491 réponses à ce sujet

[Crypticqa]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:18 .

[billy the squid]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:18 .

[philippe willaume]

Plaintiff wrote...

Yendor_Trawz wrote...
Games shouldn't be designed to represent the market they are selling to, they should be populated with the people who the writers and designers deem to be the demographic of that setting.

And what a coincidence that the demographics of all their settings are almost always exclsuively white, straight men! Even when they make a game based on a film franchise that features women extensively, female characters are only added at the last minute!

When you try to insert political correctness into a fictional setting to appease the perceived sensibilities of your market, you are effectively committing self censorship. Its the first nail in the coffin of good art.

You heard it here first, folks. To make good art, you have to be an exclusionary bigot.

My own opinion is that it almost always looks like tokenism when you do. I believe it's fine to exclude certain races, sexualities, left handers, whatever, within a fictional setting. If that setting were meant to mirror our own society, then yes, it would be misrepresentative.

Then you need to crack open a dictionary and look up the actual meaning of tokenism.

"Tokenism" isn't a problem, if the minority characters are written like real people instead of shallow stereotypes. Writers who hide behind the fear of being "accused of tokenism" are only exposing their inability to think of minorities as real people. What they're actually saying is "I don't know how to write a coloured, female or gay person, because I'm incapable of understanding that their brains work exactly the same as mine, because I am unable to look past their totally superficial differences. Despite this, I have no problem writing elves, dwarves and space aliens"

It's an absolutely pathetic excuse. The solution to tokenism is learning to write better, not excluding minorities from your work in order to avoid confronting your own ginorance.

I obviously can be wrong but I don't think this is what he is saying.
I am a straight male and kind of old too boot. As for white i don't know it looks like it but Europe has been invaded a lot , and done a fair bit of invasion those last 4000 years.

I understood his post as being in agreement with what i believe is your position, which happens to be mine as well.
I think he is coming from the angle,  of saying that basically  publishing company should be more like Bio
ware and because they are not you end up with situation like A:CM  where you could have played a woman and where you end up with a token half cooked  presence.
 
For the setting

the same goes for the settings, Sure a setting can be set up to justify a bigoted position. 
I.E the Gor series, on subject of witch I totally agree with M.Moorkook when he subject that those book should be placed on the top shelves  i.e. in the man's owns words "I’m not for censorship but I am for strategies which marginalize stuff that works to objectify women and suggests women enjoy being beaten." ( and yes it worries me that John Norman/  Dr. John Lange is one of the best E-seller) may be it is the "Please, by me master" that does it.

But equally the setting of the Witcher explores the lowed of the society  and the world of the secret
service is what it should be
Ie a world  where by definition male and female are objectify and where the population is dived on two categories, those who embrace and thrive and those who can't do anything but suffer it and vent their anger and frustration on an alien race, which they well know are not the cause of the misery of their present situation but are far easier to fight that the real cause of their condition

IE You can not have a world set in N.S.D.A.P  territories  that don't t discriminate  Gays, the mentally ill, the communist , the gypsy and the Jews.

For me the fundamental difference between Gor and the Witcher is that as in the witcher the  player/main char we can take action to oppose the setting whereas Tarl Cabot flipping enjoy the ride.

 Phil

Modifié par philippe willaume, 24 février 2013 - 01:31 .

[Lady Mortho]

To sit on their luxorious thron and gaze out at the men in the fields!

[Plaintiff]

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...
Oh I see how it is, so when a woman gets upset when female marines arent put in an action game it is totally an acceptable response and an example of how Men are ruining the game industry with their "Anti-women sexist power agenda" but when a man points out an actual example of anti-male sexism in videogames it is called "grossly misrepresenting material"? Thats one hell of a double standard you got there, some might even call it "sexism".

Your lack of integrity has nothing to do with your gender, which, up until this point, I did not even know, and everything to do with your behaviour.

You grossly misrepresented the content of the original article you linked to. You grossly misrepresented the arguments of other posters, including myself, in this very thread.

So no, I'm not going to take anything you say at face value. At this point, chances are it's a strawman, if not an outright falsehood.

