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
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
So my brother claims that the only games that have oversexualized girls are free to play games or just generally bad games. Overwatch apparently doesn’t count because “it’s overrated” so any examples for good games with skimpy armour? Thanks a lot!
Well, like so many explanations, this creates some obvious issues.
Firstly it’s dependent upon arbitrary divisions that mostly serve to try to pretend various parts of media just don’t exist or somehow don’t matter regardless of who consumes them.
For example: only free to play?
League of Legends is a free to play game that generates millions in revenues, has a professional esports scene and pretty much launched the rise of MOBAs as a gaming genre. While it does have some characters who are positive examples, and the occasional sexy man, it’s in fact so problematic it has a whole blog trying to keep track of it all (ie @leagueofsexism)
Long time offender World of Warcraft is basically the MMORPG that got away with not being a free to play game for years and years (and the free part available today is super stingy).
Ultimately, Free To Play is just a business model – there are good games that use it well and terrible games that try desperately to exploit it.
As for the statement of generally bad games, well it’s certainly true that many games that rely upon the skimpy armor are terrible. It’s also true their poor reception tells you everything you need to know about the myth that “sex sells”. However, there’s certainly also celebrated AAA titles that feature all kinds of terrible female attire:
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain has a massively critically successful creation of game development superstar Hideo Kojima. It was a massive financial success and brought us so, so many wonderful breathing through your skin jokes.
The Witcher 3 collected a slew of awards, critical praise and is still getting massive sales of the game itself and it’s hefty DLC expansion packs after resorting to trying to blame a female character for her questionable battle attire choices and pretend the rest of the problems weren’t there.
As for overrated… well by who?
Every game has people who feel it’s overrated and most games have people who think it’s underrated. No opinion though changes that Overwatch has sold millions of copies, gotten massive amounts of media attention, generated tons of vocal fans and made millions of dollars for Blizzard.
Really the arguments above aren’t really a useful statements, they’re just an excuse to dismiss literally any game as not being worthy of valid concern.
– wincenworks
Continuing from your brother’s logic, here’s an extended list of arbitrary things a game can’t be if we want to judge its treatment of women:
- it’s free to play
- it’s freemium/pay to play/any other technically free
gameplay model
that involves microtransactions for the full experience
- it’s popular
- it never became popular
- it’s overrated
- it’s underrated
- its core demographic are horny men
- its core demographic are children
- it’s made in America and therefore immune to criticism under freedom of speech
- it’s made outside of America and therefore comes from a magical land of porn and fairy dust
- the title contains letters of some sort in it
-
it has graphics of some kind
Well that suuure leaves us with a fair and totally unbiased choice of games to talk about.
~Ozzie
So my brother claims that the only games that have oversexualized girls are free to play games or just generally bad games. Overwatch apparently doesn’t count because “it’s overrated” so any examples for good games with skimpy armour? Thanks a lot!
Well, like so many explanations, this creates some obvious issues.
Firstly it’s dependent upon arbitrary divisions that mostly serve to try to pretend various parts of media just don’t exist or somehow don’t matter regardless of who consumes them.
For example: only free to play?
League of Legends is a free to play game that generates millions in revenues, has a professional esports scene and pretty much launched the rise of MOBAs as a gaming genre. While it does have some characters who are positive examples, and the occasional sexy man, it’s in fact so problematic it has a whole blog trying to keep track of it all (ie @leagueofsexism)
Long time offender World of Warcraft is basically the MMORPG that got away with not being a free to play game for years and years (and the free part available today is super stingy).
Ultimately, Free To Play is just a business model – there are good games that use it well and terrible games that try desperately to exploit it.
As for the statement of generally bad games, well it’s certainly true that many games that rely upon the skimpy armor are terrible. It’s also true their poor reception tells you everything you need to know about the myth that “sex sells”. However, there’s certainly also celebrated AAA titles that feature all kinds of terrible female attire:
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain has a massively critically successful creation of game development superstar Hideo Kojima. It was a massive financial success and brought us so, so many wonderful breathing through your skin jokes.
The Witcher 3 collected a slew of awards, critical praise and is still getting massive sales of the game itself and it’s hefty DLC expansion packs after resorting to trying to blame a female character for her questionable battle attire choices and pretend the rest of the problems weren’t there.
As for overrated… well by who?
Every game has people who feel it’s overrated and most games have people who think it’s underrated. No opinion though changes that Overwatch has sold millions of copies, gotten massive amounts of media attention, generated tons of vocal fans and made millions of dollars for Blizzard.
Really the arguments above aren’t really a useful statements, they’re just an excuse to dismiss literally any game as not being worthy of valid concern.
