296 réponses à ce sujet

[Applepie_Svk]

Jesus Christ people go get a real problem. Go live in Liberia where people and villages are being wiped out by Ebola.

Oh I'm sorry let's hear about your first world video game problems instead. We need more gay and transsexual characters.

 

When you look on it, it´s quite entertaining, how Sarkeesian managed to troll so many people with an issues of gaming sexism, if she ever wanted to do something meaningful, she would start dealing with real world problems and not with the collection of money... and it´s still going on

[MWImexico]

I am. And I can't imagine a world in which sexism doesn't take place, and people are still flawed. Sexism is written into us on a biological level, and even when someone is being sexist without meaning to, it takes a lot for them to admit the problem and overcome it. Unless people are perfected(impossible in this world), sexism will exist. I guess my imagination is too grounded in that way. I don't believe that man(or woman)kind will ever get to the point where sexism doesn't exist, so it's not something I waste my time imagining. The only thing we can do is call people out when they do it and check ourselves when we do it.

 

Seriously? And what is the part of social influence in this matter? Are we what we are by nature or because we are conditioned to be that way?

 

 

But creating an imaginary world without sexism means we take out a key component of how flawed people really are. I'm not interested in that kind of world. It's boring, and doesn't reflect what I know to be true about human beings.

 

In my point of vue, it's not a "key" component but only a component among others. So I won't prononce myself without context, I don't know if I would qualify a game happening in an imaginary world without sexism as boring, that would depends on the story told.
 

[karushna5]

Jesus Christ people go get a real problem. Go live in Liberia where people and villages are being wiped out by Ebola.

Oh I'm sorry let's hear about your first world video game problems instead. We need more gay and transsexual characters.

 

This is very disingenuous, mostly because no one actually wants to talk and help the people they mention in these posts. In fact the only times people ever seem to bring this up outside the News is to shut down conversations. The fact is that is not only unkind disscussions because you are belittling the person you are talking to, but it is also it is belittling the group that you mention since they seem to only be there to show other people that complaining about anything is wrong because someone else has it worse.

 

And the fact is that does not help the conversation. People can have a problem without it being the worst problem, and they can care about something other than the biggest thing. It is similiar to getting a kid to eat because "there are starving people in___" when they hate the food. There are genuine problems in the world but pointing to them as only a way to make people be quiet about other problems isn't fair to either group. 

[Imported_beer]

 

 

Why is it that every single time this argument is used its always about how women and minorities should shut up about representation in gaming and just deal?

I wonder about this.

 

I hear it so often here. That since white young males play the most games, a world that reflects this is their right.

 

However, I wonder how many young, white men actually want this. Is this a universal desire for all white guys to want only one kind of game? Do all white guys only want to play as generic white dudes? Are all white guys completely offended and put off gaming if the game shows women who are not there just as eye-candy and LGBT characters who are not stereotypes?

 

Millennials are the most racially diverse generation in decades, so my gut tells me, young white men don't mind hanging out with or affiliating  with people of other races, genders and sexual orientations in games or in real life. I am confident that many people actually speaking up for non sexualized female characters and representation from other ethnicities and sexual orientations are indeed white, male and young.  Young men are not a monolith.

 

Then, I wonder, how long can they keep that "we buy it, so we are the only ones that need to be catered to" argument up? The composition of gamers is shifting and trending far more diverse. In 2001, the supremacy of the white young man was unchallenged. There was no point making a game that catered to anyone else. I gamed then, but I was fully aware that I was not...that demographic and there was no sense in expecting that a game would cater to me. But today, I don't expect a ethnic, gay, or female gamer to be as comfortable with that fact.

 

This is a cultural battle as much as it is a battle for sales. Today, a company wants to be on what it considers to be the right side of history, just as much as it wants to ensure sales because those are no longer two separate things. In such a case, it will have to choose whether it wants to be exclusionary, catering just to a subset of its core gaming population (young, white men who do NOT like inclusion of other races, genders or sexual orientations in a non gaming norm way). Or go broad with an eye for the future which includes more open minded core gamers, and gamers of the future.

