477 réponses à ce sujet

[Addictress]

So now we lead you to the point where you are on the brink of questioning

1. The legitimacy of womens' offense. You question the validity of their feelings.

And still, as predicted, this does not rely on empirical data on whether men act out on the message. It all starts and ends at the feelings of 50% of the population on a given meaning.

Congratulations.

If you want, you argue just how many people it offends. How many gamers are girls. How many gamers should be girls, and whether you care if they are offended, or whether they will really stop buying games if they are offended. Those are more constructive debates we could be having.

As you were.

[Gwydden]

There is a difference between being offended by someone making jokes about rape and being offended by a bit of political satire. Offense can take many forms.

I'm not sure those examples have much to do with my point, but not really.

 

Let me put it like this: I find the whole idea behind a game like Hatred or (ugh) Rapeplay or whatever it's called to be in bad taste. And yet you don't see me expecting the developers to stop putting out games like those, or change them to be more palatable to my particular sensibilities. I simply stay well away from them.

 

My being offended doesn't entitle me to make demands to developers or expect anything from them. Being offended is, as I said before, remarkably easy. Making a game is not.

[Addictress]

I'm not sure those examples have much to do with my point, but not really.

Let me put it like this: I find the whole idea behind a game like Hatred or (ugh) Rapeplay or whatever it's called to be in bad taste. And yet you don't see me expecting the developers to stop putting out games like those, or change them to be more palatable to my particular sensibilities. I simply stay well away from them.

My being offended doesn't entitle me to make demands to developers or expect anything from them. Being offended is, as I said before, remarkably easy. Making a game is not.

If you want, you argue just how many people it offends. How many gamers are girls. How many gamers should be girls, and whether you care if they are offended, or whether they will really stop buying games if they are offended. Those are more constructive debates we could be having.

Called it. Ding ding ding!

[Gwydden]

Called it. Ding ding ding!

Hmm? Women (people in general, really) are well within their right to not buy games they find offensive. I never questioned that. In fact, it seems obvious from where I'm standing.

 

My only objection was to people expecting games to cater to their particular sensibilities. People who are offended because CDPR did this or that have no more right to demand things from them than do people who are offended because Anders hit on their male Hawke in DA2 or that straight men got fewer romances than women in DAI with respect to Bioware.

 

EDIT: I should add, though, that plenty of women buy and enjoy TW, so... moot point?

[Addictress]

So. You want to associate yourself with violent, reprehensible niche game enthusiasts. In other words, you relish in the voyeuristic appreciation of things which society looks down upon - things which, shall we say, we find morally reprehensible. Why? Why are they morally reprehensible?

That's another discussion, certainly out of the scope of this thread, and I can see the mod approaching already.

All I can say is, the population of people who agree with the immorality or insensitivity of these meanings is growing. Bioware has an edge here.

I flat out agree TW3 is technically superior. In mechanics, in gameplay, in the complexity of rendered mise-en-scene, and AI.

But Dragon Age steals the reward for lore and social progresiveness.

Progression is progression my friends. Progress will go forth and you will be left behind.

Bye now.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

Media study is not social science. Media study relies on the reader's detached common sense and logic to put forth the relationship between art and culture.

Culture cannot be quantified. Culture is a system of values and beliefs, spread by symbols and art.

Assuming you are able to read and see, you should simply engage with arguments that point out interpretations and meaning in art. It does not require statistical data of cause and effect, because the logic is this:

An interpretation exists and a piece of art visibly communicates this message. The argument is that it's not just a few people or one person who sees this message. It is a large population of people. In order for a word, a symbol, or a message to hold any useful weight in language, it must mean the same thing to several people, right? That's what language is. The word apple refers to the same concept, or object, to me, as it does to you. That's how we speak to each other.

In social theory, multiple people agree that a certain image or set of images hold an obvious meaning - a message. It is proven by mere fact it is agreed upon by more than one subject to mean the same thing, to refer to a common concept.

