Misogyny in Video Games

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

lol… now there’s a topic you don’t expect to see on an eroge site, right? :stuck_out_tongue: Anyways, very interesting viewpoints:

http://kotaku.com/5854819/he-asked-abou … idnt-dodge

Though to be honest, while there are many girls who are interested in fighting games, the vast population is male. The type of games where girls equal or outnumber boys, tend to be titles like The SIMS, Harvest Moon, Ragnarok Online, or Bejeweled. Demographics don’t lie, and so as a series evolves, the sequels or improvements tend to reflect that more women are buying them (i.e. the designers try to appeal to them). :expressionless:

#2

Isn’t that the same website that said Duke Nukem Forever was misogynistic? :roll:

I can’t take a website seriously that thinks a game full of hyperbole for the sake of enjoyment is somehow attempting to reduce women to second class citizens.

#3

Uh … it seems pretty clear to me that Duke Nukem Forever is misogynistic. Saying “oh it was just a joke” isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card that makes it all better. If the game also degraded men in the same way, that would be different.

#4

Fighting games often are sexist in certain ways (though obviously not in all ways. Very few people have the mental stamina to be every kind of sexist at once). The audience is predominantly male, but as with most complex social situations, cause-and-effect are murky. Would women play fighting games more if they weren’t so heavily marketed at horny juvenile males? (I always remember the old “She kicks high” commercial as the most blatant example.) SOME would. Would they do it in sufficient numbers for it to make businses sense for a company that’s only interested in the bottom line rather than not offending people? Dunno. I certainly know people who have been driven away from fighting games because of the community behavior and the endless array of ever-bustier girls in ever-skimpier outfits, but that’s anecdote, not data.

#5

If I remember correctly (I did read the article, but it was like a couple days ago) then the guy actually says that no, it wasn’t worth it. The character designs that were the most popular were the super-sexy ones, and so the series moved in that direction because that is what the audience sent the clear message they wanted to see more of.

#6

Two words: Mai Shiranui. Many of the character designers involved with KoF – even veterans like Falcoon and Shinkiro – have commented how uncomfortable they feel while drawing her because she’s, using Shinkiro’s own words: “not safe for children.”

They know she’s basically a fighting game whore… and honestly feel bad they can’t make her anything more than that. When Mai is in a fighting game, more time and effort is put into how her tits will bounce, than her actual fighting technique. :expressionless:

#7

To counter that, at the same time companies try to expand their audiance pool while trying to maintain as much of their existing base as possible. Not nessasarily for every game and every aspect of each game, but in general. Some are more conservative about while others try more radical changes.

#8

Not to go too off topic, but I noted there’s a similar mentality with RPG and tabletop gamers as well. A wonderfully blatant example would be Natalya Melnik and Jennifer Haley. These two women are masterclass miniature painters. Many kept asking them how they did it so well… so eventually the pair would produce DVD’s that showed them painting figurines. A totally non-sexual instructional, right?

So you’re supposed to be watching these vids, paying attention to the lovely ladies painting… not their wonderful cleavage. Riiiiiiiiiight…

Of course, who am I to deny these ladies their gifts? After all, if showing a little T&A sells more videos, more power to them for exploiting every weapon in their arsenal. If it doesn’t bother 'em, shouldn’t bother me either… but I don’t think the male masterclass painters, wear Conan outfits when they do their instructions. :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

Found a great BLOG that deconstructs games from one feminist’s point of view. It’s got some great opinions and written with very deep thought. I don’t agree with many of her views (it’s MY fantasy world damn it – if I want objectified women, that’s MY fake reality), but they’re presented in a constructive way:

http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/

She covers a HUGE range of genre: from RPG’s to fighters to hentai. Even if you’re 100% against feminists, I suggest checking it out some time. Sun Tzu says you should know the mind of your enemy. :wink:

EDIT
On a side note: I find it rather stupid how many feminists insist (heh…) that females should always dress and act exactly like males. The sheer absurdity of it ignores human culture and physiology. I also have noticed that a lot of feminists ignore that civilization and technology has been the great equalizer between the sexes. In a brutal savage world with humans being animalistic (no society, no inventions) – women are greatly disadvantaged and we’re probably reverting to a “club woman on head and pull her hair back to the cave” as the common marriage ceremony.

It’s called sexual dimorphism. :roll:

And why do feminists ignore things Hard Gay or the fact that classical Conan wears LESS clothes than classical Red Sonja? :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

Alright, who let her out of the kitchen??? J/K I really don’t understand the whole point of those blogs. Do girls not objectify men in video games to? Maybe I should make a blog about that. Damn women getting all those big overblown muscly guys in MY games. :lol:

Really, both men and women are objectified in games. It is called a virtual world and we can do what we want in it. Time to go play Skyrim. Time to objectify killing people in my video games.

#11

I don’t know about exactly the same, but are they arguing for enforced neckties on all women? If so, where can I donate for this worthy cause? :shock: The world needs more neckties between breasts.

#12

Women should dress and act like men to the extent that men should dress and act like women. Which is to say, both should be free to do it how they please.

