Tag: representation

Posted on

paradoxy-intent:

sassy-gay-justice:

feministgamingmatters:

Someone did a study on sexualisation in video games, and GGers mocked them for…doing research? Because they were doing it instead of ““““making their own games.”““““ So I guess not only critique but, like, literal science isn’t valid now?

WE ARE making our own games and these dudes cry about “forced diversity” or “tokenism” or “political agendas” or w/e!! You legitimately cannot win!

I saw it put in the most interesting way a while ago: They don’t expect us to have the skill, time, effort, or desire to make our own games. They just want us to be silent.

They assume that we just want to “complain” and “be offended at everything” and they want to hand-wave away any concerns we have, regardless of their validity.

Then they assume we don’t have the skills to make our own games because they don’t think we love games as much as they supposedly do, nor do they think we haven’t been doing that since forever, and now it’s just so much easier for anyone to do.

So, they tell us to “make our own games” if we don’t like theirs, and then we do, and they pitch a fit that people are even paying attention to them or saying they’re actually good. We research, we make our own games, we do everything they tell us to do, and we still aren’t valid to them.

And we never fucking will be, because it’s never been about any of their pitiful excuses. It’s always been about shutting us out by any means necessary.

No matter how they dress it up with their bullshit about “ethics”, it’s always been about exclusion of the “undesirables” for GG. They just don’t want our “kind” here, and by that they mean anyone who isn’t a cishet white dude or isn’t okay with gaming being a “male space” for cishet white dudes.

The big issue with the “stop complaining and make your own games/shows/books/comics” rhetoric is that it’s unwinnable by design.

When someone’s not a content creator, but a critic, researcher or even just a fan casually sharing their opinion, the Status Quo Warriors would shut them down for “doing nothing” or “just whining” or “not appreciating” the media as they already are.

If someone is a content creator, the Status Quo Warriors would accuse their work of all the above “political agendas” (not realizing every creative work is political by nature) and blow every minute problem the work might have out of proportion.

And then they have the audacity to say that it’s the critics who are never satisfied.

“Go make your own thing” is really yet another variation of making up arbitrary conditions to prevent status quo-upholding media from being critiqued.

~Ozzie

Posted on

privatesuintor:

banshees:

ana amari’s tea time emote

Ohmygoshohmigoshohmigosh!!!!!

A female character well over 50 that is NOT SEXUALISED AND STILL BEATS ASS!

I’m excited ^^

Oye, @bikiniarmorbattledamage, a positive example among the widowmakers and tracers in that game ^^

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It’s very exciting to see Blizzard has started work on making the game that they said they wanted to make shortly after announcing Overwatch!

Ana Amari certainly looks amazing and greatly boosts representation for badass mothers and older women of color though I notice something.

Of her eleven skins: Five show Ana as her glorious mature-aged self, four show her with her face completely covered and two show her as young.  In fact there are zero Legendary skins where you can see Ana’s beautiful older face.

And the skins with her as a young woman don’t really do anything surprising with her, it’s not like Genji’s showing him as pre-cybernetic, it’s just… well:

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So while it’s fantastic that Blizzard has started to realize that women in their sixties are dramatically under represented in action games – it’s kind of a shame that they couldn’t commit to it the whole way.

– wincenworks

Ana is a very welcome addition to Overwatch’s cast (heavens know we’re in a desperate need for older women in media, especially games), though I can’t help but notice how, not unlike Zayra, she’s a very safe approach to diversity. While being 60, she’s at the “conventionally attractive lady with grey hair and a couple facial lines” side of old person design.

Also, the fact that Ana’s clothes look very realistic for a sniper make Widowmaker’s hypersexualization stand out even more. With changes Blizzard made so far, they’ve proven a couple of times how they can edit and add things to the game as they please, but are afraid to change all that much

~Ozzie

Posted on

The Rigged Slot Machine – Overwatch’s Female Character Creating Engine

Every time we criticize female sexualization in Overwatch, we’re sure to get at least a single reply along the lines of “What’s wrong with having ONE sexy assassin/pilot/etc. in the game?”, to which our answer would be “Nothing. But where’s that ONE person you’re talking about? We see a whole bunch.  Also why no male character is coded unequivocally sexy with his design and/or clothes and/or posing and/or personality?”

I figured the best way to illustrate this is a rigged slot machine, in which slot devoted to describing character design lands on “sexy” 6 out of 8 times.

