Anyone who has played a video game in the last 10 years will know that the industry is fairly rife with direct and indirect sexism, but a new Kickstarter campaign which seeks to create a web series about these issues has caused a whole lot of controversy within the community. Is sexism the last gaming-taboo?
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It would be refreshing to see more female protagonists who don't look like supermodels and the occassion lead that is far from it (like Brienne of Tarth). Variety is after all, the spice of life.
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My point here is that feminist make it seem like females are ALWAYS sexulized and treated like objects in video games and then pretends that it doesn't happen to the other sex at all. We see over-sexualized males, both androgynous and transgendered (Poison), but no one seems to complain about them.
Sure, there are a ton of scantily clad women in many, many games, but when you consider that male characters get the "beefcake" treatment 9 times out of 10 as well, you start to realize that it's never really been a gender thing. It's just lazy design. It's just developers mistaking aesthetic idealism for interesting characterization.
And it may just be old fashioned exploitation many times as well. Either way, both genders get the treatment in one way or another.
<but no such controversy appears when the vast majority of men in videogames have abs that are so well defined they look a canal system.>
Men generally don't have body image or appearance issues. That's why (main) male video game characters can be widely celebrated equally regardless of looks. Mario, Marcus Fenix, Nathan Drake, Link, (insert GTA main character here), Kratos, (Old) Solid Snake, etcetera.
"Men GENERALLY don't have body image or appearance issues"
Generally is the keyword here, how did you miss that?
Lots of people have appearance/image issues not just women or homosexuals, everyone at some point in the day or time in their life has image/appearance issuses. Men just don't take it to as high of an extream as women do.
And where is the proof of that statistic?
I never could understand this double standard about sexism in video games.
It's "sexism" and a "bad portrayal" of women in video games when a female character is not wearing a lot.
http://www.iphonebrand.com/...
But not "sexism" or a "bad portrayal" of men when a male character does not wear much?
http://gowfactorfiction.hos...
http://static.gamesradar.co...
It's "sexism" and a "bad portrayal" of women in video games when a female character is wearing tight clothes.
http://images.wikia.com/mas...
http://images2.wikia.nocook...
But not "sexism" or a "bad portrayal" of men when a male character is seen wearing tight clothes?
http://img.gamespot.com/gam...
http://s3.ecetia.com/files/...
http://www.fightersgenerati...
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It's "sexism" and a "bad portrayal" of women when the woman does it but when the male does it, it's all good.
That's like saying "Women should only wear this and should only act like that.".
Why the h#ll would people (like Anita Sarkeesian) talk about equality when they want to restrict what female character(s) say, do and wear?
Male characters are not restricted, so why should female characters be?
Video games got male sterotype too, are male characters restricted to avoid them? NO. Is it a problem? NO.
http://holygrenade.com/2012...
For political correctness has NO place in gaming. Disagree?
Then you might not like the following.
Pokemon: You catch animals and make them do battle.
God of War: Need I say a thing?
Uncharted 2/3/GA: Drake steals things (mostly when he needs to but you get the point).
Street Fighter: Fighting is "wrong".
And the list goes on and on.
If people really feel this way about gaming, make your own games.
That scam artist (Anita Sarkeesian) got $158,917 so she can "research" (LMFAO XD) sexism in video gaming (even though she can just look up Wiki pages and walkthroughs for FREE). You mean to tell me she can't use some of her funds to at least learn how to make games?
FIN... 7_7
My woman wears all that because she has a great body and wants to look sexy for me.
If i want to see a fat girl i will go to a fast food restaurant. I dont need to see it in a video game where it is suppose to be a fantasy world.
This man speaks truth! lol I know lots of women who openly addmit they dress sluty for attention its their choice how they dress. I didn't pick what they wear. I do agree women in video games for the most part are always Portrayed wrongly. A good example of a game portraying women right imo is HL2 with Alyx Vance, shes strong, smart, can handle herself, shes not sluty but she is still a very sexy and beautifull women with out flashing her boobs all over the place.
I don't think women like being looked at as some form of sex toy, because that's pretty fucking degrading. I like to think that they value themselves higher than that. Because, at the end of the day, they're human regardless of what gender they are. If I don't think I'm some kind of pornsack, then why should they?