There are and have been plenty of human cultures where men wear things that the modern American would call a skirt or a dress. There are and have been plenty of human cultures where women wear pants, or go topless, both things that in other locations are considered only acceptable for men. Culture is highly varied. As for physiology, well, even within a single sex body shape varies so wildly that I’m not sure what you mean.

I have no problem with men wearing skirts. I have no problem with men choosing not to wear skirts. I apply exactly the same logic to women. I do not see this as absurd.

If, within an intentionally created fictional setting/depiction, men are consistently all dressed one way and women are consistently all dressed another way, I am likely to think about what the intention was.

There’s growing evidence that this isn’t actually the case. It’s a cultural construction based on the gender beliefs that people held at the time that they codified the caveman myths. More detailed research has since suggested something much closer to equality in the ancient distant past… not to mention plenty of signs of women warriors. (The entire Rape And Pillage Horny Men Viking mythology also looks pretty shaky when the evidence is examined closely enough.)

Sure, real sexual equality has been pretty rare throughout history, but the whole story is a lot more complicated than it’s sometimes made out to be. It’s not like women all spent their days being constantly beaten black and blue until 1964 and then suddenly after that everything was rosy. There have always been educated women and professional women, though the proportions were quite different. Many cultures had specified roles for things men should do and things women should do, but honored both of them, because how would one ever survive without the other?

In some ways, technological (as distinct from cultural) advancement has caused problems for women. Labor-saving devices for household chores have made keeping house a lot easier. This has led some people to get the idea that it’s no burden at all, while still assigning all responsibility for it onto the heads of women. There has been more respect for the hard work of a farmwife in the past when it was a little more obvious the tough physical labor she was doing all day long to keep the place in order. Now a lot of people expect a woman to keep a fulltime job AND keep the house in top condition and see no problem with this… or look down on anyone, male or female, whose sole profession is homemaking.

There arent a lot of mainstream video games prominently featuring characters like Hard Gay, are there? :slight_smile:

#13

Can you prove it?

The problem with that is that feminists do not care about male/female cultural equality.Remember the rapelay debacle? That incident made the rounds to EVERY single feminist blog on the internet.I have yet to see a feminist campaign for the right of straight men to wear skirts in public.

Also men were regularly killed in the ancient world and women were sexually assaulted.I don’t think these nuns would have been afraid without good reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfigurement

#14

Not true.

Not true.

It’s hard to have a serious conversation with you when you make up bizarre absolutes.

I do not claim that crazy feminists don’t exist. I’m sure they DO, although I have very little contact with them. Just like I absolutely know that insane hateful Christians exist, but I personally have very little to do with them, and I don’t imagine that everyone who goes to church also supports ritual child abuse.

A large number of blogs carried the story about “Amazon sells rape porn!” because that made the rounds of the mainstream news. A large number of blogs that weren’t feminist at all carried that story as well. They didn’t know any more details than that and didn’t really care. Only one very tiny group which I, at least, had never even heard of before that point, got involved in the whole “directly contacting government ministers and demanding that they do something”

It’s generally not illegal for men to wear skirts, meaning there’s little point in ongoing campaigns to change the law. You damn well do see campaigns protesting against incidents wherein any man, straight or otherwise, is abused for wearing one. (Why would it make a difference if the man was straight or not?)

Both of those things still happen today.

And women were regularly killed in the ancient world and men were sexually assaulted. Both of those things still happen today.

I’m not saying nasty things didn’t happen, of course they did. I’m not saying life isn’t better now, of course it is.

But it’s crazy to think that EVERYONE in the past was a hulking hairy sexist racist everything-ist walking down the street covered in filth chewing tobacco in one cheek and opium in the other. :slight_smile: And it’s crazy to think that life now is perfect, or that we should stop trying to get better because we’re better than we used to be.

As for your specific example of the nuns, historians aren’t even sure said nuns ever existed. That’s the problem with popular history, it’s really more mythology! :slight_smile:

A horrific event which isn’t mentioned in history until hundreds of years after it supposedly happened tends to sound rather like something someone made up as ‘proof’ of how horrible the Vikings were, doesn’t it?

#15

Well, that depends. Not to you, certainly. No offense, but you’ve clearly already reached a decision on the issue and that’s simply all there is to it. Nothing would ever be strong enough to convince you, not if I spent weeks playing the game, meticulously documenting all the reasons why I thought it was sexist, and then cross-referencing this with the literature on sexism. I don’t have the time to do that, and even if I did, you still wouldn’t believe it.

They held a preview for the game in a goddamn strip club. There is a “capture the babe” mode. This, among all the other things I have heard about the game, are enough to convince me that I am not going anywhere near the game. But I am quite convinced that it is indeed misogynistic; it is the entire basis for my decision to skip the game.

I could have dealt with a crappy game. I was willing to put up with a crappy game, even though I have a fairly firm policy of not paying for things I don’t think I will like. I was that curious about what exactly in God’s name they had spent so much time doing. I was dying to know what they’d been doing for … shit, twelve years? Thirteen? :slight_smile:

But then I heard about the stuff that was actually in the game, and from the reviews I did not think I would be able to sit through the game’s misogynistic attitude.

Sure, I could go spend an hour tracking down those reviews, since I don’t remember exactly what they said. But they won’t convince you anyway, and everyone else here already knows what’s in them :slight_smile: