Tag: commentary

Posted on

Hey I want to genuinely ask why don’t you make your own story/game with the design of how you want females to be represented? I know what you have to say about it in your Rhetroic Bingo but there are ways to get around that; Like making a webcomic of said story to gain fans then make a kickstarter for a game or book I mean it worked for Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck series, Or you could gather a group of like minded individuals to collaborate on a game/movie/comic.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

image

Actually we’re both working on our own projects (they’re at a stage of completion where we’re comfortable sharing, and neither are the like minded people we’re working with (so there will be no further details forthcoming at this time).

Also, believe it or not: Some of the people involved in related blogs actually work in industries such as video games.

Saying that it “worked for Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck series” is as absurd, it’s like suggesting that someone’s who broke should just become a millionaire by building a web site like Google (it worked for Larry Page and Sergey Brin!)

Homestuck is a particularly bad example because it:

  • Didn’t really challenge the status quo at all, it was just a new absurdist comic that wanted to tell a story and entertain
  • Has a large and very enthusiastic fanbase, but has more or less no influence outside of that fanbase.  It’s very successful for a web comic, but that success doesn’t mean it’s influential in the grand scheme of things (or even in web comics)
  • Employs an economical style that works fine for the stories in Homestuck but is not necessarily even faintly compatible with other styles and stories.

image

Making a production that showcases women in sensible armor would pretty much require a higher standard of visual quality than something that’s intended to look like a scribble done in MS Paint.  So even with a web comic at a lot of hours in image creation.

More accessible and larger markets (which means more competition) products like animated features/movies/etc require even more effort and expertise.  Video games would require more skills and time again.

That’s not to say things like Kickstarter and Steam’s Greenlit aren’t fantastic and making the market more accessible but it’s insulting to creators of these products to downplay the work involved and pretend just anyone can do it (particularly with their other responsibilities and how much work is involved).

image

Even if Ozzie and I did somehow stumble across the time, money and connections to make a modest game (since video games are currently the biggest market) – say on par with Gone Home, here’s what we could look forward to:

  • Sales would be a small fraction of those by mainstream publishers – even a lambasted product like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning gets more sales (and hence market influence) than a critically acclaimed indy production
  • If the game doesn’t do well, for any reason – there will be a general backlash saying that it’s proof that the public doesn’t want well armored heroines
  • If the game does do well, for any reason – there will be a general backlash from people claiming that it’s only got sales due to political reasons and not because of the game (for more information, read the reviews on Gone Home’s Steam Store page – for extra laughs compare them to the reviews on The Stanley Parable a game that employs almost identical mechanics but doesn’t challenge people’s perceptions of the world around them per se)
  • While it may provide some influence in mainstream gaming, it is likely that the industry would in general mostly overlook. Lots of people want to copy Minecraft – but almost nobody talks about its gender ambiguity.

I mean we already have big names in industry like David Gaider promoting the importance of inclusion, Mark Rubin – the executive producer of Call of Duty (the iconic game of brodudes) recently announced they’ll be including female playable characters to recognize the female fanbase they already have around the same time that Ubisoft announced that making female characters in their next Assassin’s Creed game would be too much work.

The idea that an independent production is somehow going to overpower the influence of the mainstream media is, frankly, ridiculous (unless you’re Batman).  None of that is to say there aren’t things like games or artworks out there that are made for political reasons or with such goals – but they’re made by people who want to make the things.

History has already shown that if you make a web comic just because you want to make lots of money off it – you’re going to be disappointed.  Likewise if you make a web comic, animation or game just because you want the world to change their perceptions of other people.  Usually even political projects are less about expecting to change people, and more about the need to express something important.

So to summarize the main points:

1. Not everyone who is critical of a market should be expected to produce for that market. Every modern marketplace needs more customers than suppliers so it makes sense to leave the production up to people with the motivation and skills to do so.

2. If 50% of the population can see themselves well represented by going to, say, a game store, but the other 50% have to spend years building a game for themselves – that is not equality.

Criticism in the marketplace is important, it leads to more pressure on the experts to make better products and refine their priorities.

image

– wincenworks

This week throwback: an in-depth explanation of why “If you don’t like it, go make your own!” argument is one big fallacy and an insult to all hard work that goes into creating media.

