Thoughts on gamergate

[Fenrir]

Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes.

But that's what GG wants hence the Bayonetta 2 Polygon review controversy?


Movies can have elements existing independently of the story, like action scenes. Some people saw Inception for the story and some for the action.


As a side note I'm more of a gameplay than story person but mechanics don't exist in a vacuum and almost nothing is apolitical. (Like Mario saving the princess while the opposite never happens)
You can definitely enjoy a game and ignore its most troubling parts but I think it's pretty fair to analyze these troubling parts and want them removed if possible. Or to praise something like Shadowrun Returns for being inclusive.

Personnally I want reviews to tell me if there's horrible shit like what happens in God of War 3 and not just talk about mechanics or epicness or whatever.
I like Eurogamer

[Sierra]

- Even in AAA games, the option of having a female main character can be actually beneficial to the devs and not just a money waster. Consider this: Lords of the Fallen is a WoWified Souls knockoff. I was going to buy this game, because hey, souls is my favorite series, but when i saw that you can only play as bald angry butly white guy I just kinda stopped caring. Real lost sale there. I probably wouldn't have bought ME2-3 at a high price without Femshep. Note that all this isn't even a conscious choice. I'm in a minority but who can really say how small that minority is?

This is me.

But it probably shouldn't be a surprise by this point that my interest in a game plummets if I'm forced to play a dude. Cids probably not representative of any substantial demographic.

[AndrewRogue]

But that's what GG wants hence the Bayonetta 2 Polygon review controversy?

Like I said, wanting it wholesale is dumb and part of why I don't actually like the GG movement. But throwing the baby out with the bathwater is silly too, which is why I brought it up. Balance in all things and what not. This is sort of why I get grumbly about the blanket dismissal of shit from GG in much the same way I get grumbly about folks from GG trying to shoot down discussions of sex/sexuality in video games by demonizing the people starting the discussions. You lose sight of the discussion and focus on the offense.

Movies can have elements existing independently of the story, like action scenes. Some people saw Inception for the story and some for the action.

Sure, but I think it is fair to say that the gap between "movie having nice action scenes and movie having nice story" vs "game having nice gameplay and game having nice story" is a much larger one, particularly in some games. Like, it is the absolute far extreme, but things like League of Legends and Persona 4 Arena can be played/read while barely ever interacting with the story/gameplay.

As a side note I'm more of a gameplay than story person but mechanics don't exist in a vacuum and almost nothing is apolitical. (Like Mario saving the princess while the opposite never happens)

You can definitely enjoy a game and ignore its most troubling parts but I think it's pretty fair to analyze these troubling parts and want them removed if possible. Or to praise something like Shadowrun Returns for being inclusive.

Yeah, definitely. But that doesn't mean I have to care or that I want to read reviews that talk about it. The board game Endeavor makes slavery really appealing and encourages the players who start in on it to make sure that abolition never comes about. Does this have the potential for interesting discussion re: socioeconomic impact of slaver or what have you? Sure. And I'm sure people have had fascinating conversations about it. Does this I'm always going to care? Not really.

So really, we're basically agreeing, near as I can tell? There is space on the net for both types of reviews and limiting ourselves to one style or the other (or, honestly, just those two!) is silly!

[Lady Door]

Niche markets are great. They're easy to find and target, they have specific needs and wants, and you can and should take risks talking to "your people" because you have a really good sense what context they're coming from. They also spend a hell of a lot of money, so it doesn't even matter that they're a smaller group. (In mobile, niche markets like card battle games make 10-30x as much per player as do mass market titles.)

ME3 is a brilliant mass-market success in that it "takes a risk" by making a very, very minor, mostly cosmetic, change. Then you have a no fuss, no muss "everyone is happy" solution that is really just a watered down choice without choosing. Okay, yeah, so your character now has breasts! Femshep can have a relationship with another female! She carries on just the same as non-Femshep and no one even notices!

It wasn't a risk.

They got more attention because they were "edgy" on the surface, but the game was the same. The genders did not matter (except in ME1-2 relationship choices, but that's commentary on sexuality more than anything, and two brief dialogues in response to bigotry).

On one level, that is wonderful. That's exactly how some feminists would prefer it go: females are people and males are people and they get seen as people, not judged in the context of a stereotype about their gender. On another, it was the kind of bland "no duh" design decision that did nothing but expand their target audience. Shepard was abstract enough as a character that it truly didn't matter what gender s/he represented. That way they didn't offend the guys, even made some guys who like to play female avatars happy, and the girls could play as girls or else not feel bad about playing the guy because at least the girl was an option.
 
Anyway. Bottom line: The market is loud. I test campaigns. I do neutral, I do gender pandering, I do thematics. No matter how many variations I do, the answers remain remarkably similar. Guys respond to violence and action and scantily dressed women. Women respond to pretty things and sometimes also to scantily dressed women. Maybe those ads aren't as neutral or fair or purely thematic as they should be, but if true that just reinforces the point about risk: something that is new requires someone who can do it well. Not everyone can, and someone who does it wrong presents a potentially company-ruining mistake.

As I said, it's really damn infuriating to fall into that rut but the people who click on banners and make purchases are the people the business cares about.

I want companies to try something new. I like the success stories from when they branch out. I love it when a company does something very, very well. I get angry with games that pander to a saturated market because players look for something "new" that is actually familiar. I want more business decisions to matter on a social level, not just a fiscal level.