I have not misrepresented anything including your arguments, it is not my fault that you arguments are so weak and petty that they are so easily turned against you, and now instead of trying to engage in civil discussion you resort to petty personal attacks and block your ears to all reason. Typical.

I've not made any personal attacks against you.

You have been saying things in this thread that are not true. It's really that simple. So when you say The Longest Journey, or any game, for that matter, contains sexism against men, I am disinclined to believe you.

If you're not trolling or purposefully lying, then the only other option is that you honestly don't understand why the things you are saying are demonstrably false.

apart from the "all women writing staff" comment in the OP please demonstrate how my comments are false. You may not like my comments but that doesnt make them any less true.

For starters, you accused me of supporting a double-standard based on gender. But I couldn't have possibly been doing that because your gender is not known to me. That's a misrepresentation of my argument.

You misrepresented the content of the article. You said that the author was accusing men of being:

so afraid of strong women that they must reinforce the status quo by depicting females in video games as either sex objects or relegating them to "second-tier roles"?

But that's not really what the article is about at all. It is simply addressing the fact that female protagonists are rare, and discussing possible causes for why that might be. At no point does the author accuse men of being so petty and vindictive and afraid that they need to reinforce their position by neglecting and insulting women. If anything, the article suggests that this neglect is unintentional.

All the author points out is that the industry is operating on a belief that female protagonists are less successful, despite the fact that the "research" done to arrive at this conclusion is very flawed, and fails to take into account dicrepancies such as the difference between the funding that a female-centric game gets compared to a male-centric one.

[Gandalf-the-Fabulous]

Plaintiff wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...
Oh I see how it is, so when a woman gets upset when female marines arent put in an action game it is totally an acceptable response and an example of how Men are ruining the game industry with their "Anti-women sexist power agenda" but when a man points out an actual example of anti-male sexism in videogames it is called "grossly misrepresenting material"? Thats one hell of a double standard you got there, some might even call it "sexism".

Your lack of integrity has nothing to do with your gender, which, up until this point, I did not even know, and everything to do with your behaviour.

You grossly misrepresented the content of the original article you linked to. You grossly misrepresented the arguments of other posters, including myself, in this very thread.

So no, I'm not going to take anything you say at face value. At this point, chances are it's a strawman, if not an outright falsehood.

I have not misrepresented anything including your arguments, it is not my fault that you arguments are so weak and petty that they are so easily turned against you, and now instead of trying to engage in civil discussion you resort to petty personal attacks and block your ears to all reason. Typical.

I've not made any personal attacks against you.

You have been saying things in this thread that are not true. It's really that simple. So when you say The Longest Journey, or any game, for that matter, contains sexism against men, I am disinclined to believe you.

If you're not trolling or purposefully lying, then the only other option is that you honestly don't understand why the things you are saying are demonstrably false.

apart from the "all women writing staff" comment in the OP please demonstrate how my comments are false. You may not like my comments but that doesnt make them any less true.

For starters, you accused me of supporting a double-standard based on gender. But I couldn't have possibly been doing that because your gender is not known to me. That's a misrepresentation of my argument.

I am pretty sure it is not that hard to figure out my gender and I do find it hard to believe that you were genuinely clueless as to what gender I am, but I have no proof so I must give you the benefit of the doubt.

Plaintiff wrote...

You misrepresented the content of the article. You said that the author was accusing men of being:

so afraid of strong women that they must reinforce the status quo by depicting females in video games as either sex objects or relegating them to "second-tier roles"?

But that's not really what the article is about at all. It is simply addressing the fact that female protagonists are rare, and discussing possible causes for why that might be. At no point does the author accuse men of being so petty and vindictive and afraid that they need to reinforce their position by neglecting and insulting women. If anything, the article suggests that this neglect is unintentional.

If it is unintentional then what is the problem? But unfortunately you are wrong, the author does indeed claim that it is a fear among the male dominated games industry as implied all through the article and clearly stated in this quote.

