The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
In a video that covers a few game mechanics, over-commercialization, verbal abuse in gameplay and the general state of games… what is the hot topic in the comments?
Seems familiar. Anyone ever notice how the whole “If you don’t like it just shut up and make your own!” thing only ever applies to people who want progress… like why aren’t the people who want terrible stuff obligated to just shut up and make their own?
– wincenworks
I assume you’re referring to this blather where Matt Cavotta tried to explain that he didn’t want to be responsible for his decisions are Creative Lead and basically didn’t want to do his job (which is probably why he isn’t the creative lead anywhere anymore). He also admits (Myth #5) that he doesn’t speak for Wizards of the Coast (WotC), just himself.
If you actually read it though, there’s a few very damning points here and a lot of strawmanning and standard issue rhetoric while throwing his fellow artists under the bus. See how he keeps referencing the style guide and saying “Well they’re not doing anything they’re not allowed to… creative freedom!”
Style guides are not brief little guidelines with just a few bullet points and “be creative” in bold letters, they’re actually quite carefully constructed and complicated documents and contain many restrictions.
Some examples:
And of course:
See, art directors and their bosses are supposed to supplement guides and provide guidance to artists so that the artist creates the best possible product for the company and the artist themselves. It helps to fix mistakes and smooth out issues, this one was an issue in 2005 when Matt made his statement and it’s continued to be one.
Now, there are several things that WotC can and should have done before 2005 to fix this. By could I mean both as part of being a responsible company and in terms of trying to maintain brand image and profits:
WotC easily had the infrastructure to do this by 2000 – I know this because I worked for WotC in the early 2000s (up until July 2005 in fact) as an online chat room moderator and even in this minor role I had to sign an NDA, memorize pages of regulations and undergo supervised training. When I left, they were not slowing down on that in the slightest.
This has nothing to do with Wizards of the Coast wanting to be a cool relaxed company, or offer artist freedom or being somehow unable to make decisions on what they do and don’t publish – it’s that they simply haven’t cared to properly address this issue and set high standards for things other than being viable to sell in China and Walmart.
They publish things, they are responsible for the what they publish. It’s that simple. They have more power than the artists over what gets published because they have the ability to refuse, crop or edit submitted artwork – artists, on the other hand, can only get published if they meet the publisher’s expectations… and then it might get cropped or edited.
– wincenworks
Also, themystisk, even if the nonsense you wrote somehow WAS true, it would still prove our point:
Either way, it’s part of a larger problem with media’s and society’s expectations towards women. Blaming random bad artists for it is just a disingenuous, oversimplified answer and offers no solutions to the issue.
~Ozzie
I would just like to point out that WotC have addressed the state of dress that characters in the art for their cards are in, and for all of their other merchandise for that matter. They simply commission an artist to draw, say “Elf rogue in cityscape”, that the artist then hands them a female in skimpy leather armor, isn’t their fault. Essentially, they give the artists pretty free reins, and if they manage to fit the description given, it usually goes through. So blame the artists, not WotC.
I assume you’re referring to this blather where Matt Cavotta tried to explain that he didn’t want to be responsible for his decisions are Creative Lead and basically didn’t want to do his job (which is probably why he isn’t the creative lead anywhere anymore). He also admits (Myth #5) that he doesn’t speak for Wizards of the Coast (WotC), just himself.
If you actually read it though, there’s a few very damning points here and a lot of strawmanning and standard issue rhetoric while throwing his fellow artists under the bus. See how he keeps referencing the style guide and saying “Well they’re not doing anything they’re not allowed to… creative freedom!”
Style guides are not brief little guidelines with just a few bullet points and “be creative” in bold letters, they’re actually quite carefully constructed and complicated documents and contain many restrictions.
Some examples:
And of course:
See, art directors and their bosses are supposed to supplement guides and provide guidance to artists so that the artist creates the best possible product for the company and the artist themselves. It helps to fix mistakes and smooth out issues, this one was an issue in 2005 when Matt made his statement and it’s continued to be one.
Now, there are several things that WotC can and should have done before 2005 to fix this. By could I mean both as part of being a responsible company and in terms of trying to maintain brand image and profits:
WotC easily had the infrastructure to do this by 2000 – I know this because I worked for WotC in the early 2000s (up until July 2005 in fact) as an online chat room moderator and even in this minor role I had to sign an NDA, memorize pages of regulations and undergo supervised training. When I left, they were not slowing down on that in the slightest.
This has nothing to do with Wizards of the Coast wanting to be a cool relaxed company, or offer artist freedom or being somehow unable to make decisions on what they do and don’t publish – it’s that they simply haven’t cared to properly address this issue and set high standards for things other than being viable to sell in China and Walmart.
They publish things, they are responsible for the what they publish. It’s that simple. They have more power than the artists over what gets published because they have the ability to refuse, crop or edit submitted artwork – artists, on the other hand, can only get published if they meet the publisher’s expectations… and then it might get cropped or edited.
– wincenworks
Also, themystisk, even if the nonsense you wrote somehow WAS true, it would still prove our point:
Either way, it’s part of a larger problem with media’s and society’s expectations towards women. Blaming random bad artists for it is just a disingenuous, oversimplified answer and offers no solutions to the issue.
~Ozzie
Well we don’t really, these concerns are covered in the FAQ but since we’re still getting the outrage for our noble work – let’s have some fun!
Bring out contestant number one! Sorry, I already forgot your name!