 

They will have to choose sides. That is what is happening.

[Hellaine]

Jesus Christ people go get a real problem. Go live in Liberia where people and villages are being wiped out by Ebola.

Oh I'm sorry let's hear about your first world video game problems instead. We need more gay and transsexual characters.

 Sexism isn't a 'first world problem'.  That's a cruelly patronizing and not at all conductive thing to say.  This is a forum about video games.  And we're in a post specifically designated for the discussion of sexism in this video game.  So...  Personally, I think this is a pretty thought provoking thread and I'm intrigued by the well typed posts I'm reading from both sides.  But the 'lol get sum real issues hur hurr' 's seem mean spirited.

 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't heard of men who fish their keys out early so they won't have to spend extra time looking for them if the worst happends,

Actually, I do this if there's anyone within sight. Always have.

Like using b***h in general (since Fereldans love dogs), or using it to describe assertive women, which really doesn't commute culturally IMO, if women are in any way equal to men.

I don't think it connotes assertiveness.

This might also be a case of the writers being influenced by their environment. The DA writing team is primarily female, and led by a gay man. They may well use b***h playfully with each other (I realise I'm stereotyping here, but I'm trying to offer a plausible scenario, not describe how these people actually behave). They also happen to live and work in a city that is remarkably free with its profanity. The casual use of harsh language in Edmonton is actually quite surprising. If language were hurtful here, the city would just stop.

And: why in media the plots women get usually center around rape or pregnancy and childbirth (or, in worst cases, both at the same time)?

If you're going to tell a story about pregnancy or childbirth, it sort of has to have women in it.

[MissOuJ]

I personally enjoy Bioware's inclusive games (obviously) and I think every developer should be able to develop the games they want to make. Putting political pressure on developers and forcing them to develop games based on feminist or other ideologies is only going to create terrible games. Nobody in the industry is trying to oppress women, and in genres women buy more than others they are well-represented. Take point-and-click adventures, for example. They probably feature more female than male protagonists.

 

Okay, putting aside the fact that great games can be built with ideologies as their central theme (helloooo, BioShock!), how are we forcing anyone's hand?

 

People have been complaining all over the BSN and "cancelling their pre-orders" over stuff like the 8 abilities limit, the lack of healing spells and the lack of qunari hair styles, but the moment women point out a problem that makes them uncomfortable and say "I hope they didn't do this" we're "putting political pressure on developers and forcing them to develop games based on feminist or other ideologies"? The mind, it boggles.

 

I agree that nobody in the industry goes about their job trying to make the most misogynistic game ever, but their (and our) general sexist attitudes often bleed through. Nobody is taking the pitchforks to BW's office (I mean we only recently had the Why I Play BioWare -hashtag which had a huge number of women going "thank you for noticing and welcoming me"), we're telling them how this particual thing affects our experience as players asking for them to think about this issue and the way it affects us and our experience.

[phantomrachie]

Jesus Christ people go get a real problem. Go live in Liberia where people and villages are being wiped out by Ebola.

Oh I'm sorry let's hear about your first world video game problems instead. We need more gay and transsexual characters.

 

Yes Ebola is an issue, so are AIDS, Diabetes, Climate Change, renewable energy sources and reproduction rights, but none of those are relevant on a video game forum.

 

I could share me opinions on these topics or even of my own experience with living in a country whose constitution basically treats me like a baby making vessel but none of these things are relevant to video games.

 

There are terrible things going on in the world right now, but that doesn't mean that we can't discuss video games and criticise them. It just means that we need to do it in the right place, like here.

 

When I want to discuss other issues, I go to different forums and I don't bring up video games there, because they are generally not relevant to the conversation.