The world of writing and designing games is tremendously male-dominated; sadly, this absurd fear of creating complex, human women who star in games is not limited to Creighton, but is a widespread problem.

You can find this quote just under the Tomb Raider picture if you think I am lying or "grossly misrepresenting material" as you accused me earlier.

[Yuqi]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:19 .

[sarakirrer]

Okay, so, just, about TLJ: Dreamfall for a second here. The reason why Kian (who I assume is the one being discussed here) reveres women is because he comes from a historically matriarchal society that does the same. The reason why this isn't the same as the developers of TLJ reinforcing ideas of "reverse-sexism" or whatever, is that the ideals of the Azadi society (to which Kian belongs) are not seen as the norm by the majority of the characters in the game. I mean, besides revering women specifically, they basically believe that Azadi in general are superior to ANY other people. Other characters in the game often comment about the Azadi faith and culture being really bizarre to everyone but the Azadi themselves (it's expected that the player will empathize with the views of those characters and not the views of the militaristic Azadi).

Moreover, the Azadi are pretty much the bad guys of the game (matriarchal society = bad guys = how is this sexist against men?)... And over the course of the story, Kian begins to question his faith and the orders from his (female) superiors. I found him to be a much more evolved character than a person who simply bowed and scraped to any woman without reason, despite his habit of addressing women as "Mistress" and treating them with more respect than men. He didn't get as much content as April or Zoe, but the content that he did have was rich and was important to the story.

TL;DR: As a character, yes, HE holds "reverse-sexist" (?) ideals (that reflect the structure of his society); however, TLJ: Dreamfall does not present those ideas as being okay.

Modifié par sarakirrer, 24 février 2013 - 02:20 .

[philippe willaume]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:20 .

[Yendor_Trawz]

Plaintiff wrote...

Yendor_Trawz wrote...
Games shouldn't be designed to represent the market they are selling to, they should be populated with the people who the writers and designers deem to be the demographic of that setting.

And what a coincidence that the demographics of all their settings are almost always exclsuively white, straight men! Even when they make a game based on a film franchise that features women extensively, female characters are only added at the last minute!

When you try to insert political correctness into a fictional setting to appease the perceived sensibilities of your market, you are effectively committing self censorship. Its the first nail in the coffin of good art.

You heard it here first, folks. To make good art, you have to be an exclusionary bigot.

My own opinion is that it almost always looks like tokenism when you do. I believe it's fine to exclude certain races, sexualities, left handers, whatever, within a fictional setting. If that setting were meant to mirror our own society, then yes, it would be misrepresentative.

Then you need to crack open a dictionary and look up the actual meaning of tokenism.

"Tokenism" isn't a problem, if the minority characters are written like real people instead of shallow stereotypes. Writers who hide behind the fear of being "accused of tokenism" are only exposing their inability to think of minorities as real people. What they're actually saying is "I don't know how to write a coloured, female or gay person, because I'm incapable of understanding that their brains work exactly the same as mine, because I am unable to look past their totally superficial differences. Despite this, I have no problem writing elves, dwarves and space aliens"

It's an absolutely pathetic excuse. The solution to tokenism is learning to write better, not excluding minorities from your work in order to avoid confronting your own ignorance.

Wow, angry much? Your entire response is strawman and a distortion of what I said.

Best thing I can do is leave your comments to stand as a testament to your ignorance.

But I will highlight this gem of your deluded reasoning - You somehow turned self censorship (which I'm against) into bigotry (which I'm also against) Brilliant. That takes some skill and a warped agenda. 

I think the only thing 'folks heard here first' is that you are blindingly good at missing a point and have no understanding of the basic concept of context.

[jillabender]

Yendor_Trawz wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Yendor_Trawz wrote...
Games shouldn't be designed to represent the market they are selling to, they should be populated with the people who the writers and designers deem to be the demographic of that setting.

And what a coincidence that the demographics of all their settings are almost always exclsuively white, straight men! Even when they make a game based on a film franchise that features women extensively, female characters are only added at the last minute!