All heroes in the game have unique ethnic and cultural backgrounds, backstories and personalities. Most of them look quite diverse. The problem is that for women in Overwatch, more often than not,

the visual design compromises that in one way or another, in favor of making them conventionally attractive for the presumed cishet male gamer. 

It might be a single thing, it might be the whole way character looks, dresses and is animated, but most of female Overwatch heroines suffer from gratuitous sexualization and obvious double standard when compared to their male colleagues. And a single step in more varied female representation should not be glorified as massive progress when everything else remains unfixed. 

While a few of the game’s problems listed in old articles like this or this one got resolved by expanding the lineup, sadly, year and a half later

a lot of them remain true.

~Ozzie

more about Overwatch on BABD

Breakdown of all the concerns we have with characters under the cut:

Symmetra, the Sexy Indian Architect: (yes, we know the in-universe word is architech, but isn’t really relevant nor is it our job to explain Blizzard’s convoluted lore). Everything about her pantless costume and non-dance related posing is devoted to accentuating her hourglass figure, especially the thighs and hips. Also she’s wearing thigh-high high heels for no reason other than to look sexy to the audience – even Blizzard knows this.

D.Va, the Sexy Korean Mecha Pilot: D.Va is a teenage gamer celebrity. She’s girly, flirty, flamboyant and confident. Being a sexy character suits her personality and backstory. Her biggest sin is that she was revealed very late in the beta, so among all the gratuitously sexualized women, her genuine sexyness doesn’t stand out. Overwatch missed an opportunity when they didn’t make her THE sexy female character in the cast of diverse women with varying degrees of femininity.

Mercy the Sexy Swiss Healer: She’s a doctor devoted to heal the wounded with the help of her high-tech suit… suit that is so skin-tight it involves a boobplate. We can assure there’s nothing high-tech about separate boob bumps in a rigid breastplate meant for protection. Also, angel-themed character just happens to be a pale, blue-eyed blonde? How subtle!

Pharah, the Sexy Egyptian Soldier: Personality-, animation- and story-wise, a professional and devoted soldier in every inch. Design-wise… her (obviously Samus-inspired) battle suit includes what looks like a metal thong.
And funny how a female soldier character in gender-ambiguous armor just happens to have long, luxurious hair and perfectly made up face under that helmet. If she was a man she’d have the battle hardened, probably scarred, grizzled Male Protagonist™ look, including the buzzcut that conveniently cuts down on polygons while conveying military pragmatism.

Widowmaker the Sexy French Assassin: Some say she’s justified in looking sexy, as her design coveys a femme fatale. While it’s not wrong to have a femme fatale in the lineup (as long as it’s played as more than “good is chaste, evil is sexy”), we don’t see how that connects to this particular character, given her personality and story.
Why someone who was kidnapped, brainwashed and turned into a perfect unemotional killer would dress in something that looks like bodypaint with impossibly deep cleavage and high heels? How is such look helpful for her job as a sniper? Why does every male character from this archetype look totally different than her?

Tracer, the Sexy British Speedster: She’s playful, cute, energetic… and for some reason, whenever there’s a chance, her butt is put in the spotlight. Blizzard couldn’t give it up even when they admitted her previous victory pose was objectifying… they replaced it with a more playful, yet still butt-focused literal pinup.

Zarya, the Beefy Russian Gunner: The first attempt for a different female body type in Overwatch. Why does her suit includes boobplate, though?  Much like Pharah, she doesn’t seem to have any of the grit we come to expect from heavy duty soldiers when they happen to be men.

Mei, the Curvy Chinese Scientist: Only problem with her is that we don’t know for sure whether she is significantly chubby/curvy (compared to all the thin women around) or if her thick arctic clothes make her look that way.  She certainly doesn’t have her body type conveyed to the same extent as, say, Roadhog.

ALL OF THEM: They’re all young (19-34), with conventionally pretty faces (even Zarya and Mei, who are supposed to be somewhat masculine and chubby, respectively, don’t veer off any far from Western beauty standard). There’s very little body type variety. Literally half of the women are ethnically white, while two East Asian characters sport pale completions.