[volkoff]

i hope there is sexism, it's in the real world, it should be in thedas.

i prefer story's which are close to the real thing (maybe dramaticed for fun purposes.)

for example; i'm one of those vew people whom absolutely loves halo: reach & odst. i prefer them over 1-3. sure i love master chief, but he is the eye of the hurricane. everything is going to **** around him but he's fine. the reason why i loved reach and odst is because the games were dark. they portrayed how the covenant-human war really was. and that's why i dislike halo 4. (they went from the brink of extinction to kicking covvy ass within 1 game.(3-4))

thats also why i dislike women hero's. i prefer a hero whom happens to be a women. that's why (what i've seen so far) i dislike vivienne. and why i adore isabela and cassandra. to me it seems like bioware went ''lets make a strong, independant women hero'' and vivienne is the product of that. the reason why i love isabella is because she was flawed. (her problems with being tied down came from her abusive ex-husband)

[catabuca]

I find the discussion of percentages of male/female players asinine. But nevertheless, since it seems to keep cropping up as a way to shut down all these evil women who so unfairly don't like sexism, I'll leave this link here:

 

http://www.pcgamer.c...utnumber-males/

 

 

 

Surveys conducted by analyst firm Superdata Research have found that in the US, women play more PC games overall than men. They also play more RPGs on PC than men, while men outnumber women in the FPS and MMO genres.

 

 

 

The scales dip slightly further toward women when it comes to the RPG genre, with 53.6 percent of the market made up of women, while men represent 46.5 percent.

 

 

 

"It is true that 58 percent of mobile gamers in the US are women. But it is also true that just over 50 percent of American PC gamers are women," she wrote. "In fact, women are the largest gaming demographic for PC role-playing games (54 percent) and they represent almost 40 percent of MMO and digital console gamers. So to say that women are just casual gamers is empirically false."

 

I don't present these data as evidence that women should therefore be represented more than men. I don't present it in order to gloat or thumb my nose or suggest women are 'better' than men, or anything else that often gets thrown around in the opposite direction.

 

I present it to show that the received wisdom (which is anything but wise) that has it that men play more of X than women so shut up women simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

 

But frankly, even if it did, it is still no excuse to allow unfettered sexism, racism, homophobia, or anything else in our media. Because what are we really saying if we accept that line of argument? We are saying that men are inherently sexist, that they all want to see women as playthings and objects, and that is the way it should be. We are saying that because there is sexism in our patriarchal society, there should therefore be sexism in our patriarchal society. We are saying that if men play more of X than women, we should cater for the lowest common denominator, all men are sexist, all men want the same thing, and we should continue to prop up this type of world. 

 

That seems anathema to what we should be saying. We should be holding our media to a higher standard. It's okay to have sexism in our media if it's men who are playing it? It's okay to have racism in our media if it's white people who are consuming it? If anything, that's exactly why it should be tackled in those things.

[MissOuJ]

Actually, I do this if there's anyone within sight. Always have.

 

Do you do it because you fear rape?

 

Also, do you still do it when there's absolutely no one within sight? Do you ever stop at the door to think "Damn, were are my keys?" only to realise a split-second later that they're already in your hand because you took them out of your bag when you were still in the bus, because this process has become automatic to you?

 

Because I do.

 

 

I don't think it connotes assertiveness.

 

Seen as this is the most common insult I receive from men when I don't do what they want (no matter how polite I am in my refusal) and the most common insult I see other women in the same situation receive, I have to disagree.

 

 

 

This might also be a case of the writers being influenced by their environment. The DA writing team is primarily female, and led by a gay man. They may well use b***h playfully with each other (I realise I'm stereotyping here, but I'm trying to offer a plausible scenario, not describe how these people actually behave). They also happen to live and work in a city that is remarkably free with its profanity. The casual use of harsh language in Edmonton is actually quite surprising. If language were hurtful here, the city would just stop.

 

My point exactly. Again, we have to ask "why are female gendered insults so easy to use"? This is a bigger cultural problem.

 

I don't have a problem with profanity. Damn, you should hear me swear sometimes - I don't just get nasty, I get creative. But somehow I am usually able to steer away from overly hurtful and stereotypical words, because I am aware of them and their harmful influence.