You want to know how my company approves new projects? Its potential to provide a player the reason to spend $10k. The furthest they care about the game itself is whether it's compelling enough to get people to play it and spend money in it. Not what the game is, or what it represents, or how players feel about it -- whether they can get players to stick around for the ad impressions they can get out of them and give the crazy few a chance to spend buckets of cash. Naturally, the company wants to spend the least amount of time and resources they can on making that happen. Filling the mold with new colors is the easiest way to do that.

Of course, that is just my company, and not all businesses are created equal. There's still the matter of why we keep choosing this, why we haven't been able to address concerns feminists are bringing up, why people say one thing and do another (mostly because "people" do not all think the same and, shockingly, are made up of individuals).

Ugh. Alright. Enough incoherent ranting.

[VySaika]

Oh, hey, missed a topic on this.

Not much to add, beyond that I find bonuses being tied to reviews being scummy as shit. But yeah, that's an industry problem not a reviewer problem. Since I'm horribly sheltered and don't really go much of anywhere on the internet but here/imgur/webcomics/twitch, GamerGate has largely been a thing that just...sort of existed in my peripheral vision? Interesting to read about from folks here at least.

[Meeplelard]

I am pretty much like Gate here, though I do go to more areas around the internet.  The key thing is, though, while I learned about Gamergate through various avenues, I just sort of shrugged and moved on.  My thought was "it's people blowing shit out of proportion and they need to just shut up and move on" and haven't paid much attention beyond it.  Whenever I see a Gamergate article or discussion pop up, I usually just don't pay it any mind.  My thought is "Oh boy, more of this."

Regarding the Bayonetta thing...and I am going to tangent here so BE WARNED!

First off, to be fair, Bayonetta 2 and GTA5 were reviewed by different guys.  This isn't the same as the Resident Evil 6 vs. Metal Gear Solid 4 case on...IGN I think it was? Where the same guy reviewed both games and praised MGS4 for having so many cutscenes and such, then condemned RE6 for the same thing.  It wasn't a case of "RE6's cutscenes suck, so it detracts from the game" contrast to MGS4 having quality ones, just simply condemning one game that he praised another game for.  That could be argued poor wording of course, since as I said, a simple case of "too many poor cutscenes" would have made all the difference, as the implication would be "MGS4 got praised because it's cutscenes don't suck!"  Granted, RE6 has many other issues and this is neither here nor there.

The thing about Bayonetta 2 is it came off like a click-bait review.  He's praising the game on all fronts, and the game is getting all these 9-10/10s, but then he goes "oh, but it is oversexualized" and seems to criticize the game harshly, while still giving it a "technically positive review" even though it's notably lower than everything else.  He also tries to smokescreen the rest of the game's qualities by constantly forcing this "The gameplay is great! But oversexualized.  The plot is inoffensive! But oversexualized.  It's incredibly fun!  But oversexualized."  Maybe I am misremembering, but it felt like the score was there because the guy didn't want his review lost among a sea of high scores.  Now granted, sites just removing review scores altogether and simply rating on a metric of adjectives with pros and cons listed would have solved this.

There are cases where reviewers legitimately just seem to be making shit up so their review stands out more.  Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze comes to mind from Gamespot, where the reviewer slammed the game for something just about every other single reviewer had a complete opposite reaction to, to the point of the response being "What game did you play?"  Or Link Between Worlds, where the Destructoid review is filled with mostly high praise...but then he tries to make a "It lacks heart and is completely by the numbers" and then punishes the game for it, which is basically saying "screw the fact that the game is well designed, fun and has few flaws, IT'S SOULESS!"

I'm not saying these review scores should be changed so much as review scores are indeed an issue with them to begin with; if you read the reviews, you'd get a better sense of the legitimate strengths and weaknesses.  Gamexplain, for example, recently completely removed all scores, and simply rates the game on things like "Likes it a lot!" "It is fun!" "Not very good" etc, not stating what the rating actually is as a numeric.  I think Yahtzee, of all people, a while back stated he doesn't give review scores because he feels a game's enjoyment should not be measured on an arbitrary number metric.

Discussing this recently, I think it's worth noting that the main difference between a site like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic is what they're attempting to aggregate.  Rotten Tomatoes main score, the Rotten vs. Fresh, doesn't come from "How good" the movie is, but rather "how many people liked this movie?"  It demonstrates more a chance you'll like the film in question, without telling you how much.  They do have the aggregate rating on there, but it's secondary; something else to look up if you're wondering "How much do reviewers like this?"

Metacritic is the other way around; it measures "how good it is" as the primary score.  If you click on the game in question, it will indicate how many reviews were Good, Mixed and Bad.  I think the latter is more meaningful because it demonstrates a consistent opinion better; people have different tastes, and if the focus was more on "is this good, y/n?" compared "How good is this?", then a lot of the complaints would be far lower.

In any event, some of the problems as I tried to state before with Clickbait reviews is that even when they're not that bad a score (7.5 for Bayonetta 2 for example), sometimes they're written in a way that tries to mitigate the game's strengths by just constantly shoving their own personal pet-peeve as a main feature when overall it's secondary, which vaguely defeats the purpose of the review.  If something pissed you off a lot, just focus on it for one paragraph; don't keep trying to go "oh, but this strength doesn't matter because IT HAS THIS ISSUE!" 

