmm, so I think we have different definitions of "sex object." I'm using the term to mean that a character is a one-dimensional prop serving as an object of sexual desire, and nothing else.

How many video game characters actually meet that definition of "sex object" though? Not many. And the ones that do, are usually that way to illustrate how terrible whoever it is that's treating them like a sex object is.

 

[Bamspeedy]

With mods even if the creator of the game had no intention of 'all women in bikinis', the player can make the game that way. Mods can make them all nude, too.

I don't like that in some of the 'video games are sexist' articles I've read, they bring up stuff like Rapelay. Even if it came on a disk, played on desktop/laptop, porn games are not 'video games'.

 

[red_elk]

Hmm, so I think we have different definitions of "sex object." I'm using the term to mean that a character is a one-dimensional prop serving as an object of sexual desire, and nothing else.

In other words, a porn game character.

 

[Mise]

I'd say the "defence" of the game is that the people who enjoy it don't seem to care about the issue that you're raising, even seem to prefer it the way it is, instead of the way it would need to be for you to enjoy it.
In a cultural sense it's not about money (although in the market-sense it of course is), it's about the audience that gets exactly the product they want.

While your personal opinion may be that the game is "crap", the audience seems to disagree, so the game achieves exactly what it is there for - to provide entertainment for its audience.

Thanks for stating the obvious. As I said, we're in violent agreement. Most gamers prefer crap games, because most gamers are complete morons. Hence things like Gamergate, and the shrill, frothing rage against the SJW boogeyman.

 

[Ryika]

I guess I was under the impression that there was some disagreement because of the negative way in which you phrased it, but it seems you just have a rather negative image of people in general. ^^

 

[Farm Boy]

With mods even if the creator of the game had no intention of 'all women in bikinis', the player can make the game that way. Mods can make them all nude, too.

I don't like that in some of the 'video games are sexist' articles I've read, they bring up stuff like Rapelay. Even if it came on a disk, played on desktop/laptop, porn games are not 'video games'.

And the Saw series isn't cinematography.

I'm not sure that in a world full of video game murder simulators I'm particularly shocked that a rape simulator got production value spent on it. I'm not even sure it's actually any cause for concern above Call of Duty, or something like that. Most parents wouldn't let kids openly play Rapelay in the living room, so at least that one is still shunned as inappropriate. A video game can certainly be a violently sexist and mysoginistic fantasy without video games being sexist and mysoginistic fantasies in general, or video gamers being any great example of such.

I guess I got thinking about it as I watched my son play Overwatch on an empty level and he had the character jump off a cliff. He asked why the character screamed. What's really the answer there, other than, "He doesn't want to die?" Overwatch is a pretty tame example of that.