186 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

The voice acting on the other demons is male, I'm pretty sure.

[slimgrin]

Plaintiff wrote...

Games are social commentary, by their very nature, and as such they are legitimate targets for criticism. Every media product is.

The games that get made reflect and impact the society in which they were produced, and "we just didn't think about it" isn't an acceptable excuse. If you fail to think about what your product is saying, then you deserve every single criticism that is lobbied against it.

No, games are art. And as such the degree of social commentary is up to the creator.

Modifié par slimgrin, 06 juillet 2013 - 05:49 .

[AresKeith]

Rawgrim wrote...

Its probably just based on a succubus. Simple as that.

[Cigne]

Wulfram wrote...

Zazzerka wrote...

So 64 Flogs walk into a bar wrote...

I was thinking, wouldn't it be better if they change their form to suit the person who they are trying to seduce/possess?

How do you suggest they implement that into a video game? They'd have to make a lot of assumptions about you and your character.

Base their appearance on who the PC romances

It would still require they spend zots creating a male version, but I think it's a great idea. You'd have to reserve use of the Desire demon until after the romance has begun, though.

Keep the idealized succubus/incubus body model, and morph the romance's face into it...

Desire demon: "Isn't this what you really want?"
Warden: "Wow. Alistair, how come you aren't built like that?"
Alistair: "Hey!"

[So 64 Flogs walk into a bar]

Wulfram wrote...

The voice acting on the other demons is male, I'm pretty sure.

Well, so is the voice actor for the deepstalkers .

They aren't human, they are completely different to what we know. Male and female do not exist for demons, but SOMEONE has to do their voice acting. You can't hire a demon to do it.

Modifié par So 64 Flogs walk into a bar, 06 juillet 2013 - 05:56 .

[Plaintiff]

IceHawk-181 wrote...
I am plentifully aware of what DG is and what he thinks he does within the medium. I would also argue that an individual who characterizes disagreement with his decisions as the fanbases' "difficulty in wrapping their heads around" these uber-complex topics little more than self-gratifying egoism and that the decision to input sexual politics into games has actually degraded, not improved, Companion Arcs in each and every Bioware production since ME1.

Pffffft. There are no sexual politics in ME1, or 2, or even in 3, unless you count the mere inclusion of alternate sexualities and reproductive systems as a political statement in and of itself.

The humanoid species of the John Carter of Mars books, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, are oviparous. Is that a political statement?
 

I would prefer the fictional medium to not be bound by progressive politics and have characters ranging from ditzy sexualized women and boorish hulking man-idiots to deep and intelligent moral compasses based on the dictums of plot without worrying whatsoever that some Sophomore coming out of their first taste of Gender Studies is going to take offense and post a Youtube video decrying the overly sexualized nature of a video game character or the lack of homosexual romance options in a product marketed to heterosexual male teenagers.

It should instead be bound by your admittedly conservative politics, right?

Yes, don't put politics or difficult issues into games made for heterosexual male teenagers. We wouldn't want them to start thinking about things and having opinions. And the notion that a game company might try to appeal to anyone other than heterosexual male teenagers is absurd.
 

The assumption of responsibility for a Progressive Cultural Impetus on the part of the Gaming Media and certain Developers is part of the reason why I think quality AAA titles are harder to come by these days.

It is everyone's responsibility to promote an equitable society where all members are treated fairly and with respect.

Artists are expected to explain and defend their work if they are to be taken seriously. If games are to be taken seriously as an artform, and many gamers and game developers insist that they should, then they must be held to the same level of scrutiny.
 

When an amazing game like The Last of Us is attacked for not doing "enough" to advance positive female characterizations or we start pretending that making NPCs PC-Sexual is somehow an improvement over more in-depth and independent characterizations we have a problem.

Some people disagree with your opinion of one game, so now "we" have a problem? Who's "we"? Sounds like it's just your problem, and one that you invented for yourself at that.

Explain how giving a character a set sexuality makes them in any way more "in-depth" than a character whose sexuality is fluid.

[Kallimachus]

It's because everybody knows women do not enjoy their sexuality for its own sake, they just use their sexuality as weapons to manipulate, trick and control innocent men. That is why women hold more power in society than men (who never could or would use their sexuality in such a nefarious way).

[/sarcasm]

The trope of the evil demon seductress is so very obviously misogynistic. And it is actually very sad that it has found itself a home in the DA franchise. That possible fact that it is based on traditional misogyny (like the succubus myth) is no excuse.
It is also untrue that other demons are genderless. While the form of some of them is indeed without gender characteristic (the rage demon comes to mind), no one could mistake the pride demon to be female. And to make it clearer that they are not female, all demons in the game (except the desire demon) are dubbed by men. And btw that also goes to the two spirit types we have seen - Valor and Justice were both clearly male.
Even in the two cases in the game when demons seemed to defy these gender appearances, as soon as they reverted to their demonic forms they reverted to their original sex - Herren changes to a feminine desire demon in the Darkspawn Chronicles, and the baroness changes to a male sounding (and arguably looking) pride demon in Awakening.