I point to an image of a sexualized woman on the ground and the contextual absence of sexualized men on the ground in a vulnerable position as well as the context that it is a very early teaser, the agreed-upon impression being it is intended to grab attention. Who's attention? A large population of people agree that, given the cultural context it is intended to grab men's attention.

None of this is a statistical argument on who it affects and whether it does. All of it is merely pointing out the expression of an idea and a cultural message that is being broadcast. Whether it actually causes physical action in the real world is irrelevant. We simply stop at the mere fact of its existence and its prevalence and feel offended, just as a the mere broadcast of an insulting word might offend a passive listener.

 

This is a long winded method of saying :- "I am shifting my goalpost now that there is actual peer reviewed unbiased research that show that video games cause neither violence nor sexism."

 

So now we lead you to the point where you are on the brink of questioning

1. The legitimacy of womens' offense. You question the validity of their feelings.

And still, as predicted, this does not rely on empirical data on whether men act out on the message. It all starts and ends at the feelings of 50% of the population on a given meaning.

Congratulations.

As you were.

 

Given that games like TW3 are enjoyed by many women worldwide, its the word of a small group of women on this thread versus the word of a large women who bought the game and enjoyed playing it.

 

Who are you to be the representative for all women ? Isn't that rather arrogant and self-centered ? Its like saying - "I do not like this type of media material or clothing, I am a woman and therefore my feelings and opinions represent the collective views of women." Its not like you are the Pope of the human female collective or the official spokesperson of the female collective.

 

Is there any peer reviewed research that has been published to show that a significant majority of women are against TW3 because of its supposed anti-women message ? There isn't one. But there are peer reviewed research that says that video games cause neither violence or sexism.

 

 

So. You want to associate yourself with violent, reprehensible niche game enthusiasts. In other words, you relish in the voyeuristic appreciation of things which society looks down upon - things which, shall we say, we find morally reprehensible. Why? Why are they morally reprehensible?

That's another discussion, certainly out of the scope of this thread, and I can see the mod approaching already.

All I can say is, the population of people who agree with the immorality or insensitivity of these meanings is growing. Bioware has an edge here.

I flat out agree TW3 is technically superior. In mechanics, in gameplay, in the complexity of rendered mise-en-scene, and AI.

But Dragon Age steals the reward for lore and social progresiveness.

Progression is progression my friends. Progress will go forth and you will be left behind.

Bye now.

 

Social progressiveness for what exactly ? Is there evidence that Bioware games are responsible for the improvement or degradation of social progress ? No, and that's the reality - Bioware games are just that. Games. Nothing more, nothing less. They don't affect the real world in that way. I have not seen Bioware games influencing judiciary for example.

 

Given that we now know that video games cause neither violence nor sexism, it follows to reason that social progress hinges on real issues involving real people and open discussion on these real issues and real people, not imaginary ones.

 

For example, having Krem and having Iron Bull lecturing players on transgenderism is not going to affect the recent law passed in Indiana and it will most definitely not affect how transgenders are oppressed in other parts of the world. Having Dorian's personal quest be about his father trying to use blood magic to change him is not going to change the fact that there are many countries in the world that oppress and prosecute homosexuals.

 

Pixels, fiction and fictional characters is not going to change the fact that there are real homosexuals out there being jailed or facing a caning sentence or thrown from the top of buildings.It is not going to change the fact that women in the Middle East and Africa are oppressed for simply being women and women in Western Europe are facing issues due to immigration from Middle East and Africa.

 

Newsflash - The Fade does not exist in the real world, therefore you can't just feel or emote or create fiction to solve your problems. Real people having real dialogue on real issues will be the ones to do it. Not via preaching in video games and not via fictional characters.

 

If you want more example, let's take Wonder Woman and Black Widow. Both are in very popular movies that will be watched by many worldwide. Will that somehow magically make women strong, independent and empowered ? No. Real women doing real work and working real hard in order to succeed in real life is what turns an average jane in real life into a strong, independent and empowered women. Women like Maryam Namazie or Ayaan Hirsi Ali did not "identify" with a fictional female character to become strong, independent and empowered women. They went through real struggles and came out of it as a real victor.