 

 

 

If you're going to tell a story about pregnancy or childbirth, it sort of has to have women in it.

 

But why is it that it's one of the only kinds of stories women have in some media, in addition to rape and kidnapping? And why, particularly in the sci-fi genre, is it usually portrayed as boderline bodyhorror?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Yes Ebola is an issue, so are AIDS, Diabetes, Climate Change, renewable energy sources and reproduction rights, but none of those are relevant on a video game forum.

I'd love to see a game that tried to address the climate change and renewable energy issues seriously.

[Tymvir]

I find the discussion of percentages of male/female players asinine. But nevertheless, since it seems to keep cropping up as a way to shut down all these evil women who so unfairly don't like sexism, I'll leave this link here:

 

http://www.pcgamer.c...utnumber-males/

 

 

 

 

I don't present these data as evidence that women should therefore be represented more than men. I don't present it in order to gloat or thumb my nose or suggest women are 'better' than men, or anything else that often gets thrown around in the opposite direction.

 

I present it to show that the received wisdom (which is anything but wise) that has it that men play more of X than women so shut up women simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

 

But frankly, even if it did, it is still no excuse to allow unfettered sexism, racism, homophobia, or anything else in our media. Because what are we really saying if we accept that line of argument? We are saying that men are inherently sexist, that they all want to see women as playthings and objects, and that is the way it should be. We are saying that because there is sexism in our patriarchal society, there should therefore be sexism in our patriarchal society. We are saying that if men play more of X than women, we should cater for the lowest common denominator, all men are sexist, all men want the same thing, and we should continue to prop up this type of world. 

 

That seems anathema to what we should be saying. We should be holding our media to a higher standard. It's okay to have sexism in our media if it's men who are playing it? It's okay to have racism in our media if it's white people who are consuming it? If anything, that's exactly why it should be tackled in those things.

 

I wouldn't put too much trust in those surveys, as they are often politically motivated. Bioware themselves released an infographic with actual facts about Mass Effect 3, showing that in one of the most inclusive games by one of the most inclusive developers, male gamers far outnumber female gamers:

 

[catabuca]

I wouldn't put too much trust in those surveys. Bioware themselves released an infographic about Mass Effect 3, showing that in one of the most inclusive games by one of the most inclusive developers, male gamers far outnumber female gamers:

 

 

I'm a woman. Sheploo is my canon Shep.

 

One thing we can both agree on: stats never tell the whole story.

 

Something I noted myself when playing ME1 was that I was connected to the internet only for a few of my initial playthroughs. After a while, I went 'off grid' for my video gaming, and so none of my statistics will have been collected for those subsequent playthroughs. For ME2 and ME3 too. I only connected for ME3 multiplayer, and that was with a different version of the game, different platform. BioWare have no information from me on who or what I played in ME3's campaign. I suspect I'm not alone.

 

I don't present that as evidence of those stats you quoted as being wholesale wrong. Merely to show that countering one set of stats with another that might equally have their own inherent problems isn't really too useful.

[Neon Rising Winter]

I wouldn't put too much trust in those surveys. Bioware themselves released an infographic about Mass Effect 3, showing that in one of the most inclusive games by one of the most inclusive developers, male gamers far outnumber female gamers:

 

You do know that doesn't contain any data on the gender of players?

[Hellaine]

I wouldn't put too much trust in those surveys. Bioware themselves released an infographic about Mass Effect 3, showing that in one of the most inclusive games by one of the most inclusive developers, male gamers far outnumber female gamers:

 

 

Well but even that image is unclear.  That just says, of gamers that FINISHED the game, what gender did they choose to PLAY as, not what gender they actually are.  I mean, I wouldn't doubt more men that women played and beat that game, but that might not be the best example either.