Moreover it is simply not true that desire = sex. Greed, gluttony and power hunger are all forms of desire. Even within the game, desire demons rarely offer actual sex. To the Templar in the 4th floor of the circle tower the demoness offered domesticity. to Lady Harimann she offered political power, to Feynriel she offers his father's love, to Isabela she offered her old status as a captain (complete with boat and crew), and to Aveline she offered her dead husband restored (while continually caressing her breasts). To connor the desire demon offered to heal his father.
In fact, the only place where the demon offers sex (that I recall) is to thw warden during the "Arl of Redcliffe" quest and even there it was accompanied by other options.

So there's no escaping the conclusion that the hyper-sexualization of the desire demon is very simple misogyny.

Modifié par Kallimachus, 06 juillet 2013 - 06:04 .

[keightdee]

Why does a desire demon look like a naked human woman? Laziness. Lack of imagination. Misogyny. You know, the usual.

Considering that "desire" as a "sin" or feeling addresses more than mere sexual desire, the demon could just as easily have been a purse full of sovereigns. (...Or a purse full of Sovereigns! I'm sorry, I haven't had any coffee yet.)

Kallimachus wrote...

It's because everybody knows women do not enjoy their sexuality for its own sake, they just use their sexuality as weapons to manipulate, trick and control innocent men. That is why women hold more power in society than men (who never could or would use their sexuality in such a nefarious way).

[/sarcasm]

Modifié par keightdee, 06 juillet 2013 - 05:57 .

[Plaintiff]

slimgrin wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Games are social commentary, by their very nature, and as such they are legitimate targets for criticism. Every media product is.

The games that get made reflect and impact the society in which they were produced, and "we just didn't think about it" isn't an acceptable excuse. If you fail to think about what your product is saying, then you deserve every single criticism that is lobbied against it.

No, games are art. And as such the degree of social commentary is up to the creator.

Art is a media product, and like all media products, is automatically a comment on society, regardless of the creator's intentions.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 06 juillet 2013 - 05:58 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

So 64 Flogs walk into a bar wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

So 64 Flogs walk into a bar wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

I wouldn't call a pride demon agendered.

Go on

Well they look pretty much clearly male to me. Most of them do.

In what way does it look male?

For pride demons it's the no breast, harsh strong features, extremly muscled arms, nothing that you could really call hair, harsh deep voices, huge steroid like muscles and well defined almost chistled pecks, really I'm not seeing the feminine components of this thing at all.

[berelinde]

Or if they were unwilling to accept that 40%+ of their player base is not attracted to females, at least give us a dialogue option along the lines of "Whatever you're selling, I'm not even remotely interested."

That line would actually work as a dialogue-based switch to use male animations from that point onward.

Considering the importance demons will have in DAI, this isn't just political grandstanding. A desire demon who isn't even remotely attractive to a significant portion of the people playing the game is not very effective. Of course, that assumes that the argument that desire demons should be female is anything other than an attempt to preserve a sense of male privilege and entitlement.

[slimgrin]

Plaintiff wrote...

slimgrin wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Games are social commentary, by their very nature, and as such they are legitimate targets for criticism. Every media product is.

The games that get made reflect and impact the society in which they were produced, and "we just didn't think about it" isn't an acceptable excuse. If you fail to think about what your product is saying, then you deserve every single criticism that is lobbied against it.

No, games are art. And as such the degree of social commentary is up to the creator.

Art is a media product, and like all media products, is automatically a comment on society, regardless of the creator's intentions.

That is the most contrived definition of art I've read in a long time. As an artist, I'm glad that in reality, I am beholden to no one.

Modifié par slimgrin, 06 juillet 2013 - 06:12 .

[Eveangaline]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

So 64 Flogs walk into a bar wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

So 64 Flogs walk into a bar wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

I wouldn't call a pride demon agendered.

Go on

Well they look pretty much clearly male to me. Most of them do.

In what way does it look male?

For pride demons it's the no breast, harsh strong features, extremly muscled arms, nothing that you could really call hair, harsh deep voices, huge steroid like muscles and well defined almost chistled pecks, really I'm not seeing the feminine components of this thing at all.

Dude, that thing doesn't look human in the least. It doesn't have a defined gender the same way most people can't tell the gender of a tiger they're looking at. They don't assume the tiger is male because it doesn't have human breasts on it's chest. Same way this thing doesn't register as close enough to human to really gender it.

[So 64 Flogs walk into a bar]

@darth brotarian

Demons are a COMPLETELY different thing to humans. To use human biology as a way to judge their gender is ridiculous. They do not reproduce as we do, what need for gender would there be?

Female frogs do not have breasts. Do they automatically look male? No, because we know better than so as to use human sexual features as a template for figuring out the gender of a completely different thing.

Demons are not corrupted humans like Hurlocks are, and so any resemblance to human biology is simply design as opposed to a comment on their gender.

Modifié par So 64 Flogs walk into a bar, 06 juillet 2013 - 06:08 .

[Kallimachus]

Filament wrote...

I seem to recall at least a couple female pride demons, such as the Baroness.

As soon as the baronness reverts to her demonic form she becomes male. Both her form and her voice are male.