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waitingoutthewinter:

Hey! I came here to ask for your help. I recently had a discussion about female armour in video games with a male friend. The thing is, while i tried to convince him about how it was sexist and fucked up in so many levels, he said a lot of stuff like: Most of these are from oriental games, only men play video games in asia, sexy women sells because mostly men are buying. I want to know what I could say against that, because I know it doesn’t make it ‘okay’. Thank you <3

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Okay… wow at your friend’s assumptions… this is going to take a while.

Firstly and foremost, there is a reason why Ozzie put “She was designed in a country where sexualization is cultural!” prominently on the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo card.   Actually there are two good reasons:

  1. Local cultural differences don’t excuse how you treat roughly half the population of the world.  Objectifying people is not about sexual expression within your culture, it’s about reducing them down to something less than human.  
  2. The vast majority of people who make this claim don’t know anything at all about the region they’re referring to and are just outright spreading ignorance.

So, with that second point particularly in mind… let’s move on to:

“in Asia…”

Any time you hear someone try to use the justification of cultural differences with “Asia”, you should remind them (violently if necessary) that Asia is not:

  • A culture
  • A country
  • A hivemind
  • A magical wonderland where the rules of reality are suspended and hence things happen with no explanation

Asia is a collection of countries which all have their own cultures and values.  Those cultures are always evolving and the values vary from individual to individual (the individuals also grow – they are people after all).

Often, when people talk about “Asia” (or Asian video games) they mean Japan and/or South Korea. To claim that women in these areas don’t play video games is completely absurd.  I mean lets look at some photos of gaming Internet Cafes in South Korea… notice something?

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(x)

Japan actually has a whole genre of games which are heavily targets at women, Otome.  It is a thriving genre, the same company that makes action games like Dynasty Warriors also makes otome games (along with like fifteen other major companies). It’s also the home of Nintendo – the company that produces gender progressive games like Pokemon.  Japan is also the home of Square Enix, the creators of the famous Final Fantasy – a game with a massive female fan base if ever there was one.

After we received this ask, I messaged a female friend in the South East Asia region over Steam and asked if she thought there was any truth to your male friend’s idea.  Her response:

“only men play video games in asia???
doood
plenty of females play video games in asia. at least half of my friends do. and they’re not just homely wallflowers either”

(After this we discussed what a seriously hot and awesome cousin-in-law my friend has.  It’s not really relevant to games, but her cousin-in-law is awesome… and hot.)

This is not to say that any of these nations are some sort of post-sexism gaming wonderland. Rather that it’s fairly safe to say that the blanket notion of women in Asia don’t play games is just absolutely ridiculous. So on to…

“Most of these are from Oriental games”

Some of the games with terrifying female armor are made primarily in Asia. Some of them are made primarily in the western world. Many of them are made collaboratively and ALL of them are made for the global marketplace.

There are numerous games made in one region with the story based on culture or region of another, stories of how games had to be modified for different markets, etc.  Game companies have been marketing to the world at large for a long, long time.

Due to the increases in customer expectations and the need for broader markets, many  MMOs now involve partnered companies from multiple regions.  AAA games developers now frequently outsource large parts of projects to studios around the world.  

To further confuse things: The Japanese company Square Enix owns several games studios based in and found in Europe.

The line between “Asian” or “western” games on in the marketplace has been really blurry for a long time.

“sexy women sells because mostly men are buying”

If there is one thing I’m sure of, it’s that sex doesn’t sell (unless you’re selling sex).  

There’s seriously no history, precedents or market research to suggest trying to sex up your game has ever helped sales.  It’s just something people do because they want to believe there’s an easy way to get sales.

Bayonetta marketed heavily on sex appeal in order to try to expand from the audience of those who liked the Devil May Cry franchise and ultimately sold less copies.

Duke Nukem Forever heavily marketed it’s own crass version of sex sells… it didn’t impress anyone or help save it from being a dire warning on how not to make video games.

The Dead or Alive franchise invested in the “sex sells” approach with not one, but three “extreme beach volleyball” games.  After all that pandering, the franchise still has no advantage over it’s competitors and struggles to meet it’s (relatively modest) sales goals.

None of these games sales figures can compare in the slightest to Minecraft’s selling over 49 million copies or Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare selling over 28.5 million.

Even the undeniably vulgar Grand Theft Auto 5, which sold over 32 million copies, didn’t rely on sex to sell it’s product.  Instead the vast majority of the marketing was focused on the three main protagonists and the franchise it belonged to.