I could go on about Polygon stuff but eh, spare you; it's been beaten to death and mostly a laughing stock, though anyone asking them to change their reviews is ridiculous.

[NotMiki]

I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk.  The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total."  I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this.  I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that.  And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.

When you say this...it sounds a lot like you are saying that the reviewer is playing the game wrong.  It's the industry's problem that Metacritic scores are used for anything, not the problem of reviewers.  To the extent that it is the problem of reviewers, you could argue that the industry is exerting unfair pressure on reviewers to give good grades by holding developers hostage.

Baseball actually has had a similar problem - players getting bonuses for being named as candidates for/winning various MVP awards.  Those awards are decided by the Baseball writers' association.  The association blasted the teams for allowing those types of incentives, citing the obvious conflict of interest it creates, and the teams have stopped offering them.

Bayonetta is a bit of an interesting case because it's a pretty popular game among women, and it has an undeniably empowered if sexualized main female character. I think the game brings forth an interesting discussion about sexual empowerment and if a game can simultaneously have a sexualized-yet-empowered female main character and not "cater to the male gaze", which seems to be the chief complaint about the game(s). I think discussions on sexualization of female characters need to be taken in the context of the game's overall feminist credentials. I also think it is interesting that in the analogous 3D action game, Devil May Cry, Dante is a hot dude who doesn't wear a shirt and seems to be designed to be slobbered over by girls -- silver hair, sexy red coat, kinda bishie. I think both he and Bayonetta were consciously designed to be appealing to both genders!

Feminism is in a Relationship with Bayonetta and It's Complicated
Seriously tho, there are things I could say about Bayonetta, but I'm sure other people have said them better already, so I'll just leave it at this: Bayonetta the character is just brimming with justified self-confidence, and the viewer is meant to admire her for it.  That goes a long, long way.

http://time.com/3576870/worst-words-poll-2014/

Feminist has gotten the most votes on "words to ban in 2015".

Time can go fuck itself.

And so, I continue to pander to the mostly quiet masses and their wallets. I thank the fuckers that are attacking me, attacking my profession, attacking the things I love, because they have increased our sales and downloads. And they make me hate my job a little bit more every day.

Just think how bad you would feel about yourself if you sold AR-15s.  Actually don't.  Please.

Seriously, though, it's not the GamerGate movement that is driving interest.  It's the part where GamerGate gets thrashed on Colbert that is doing it.  To the extent your industry benefits, think of it as your immune system coming back stronger from fighting a nasty virus.  A nice temporary benefit that is your body's way of saying "sorry for the trouble."

Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."

Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes. But wanting it from some isn't really that different from wanting reviewers to focus on the socialogical aspects. I mean, frankly, I'm uninterested in discussions on whether Archipelago is a good/bad board game on the basis of how it handles the subject of colonialism and tend to stray away from reviewers who talk about it.

So basically, I don't think it is that unreasonable to want to see reviews that focus largely on the gameplay element and either ignore or seperate out the social stuff. I mean, that's what you do with reviews: you find folks who have similar opinions/focuses, as they are most likely to feel similarly about titles.

Funny, thinking about Bayonetta in particular, I realized one of the reasons I'm less troubled by it than I might be is that the controls and gameplay in general are what makes Bayonetta the character work.  I said she's brimming with justified self-confidence...well most of what makes it justified is that the controls are so tight that you feel powerful playing as her.

p.s. really Time can go fuck itself.

[metroid composite]

Time is stupid

http://www.themarysue.com/damn-it-time/


Polygon does outright label itself a "progressive" publication.  And one of the best things to read about their involvement was written by their editor in chief:

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/17/6996601/on-gamergate-a-letter-from-the-editor


On GTA not getting a low score...let me preface this by saying that, Bayonetta appeals to me personally more than GTAV does.  GTAV doesn't have prominent female characters that kick ass.  Buuuuuut...GTAV also doesn't fall into traditional traps that other games in the industry do.  The women in the game have reasonable body proportions.  It passes the Beschdel test.  It also does a lot of this:

http://maxbarry.com/2011/07/08/news.html

I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. “That makes girls more special,” said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face. That’s the problem. Being female should not be special. It should be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are all kinds of women. You just wouldn’t think so, if you only paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.

Is it the positive role model thing? Because I don’t want only positive female role models. I want the spectrum. Angry girls, happy girls, mean girls. Lazy girls. Girls who lie and girls who hit people and do the wrong thing sometimes. I’m pretty sure my daughters can figure out for themselves which personality aspects they should emulate, if only they see the diversity.

GTAV, for better or for worse, has a much wider spectrum of female characters by this measurement than...frankly most of the industry.

Is it a game that appeals to women?  No.  Would I recommend it to Ciatos over Bayonetta 2?  No.  But is it a game that should be marked down for misogyny?  That's an interesting question.  It contains misogynist characters, for sure.  But this usually doesn't end well--their girlfriends/wives leave them.  They'll refer to the female vice president of a company as "that secretary" and things get verbally hostile, and ultimately end in serious disagreement.  Does having a misogynist main character in a universe where misogyny has consequences make the game itself misogynist?  I would argue no, but there is absolutely room for debate.

Then again, there is room for interpretation in Bayonetta 2 as well.  To take some highly relevant feminists to a gamergate discussion: Brianna Wu loves it, and Anita Sarkeesian hates it.