All of the above are the reasons why it is warranted its own spot on the Rhetoric Bingo.

image

Feel free to share this post with anyone who insists that people should start making their own games/movies/comics/whatever instead of “whining” about having no representation in media.

~Ozzie

Posted on

blazestuck:

Hey I want to genuinely ask why don’t you make your own story/game with the design of how you want females to be represented? I know what you have to say about it in your Rhetroic Bingo but there are ways to get around that; Like making a webcomic of said story to gain fans then make a kickstarter for a game or book I mean it worked for Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck series, Or you could gather a group of like minded individuals to collaborate on a game/movie/comic.

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

image

Actually we’re both working on our own projects (they’re at a stage of completion where we’re comfortable sharing, and neither are the like minded people we’re working with (so there will be no further details forthcoming at this time).

Also, believe it or not: Some of the people involved in related blogs actually work in industries such as video games.

Saying that it “worked for Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck series” is as absurd, it’s like suggesting that someone’s who broke should just become a millionaire by building a web site like Google (it worked for Larry Page and Sergey Brin!)

Homestuck is a particularly bad example because it:

  • Didn’t really challenge the status quo at all, it was just a new absurdist comic that wanted to tell a story and entertain
  • Has a large and very enthusiastic fanbase, but has more or less no influence outside of that fanbase.  It’s very successful for a web comic, but that success doesn’t mean it’s influential in the grand scheme of things (or even in web comics)
  • Employs an economical style that works fine for the stories in Homestuck but is not necessarily even faintly compatible with other styles and stories.

image

Making a production that showcases women in sensible armor would pretty much require a higher standard of visual quality than something that’s intended to look like a scribble done in MS Paint.  So even with a web comic at a lot of hours in image creation.

More accessible and larger markets (which means more competition) products like animated features/movies/etc require even more effort and expertise.  Video games would require more skills and time again.

That’s not to say things like Kickstarter and Steam’s Greenlit aren’t fantastic and making the market more accessible but it’s insulting to creators of these products to downplay the work involved and pretend just anyone can do it (particularly with their other responsibilities and how much work is involved).

image

Even if Ozzie and I did somehow stumble across the time, money and connections to make a modest game (since video games are currently the biggest market) – say on par with Gone Home, here’s what we could look forward to:

  • Sales would be a small fraction of those by mainstream publishers – even a lambasted product like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning gets more sales (and hence market influence) than a critically acclaimed indy production
  • If the game doesn’t do well, for any reason – there will be a general backlash saying that it’s proof that the public doesn’t want well armored heroines
  • If the game does do well, for any reason – there will be a general backlash from people claiming that it’s only got sales due to political reasons and not because of the game (for more information, read the reviews on Gone Home’s Steam Store page – for extra laughs compare them to the reviews on The Stanley Parable a game that employs almost identical mechanics but doesn’t challenge people’s perceptions of the world around them per se)
  • While it may provide some influence in mainstream gaming, it is likely that the industry would in general mostly overlook. Lots of people want to copy Minecraft – but almost nobody talks about its gender ambiguity.

I mean we already have big names in industry like David Gaider promoting the importance of inclusion, Mark Rubin – the executive producer of Call of Duty (the iconic game of brodudes) recently announced they’ll be including female playable characters to recognize the female fanbase they already have around the same time that Ubisoft announced that making female characters in their next Assassin’s Creed game would be too much work.

The idea that an independent production is somehow going to overpower the influence of the mainstream media is, frankly, ridiculous (unless you’re Batman).  None of that is to say there aren’t things like games or artworks out there that are made for political reasons or with such goals – but they’re made by people who want to make the things.

History has already shown that if you make a web comic just because you want to make lots of money off it – you’re going to be disappointed.  Likewise if you make a web comic, animation or game just because you want the world to change their perceptions of other people.  Usually even political projects are less about expecting to change people, and more about the need to express something important.

So to summarize the main points:

1. Not everyone who is critical of a market should be expected to produce for that market. Every modern marketplace needs more customers than suppliers so it makes sense to leave the production up to people with the motivation and skills to do so.

2. If 50% of the population can see themselves well represented by going to, say, a game store, but the other 50% have to spend years building a game for themselves – that is not equality.

Criticism in the marketplace is important, it leads to more pressure on the experts to make better products and refine their priorities.

image

– wincenworks

This week throwback: an in-depth explanation of why “If you don’t like it, go make your own!” argument is one big fallacy and an insult to all hard work that goes into creating media.