All of which is to say that if it were just cultural differences, these games wouldn’t become mainstream titles in the English speaking world.  They’re mainstream titles because lots of people in the western world buy them.

– wincenworks

edit: important note!

satyabear said:

Fabulous post. Also worth mentioning that the term “oriental” is colonialist, racist, and highly offensive.

Time to bring this back as we’re getting people trying to assure us that things are magically different in Asia and to expand upon the post to address a couple of other myths people have raised to try to protect the core myth.

Myth – Japan (for example) doesn’t have or want any kind of Feminism

Japan totally it’s own feminist movement with a variety of key figures who have a variety of experiences and opinions on the best way to promote feminism in Japan.  Writers, sociologists, film makers, all kinds of women in Japan are interested in helping establish real equality for women.

Just because you haven’t heard about them or someone tells you they’re not a thing, doesn’t mean it’s so.  Feminism and other activist groups are frequently misrepresented and misunderstood in their homeland regardless of the background.

This all applies to South Korea and China and every other country in Asia and the rest of the world.  It turns out women are people and want to be treated as people.

Myth – Western SJWs cruelly force collonialist censorship on innocent Asian companies

Every company in every country in the world has it’s own complicated combinations of opinions and conventions regarding… everything.  Sometimes products move across the world virtually unchanged and sometimes they get altered before being released anywhere for any number of reasons.

An example of the changes going in reverse was that the Japanese version of God of War III has one major difference – Aphrodite’s boobs are covered up by a last-minute bra-thing addition rather than bare and on display. (NSFW).  Why? You’d have to ask the Japanese localization team.

What does and doesn’t make it into a game or a localization is a complex process involving any regulatory bodies, the publishers, the developers and influenced by any trends or concerns at the time regardless of which nations are involved.  Sometimes games stop getting localizations purely because the company isn’t well set up to do it anymore.

Of course, the main motivation behind creating these myths isn’t actually concern for the creators in this nation – it’s just trying to ensure an ongoing supply of fap material with the easy scapegoat (the very same nation they’re pretending to protect).

– wincenworks

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This is why we find it difficult to celebrate Blizzard’s baby steps towards progress – they are already so self-congratulatory about it that they basically gave up before they started.

Okay, yes, baby steps, Blizzard has got a long history of being terrible and a lot unlearning to do.  But they could at least try to show some self-awareness of this.

Dirty Bomb, a game which I feel we have actually tragically under-represented in our positive examples, has managed to incorporate diversity and gear equality without making it a novelty item.  How? By making diversity a genuine priority – that’s why their line up looks more like this:

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– wincenworks

And it’s not only body diversity which seems to be a challenge for female Overwatch characters, so is their AGE!

D.Va is actually the youngest in the whole ensemble (19). Female characters don’t get older than 34 37 (Mercy), while male ones range from 20 (if you count Zenyatta, a robot) or 25 (Junkrat) all the way up to 61 (Reinhardt).

The overall design of D.Va is perplexing on so many levels, too. What new is she supposed to contribute? Yet another young, thin, conventionally pretty woman in a catsuit… something the game (and the industry as a whole) so totally lacked before! Even her silly pseudonym rubs in that she’s a diva. 
The idea of a Korean professional gamer-turned-mecha pilot is very cool (even if the backstory rips off Evangelion/Pacific Rim), but why make her look so generic… and paint her mech pink? 

My most optimistic guess: one of many Blizzard’s Creepy Marketing Guys saw Zarya and said “So, we’re doing female tanks now? Okay, but next one is gonna be the SEXY tank! And make her more PINK!”

~Ozzie

more on Overwatch | more on Blizzard

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“When the actions of her feudal lord begin to lay the seeds of doubt within her, a samurai with exceptional swordplay and even far greater courage, must make a bold decision that forever changes her fate-along with the history of Japan itself!“

So, speaking of exotification, how far removed form reality must a western creator be to make some sort claim that these covers are reflective of the samurai?  Are they not aware that pants were actually a noteable thing for samurai due to their frequent status as cavalry?

Do they not understand the idea of doing a cool fantasy world full of basically East Asian people (in the same way most are full of basically Anglo-Saxons) would be sufficiently novel and exciting without dragging a real world culture that’s already largely misunderstood into it?

Oniba: Swords of the Demon is yet another title that poses a lot of questions… and none of them good.

– wincenworks

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:

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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.

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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).

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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.

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– 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.

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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