[Luther Lansfeld]

On GTA not getting a low score...let me preface this by saying that, Bayonetta appeals to me personally more than GTAV does.  GTAV doesn't have prominent female characters that kick ass.  Buuuuuut...GTAV also doesn't fall into traditional traps that other games in the industry do.  The women in the game have reasonable body proportions.  It passes the Beschdel test.  It also does a lot of this:

http://maxbarry.com/2011/07/08/news.html

I have been told that this is a good thing for girls. “That makes girls more special,” said this person, who I wanted to punch in the face. That’s the problem. Being female should not be special. It should be normal. It is normal, in the real world. There are all kinds of girls. There are all kinds of women. You just wouldn’t think so, if you only paid attention to dogs and Smurfs.

Is it the positive role model thing? Because I don’t want only positive female role models. I want the spectrum. Angry girls, happy girls, mean girls. Lazy girls. Girls who lie and girls who hit people and do the wrong thing sometimes. I’m pretty sure my daughters can figure out for themselves which personality aspects they should emulate, if only they see the diversity.

GTAV, for better or for worse, has a much wider spectrum of female characters by this measurement than...frankly most of the industry.

My specific complaint about GTA5 was not that it was overtly misogynist, it was that women seem to be all side characters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V_characters
There are fourteen characters listed on this list of GTA5 characters before a single female comes up. The first female who is mentioned is one of the main character's wives. Yawn. Most of the other research I've done indicates that women aren't very important in the story, and obviously the choice to have three male mains in a series with nothing but male mains makes me raise my eyebrows. (And passing the Bechdel test is not relevant in a discussion vs. Bayonetta, which I'm certain does. Less certain it would pass a male-male Bechdel test -- would have to watch the game again to remember that.)

Then again, there is room for interpretation in Bayonetta 2 as well.  To take some highly relevant feminists to a gamergate discussion: Brianna Wu loves it, and Anita Sarkeesian hates it.

You mean feminists are not the borg? And here I was preparing for assimilation...

[Fenrir]

Yeah Lady Door I guess it wasn't a risk.
But I like big companies taking small steps and I don't think that realistically we can ask them to take risks...?
Also, the end result of adding FemShep and its positive effects is more important than whether this was a big risk or not, really.

Hey you're not working for Marlboro, you're not going to lose your soul!



Anyway, here's a list of hyperbolic reactions from pro GG guys:

http://www.reddit.com/r/BestOfOutrageCulture/

It doesn't really tell anything IMO since it's cherry picked (Well, it shows that you can really lose yourself in your own Internet bubble) but I found it really funny.

[Grefter]

You mean feminists are not the borg? And here I was preparing for assimilation...

One more dream of a roborgy shattered.

On female characters in GTA5 ehhh I wouldn't say that they aren't important to the plot.  Amanda and both his kids are a massive part of Michael's motivation and drive.  Early on a lot of Franklin's interaction is with his Aunt who he lives with and even after that a massive portion of his character time is about his family.

A lot of pages that talk about GTA5 talk about the parts of the plot that is the characters doing things and not the character sequences,which is strange because a lot of the game is actually tied up in character sequences.  For those parts the women in their lives are really important factors of both Michael and Franklin.

Trevor is weird and special, you only have two possible scenes where you meet his mother but she is massively impacted on his character.  Trevor is a fucking mess and a huge part of it is because eh mother is a drugged out head case as well.

Now I would argue it isn't great that they are relegated to side characters, but on thr  other hand, they are also the most consistently normal part of the game.  All the other stuff in the game is over the top ridiculous and Michael especially will act out in an over the top fashion in response to plots surrounding Amanda and Tracey, but when interacting with them it is where the game is most grounded and character driven.

[Cmdr_King]

http://chezapocalypse.com/episodes/s4e8-fight-club/

Lots of words about how the main enemies of men are men.  Tangental but interesting, at least to me.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Scattered thoughts here.


On Gamergate and why they suck:

The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists."

I really dislike just equating the two sides here. I don't think it's at all fair to say that both sides are "equally bad" or whatever. Hell, just look at the labels both throw at each other, and assume that they have some truth to them (and they do). The Gamergate crowd is guilty of misogyny. The anti-Gamergate crowd is guilty of... caring about social justice? The fact that anyone can say that as if it is an insult is kinda mindblowing. "Fuck you for caring about the downtrodden of society." I think that right there says very much about how vile the Gamergate crowd by and large is. I get that it has some good people in it, but the movement's standardbearers are... not making a good name for themselves.

I mean, I don't agree with every criticism that gets thrown at a game in the name of sexism or racism, but I applaud anyone's right to bring such things up, and think such discussions are worth having. The way the average Gamergater seems to rage against the discussions themselves (and insults others for caring about such things) smacks of insecurity.


On game reviews in general:

Y'know, reading all this just makes me think that Metacritic (or more accurately, how it's used) is awful. Like, really, are we going to complain about one bad review of a game and dismiss it as attention-grabbing? Personally I think it's completely embarrassing how little review scores vary, sometimes. FF12 got more or less uniformly high reviews, and is a game with many detractors at every RPG site I've seen; why aren't all of us who were put off by the game not represented? To say nothing of GTA, a series I find to be incredibly unappealing (and I -know- I'm not alone) but giving it a score below 8/10 is "clickbait"? Give me a break. I dunno how much Metacritic contributes to this hivemind behaviour among reviewers (as Ashley alluded to, it's already a pretty incestuous industry so maybe it would happen anyway), but it certainly doesn't help.