All of the above are the reasons why it is warranted its own spot on the Rhetoric Bingo.

image

Feel free to share this post with anyone who insists that people should start making their own games/movies/comics/whatever instead of “whining” about having no representation in media.

~Ozzie

Posted on

Warmachine – Necrotechs

@recklessprudence submitted:

So, I was reading your past Warmachine commentary, and got to the part where you said that ‘Skarre comes from an army where the female commanders are always sexy ladies – and the male characters… significantly less attractive’, and I thought “Surely not! I read Master Necrotech Mortenebra’s lore and remember her disdain for the flesh she escaped by becoming the undead horror masterpiece of engineering and magic she is now, and I vaguely remember the model, she’s just an only-partially humanoid  robot with her soul animating it, there’s no reason for her to be like that”

…and then I looked up her model.

image

Yes, that is boobplate. On a spider-robot-lady who barely has a face. Why was that the crucial aspect one of the greatest masters of combining Necromancy and Engineering the world has ever seen focused on?

Especially when a focus on her sex appeal was nothing that was in the lore, and in fact her disdain for the weakness of flesh (not anything in particular, just the fact that bodies need food and water and fairly narrow climate tolerances and time to heal and whatnot – the whole organic thing)

Hell, even her subordinate necrotechs are undead for the most part, grotesque monstrosities of necromantic technology that look like this:

image

PP, I love your game, but… really?

…On the plus side, she has no ribcage under that to be broken, like a normal undead, just more mechanisms of her robot body? But then, it’s still going to guide both ranged fire and melee strikes into a spot, repeatedly. And I don’t care what you’ve built your new body out of, or how thick the forcefield generated by your will married to sorcerous technology surrounding your body is, you don’t make your third century by making things easier for your many enemies!

I personally have this theory (that I cling to out of desperate fear of the alternatives) that armies like Cryx end up with sexy undead because the creators have trapped themselves into using boobs, wasp waists and thongs as their signals that a model is female.  Particularly if they’re “evil”.

Once you’ve set that convention, or simply decided to adhere to it in order to conform with market expectations – you paint yourself into a corner with the designs.  Doing the undead horror who’s more machine than flesh as a different attracts attention to the convention and breaks the “language” of their visuals and opens it up to criticism.

Sticking with the conventions, however limiting and silly that ends up being, invites people to respond to anything ridiculous as “it’s just fantasy”.  That of course, only holds up so long as lots of people stick to the same conventions – so they all find themselves trapped in an unspoken agreement.

– wincenworks

Posted on

Warmachine – Necrotechs

@recklessprudence submitted:

So, I was reading your past Warmachine commentary, and got to the part where you said that ‘Skarre comes from an army where the female commanders are always sexy ladies – and the male characters… significantly less attractive’, and I thought “Surely not! I read Master Necrotech Mortenebra’s lore and remember her disdain for the flesh she escaped by becoming the undead horror masterpiece of engineering and magic she is now, and I vaguely remember the model, she’s just an only-partially humanoid  robot with her soul animating it, there’s no reason for her to be like that”

…and then I looked up her model.

image

Yes, that is boobplate. On a spider-robot-lady who barely has a face. Why was that the crucial aspect one of the greatest masters of combining Necromancy and Engineering the world has ever seen focused on?

Especially when a focus on her sex appeal was nothing that was in the lore, and in fact her disdain for the weakness of flesh (not anything in particular, just the fact that bodies need food and water and fairly narrow climate tolerances and time to heal and whatnot – the whole organic thing)

Hell, even her subordinate necrotechs are undead for the most part, grotesque monstrosities of necromantic technology that look like this:

image

PP, I love your game, but… really?

…On the plus side, she has no ribcage under that to be broken, like a normal undead, just more mechanisms of her robot body? But then, it’s still going to guide both ranged fire and melee strikes into a spot, repeatedly. And I don’t care what you’ve built your new body out of, or how thick the forcefield generated by your will married to sorcerous technology surrounding your body is, you don’t make your third century by making things easier for your many enemies!

I personally have this theory (that I cling to out of desperate fear of the alternatives) that armies like Cryx end up with sexy undead because the creators have trapped themselves into using boobs, wasp waists and thongs as their signals that a model is female.  Particularly if they’re “evil”.