When you try to insert political correctness into a fictional setting to appease the perceived sensibilities of your market, you are effectively committing self censorship. Its the first nail in the coffin of good art.

You heard it here first, folks. To make good art, you have to be an exclusionary bigot.

My own opinion is that it almost always looks like tokenism when you do. I believe it's fine to exclude certain races, sexualities, left handers, whatever, within a fictional setting. If that setting were meant to mirror our own society, then yes, it would be misrepresentative.

Then you need to crack open a dictionary and look up the actual meaning of tokenism.

"Tokenism" isn't a problem, if the minority characters are written like real people instead of shallow stereotypes. Writers who hide behind the fear of being "accused of tokenism" are only exposing their inability to think of minorities as real people. What they're actually saying is "I don't know how to write a coloured, female or gay person, because I'm incapable of understanding that their brains work exactly the same as mine, because I am unable to look past their totally superficial differences. Despite this, I have no problem writing elves, dwarves and space aliens"

It's an absolutely pathetic excuse. The solution to tokenism is learning to write better, not excluding minorities from your work in order to avoid confronting your own ignorance.

Wow, angry much? Your entire response is strawman and a distortion of what I said.

Best thing I can do is leave your comments to stand as a testament to your ignorance.

But I will highlight this gem of your deluded reasoning - You somehow turned self censorship (which I'm against) into bigotry (which I'm also against) Brilliant. That takes some skill and a warped agenda. 

I think the only thing 'folks heard here first' is that you are blindingly good at missing a point and have no understanding of the basic concept of context.

I don't think that you intended to say anything bigoted, but with respect, I'm bothered by the implications of your post.

Speaking just for myself, here's how your comment comes across to me:

"Because it's so difficult to write convincing minority characters who don't feel like token, shallow stereotypes, it's best not to include minority characters unless the story clearly requires it. Unless there's a clear justification for it, including minority characters will just come across as an attempt to be politically correct."

Again, I don't believe you intended to come across as insulting to typically underrepresented groups, but I think your comment can easily be perceived that way, because it shouldn't be difficult to portray gay or non-white characters, for example, as three-dimensional people - provided that one sees members of those groups as real people.

Of course, no one story-teller can be expected to be perfect, or to single-handedly solve the issue of inclusion - as I said earlier, I would be surprised if anyone truly expected that.

But I'm bothered by the idea of assuming that members of underrepresented groups were included in a given story just for the sake of being politically correct, and not simply because they're people, and there's no reason not to include them.

Modifié par jillabender, 24 février 2013 - 08:05 .

[Phaedros]

The role of women? The Commander! Every time...

[ReallyRue]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:20 .

[Dave of Canada]

I can't be the only one who's grown tired of every game being a political message nowadays.

[Harle Cerulean]

Dave of Canada wrote...

I can't be the only one who's grown tired of every game being a political message nowadays.

Frankly, I think this article should be required reading for... well, everyone, but especially everyone who thinks including women, non-white, and non-straight characters is "a political message."

[jillabender]

Harle Cerulean wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

I can't be the only one who's grown tired of every game being a political message nowadays.

Frankly, I think this article should be required reading for... well, everyone, but especially everyone who thinks including women, non-white, and non-straight characters is "a political message."

Thanks so much for that article - it captures what I was trying to get across far better then I ever could, and it's a great resource for historical facts that I wasn't aware of.

Modifié par jillabender, 24 février 2013 - 06:26 .

[Dave of Canada]

Harle Cerulean wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

I can't be the only one who's grown tired of every game being a political message nowadays.

Frankly, I think this article should be required reading for... well, everyone, but especially everyone who thinks including women, non-white, and non-straight characters is "a political message."

I don't see it. The fact remains that games--especially narrative driven ones--need to deal with uncomfortable subject matter in a very mature way, sometimes becoming parts of the themes in the storyline.

The fact that most stories nowadays claim to be mature, introduce subject matter which could be known as "mature" but refuses to deal with it or just dismisses it to pander comes across as wish fulfillment rather than say, actual narrative which may confront what people believe.