Bonuses being tied to Metacritic scores are dumb for a huge number of reasons, and if I hear about someone missing out on such a bonus, I don't begrudge the low review which very possibly had an interesting perspective to bring to the game. I begrudge the fact that such a bonus exists in the first place. (Also, if you MUST have a bonus, why does it have thresholds? Why not just create a formula that turns the score into a bonus? Then one review will have a minimal effect on the bonus you get, instead of potentially pushing you from "lots" to "nothing".)


On more socially progressive things being "risky":

Y'know, on the one hand, the arguments people make to defend some questionable things in games can make sense. Having your characters be physically attractive / sexy / dressed in ways that we'd associate with a risque halloween costume probably does help sell your game (while turning very few people away). So do male main characters and stories where the main players are male, much to my chagrin. I'd love to see more change there even so (I love that smurfs/dogs link, it's so true) but I can at least understand the marketing arguments for why they aren't happening as much as I'd like.

But there are definitely places where regressive/misogynist stuff persists... more out of habit than because anyone likes it? Take the way Princess Peach (damn near the only female character in the Mario series) is kidnapped in a vast majority of games. Does this help sell the games any more? I really, really doubt it. When she wasn't kidnapped in Super Mario 3D World and was playable instead, I didn't see a single complaint, but -did- see people who said "hey cool you can play as Princess Peach". I definitely think the damsel in disterss trope could be played down at little cost in terms of losing the straight male gamer but at a notable benefit to everyone else, but it doesn't happen because inertia and/or because Mario/Zelda/etc. did it and they were just that big in the 80's. And I suspect that's just one example, although I'm not in marketing so it's hard to be sure.


On Bayonetta:

Feminism is in a Relationship with Bayonetta and It's Complicated
Seriously tho, there are things I could say about Bayonetta, but I'm sure other people have said them better already, so I'll just leave it at this: Bayonetta the character is just brimming with justified self-confidence, and the viewer is meant to admire her for it.  That goes a long, long way.

I pretty much have to second all of this. I especially like that first line and may have to steal it. To this day I'm not certain how I feel about Bayonetta from a feminism standpoint. But I'm glad it exists, and I'd much rather see a game like Bayonetta than yet another game which all but ignores the existence of women (at least, ones with their own motivations who don't exist just to develop other, male characters) which are way too common.

[metroid composite]

My specific complaint about GTA5 was not that it was overtly misogynist, it was that women seem to be all side characters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V_characters

Mmm...that list is a bit misleading, as the characters who are listed as "central allies" and "central enemies" are the ones who get into gunfights with or against you.  Whereas the women in the story are generally the ones saying things like "you should stop getting in gunfights and do honest work that won't get you or me killed."  (And at least to me felt more important than a random enemy gang leader).


But...at any rate, I don't see how gender ratio of the cast alone should get it marked down by Polygon for sexism.  Smash Bros games have a mostly male cast.  Should they get marked down for sexism?  Most Megaman games have an almost entirely male cast.  In fact, there's been what, 70 megaman games and not a single one has had a female protagonist???

There are people who have argued that GTAV is sexist or contains sexist elements (Carolyn Petit, Anita Sarkeesian), but I think "gender ratio of cast" in isolation is not a good argument.

[Dark Holy Elf]

As a a big Megaman fan, let me be the first to say that its gender ratio is certainly problematic. (A bunch of the cast are even robots, but they're all gendered as male... except for the "housekeeper robot". Great, Megaman, just fucking great.) I agree that in isolation, a lopsided gender ratio does not 100% imply that a game isn't very woman-friendly - FFX has several good/interesting female characters and it is certainly male-dominated numerically, and certainly a game telling e.g. a story about WW2 soldiers is going to be mostly men - but it's certainly a factor and not one to be dismissed idly.

Although your comments that the women and men of GTA behave pretty clearly along gender lines (men fight, women tell you not to fight) or that most of the female characters seem to exist to develop the male protagonists (per Grefter's comments), or just the marketing posters for the game I've seen with women in string bikinis... well, it isn't really endearing me to the game on any other gender-related fronts either. I haven't played GTA5 (obviously), but 3 was absolutely appalling on gender issues and given what little I do know about the series I'm skeptical that it has improved much.

Which, well, fine, but it would be great if more reviewers would actually acknowledge this, since it is a problem for at a fair number of us players (you can easily Google to find many women and their allies with serious issues with the game, it is not just confined to strident feminist critics) but apparently we don't matter to reviewers.

[Grefter]

I think I put that poorly.  It isn't necessarily that the females are there to develop the males.  Amanda specifically is also one of the most developed characters in the game.  For a game that has three "mains" a whoooooole lot of stuff is really about on Michael and his family and the main narrative arc of the game seems to be about Michael and Amanda to me.

I guess that means I probably should pick it up on PC and give it a spin when it comes out so I can form a better opinion on it (since I was more of a spectator in GTA5).

Edit - Franklin's Aunt doesn't develop him, Michael really does there, but she provides a lot of backdrop to him and his life.  Like I said with Trevor, his mother is very very much an explanation for why he is the way he is.  Mix abandonment, oedipal complex, physical and mental abuse with all the drugs ever in to two people and that is Trevor and his mother.  Edit 2 - That is to say Trevor is fucking amazing and is pretty close to best character find of 2013.

