idlehands said
Why does she have to be dumb? I object to this more than the measurements only attainable through plastic surgery. I'm not a huge gamer, but I've seen enough dumbing down of female characters. The last Tomb Raider (speaking of objectification) was the last straw for me. I understand it was a reboot to where Lara Croft was younger but they took a character who was uniquely strong, smart, and deadly and turned her into a simpering teenager. /rant

whoa. I came in to say i think it's getting better in AAA titles, because look at the new Tomb Raider and look at how Lara's not just a masturbation toy anymore. Cuz I thought that game represented some major progress.... but I guess.... not? Idunnno. Now I'm rethinking my position.

Your biggest releases aren't about sex anymore. Games that make money are Call of Duty (the female models are indistinguishable from the male models, other than voice and occasionally hair); Battlefield (basically all dudes), and Angry Birds. Assassin's Creed did okay....

NEVER MIND I FUCKED UP

ImANargleHunter said
I think the key thing here is that I don't want to see myself as a sex object, so I'd rather have the female characters I identify with not be seen exclusively as a sex object. I don't want them to have to have a love interest that their character is based around, or some man they have to depend on, I want them to go on an adventure and wreck shit. If they happen to be hot and pick up a love interest along the way, whatever. Just don't reduce them to a shell of a character. They should be complicated.

>complicated women
>escapism

pick one

Awson said
>complicated women>escapismpick one

Omg lrn2write

You can have complicated women who go on adventures.

mdk said whoa. I came in to say i think it's getting better in AAA titles, because look at the new Tomb Raider and look at how Lara's not just a masturbation toy anymore. Cuz I thought that game represented some major progress.... but I guess.... not? Idunnno. Now I'm rethinking my position.

I agree her form was pretty rediculous but I'm speaking about the character herself. She was strong, she didn't have a 'love interest' to propel her story, she used her wits and her tits, not to mention her guns, to get what she wanted. So other than the crazy boob/hip ratio, she was a badass female lead.

mdk said
whoa. I came in to say i think it's getting better in AAA titles, because look at the new Tomb Raider and look at how Lara's not just a masturbation toy anymore. Cuz I thought that game represented some major progress.... but I guess.... not? Idunnno. Now I'm rethinking my position.Your biggest releases aren't about sex anymore. Games that make money are Call of Duty (the female models are indistinguishable from the male models, other than voice and occasionally hair); Battlefield (basically all dudes), and Angry Birds. Assassin's Creed did okay....

Assassin's Creed and GTA V had a lot of whores. A lot. And Battlefield had like, one asian woman and some random blonde haired hacker. Nonetheless, the games at least do somewhat of a degree of realistic representation

The Imagination said
Assassin's Creed and GTA V had a lot of whores. A lot. And Battlefield had like, one asian woman and some random blonde haired hacker. Nonetheless, the games at least do somewhat of a degree of realistic representation

He said Angry Birds, so I'm assuming he was kidding.

idlehands said
As Kaga said, it's marketing to the lowest common denominator. It's not just that men like attractive women, because women like attractive women. What gets me is that the oversexualization. Like a game where the higher level you get, the less armor your female character wears. The 'bikini' armor, it's a joke, while male characters get all sorts of heavy gear. I don't play many games, but I've seen it in WoW, Rift, and Guild Wars, mostly fantasy based games. Emphasis on the fantasy part. I play Lord of the Rings Online, which is more realistic looking and the female characters, aside from cosmetic dresses, wear the same armor as the men. So if you're tanking, you're in full plate and helm, rather than a ridiculous iron g-string. That game also has an older demographic and it's pretty much split 50-50 when it comes to the sex of the gamer. I enjoy that game partly because my female character doesn't have to look like a floozy. I mean, there is one thing to look attractive and another to look like stripper. It's few and far between that you can find this though.I thought about mentioning this as well. Though my point is that they still get treated better in the costuming department.

But don't you know evil men = colder, evil women = hotter.

That easily explains why evil people dress the way they do.

So yeah, muhsoggyknees in vidyagams. I think it's a thing that does exist, but definitely not on the scale that most people would imply with their sensationalist horseshit outcries.

I'm not going to be just limiting this to 'objectification', but let's touch on the whole sexism thing as a whole because I'm already torturing myself with the typing and why the fuck not go all the way with it?

So, the easiest way for me to tackle this is to use examples and go off of that.

Bayonetta. Is she a sexist character because of her body shape and personality? Not really. You can totally claim that she conforms to some male ideal, and y'know what, perhaps she does. But nobody is saying that regular women have to look like Bayo. Shit, a large majority of the point of that character is to be unrealistic and over the top for fun. And therein lies the point: she's not sexualized just for the sake of giving teenage males boners, she's sexualized because that's who her character is. She's a dominant predatory person and hell of an intimidating motherfucker. You can't really claim it to be a male power fantasy when she spends the entire game sexually torturing enemies and basically being a huge fucking perving creep towards the male supporting character. So no, she's not a sexist character. The game isn't saying "THIS IS WHAT FEMALES ARE", the game is saying "Hey look, there's this chick named Bayonetta and she's a fucking over the top weirdo, now go have dumb adventures." So, when someone calls that portrayal sexist, I ask why are we not allowed to have this character? Again, she was never a statement about women, she is just one character who looks and acts a certain way. Saying she isn't allowed is like saying Salvador from borderlands is sexist towards men because he's a short hulking brute who likes shooting things. But Salvador, much like Bayonetta, was never intended to be a statement about a gender as a whole, they're just singular fucking characters.