 

Fiction is fiction. It can be good fiction or it can be bad fiction. It can be a non-preachy form of fiction or a preachy form of fiction. The constant here is that fiction will remain fiction in the realm where things really matter - In the real world, in judiciary, etc.

 

As for lore, Bioware contradict and retcon lore far too much for their lore to be considered as top notch.

 

CDPR has the edge on lore simply because they have an actual source material for their in-game lore which allows for more consistency. The Witcher games are based on books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The same goes for Cyberpunk 2077 over Mass Effect Andromeda since Cyberpunk 2077 are based on the creations of Mike Pondsmith.

[Gwydden]

So. You want to associate yourself with violent, reprehensible niche game enthusiasts. In other words, you relish in the voyeuristic appreciation of things which society looks down upon - things which, shall we say, we find morally reprehensible. Why? Why are they morally reprehensible?

That's another discussion, certainly out of the scope of this thread, and I can see the mod approaching already.

All I can say is, the population of people who agree with the immorality or insensitivity of these meanings is growing. Bioware has an edge here.

I honestly have no idea of what you're talking about here, but from what little I've been able to understand I get the impression you believe I said something I have never claimed. Whatever that is.

 

I flat out agree TW3 is technically superior. In mechanics, in gameplay, in the complexity of rendered mise-en-scene, and AI.

But Dragon Age steals the reward for lore and social progresiveness.

Progression is progression my friends. Progress will go forth and you will be left behind.

Bye now.

I never talked about the relative quality of the two games, beyond saying I prefer TW over DA. I certainly made no reference to the quality of any DA game in particular, much less the series as a whole.

 

But since the stated subject matter of this thread is how good DAI is or could be... I don't think anything could have saved that game. In my opinion, it had way too much that was simply boring and very little that was actually worthwhile. So there.

 

"Social progressiveness" is nice. Diversity is great. But neither does a good story make, or even a good game. And this has nothing to do with TW. It is just about how all the inclusivity in the world is not enough to make something fun to play.

 

And in fact, I get the feeling that's why a lot of people found DAI preachy, even though it really isn't beyond maybe a couple of moments here and there. If a story or a game is fun, it will no matter that it has an agenda. People will gladly take it in. If they are bored, though, they will just feel like someone is using the video game as their private soapbox regardless of how true that is. So there's that.

[Vanilka]

Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you say my collection's complete?

Um, I'm not sure I understand the reference. Sorry. What is it from?
 

But I appreciate your input. I played both TW1 and TW2 earlier this year and I feel inclined to say the series has become my favorite RPG franchise. And yet I avoided it for the longest time because of all the stuff I kept hearing about it around these parts.
 
Does it cater to straight males quite strongly? Yeah, that's undeniable. But also blown out of proportion, IMOSHO. I mean, someone said before that Geralt gets to sleep with a lot of women, but after hearing this for quite a while I decided to check the actual numbers and, surprise surprise, found that in TW2 and TW3 he can have sex with less women than a male Warden in DAO (not counting prostitutes in any of the three games).
 
The first one? Yeah, lots of (mostly silly and bare-bone) encounters. Not broken up about their departure over here. But good God, people made such a big deal out of the friggin' cards. Before I played the game I assumed, based on what I had heard, that there was some kind of little gallery inside the game with all the women Geralt had slept with arrayed there and some kind of system to let you know how many cards you were missing. And at the time I agreed that yeah, that's kind of in bad taste.
 
Instead, what I got was a codex that included all of the characters in the game. In order to see a card, you actually had to look for the corresponding character, then click on the heart icon in a corner of their (regular, non-sexualized) portrait. I really didn't feel like the game was encouraging me to "collect" them. I imagine a completitionist might feel that way, but then completitionists are crazy  Instead, I just felt like the cards were some tasteful erotic art that served as a cheap (in terms of resource cost) substitute for sex scenes, which the game didn't have.