Edit Edit Edit - MEGAMAN PLOT.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Hmm. To use two examples from media I know well...

If I were reading reviews on a website of Batman: The Dark Knight and Sin City, two movies which I greatly enjoy, and one of them gave Sin City a significantly lower score because it was sexist, I would think they were strange. Yes, the movie has a lot of T&A, but it also has several female characters who are quite capable and competent; Gail has always been one of my favorite characters. Batman: The Dark Knight has a single female character who I would say is not a terrible character but realistically is less relevant in the movie than Batman/Alfred/Gordon/Joker/Two-Faced, and she's a bit of a classic 'female' role (less so in the Batman Begins but that's not what I'm talking about). The movie doesn't completely shit the bed on its one female character, but nor is she particularly good relative to the previous characters named.

I would conclude from reading these two reviews that this website did not have the same definition of sexism as I did and I would stop reading it. Not that the reviewers are terrible people or that they should lose their jobs, but simply that they criticized sexism in a way which I found inconsistent and thus not all that valuable to me. Whereas if neither movie's review mentioned sexism, I would probably just think they didn't care about it, and if both reviews addressed the movies' respective issues, I would maybe look up what they thought about other movies such as Avengers/other Marvel movies that I actually haven't seen, trusting them to at least give me one feminist perspective if I desired such a thing.

[Lady Door]

The persistence of misogynist, etc., stuff because of inertia is definitely a thing. I don't have much experience with it personally because mobile is not exactly a story-driven medium, but I have noticed it in books and movies and other media. Just because the main character is female doesn't mean the game isn't misogynistic, which seems to be a really hard concept for some of the pish-posh GGers to grasp.

Identifying as female myself, I'm still mystified that people think I am inherently less valuable. I have never understood how someone could see "different" and think "evil." I know I'm not alone in that, but it makes it hard to talk to people who do think that way.

Identifying as female also means I've been subjected to the occasional overt or subconscious misogyny. It's rare enough to be overt that I can't help but laugh when it happens. It's the subconscious one, the bits about being passed over for a certain project because I'm not a guy, having my ideas discarded only to have the exact thing come up again in a male voice and be lauded, being chastised for speaking up instead of being praised, and so on that are more unsettling. Those things you can wave away individually because they're based on so many subjective pieces, but that in total add up to an unpleasant scene.

How do you combat that silent beast?

Probably not by diving into the snake pit with the foamy-mouthed rabble. Research has proven that anyone entrenched in their beliefs only becomes moreso after being confronted about it. As humans we have a weird tendency to dig in and struggle to save face.

Is it enough to have characters that espouse positive models for females even though the protags are male? Is it enough to paste boobs onto a blank canvas that could be either and call it good? Is it enough to have a female protag at all, regardless of how she's portrayed? Do women need to look "more like men" to be acceptable?

I imagine those questions are behind, you know, hundreds of years of political movements, educational fields, and citizen activism.

So how do you take it on in video games, especially when it's in the subtle form that is "not at all like those angry misogynists on Twitter" but is easily rationalized by saying "well, we'd attack people like Zoe even if they were a Zander!"?

(I obviously have no answer.)

[SnowFire]

Side comment unrelated to Gamergate: Eh, I'd definitely give MegaMan a pass on gender issues (at least from what I played of it), re Dark Holy Elf.  They're all robots.  Splash Woman isn't actually a woman, Mega Man isn't actually a guy, etc.  There's certainly no physical differences [that couldn't be fixed with a trip to the refurbishing lab], and no reason to think that gender means anything here, nor any indication that robot gender roles matter at all - it's just decoration, like Dr. Light painting his car.  I guess Dr. Light liked having his housekeeping bot appear like a human girl?  It doesn't seem to *mean* anything though.

Although I guess if you want to nitpick, the plot of Mega Man 4 has a human-damsel-in-distress story on the side?  But whatever, it barely matters.  (Disclaimer that I haven't played any actually text-heavy MM games, so maybe MMXCM or the like is worse on this count?!  I have no idea, I've played less MM than some of the DL's more hardcore fans, so I might be uninformed here if there's content in some games that makes robot gender an issue.)

[Grefter]

Eh I would argue the opposite really.  The fact that they are robots and there is no frame of reference with their junk (other than Junk Man) to quantify their Sex then the fact that the default interpretation is that the robots are coded Masculine says an awful lot.

It isn't really something I see as a problem with Mega Man though because it isn't offensive about it, but it is very much a product of its time.  I think in 50 years it will stand out more obviously as a systemic thing (such as the prevalence of white actors for all the characters in old movies) but not blatantly offensive by denigrating women especially (though Roll could be a bit uh more well ought out).  To go back to the movie example, Vertigo isn't the most broadly cast movie ever made, but it stands up as a solid price of cinema without it really being a problem.  Sure it would be great if it was more progressive, but it sure as shit wasn't Breakfast at Tiffany's.

[Meeplelard]

I have to agree that the fact that "They're robots"does not mean "they're technically genderless thus don't count."