[Giantdeathrobot]

Darkspawn reproduction isn't something that is concrete, set in stone outside of the realm of fiction. It was created by a person, a writer, and it could have been substituted for absolutely anything else that could have been written with its own lore structures around it. They could have written lore about how th people who are dragged down into the ground after a darkspawn attack are cocooned in some sort of blight material that slowly transforms them, horribly and painfully, into darkspawn. They could have made it a function of the archdemon, whereby once a blight begins the archdemon starts some kind of process that exponentially increases darkspawn numbers, hence why there are so many of them during a blight and not so many during other times. There are no concrete restrictions on what they could have written. All Dragon Age lore was created from nothing. To say "women are raped and turned into broodmothers because that's what happens" misses the point wholesale. 

 

I note that I am not suggesting that either of my two examples of alternative darkspawn reproduction would have been narratively more cohesive nor that they would even make sense from a lore standpoint. I used them in order to highlight the point that lore is created from nothing, and there is nothing inherent to a broodmother's existence, and it could have been anything that the writers wanted it to be.

 

So what is the point, exactly? That Bioware are sexists because they decided to go for the broodmother route? What's the complaint here?

[Tymvir]

You do know that doesn't contain any data on the gender of players?

 

Still reasonable to assume that most men played male shepards and most women played female shepards. Males playing FemShep and women playing Sheploo would most likely even themselves out. At least this doesn't rely on surveys, which are notoriously unrealiable because people will say whatever they want others to think. If they made a survey about IQ levels the national average would be ~140.

[Neon Rising Winter]

I'd love to see a game that tried to address the climate change and renewable energy issues seriously.

 

You know if we were to view magic as an allegory for energy I see a way this very game could pursue that route. Although that's more an interesting thought experiment and probably not for this thread.

[Quercus]

Dont force sexism it out of art, that includes story.

If something has a dark setting, dark **** happens, that includes sexism.

[catabuca]

I repeat my point:

 

even if there are more men playing something than women, it does not follow that we should be happy with that thing containing sexism.

 

Which is part of why I find the fascination with gender breakdowns of gamers more often than not asinine. It's used as a way to tell people who don't like sexism to shut up.

 

"Only men play this game. So it can be as sexist as it wants. We should create media that upholds and even sometimes encourages sexism if it's men - who therefore must inherently be sexist - are the ones playing it."

 

Strange argument.

[tmp7704]

We can force a male companion(Alistair) to have sex against his will with a woman, a woman that he hates. Imagine the outrage if we would have been able to force a woman in a dragon age game to have sex (against her will) with a male character in order for the player character to survive.

For what's worth no, we can't force Alistair. Under the hood this works like "mini Landsmeet" so to speak -- each dialogue line you take nets you positive or negative points, and you need to get certain numbers of them in the end for Alistair to agree. Thus, the player can convince Alistair to do something he's initially against, or fail to do so if they make wrong choices. But that's not forcing him any more than you're forcing the Landsmeet to agree with your arguments instead of Loghain's.

[catabuca]

Dont force sexism it out of art, that includes story.

If something has a dark setting, dark **** happens, that includes sexism.

 

If something has a dark setting, dark **** happens, that includes racism against black and ethnic minority people, that includes paedophillia, that includes gay bashing, that includes incest, that includes violent rape, that includes... and so on.

 

There is nothing that says a dark setting (whatever that is) 'has' to include any of those things. A writer begins with a clean slate. An empty page. Anything is possible. When we draw on things that are dark from our own world, we have to ask why, and we have to look at how they are represented. Those things can be represented, but how they are represented is key.

[MissOuJ]

I'd love to see a game that tried to address the climate change and renewable energy issues seriously.

 

... Anno 2070?

[Neon Rising Winter]

Still reasonable to assume that most men played male shepards and most women played female shepards. Males playing FemShep and women playing Sheploo would most likely even themselves out. At least this doesn't rely on surveys, which are notoriously unrealiable because people will say whatever they want others to think. If they made a survey about IQ levels the national average would be ~140.

Call me an old cynic, I just have this suspicion people are more likely to lie about their IQ than their gender.