Firstly I (the straight cis man known as wincenworks) love the assumption that it’s only women who are enjoying our Sexy Male Armor Fridays because a fairly hefty proportion of them are made by and for gay or otherwise queer men. It actually takes quite a bit of work to find them even on video game mod sites and art sites.
Meanwhile all I have to do to see women being objectified is open up Steam or visit my local comic book shop. It’s everywhere. In everything. It’s the predominant image of heroines and strong female characters.
So to answer your question, when we ever start to reach a reality where male characters aren’t considered worthwhile unless they conform to a very narrow beauty standard then we can start worrying about objectification of men. If that ever happens and isn’t immediately backpedaled over.
And now for our second concerned citizen! Sorry I forgot who you are too.
I can only assume this refers to one or more of the many “empowered” jokes that we make both on sexy male armor posts and others. This because the fallacy that it is somehow a power fantasy for women to conform to ridiculously demanding and implausible beauty standards.
High heels, thongs, push-up bras the flaunt cleavage, bared belly buttons and bedroom eyes often aren’t even used to to signal heightened sexuality in a female character – they’re just there as some sort of a “be sexy so boys will like you, remember you’re empowered” uniform. The top priority is still making straight men feel the character is made for them in particular.
Various media love spins of trying to excuse hypersexualizing women such as weaponized femininity, "she’s so powerful“ and a whole bunch of other things. But very rarely does it have anything to do female characters actually having power, doing what they want and not conforming to society’s demanding expectations.
James Bond gets to be powerful, sexy and use his sexual appeal to get what he wants too. But he also gets to do it while wearing awesome suits,having a charming personality and doing lots of things just because he wants to (as well as his super cool job). Not many female characters get this kind of opportunity.
So really it’s not that there’s not a relationship between sex and power, it’s just there’s a very limited relationship between hypersexualized female armor and power.
– wincenworks
male gamers like to pretend that male characters designed, draw/rendered and written by men, made hulkishly muscular and hypermasculine by men for a deliberate target audience of men is objectification and hypersexualisation rather than actively appealing to male power fantasy
and it’s somehow women’s fault of course
My favorite example of this is when people try to invoke this guy as their ultimate trump card of “Men are objectified in video games too!”
The ultimate steroid rager who converses primarily by screaming and murdering. A completely selfish man who, since murdering his wife and daughter, seems to only one emotion (anger) and prone to random acts of violence. A man so terrible that he goes out of his way to incorporate murdering random women* into “puzzle solving”.**
People actually point to this character, created by a man (David Jaffe) and try to tell us this is objectification of men in order to pander to women.
Then, presumably, after throwing a tantrum and destroying random objects in their home, then wonder why women aren’t impressed by this and find them undateable.
* The fact that almost the entire female population, including the monsters, goes to great pains to show off their breasts to the player also never seems to factor into their assessment.
** This sequence featured in Tropes vs Women in Video Games – however please be advised that this sequence along with other parts in the video contain extreme depictions of violence against women. (x)
– wincenworks
Save the boob plate! A fight worth fighting for, amirite?
Liliana submitted:
So the Divinity: Original Sin artist is even worse than I thought. Know how the original design was a typical, pathetic, pandering and obnoxious bikini armour? It got changed later (for an obnoxious boobplate, but at least it covered a bit more skin), but apparently, only reluctantly so.
That poor, poor artist, having to censor himself like that. Of course he misses the point of the criticism of these armours completely (“it’s not about realism! also look at Conan!” are among his “arguments”), but that’s to be expected, I suppose.
Apparently that design we bingo-ed and discussed before was done by one of those guys who think that any criticism of their creation is not theirs, but the critic’s problem and feels honestly so attacked right now.
Thierry Van Gyseghem’s “argumentation” is worthy of a Rhetoric Bingo, though keep in mind that most of the linked rant is incomprehensible attempt at bullshitting academic MRA paper through bizarrely broken English (the insistence that “sexistic” is a word is my fav!).
It focuses mostly on how current game journalism supposedly is serving the nefarious pro-women “lobby” (which seems like a thinly-veiled way of referring to Anita Sarkeesian), and how it leads to self-imposed censorship of the game creators (a sure proof he’s one of the people who don’t know what “censorship” is).
Also, (not so) amazingly he seems to be caught up in thinking that bared belly is the only issue in his original illustration, even though it was literally 1 out of 17 bingo squares it checked… mind you, it could have potentially scored more if legs were shown.
So yeah, with such engaging “points” we would need a whole new custom bingo for this guy, therefore please don’t take my attempt at playing with what we’ve got too literally:
Wow, he scored ridiculously high even without a custom card!
TL, DR: There goes any benefit of the doubt we could have had for this artist when it comes to deciding how “creative” the final designs get.
Big thanks to Liliana for submitting!
~Ozzie
Curiously he claims he loves feedback… I guess he means feedback that doesn’t challenge any of his assumptions, privileges, etc.
What I really love about his strange notion though is – can you imagine if it was extended into any other field?
“I am a chef, and the restaurant owner told me we’re not going to serve pale veal any more due to animal cruelty concerns – I implore you all not to self censor your dinner tables!”
“I am a banker and we have been told not to use pressure tactics to get customers to sign up for credit cards – Do not allow yourself to be censored when manipulating others!”
“I am a janitor and we have been told not to use this chemical that upsets some people’s skin – Do not allow others to tell you what you what cleaning chemicals you should use at home!”
My personal favorite snippets:
All of this vitriol because his boss asked him to… do his job.
– wincenworks