Roll is openly called "Mega Man's sister" and Protoman "Mega Man's Brother"; it's not the genderless "Sibling" but clearly gendered titles.  Roll has a very explicit female design, and is made to be a housekeeping robot (compared to Rock which was lab assistance) and for the longest time in Mega Man, this was the only female character in the franchise unless you count Kalinka in MM4, who literally existed to be kidnapped for purposes of Blackmail...which really isn't any better.  To be fair to Mega Man, a large part of the franchise was made in the early era of Video Games, where Gender issues were barely considered.  The large majority of gamers back then were adolescent boys, so it made sense to make a predominantly male oriented game.  This doesn't excuse it so much as explains why no one really cared about it.

MM9 creating Splash Woman had some buzz, because "whoa, female robot master!  One that actually fights unlike Roll!"  The fact that Splash woman exists means they could easily create more "*Theme* Woman" Robot Masters (and technically follows the pattern because it still ends in "Man"), which unfortunately MM10 did not follow suit on.  To be fair, both Splash Woman and Roll were made by Dr. Light, and you could argue that the reason all the others are male is because most of the games Robot Masters are made by Dr. Wily, who we can assume hates women!  Seeing as "he's the villain", him doing things that are less than acceptable is kind of expected.

To further demonstrate the example, I reference the Mega Man Archie Comic.  Roll is given a bigger purpose, and they even had a running gag (spawned by fanbase head cannon) that Iceman has a crush on Roll, in as much as Robot Masters can have them.  Obviously, the comic treats them as having genders even if they technically don't.  Furthermore, they introduced Splash Woman and Kalinka a lot earlier, and made a few other original female characters in a female doctor who created Quake Woman/Tempo, and that really came off as "this really needs more females" on top of one of the main police characters Mega Man interacts with being female as well IIRC.  If Mega Man had more female characters, I don't think these characters would have been necessary.

The Mega Man X and after series takes it a step further and makes it clear "These robots have emotions, so gender is indeed a thing."  For all that it's completely mockable, there is legitimate romance sub-plot in MMX4 between Zero and Iris, and they never once try to pretend Iris is anything but a female.  I could go on a whole list of how the series got progressively better, but I wouldn't say it's a good example, and there are plenty of robots treated as females, and once the franchise established "Reploids have the same mental capabilities of a human" then emotional connections were pretty unavoidable (again, ZeroxIris)


I am not defending Mega Man X games and after to be clear, merely establishing they're a step up from the classic franchise but only because the classic franchise was really bad about females in this regard.  I mostly bring them up to further indicate the "They're robots, they don't have gender!" thing is a bollocks defense.  If you make machines that have human-like appearance, then the issue of "gender" can totally apply to them, since well, if you can make them look human, you can make them look male or female!  If all the Mega Man Robot Masters had designs more mechanical and less human-like, maybe the argument can be made and the "Man" naming convention is just a tradition and they're not actually gendered, and it's more "Man" in the sense of "Man-kind" (which I know some would argue is a sexist term in itself, but let's not get into that), but the way they're designed?  Even as far back as Mega Man 1, you can tell they were built with human-like features and meant to resemble people, and they're clearly all treated as males.  Add in how Roll has existed since the first game, and has always had a blatantly female-design (with Rock having a clearly masculine one), there's really no question that these robots are meant to, at very least, be emulating the genders in question.

[metroid composite]

I would conclude from reading these two reviews that this website did not have the same definition of sexism as I did and I would stop reading it. Not that the reviewers are terrible people or that they should lose their jobs, but simply that they criticized sexism in a way which I found inconsistent and thus not all that valuable to me.

Oh well that's fair!  Of course you should try to find a reviewer who cares about the same things you care about!


The problem is that being offended, or feeling something goes over the top with misogyny to the point that it distracts you from enjoying the product?  That's a very personal thing that varies from person to person.

How much is too much?  Not everyone is going to take marks off for missing gender diversity in the cast.  Not everyone is bothered by sexualization.  Not everyone is bothered by roles being stereotypical.  I think most people appreciate it when the previously mentioned issues are not the case, BUT for some people, only some of these would be "this bugged/distracted me so much that I'm lowering the score!"

And then there are subjective things.  Some people would prefer to have a setting that sticks closer to realism, even if that means fewer women in combat roles, and physically weaker women.  Others would like to have fantasy worlds to enable Buffy The Vampire Slayer style characters where some women are physically stronger than the men, and just as many women warriors exist as male warriors.

Actually here's a fun example--I was in university taking critical theory when Buffy was shiny and new, so of course it got discussed.  Academic feminists at the time didn't really like it or consider it a feminist work because it depicts violence against women.  That got an eyeroll from me (and still does).  Like...I can understand how depicting women in violent situations might be a trigger for them.  Domestic abuse was a problem in the 90s (and still is, granted).  Some of them had probably been the victim of domestic abuse themselves.  I don't blame them for feeling that way.  But personally, do I care if a game or movie depicts violence against women?  In general no.  Not unless it's like...ridiculous levels of disturbing (click at own risk).

[Dark Holy Elf]

Actually here's a fun example--I was in university taking critical theory when Buffy was shiny and new, so of course it got discussed.  Academic feminists at the time didn't really like it or consider it a feminist work because it depicts violence against women.  That got an eyeroll from me (and still does).  Like...I can understand how depicting women in violent situations might be a trigger for them.  Domestic abuse was a problem in the 90s (and still is, granted).  Some of them had probably been the victim of domestic abuse themselves.  But personally, do I care if a game or movie depicts violence against women?  In general no.  Not unless it's like...ridiculous levels of disturbing (click at own risk).