– wincenworks
Continuing from your brother’s logic, here’s an extended list of arbitrary things a game can’t be if we want to judge its treatment of women:
- it’s free to play
- it’s freemium/pay to play/any other technically free
gameplay model
that involves microtransactions for the full experience
- it’s popular
- it never became popular
- it’s overrated
- it’s underrated
- its core demographic are horny men
- its core demographic are children
- it’s made in America and therefore immune to criticism under freedom of speech
- it’s made outside of America and therefore comes from a magical land of porn and fairy dust
- the title contains letters of some sort in it
-
it has graphics of some kind
Well that suuure leaves us with a fair and totally unbiased choice of games to talk about.
~Ozzie
Battlefield 1 doesn’t have female soldiers because ‘boys wouldn’t find it believable’
Battlefield 1 doesn’t have female soldiers because ‘boys wouldn’t find it believable’
“One might think this is because women didn’t serve combat roles – which isn’t true – but according to former DICE coder Amandine Coget, it’s because the project leads thought boys wouldn’t find it believable.
…Coget adds that DICE made several decisions for Battlefield 1
which have nothing to do with historical realism – including how tanks
function or the lethality rates of early parachutes – but female
soldiers still wouldn’t appear in multiplayer.”Heavy sighing. (h/t @cypheroftyr via Twitter.)
What’s a worse argument to not have women in your combat-heavy game than “they’re too hard to animate”? “Historically, female warriors are unrealistic”, of course! And how to add to the injury? Insult your intended demographic by saying THEY are the one who won’t believe it!
It’s not like games have potential to educate and widen the player’s horizons, right?
Considering the developer is so totally concerned with “realism” (as understood by pubescent boys), @pointandclickbait has a great suggestion to what historically accurate thing should be included instead of soldier women:
~Ozzie
I’ve been thinking more lately about the narrow standards of
attractiveness that video game characters of all genders are forced to fit
into. This
anon is correct when they say that “every main male character in every game
is mid 30s white guy with brown hair.”I suppose they
are also correct that “the typical male characters are also all incredibly
fit and attractive looking as well.” (I think Nathan Drake is reasonably
attractive and since they all look the same I guess that means I think they’re
all reasonably attractive…whelp.) But in all seriousness, they almost all fit a
generic idea of conventional attractiveness, as do most female characters.That doesn’t mean that it’s the same.
The kind of attractive that these male characters are
expected to be is not the same kind that female characters are expected to be.
This is common across many mediums, not just games, and it’s why things like The Hawkeye Initiative exist, and @bikiniarmorbattledamage has a “sexy
male armor” tag that looks ridiculous. We expect to see women contorting
themselves and wearing few clothes, and we simply don’t expect the same for
men. It looks strange. But it should look strange on anyone – these women do look ridiculous, you’re just used to
it.Both male and female characters have a spectrum of possible
representations. In the centre, with overlap, is the generic face, with the
male version presented above. Nathan Drake has his equivalent in Elena Fisher,
who is the same kind of generic attractive. Joel has Tess. Male Shep has Fem
Shep.But Shep also has Samara (source):
And throughout games there are oversexualised female
characters like this. I don’t think that anyone would argue with that, even if
they don’t see it as a problem. There is no equivalent for male characters on
this end of the spectrum. Oversexualised male characters simply don’t occur,
primarily because we have no model for creating them. Decades of media have
honed contorted spines and barely there clothes for women, but the tropes
simply aren’t there for men. Much virtual ink has been spilled about the
sexualisation implied by Overwatch’s Hanzo’s exposed pec, but it neither
invites objectification nor has the same media history behind it as
Widowmaker’s open catsuit.With mention of Overwatch, we can return to the
aforementioned spectrum. In the generically attractive middle, you have
characters like Hanzo and Symmetra. We see gendered differences here too,
though – both show skin but Symmetra’s is designed to draw the eye to legs and
hips and serves no purpose beyond this, whereas Hanzo’s brings the attention to
the power of his bow arm and significant tattoo.A quick aside: this power demonstrated by Hanzo and other
generically attractive male characters like the white dudes shown at the top
isn’t “sexualisation for women’s benefit,” it’s supposed to be aspirational for
men, as best demonstrated by this
juxtaposition of Hugh Jackman marketed to men vs. women.To return to Overwatch, we can move down the spectrum to
more sexualised characters like Widowmaker, and there is no equivalent
sexualised male characters (mostly since this is impossible, as they would look
ridiculous due to our expectations, like I said). Then we can move towards less
conventionally attractive characters.Probably the least conventionally attractive female hero is
Zarya, who was created specifically to counter concerns about all the earlier
female heroes looking the same. But she serves to show how limited the options
are for female characters, with people citing to me her “strong jaw” and
“facial scar” as making her completely unattractive. Yet she doesn’t vary that
strongly from the norm, with a standard, youthful face, and even manages to have tropes like the boobplate incorporated into her armour.Then you have the conventionally unattractive male heroes. Roadhog
is a great character and representation for fat men, but we so rarely see
any female characters who look like that. Because they can only fall
closer to the centre on the spectrum. This is easily demonstrable by comparing
Roadhog to the chubby Mei, who adheres more closely to “acceptable” standards,
being completely covered in thick fabric that obscures her actual size, and
being shown as flat stomached and large breasted in her concept art. Roadhog,
on the other hand, is unapologetically and obviously large and round.To put it shortly, in Overwatch, the men get to be anything and everything, whereas the women fit into a series of similar archetypes (source).