That's why I stated that I haven't played the Witcher and wasn't talking about the game in particular, because I can't objectively judge a game I haven't had any direct experience with. I don't even identify with the sentiment I mentioned 100% because I'm an individual, just like other women are individuals that may identify with some parts of it more than others or even not at all (Generalising is no good.), but let's just say I understand why some things are more appealing to some women than some others and why some things are downright eye-roll inducing for a lot of us.
 
I do appreciate different people's opinions on the matter, including yours, because I think that the more you know, the better to make the big picture, and having a polite discussion about it is definitely a better way to reach mutual understanding of one another and our differences than arguing about it, which is just exhausting. That's why I tried to explain my viewpoint in the first place.

I'm not sure how relevant it is to compare the Witcher and the Warden, though, since the Warden can 1) also be a woman, 2) has male love interests and prostitutes available. So unless the Witcher does that, DAO still wins as regards the kind of specialised content provided. It doesn't necessarily mean one is a better game than the other (As I said, I can't judge that yet.), but DAO still provides more content with and for the female PC.
 

And frankly, the idea that catering to straight men is problematic is what I find problematic. It seems to be implying that men can't be attracted to women and respect them at the same time. Would there be such a wave of offended people if Geralt was gay as they came and could sleep with a dozen dudes per game and collect erotic art depicting his male lovers? Or if the games had a female protagonist who did the same? Actually, there would be, but it would be from an entirely different demographic.  And the people who find TW offensive as it is now would condemn those other people as sexist and homophobic. So why is it okay one way and not the other?

 
I don't think that anybody reasonable and anybody worth respect and spotlight actually claims that. The only person that I know made a fuss about these things is Anita Sarkeesian who's, in my opinion, professionally deformed to see sexism and misogyny everywhere, but does anybody that matters even listen to her any more? (Not saying she didn't make a few good points occasionally, but still.) That's one person. There might be extreme individuals that think that anything sexual that might get included in a game is wrong, but nothing so far has led me to believe it's more than just a few crazy examples.

Of course, I agree that demonising hetero male sexuality is wrong and there's nothing inherently wrong with sex and erotic content (Hell, women like that stuff, too. Just saying.), but I'm yet to see a game negatively influenced by that sort of nonsense. Other than that, there will always be a handful of extremists on both sides of the fence.
 

I'm not accusing you here, mind you — just pointing out my personal issue with the way people tend to talk about TW around here. Especially since the series has no shortage of great female characters and it has gotten increasingly better at handling women. Which is not to say I don't see why others would be put off by some stuff in the games, but I can tell from personal experience that dismissing them because of preconceived prejudice is a bad idea.

 
So I have heard from some around here and if that is the case, then I'm looking forward to the said great female characters and other good things I've heard about the games. I also don't think that any gaming company starts as perfect. They often need to figure out their issues as well as who they actually want their audience to be, some need to learn to think outside of the box of the established genre tropes and stereotypes (Not talking just about men and women here, but established, overdone, cliché stuff concerning the story, characters, visuals, and even gameplay in general.), etc. Although I don't think I can seriously blame anyone who reads a few reviews of a game and decides, "Hey, I guess that's just not a game for me." And I think that's okay because no video game can appeal to everyone. Some people prefer The Witcher, some Dragon Age, and some The Sims or Zoo Tycoon, and that's okay. That's why we have so many genres in the first place.

[Gwydden]

Um, I'm not sure I understand the reference. Sorry. What is it from?

My favorite Disney song: Part of Your World, from The Little Mermaid 

[Vanilka]

My favorite Disney song: Part of Your World, from The Little Mermaid 

 

Oh! You know, now I can't remember whether I've ever seen The Little Mermaid.   (I mean, I must have. I was a child once. I think. Wow.) No wonder it went over my head.

[General TSAR]

The vulnerability and pervasiveness of sexualized women in stark contrast to an absence of sexualized, vulnerable men similarly is making people uncomfortable. And the underlying meaning isn't likely to be eased into widely accepted sensibilities any time soon.