For obvious reasons I really hate to be all "BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ!" in a thread about feminism but I really take issue with simultaneously claiming that violence against women is bad (which it is) and implying that violence against men is okay, or at least significantly less bad. And since you say that these people take issue with Buffy not because it is violent but because some (not even most!) of the violence targets women, I'm having a hard time reading parsing the arguments you are relaying as anything but that. Maybe I'm missing something!

(Domestic abuse of course is very much a feminist issue but the violence seen in Buffy is not domestic abuse.)


Related: I watched one of Anita Sarkeesian's videos which dealt with some of the extreme, graphic violence that can be visited upon women by the player in some games. It made me extremely uncomfortable, to the point where I almost stopped watching the video (and would have left the room if I were actually watching one of my friends play said game and do said things). Yet I'm quite aware that in most of the cases the player could do analogous things to male NPCs. I mostly concluded that some games are just too graphically violent for me, moreso than I felt it was a particularly feminist issue. Although, in the video's defence, there were also some cases which felt very gender-specific, such as the player putting a (always female) prostitute in a vulnerable situation and then murdering her, which is all sorts of fucked up.

[metroid composite]

As far as I know this brand of academic 90s feminism was anti-violence in general.  I'm quite certain they didn't think of, say GI Joe as a feminist work.  They just also didn't feel like if you made half the characters into women that it suddenly became a feminist work.  They weren't openly protesting Buffy the Vampire Slayer and trying to censor it, but they weren't endorsing it either.

But I will agree with you that there also was a degree of hipocracy, for sure.  Like...I seem to recall some SNES characters in beat-em-up games were female in the arcades, but male in the SNES games, because Nintendo did not want to be seen as supportive of violence against women.  Still think that one was ridiculous.


And yeah, I think I saw that same video by Anita Sarkeesian.  In those game's defence, I want to say a good chunk of what she showed was optional, and you'd really need to seek it out.  (In that I played GTAV more than once, and saw almost none of the content she featured; although some of the other games she talked about made it sounds like it might have been more required in those?)  In general, while I like her videos, she does say very clearly that she's critiquing the problematic aspects of a game--and so you'll see about 30 seconds of footage that was the most problematic.

[Meeplelard]

From what I understand based on comments of others, and I am speaking 100% out of hearsay here, the situations Anita Sarkeesian presented were out of context and not really fair.

Like there's a situation in one of the Hitman games where there are women being strippers, because they're forced into it, and it emphasizes them, and you can do bad things to them.  Sounds bad at first, but from what I understand, the real situation?

Your target in this mission is the guy running the joint BECAUSE of how bad the situation is, to the point where you're basically trying to help these women out.  Furthermore, apparently this is a game that while the option to kill women is a thing, you are apparently penalized for killing anyone other than your target.  So while possible, the game actually discourages the action, not encourages it. 

I'm not saying this is a pro-feminist game; the situation itself has similarities to the distressed damsel, but the way she presents it from my understanding is way worse than the situation actually is.

It's ok to critique this stuff, but a sense of context is necessary or else you give the impression of this "look at how awful this game is!"  If she explained that "this is optional, and not encouraged" but them emphasized why it's bad, I think it may have worked better.  Emphasizing that it's just one aspect of the game and that it's not the game as a whole.


Back to Bayonetta, I realized just how opposite God of War is to Bayonetta in this regard:

This game is just MALE POWER FANTASY cranked to the max.  You run around as an overpowered male demi-god who can kill whatever he wants and gets away with it.  You fight mostly demonic spawns of the underworld, sure, but then some civilians run around and you kill them and you get rewarded with health!  I'd be fine with this, except there's another aspect that made me uncomfortable, and that's God of Wars treatment of women.

The first females you see in the game are two topless women, shown full frontal from waist up, after having just slept with them, and they exist to go "come on Kratos, let's have some more fun please " and his response is effectively "QUIET WOMAN!"  Then you get to Athens and meet the Oracle of Athena who...well...

http://godofwar.wikia.com/wiki/Euphemisms

sums it up best.  But hey, his wife and child are fairly dressed...and exist to get brutally killed so he can have a TRAGIC BACKSTORY!!!  IOWs, it' a Woman in Refrigerators trope.  The only character demonstrating any sense of dignity for females is Athena herself, who is mostly off screen, speaking through her voice primarily, and if you're trying for any sort of mythological accuracy (AHAAHAHAHAH), Athena kind of has to be modest because that's kind of a major part of her characterization in mythology.

2nd Game is a little better because at least Lakhesis wears clothes but even she was sexed up, and Clotho felt like they were trying their hardest to make something as hideous as possible but still "Fanservice" hence why she's covered entirely in boobs.  Atropos is the only one who seems to have been designed with dignity, going more for a "demon woman."

Haven't played God of War 3, can't comment.

And as a reminder, God of War is a franchise that takes itself seriously, so you can't even play the satire/parody/etc. card here like you could for Bayonetta.


I get that God of War's setting is one that by nature has more Male presence than female presence, it doesn't mean the females have to either be shoved to the side for Kratos to look more awesome, or sexed up to the maximum.  It just strikes me as wrong that some games get unfairly criticized for their treatment of women when a game like God of War exists where it does nothing but objectify women left and right while making the MANLY MEN!!!! seem all the more awesome.