White-washing history and making sure we're not dealing with anything that can upset people is the very product of throwing politics into a game for no reason, you're not dealing with it and not making the people reflect upon it to the point that it becomes truly interesting. It's simply thrown in.

I'll take Dragon Age 2 for example, they introduced an all-bisexual cast (which I support) at the cost of any depth (which I loathe). The companions are thrown into the game, they're romanced and everyone praises how progressive it is when it's simply filling the wishes of both niches.

Introduce difficulties which can only occur when the relationship is one-way or another however, introduce actual depth and you've got the ability to make a player feel uncomfortable and known the challenges which actual people feel. By doing so, they might grow as a person and accept the harsh reality which they live in.

Until then, EA uses their politics and pandering as free marketing which is perhaps the most insulting thing about this entire affair.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 24 février 2013 - 06:15 .

[Volus Warlord]

Jayne126 wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

I can't be the only one who's grown tired of every game being a political message nowadays.

Let's make the World a better place for everyone!

Yes. Everyone should be more like me. Then then the world would be a better place because I am perfect. Duh. 

So the rest of you change and be more like me-share the same ideals, beliefs, moral structure, yadda yadda. Essentially intellectual uniformity. Otherwise you are barriers to progress.

So, if we were all bleeding heart liberal paranoid conspiricy theorists with a corporate account for LSD *cough*Ubisoft writers*cough* the world would be so much better.

Modifié par Volus Warlord, 24 février 2013 - 06:17 .

[legion999]

Modifié par Chris Priestly, 24 février 2013 - 11:21 .

[Volus Warlord]

Dave of Canada wrote...

I don't see it. The fact remains that games--especially narrative driven ones--need to deal with uncomfortable subject matter in a very mature way, sometimes becoming parts of the themes in the storyline.

The fact that most stories nowadays claim to be mature, introduce subject matter which could be known as "mature" but refuses to deal with it or just dismisses it to pander comes across as wish fulfillment rather than say, actual narrative which may confront what people believe.

White-washing history and making sure we're not dealing with anything that can upset people is the very product of throwing politics into a game for no reason, you're not dealing with it and not making the people reflect upon it to the point that it becomes truly interesting. It's simply thrown in.

I'll take Dragon Age 2 for example, they introduced an all-bisexual cast (which I support) at the cost of any depth (which I loathe). The companions are thrown into the game, they're romanced and everyone praises how progressive it is when it's simply filling the wishes of both niches.

Introduce difficulties which can only occur when the relationship is one-way or another however, introduce actual depth and you've got the ability to make a player feel uncomfortable and known the challenges which actual people feel. By doing so, they might grow as a person and accept the harsh reality which they live in.

Until then, EA uses their politics and pandering as free marketing which is perhaps the most insulting thing about this entire affair.

I think you are wrong and if I think it, it is true as my views are absolute truth. Therefore, I require no justification for saying you are wrong but as I pity lesser minds I will give one anyway.

First off, maturity is the biggest ongoing fallacy of all time. There is no definitive increase of self-responsibility, self control, and/or common sense with age, spare MAYBE age five. Maturity is essentially a meaningless buzzword. And because the word has no definitive meaning in application, it means whatever I want it to mean. So, maturity could mean touching on modern political issues and it could mean gore and boobs. Who really knows?

The motive behind putting politics in the game is mixed. First, you got a bit (or a ton!) of inherent writer's narcissim, and second for the attention grab. Video games are media, after all, and media by trade consists of a bunch of painfully persistant attention wh0res. Controversy becomes a form of advertising rather than anything serious in nature. Why expound your views when you already got the attention?

Please don't use Dragon Age 2 as an example for anything. I'd like to hope there is no correlation between the romance nonsense and lack of depth, but I cannot prove it with Bioware games. Let's just hope that Dragon Age 2 was an odd fluke/experiment/short dev time caused by EA's push for a convenient release date. We can only hope.

Your next paragraph is overwhelmingly naive. This is entertainment, not life lessons/character building. Try combine the two and you'll end up with stuff like Old Yeller.  I was not ready for that.

EA will be EA. 'Nuff said.