Deal. with. it.

[Addictress]

Deal. with. it.

No. YOU deal with ME. It's my dollar against yours, son.

[In Exile]

When anyone here can bring up an actual peer reviewed study that states that video games have an actual effect in the real world on how real men treat real women, then I will stop saying that video games do not have an effect on real life but there is no such study.

 

In fact, the study that we have proves otherwise:- http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/25844719

That's not actually what the study says, and it's kind of scary that you'd view a single study as an authoritative determination of any question. I can't actually access the article, but so the only empirical claim it makes is the following:

 

 

Controlling for age and education, it was found that sexist attitudes--measured with a brief scale assessing beliefs about gender roles in society--were not related to the amount of daily video game use or preference for specific genres for both female and male players. Implications for research on sexism in video games and cultivation effects of video games in general are discussed.

 

An explicit scale about beliefs in gender roles - in Germany, mind you - is not necessarily even a reliable measure of the actual beliefs about gender roles in society that the participants might have (with the caveat, again, that I can't access the study to read the methodology). There's a lot of evidence that explicit attitude scales are generally of limited use in determining prejudice, because of the overwhelming social pressure to answer these public surveys pro-socially. 

I'd also like to quote the authors, accepting their study as actually reliable:

 

 

“There are often discrepancies between what a study actually found and how people interpret it,” the two lead researchers, Johannes Breuer and Rachel Kowert told me in an e-mail interview this week after I contacted them about their 824-person study which compared gamers’ and non-gamers’ responses to a trio of questions about women’s place in society over the course of two years.

“We found that the amount of overall video game use at time 1 was not predictive of sexist attitudes/beliefs about gender roles at time 2 (i.e., 2 years later) and that (sexist) beliefs about gender roles at time 1 were equally not predictive of video game use at time 2 (for sample of German players aged 14 and older).

“Some people seem to think that this is proof that sexism is not an issue in games and gaming culture, which is something that we neither found, nor say (nor examined, really) in our study.”

 

 

And this is a quote from the paper itself:

 

 

“These findings conflict with the results of previous cross-sectional and experimental work that found some evidence for links between sexist video game content and benevolent sexism and tolerance for sexual harassment. However, these studies were either cross-sectional or looked at short-term effects. They also focused on very specific games and types of sexism, whereas the present study was longitudinal and looked at general beliefs about gender roles in society and overall use of video games. Both the design of the current study and its main findings are more in line with previous cultivation studies on violence in video games that found no or only very limited evidence for cultivation effects.”

[maia0407]

Yeah, here's one of those studies that shows problems with sexism in video games:

https://www.scienced...60413151057.htm

The study found that male gamers exposed to sexist video games showed less empathy for female violence victims.

[In Exile]

Yeah, here's one of those studies that shows problems with sexism in video games:

https://www.scienced...60413151057.htm

The study found that male gamers exposed to sexist video games showed less empathy for female violence victims.

As the authors of that study point out, these are fundamentally different in nature. There are lots of ways you can shift people's immediate baseline, without necessarily denoting the kind of casual connection people want to infer. An easy example: let's say I ask you to read a really sad story about child abuse, or a really story about a puppy. I can "trigger" (or prime) a particular mood or expression through that story. Sad (or happy) stories can cause sad or happy behaviour, but they don't necessarily cause sadness. That's the kind of category mistake involved in this type of research. The authors of that longitudinal study identified a real shortcoming in the research. It just sounds like they elect to use an incredibly stupid measure of actually evaluating their central variable, i.e., a measure that is all but discredited as a reliable indicator of prejudice. Alternatively, they only wanted to measure explicit attitudes about sexism, but that's even dumber. 

[Heimdall]

Yeah, here's one of those studies that shows problems with sexism in video games:

https://www.scienced...60413151057.htm

The study found that male gamers exposed to sexist video games showed less empathy for female violence victims.

Though to apply critique, this study appears to have been studying short term effects, not studying the affects of playing the game over time, as the long term study previously mentioned notes. That would be consistent with studies that have found that increases in aggression after playing violent games don't persist beyond the short term.