[SpazzKidJake]

 I might just be making this up but each demon has resembled a type of sin almost. 

• Rage Demon-Burning hatred and angrer the agressive type of demon. WRATH.
  
• Sloth Demon- Lazy Monotone doesn't do much. SLOTH.
  
• Hunger Demon- Skeletons, Devouring corpses. Desiring human flesh due to the lack of a body. GLUTTONY/ ENVY. 
• Sylvans Trees- They show and extreme jelousy of other living things.ENVY.
  
• Pride- Monstrously powerful. PRIDE.
  
• Desire Demon- Women/Succubus. Fufilling one's true desire, feeding off one's desires. LUST.
• Abbominations- Those who gave in, power hungry.  GREED
  

The desire demon reminds me of Lilith; A succubus basically the incarnation of lust. It dates back to the Adam and Eve kind of story. The women holding a sort of power over men and using their lust or desires against them.

So long story short they demons could be described by their sin representation. Lust/Desire being the obvious one most commonly reffered to by sexual lust or desire of power, fame ect. Although as stated above they could have used both female and male models for it; Succubus and Incubus.

Modifié par SpazzKidJake, 06 juillet 2013 - 06:13 .

[Cigne]

berelinde wrote...

Or if they were unwilling to accept that 40%+ of their player base is not attracted to females, at least give us a dialogue option along the lines of "Whatever you're selling, I'm not even remotely interested."

That line would actually work as a dialogue-based switch to use male animations from that point onward.

<snip>

This is a good idea, although the line you used as an example could also infer a simple lack of interest in dealing with demons.

[Airdeen]

IceHawk-181 wrote...

nightscrawl wrote...

IceHawk-181 wrote...

Third, regardless of what the gaming media would like to believe not every game has to be a social commentary dealing with politics in the real world and not every collection of pixels needs to be an upstanding, rational, politically correct, and respectable representation of some sexuality, gender, ethnicity, race, et al.

You should watch David's GDC presentation.

I am plentifully aware of what DG is and what he thinks he does within the medium. I would also argue that an individual who characterizes disagreement with his decisions as the fanbases' "difficulty in wrapping their heads around" these uber-complex topics little more than self-gratifying egoism and that the decision to input sexual politics into games has actually degraded, not improved, Companion Arcs in each and every Bioware production since ME1.
 
I would prefer the fictional medium to not be bound by progressive politics and have characters ranging from ditzy sexualized women and boorish hulking man-idiots to deep and intelligent moral compasses based on the dictums of plot without worrying whatsoever that some Sophomore coming out of their first taste of Gender Studies is going to take offense and post a Youtube video decrying the overly sexualized nature of a video game character or the lack of homosexual romance options in a product marketed to heterosexual male teenagers.
 
The assumption of responsibility for a Progressive Cultural Impetus on the part of the Gaming Media and certain Developers is part of the reason why I think quality AAA titles are harder to come by these days.
 
When an amazing game like The Last of Us is attacked for not doing "enough" to advance positive female characterizations or we start pretending that making NPCs PC-Sexual is somehow an improvement over more in-depth and independent characterizations we have a problem.
 
Case in point: The Desire Demon
 
It is meant to be a sexualized female form in an effort to co-opt the mythological conception of the Succubus and play upon the normalized reaction of attractiveness that the principally male heterosexual demographic playing the game will have.

It serves its purpose and does so quite well.

I think you proved Gaider's point in that speech pretty well with your response here.

I also think you are very wrong in assuming that DA is aimed at straight male gamers. To me it seems they are working towards turning that around and aim the games at the massmarket, including women and homosexual gamers.

And it is working, in his speech he pointed at the fact that of all gamers (incl. facebook and mmo) nearly half of them are women (47% to be exact) and the average age of gamers today is 30. For DA specifically 30% of the gamers are women and roughly 25% of gamers tried out homosexual romances. That's a significant amount of people who do not belong in the old straight male teenager group.

The gaming demographic is changing, and some developers are trying to appeal to more people.

[Secretlyapotato]

Kallimachus wrote...

Filament wrote...

I seem to recall at least a couple female pride demons, such as the Baroness.

As soon as the baronness reverts to her demonic form she becomes male. Both her form and her voice are male.

I wouldn't say it's male just because it's deep, it's simply a scary demonic voice.

The desire demon has a similar voice that can be heard subtley in the backround whenever she talks.

[Plaintiff]

slimgrin wrote...
That is the most contrived definition of art I've read in a long time.

Whatever else art may be, it is unquestionably a media product. That's the reality of the situation, and to pretend otherwise is dense. When you put a product out for public consumption, it becomes part of our cultural media, and as such is a ripe target for criticism on every level, including the socio-political level.

As an artist, I'm glad that in reality, I am beholden to no one.

Did anyone say you were? It has nothing to do with being "beholden" to anything.

You have no responsibility to your audience at all. You don't have to give a **** about their feelings, and they don't have to give a **** about your intent.

But a smart artist is aware that their art has the power to hurt others, and is open to criticism. If you didn't think about the messages people might extract from your work, then you have zero grounds on which to claim misinterpretation.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 06 juillet 2013 - 06:39 .