I want to see 'whatever' girls in video games. I don't care if they're fat, or have a ridiculously sculpted cg ass like miranda, so long as they have a story to tell. I'm not going to fuck a video game, so any enjoyment that shit could bring me is marginal at best.
People hold this idea that if a woman is beautiful she must not have intelligence to go with it.
Remember many woman that dress sexy have more brains and make more money then you and i combined. Theres nothing "degrading" about that.
While sexism and racism exist in our culture, there are times when folks get overly sensitive about it. They actively look for it and end up seeing what they want to see in order to confirm their beliefs. This is why a few individuals saw Lara Croft being raped when those of us of a sound and rational mind saw nothing of the sort.
Its ironic really that those upset about the portrayal of women in game are attacking a studio trying to change one of the most hyper-sexualized female characters in gaming. Seriously, this is crying wolf and IMO is just pissing people off. If you really think there is a major problem with sexism in gaming, attacking those on your side isn't a good idea.
Women have to deal with a lot, but this scene did NOTHING to draw attention to a full on rape, it drew attention to the possibility and that the strong female lead had to overcome her situation. To deny the fact that that is what the development team were going for when making a game that is trying to reach the cinematic quality of movies and games like Uncharted is laughable. It is what they were trying to show, people just over reacted to it. YOU are also falling victim to your own diagnosis...saying people are looking for problems...well me AND you are both denying what was going on because we don't want people bagging on our games, face it...its what the dev team was going for, emotional impact through the struggles of being a woman...its real, its raw and its good.
So what I'm saying is that the feminists and the gamers need to meet in the middle because rape was implied though not drawn through and the feminists over reacted and the gamers will naturally deny anything against games. When I first heard about this I immediately thought the anti game crowd was out in full force, but then I saw it and you can tell by the mans physical demeanor from the body language to the creepy subtle laugh to the camera angle that he had "intensions", but the feminists dont see this scene as someone who sees a movie and understands the emotional impact of the situation.
Look at my comment history...I'm not some feminist lady, I enjoy my games to the full extent and I WILL be picking up tomb raider. But look at it logically...go and talk with your woman about rape...show the scene to a non gamer or a woman and they will agree....the guy was about to rape her....but they will also agree it was for emotional impact because nothing happened and the strong female lead overcame her situation. I agreed with you because I dont see what the fuss is about. Especially since in a twisted metal trailer there was a scene that people thought was rape, but in reality the scene didnt fit the bill and sweet tooth is a MURDERER, so you can dismiss that easily. But the Lara croft scene fits because its what the team is going for a cinematic emotional experience, the male (man part of some underground group low morals,stuck on an island) has reason to do something like this. So its all subjective and it is ridiculous to deny that this scene wasn't an implied rape to draw emotion from the player.
Lastly before you say "BUT crystal dynamics denied the implied rape"....they only denied it after one of the lead designer said thats what they were going for ,but it drew too much negative attention http://www.computerandvideo...
Its perfectly natural to deny this so as not to draw to much against the release of the game, they just want to move on.
+ bubble.
Now to the matter at hand. As the guy said above me, political correctness has no place in video games. This reminds me of the whole PETA thing which got on the Mario Bro. games for the squirrel outfit. Video games are a work of art and entertainment. I don't see people getting bent out of shape for the millions of movies with "perfect" actors and actresses. What about all those magazines with Keyword: REAL women showing almost nude pics of themselves in "teen" magazines, but they want to attack someones made up world. There is so much going on with the world then how females are portrayed in people's work of art. This just seems like a huge self esteem issue and all i got to say about that is well here let this brother explain.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
Parental Advisory on Video above! Peace and love !
Very *very* fine.
Better to give the fat/ugly ones rolemodels to live up to. Otherwise they'll just accept being fat/ugly and no-one wants that. (Except the fat/ugly ones that are too pigheaded (lol pun) to change)
That's not exactly true they usually play bullshit casual games facebook, ios, wii games.
There is over a 10,000 to 1 ratio of male to female players in hardcore games. FPS, RPG, Action, etc.
We like tits and ass let us have it. We buy and play the damn games.