[In Exile]

Though to apply critique, this study appears to have been studying short term effects, not studying the affects of playing the game over time, as the long term study previously mentioned notes. That would be consistent with studies that have found that increases in aggression after playing violent games don't persist beyond the short term.

 

It's also a different effect. The authors wanted to study the effects on attitude and belief. These studies really study behaviour (and cognitive state, in a sense. or maybe it's better to call it state of mind). 

[maia0407]

As the authors of that study point out, these are fundamentally different in nature. There are lots of ways you can shift people's immediate baseline, without necessarily denoting the kind of casual connection people want to infer. An easy example: let's say I ask you to read a really sad story about child abuse, or a really story about a puppy. I can "trigger" (or prime) a particular mood or expression through that story. Sad (or happy) stories can cause sad or happy behaviour, but they don't necessarily cause sadness. That's the kind of category mistake involved in this type of research. The authors of that longitudinal study identified a real shortcoming in the research. It just sounds like they elect to use an incredibly stupid measure of actually evaluating their central variable, i.e., a measure that is all but discredited as a reliable indicator of prejudice. Alternatively, they only wanted to measure explicit attitudes about sexism, but that's even dumber.

I'm not trying to use the study to prove a point about sexism in video gaming. I'm using the study to prove the point that I can cherry pick studies to support whatever I already think as our resident faux economic scholar is doing.

[roselavellan]

Hmm? Women (people in general, really) are well within their right to not buy games they find offensive. I never questioned that. In fact, it seems obvious from where I'm standing.

 

My only objection was to people expecting games to cater to their particular sensibilities. People who are offended because CDPR did this or that have no more right to demand things from them than do people who are offended because Anders hit on their male Hawke in DA2 or that straight men got fewer romances than women in DAI with respect to Bioware.

 

EDIT: I should add, though, that plenty of women buy and enjoy TW, so... moot point?

 

Their treatment of women wasn't just some random aspect of the game that one had to nitpick to be sensitive about - it was extremely pervasive. I rarely get sensitive about PC issues, but this was blatant and inescapable. Almost every time a woman was featured, she was either inappropriately sexualised (from bizarre cleavage to wearing high heels in combat), a prostitute (practically half the women in Novigrad were prostitutes!), a victim or a monster. The only exceptions I can think of are Cerys an Craite and Rosa Var Attre. Sex scenes were clearly porn designed exclusively for the male viewer.

 

I have been playing computer games for years, but to date, this has been the only game I've found offensive. So, no, I don't expect game developers to cater to my "particular sensibilities", but I do expect them not to cross the line into blatant, pervasive sexism.

[maia0407]

Their treatment of women wasn't just some random aspect of the game that one had to nitpick to be sensitive about - it was extremely pervasive. I rarely get sensitive about PC issues, but this was blatant and inescapable. Almost every time a woman was featured, she was either inappropriately sexualised (from bizarre cleavage to wearing high heels in combat), a prostitute (practically half the women in Novigrad were prostitutes!), a victim or a monster. The only exceptions I can think of are Cerys an Craite and Rosa Var Attre. Sex scenes were clearly porn designed exclusively for the male viewer.
 
I have been playing computer games for years, but to date, this has been the only game I've found offensive. So, no, I don't expect game developers to cater to my "particular sensibilities", but I do expect them not to cross the line into blatant, pervasive sexism.

"How dare you ask for your perspective to be acknowledged? That's just so PC! " cries the offended straight white dude as he surveys the rows upon rows of video games featuring lantern jawed white dude and booberella as his side kick.

[Heimdall]

Their treatment of women wasn't just some random aspect of the game that one had to nitpick to be sensitive about - it was extremely pervasive. I rarely get sensitive about PC issues, but this was blatant and inescapable. Almost every time a woman was featured, she was either inappropriately sexualised (from bizarre cleavage to wearing high heels in combat), a prostitute (practically half the women in Novigrad were prostitutes!), a victim or a monster. The only exceptions I can think of are Cerys an Craite and Rosa Var Attre. Sex scenes were clearly porn designed exclusively for the male viewer.