Once you’ve set that convention, or simply decided to adhere to it in order to conform with market expectations – you paint yourself into a corner with the designs.  Doing the undead horror who’s more machine than flesh as a different attracts attention to the convention and breaks the “language” of their visuals and opens it up to criticism.

Sticking with the conventions, however limiting and silly that ends up being, invites people to respond to anything ridiculous as “it’s just fantasy”.  That of course, only holds up so long as lots of people stick to the same conventions – so they all find themselves trapped in an unspoken agreement.

– wincenworks

Posted on

lunaia:

I feel like the problem with unnecessary sexy womens clothing in many
games and comics is relatively well known and untill yesterday I would
have said that we are making progress in this area. This changed today
when I received an answer to a question that I had send Bigpoint, the
producer of “Drakensang online”, a free fantasy MMORPG.

The question I send
them asked something like “hey team, why are women now expected to fight without pants all of a sudden? I hope this is a halloween thing because I don’t really like it. I thought you were doing really well when you added more skintone options some time ago. It would be cool if you told me what changes you made in the male costume for halloween, I wasn’t really able to make anything out. Cheers, [my name]”

The answer they send, you can see above. It says: “Hello, a lot of users asked that it become better visible if a character is male or female. That is why this change was made. With kind regards […]” etc.

I don’t even know if I should be angry about this or just sad. Before female and male characters had basically the same clothing. There is no good reason (as far as I know) why gender should be made more vissible. Also, hoovering your mouse above a character will give you their name
and a (often gendered) title. This is much easier than zooming in to
spot the boob-window. You can see the changes in the pictures above. (The characters still look like before in the character menu, that is where I was able to make the before pictures.) 

I really want to make a point to Bigpoint about this, so pleas reblog or like this post if you agree with me. If you play the game, it would be awesome if you left a message in their feedback-forums or tell them what you think via their support page

A propos gender signifiers in warrior costume design… Now this case tells us a lot about the studio’s approach to creativity.

Developers got asked to differentiate gender of the characters, so removing women’s pants and adding cleavages was the best solution they could come up with? Really?

image

Assuming there truly is a huge demand for making female and male costumes more distinct, couldn’t they accommodate the designs in a more dignified way? 

And if they really had to remove some items to make character’s sex/gender obvious, why not men’s shirts? Why it’s the female characters who need “adjustments”, while male ones remain the default?

But considering Drakensang’s track record, we shouldn’t be all that surprised.

Thank you @lunaia for bringing this issue to us!

~Ozzie

more about double standards on BABD

Posted on

Guy that (supposedly) worked on a mobile game said they’d first tried not to use sex appeal. Tried some inoffensive DLC & got lukewarm response. Then they caved & tried selling things that “sexed up” the game. Supposedly they gained more male gamers (& their revenue) than they lost from girls leaving. QUESTION: Are there good visual examples of warrior women that are genuinely sexy (to teens into girls, theoretically) without being demeaning? Can we have “sex appeal” revenue w.out offensiveness?

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

The problem with crediting “sexing up” the game with increase in sales is that it assumes sex was the only avenue of generating interest – a theory that doesn’t hold up when you consider that some of the biggest selling game types (flight simulators, first person shooters, side scrolling platformers) often don’t include any sexual angle at all.

Back in 1970, Marvel comics experimented with putting Conan the Barbarian in comic format.  After the first few issues sales began to decline and the writer, Roy Thomas (who loved Conan), went to Stan Lee (who was indifferent to Conan) for advice.  Stan looked at the covers and the sales, and told them to shift away from putting animals on the covers and instead use more humanoid monsters.

They followed Stan’s advice: Sales went up again and the comic continued for twenty-three years.  However you don’t see many people campaigning that “Humanoid monsters sell!“ then trying to fit them into all marketing regardless of product or target market.  (And sex obviously wasn’t selling Conan, they had bikini damsels after all)

image

Conan the Barbarian, in his loincloth and flexing his muscles, looked like a poor man’s Tarzan (which had been the popular comic fifty years ago) when battling animals – but when battling humanoid monsters he looked like a more mature fantasy narrative that was new and unique in comics at the time.

The only narrative that sexing/male gazing up a game really provides is “This game is made to cater to the fantasy of straight men.” So if swapping out your old narrative for this one increases interest and sales dramatically – then your old narrative must have been pretty boring.