Without going into other examples, what's the overall point? Things that one could claim as sexist or simple objectification are not so if they serve an actual purpose in the plot or in the characterization of an individual in the story.

So what IS sexist?

Look at games like Dead or Alive. Every female has huge tits and are as forgettable as a character could be. It's pretty fucking obvious that they're tits for the sake of tits and nothing more. Which is a pretty shitty thing to do and sexist in my opinion, but then again, it's their right to sell their game, is it not? That's another tricky part of this that I really don't want to get into, but still relevant.

And y'know, most of the things I'd claim are sexist in games really have little to do with appearance. I don't care if a character looks attractive, male or female, because they're not fucking real so what the fuck ever. It's personalities that are off putting to me. Example time. As idlehands brought up, that Lara Croft torture porn game, but then again the argument can be made that it's an origin story and thus blah fucking blah. Yeah, DmC is a psuedo-origin story as well, doesn't mean I think Donte is any less of a retard.

Let's see, oh yeah, every fucking David Cage game ever. Hilariously enough a few feminists apparently praised Beyond Two Souls, despite it being, y'know actually sexist unlike most of the things they bitch about. It's a movie about a weak dumb broad, void of personality and without any interesting traits, who constantly gets put into rapey scenarios for the sake of rapey scenarios because women can't be strong unless they're avoiding the rapes, y'know? And of course she doesn't even get out of the scenarios herself and constantly has to be saved by her decidedly male gary sue invincible ghost.

And feminists praised that game while bitching about shit like Bayonetta. Dear fucking fuck.

Ooh, to close out, thought of another example of both personality and physical shit without a purpose. Fucking Other M, made by the same cunts that make Dead or Alive. Yeah, giving Samus high heels and making her obsessed with THE BABY. Oh, and her inability to use her established powers until her daddy figure that she wants to fuck tells her she is allowed to not die. And then she shits herself for no reason when she fights Ridley for the billionth time and suddenly develops ptsd even though she's killed him a billion fucking times.

But I digress.

Point in summary: Physical shit is only sexist if it's there just to be there, and mental shit is far more important in making something a sexist portrayal.

I didn't proofread this so fuck off.

The Imagination said
Assassin's Creed and GTA V had a lot of whores. A lot. And Battlefield had like, one asian woman and some random blonde haired hacker. Nonetheless, the games at least do somewhat of a degree of realistic representation

AC4 had whores in the brothels, sure, but they're *brothels*. Hard to avoid that when it's a story about pirates. But look at the major characters -- you're almost surprised to hear.... hang on.



So I really wouldn't call it exploitative. Theoretically you could say the same thing about GTAV, but that's not as recent in my memory -- like, okay, yes, whores are there, but the major women are like.... I mean they're diverse, right? Isn't there a purely domestic middleweight hispanic love interest?

Nice spoiler tags.

ImANargleHunter said
Omg lrn2writeYou can have complicated women who go on adventures.

But they are hard to love with the limited amount of social skills I have.

I can't go on an adventure without a love interest.

ImANargleHunter said
Nice spoiler tags.

I'm oldguilding hard

Kill Bones said I didn't proofread this so fuck off.

Did not use proper essay format, 4/10 see me after class.

Kill Bones; TL;DR

mdwhateverthefuck; wat. The only pregnant bishes were the two pirates, and its pretty evident they're gonna get fucked on long sea voyages with a drunkard for a captain. And the dudes wife or whatever got prego before the events of said game. Not very surprising, at all really, especially considering some of it actually happened,

Awson said
But they are hard to love with the limited amount of social skills I have.I can't go on an adventure without a love interest.

You are a shallow man, Awson. Work on your adventure loving skills, or forever be incapable of

Okay, I don't know where I was going with that.

I think that the relationship with Japan is often overlooked in these things. Are things Like DoA and Shitty Metroid really relevant to us and our culture?

Video games are a world-wide phenomenon and we're trying to compartmentalize it to our own way of thinking.

ImANargleHunter said
You are a shallow man, Awson. Work on your adventure loving skills, or forever be incapable ofOkay, I don't know where I was going with that.

I'm going on an adventure! -hobbits along-

And ease up, Sugarlumps. I'm being Devil's Advocate.

Awson said
I think that the relationship with Japan is often overlooked in these things. Are things Like DoA and Shitty Metroid really relevant to us and our culture? Video games are a world-wide phenomenon and we're trying to compartmentalize it to our own way of thinking.

The western world.

And then there's KB.

You did good Kibbles.

Japan's culture is pretty fucked up towards women.

I agree though, with KB, what's more irking is not costumes but personalities when it comes to lead characters. Making formally strong females into weak ones is the most insulting. Whatever the excuse they use to justify it.