I have been playing computer games for years, but to date, this has been the only game I've found offensive. So, no, I don't expect game developers to cater to my "particular sensibilities", but I do expect them not to cross the line into blatant, pervasive sexism.

In fairness, some of this is related to source material. The Witcher books deliberately made use of (And some times parodied) many traditional fantasy tropes. For example, the sexy exotic sorceress trope, the Sorceresses all being beautiful women is because they all use magic to give themselves the bodies of eternally young supermodels (Geralt's lover, Yennefer, used to be a hunchback) and generally like to show it off with revealing outfits (Meanwhile all the male sorcerers tend to be hideous and ugly).

CDPR handled all of that with the subtlety of a brick through a window though. Geralt wasn't nearly as much of a horndog as you have the opportunity to be in the games. That much was indeed fan service to a male audience.

[In Exile]

In fairness, some of this is related to source material. The Witcher books deliberately made use of (And some times parodied) many traditional fantasy tropes. For example, the sexy exotic sorceress trope, the Sorceresses all being beautiful women is because they all use magic to give themselves the bodies of eternally young supermodels (Geralt's lover, Yennefer, used to be a hunchback) and generally like to show it off with revealing outfits (Meanwhile all the male sorcerers tend to be hideous and ugly)

 

That's not really better, at least from our Western POV. The truth is that TW has to be understood in the actual cultural context in which it was written, i.e., Eastern Europe. At which point you can start to see what a comically "SJW" (by North American standards) it is as a novel. 

 

Always find it fun to see e.g. people defending the story about the social outcast who dies saving people during a race riot as the bastion of anti-PC culture. 

[Lezio]

In fairness, some of this is related to source material. The Witcher books deliberately made use of (And some times parodied) many traditional fantasy tropes. For example, the sexy exotic sorceress trope, the Sorceresses all being beautiful women is because they all use magic to give themselves the bodies of eternally young supermodels (Geralt's lover, Yennefer, used to be a hunchback) and show it off with revealing outfits (Meanwhile all the male sorcerers tend to be hideous and ugly).

CDPR handled all of that with the subtlety of a brick through a window though. Geralt wasn't nearly as much of a horndog as you have the opportunity to be in the games. That much was indeed fan service to a male audience.

 

Actually, Geralt is even worse in the books. Hell, he gets into a relationship with Fringilla Vigo while he's pursuing Yennefer and Vilgefortz

 

Also, apart from Yennefer and Triss, in TW2 and TW3 it's possible to have sex with, what, 5 women? (Ves, elf in Iorveth's path, Cynthia, the battle-maiden in Skellige and Keira, plus the prostitutes if one doesn't have internet for that kind of thing)

[Heimdall]

Actually, Geralt is even worse in the books. Hell, he gets into a relationship with Fringilla Vigo while he's pursuing Yennefer and Vilgefortz

Also, apart from Yennefer and Triss, in TW2 and TW3 it's possible to have sex with, what, 5 women? (Ves, elf in Iorveth's path, Cynthia, the battle-maiden in Skellige and Keira, plus the prostitutes if one doesn't have internet for that kind of thing)

I actually haven't read all the books, though my impression is that the rather nebulous status of his relationship with Yennefer during that pursuit left room for other partners.

Don't forget the succubus!

[Lezio]

I actually haven't read all the books, though my impression is that the rather nebulous status of his relationship with Yennefer during that pursuit left room for other partners.

 

Considering she was getting tortured while he did it, dunno   Still, there was that one time Yennefer led Geralt to a city specifically so she could "get in touch" with an old friend of hers. Geralt and Yennefer's relationship in the books is the definition of messed up

 

Going back to the main point, yeah in TW1 one could argue it's overdone (my main problem with it was that it was too cartoon-ish, not really because of some moral high-ground), but in 2 and 3 it's much toned down and only there for "immersion", really