There have been numerous warrior women in video games over the years.  Most of them have been under marketed, relegated to sidelines, ignored or otherwise mishandled due to general fear that they weren’t meeting the “make straight men feel important” factor that modern markets cling to as their sacred idol.

It’s actually not that difficult for creators to make female characters who are sexually attractive without going into bikini armor or other exploitative tropes.  I mean, if you give a woman agency, ability and personality – odds are good people will find it sexy.

Essentially the problem is that the gaming industry, and many other mediums, are reluctant to take the risk of incorporating different perspectives and different priorities over “games to reassure straight white men that they’re straight and awesome”.

– wincenworks

Bringing this back this Thursday because the most important conversations to have in character design and critique thereof are not “is it sexy” or “what’s wrong with sex” but:

  • What is the design really selling?
  • Why should the audience be interested?
  • How does it fit in with the other designs?
  • How does it fit into media as a whole?

Unfortunately David Gaider has since removed his blog, but his rather excellent talk on sex and video games is still available in GDC Vault and still covers important points about perspective and privilege.

Even if you’re a soulless corporation making products purely for profit and only interested in sales – it’s worth it to consider all these points.  After all, you do want your audience to like your product and to cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing.

– wincenworks

Posted on

danalynnandthecallofadventure:

Guy that (supposedly) worked on a mobile game said they’d first tried not to use sex appeal. Tried some inoffensive DLC & got lukewarm response. Then they caved & tried selling things that “sexed up” the game. Supposedly they gained more male gamers (& their revenue) than they lost from girls leaving. QUESTION: Are there good visual examples of warrior women that are genuinely sexy (to teens into girls, theoretically) without being demeaning? Can we have “sex appeal” revenue w.out offensiveness?

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

The problem with crediting “sexing up” the game with increase in sales is that it assumes sex was the only avenue of generating interest – a theory that doesn’t hold up when you consider that some of the biggest selling game types (flight simulators, first person shooters, side scrolling platformers) often don’t include any sexual angle at all.

Back in 1970, Marvel comics experimented with putting Conan the Barbarian in comic format.  After the first few issues sales began to decline and the writer, Roy Thomas (who loved Conan), went to Stan Lee (who was indifferent to Conan) for advice.  Stan looked at the covers and the sales, and told them to shift away from putting animals on the covers and instead use more humanoid monsters.

They followed Stan’s advice: Sales went up again and the comic continued for twenty-three years.  However you don’t see many people campaigning that “Humanoid monsters sell!“ then trying to fit them into all marketing regardless of product or target market.  (And sex obviously wasn’t selling Conan, they had bikini damsels after all)

image

Conan the Barbarian, in his loincloth and flexing his muscles, looked like a poor man’s Tarzan (which had been the popular comic fifty years ago) when battling animals – but when battling humanoid monsters he looked like a more mature fantasy narrative that was new and unique in comics at the time.

The only narrative that sexing/male gazing up a game really provides is “This game is made to cater to the fantasy of straight men.” So if swapping out your old narrative for this one increases interest and sales dramatically – then your old narrative must have been pretty boring.

There have been numerous warrior women in video games over the years.  Most of them have been under marketed, relegated to sidelines, ignored or otherwise mishandled due to general fear that they weren’t meeting the “make straight men feel important” factor that modern markets cling to as their sacred idol.

It’s actually not that difficult for creators to make female characters who are sexually attractive without going into bikini armor or other exploitative tropes.  I mean, if you give a woman agency, ability and personality – odds are good people will find it sexy.

Essentially the problem is that the gaming industry, and many other mediums, are reluctant to take the risk of incorporating different perspectives and different priorities over “games to reassure straight white men that they’re straight and awesome”.

– wincenworks

Bringing this back this Thursday because the most important conversations to have in character design and critique thereof are not “is it sexy” or “what’s wrong with sex” but:

  • What is the design really selling?
  • Why should the audience be interested?
  • How does it fit in with the other designs?
  • How does it fit into media as a whole?

Unfortunately David Gaider has since removed his blog, but his rather excellent talk on sex and video games is still available in GDC Vault and still covers important points about perspective and privilege.

Even if you’re a soulless corporation making products purely for profit and only interested in sales – it’s worth it to consider all these points.  After all, you do want your audience to like your product and to cut through the noise of what everyone else is doing.

– wincenworks