And this isn’t just about Overwatch, it applies across
games. Male characters get vastly wider options, whereas female characters are
stuck in the same rut of conventional attractiveness. And even when male
characters fall into these same standards, which they often do, they are still
more likely to look realistic and not to be outright sexualised. Those are the
main differences.
Despite what some assume, we don’t deny that male characters have their own share of common design tropes (which, paired with characterization cliches, make up their own bingo game), we just ask not to claim they’re equivalent to the issues female characters have.
It is really important to not conflate problems of generic male hero design with problems of sexualized heroine design. They come from completely different places and it’s dishonest to treat them as interchangeable.
As @feministgamingmatters says, not only Overwatch (or Blizzard) is at fault, but I’d note it makes a great case study material. As a vastly popular mainstream game with a very big cast, it allows us to make comparisons across the characters and to point out reoccurring patterns.
And yes, even with the existence of generically attractive male character, both in this game and media as a whole, male heroes still have more moulds to fill than their female counterparts.
~Ozzie
I’ve been thinking more lately about the narrow standards of
attractiveness that video game characters of all genders are forced to fit
into. This
anon is correct when they say that “every main male character in every game
is mid 30s white guy with brown hair.”I suppose they
are also correct that “the typical male characters are also all incredibly
fit and attractive looking as well.” (I think Nathan Drake is reasonably
attractive and since they all look the same I guess that means I think they’re
all reasonably attractive…whelp.) But in all seriousness, they almost all fit a
generic idea of conventional attractiveness, as do most female characters.That doesn’t mean that it’s the same.
The kind of attractive that these male characters are
expected to be is not the same kind that female characters are expected to be.
This is common across many mediums, not just games, and it’s why things like The Hawkeye Initiative exist, and @bikiniarmorbattledamage has a “sexy
male armor” tag that looks ridiculous. We expect to see women contorting
themselves and wearing few clothes, and we simply don’t expect the same for
men. It looks strange. But it should look strange on anyone – these women do look ridiculous, you’re just used to
it.Both male and female characters have a spectrum of possible
representations. In the centre, with overlap, is the generic face, with the
male version presented above. Nathan Drake has his equivalent in Elena Fisher,
who is the same kind of generic attractive. Joel has Tess. Male Shep has Fem
Shep.But Shep also has Samara (source):
And throughout games there are oversexualised female
characters like this. I don’t think that anyone would argue with that, even if
they don’t see it as a problem. There is no equivalent for male characters on
this end of the spectrum. Oversexualised male characters simply don’t occur,
primarily because we have no model for creating them. Decades of media have
honed contorted spines and barely there clothes for women, but the tropes
simply aren’t there for men. Much virtual ink has been spilled about the
sexualisation implied by Overwatch’s Hanzo’s exposed pec, but it neither
invites objectification nor has the same media history behind it as
Widowmaker’s open catsuit.With mention of Overwatch, we can return to the
aforementioned spectrum. In the generically attractive middle, you have
characters like Hanzo and Symmetra. We see gendered differences here too,
though – both show skin but Symmetra’s is designed to draw the eye to legs and
hips and serves no purpose beyond this, whereas Hanzo’s brings the attention to
the power of his bow arm and significant tattoo.A quick aside: this power demonstrated by Hanzo and other
generically attractive male characters like the white dudes shown at the top
isn’t “sexualisation for women’s benefit,” it’s supposed to be aspirational for
men, as best demonstrated by this
juxtaposition of Hugh Jackman marketed to men vs. women.To return to Overwatch, we can move down the spectrum to
more sexualised characters like Widowmaker, and there is no equivalent
sexualised male characters (mostly since this is impossible, as they would look
ridiculous due to our expectations, like I said). Then we can move towards less
conventionally attractive characters.Probably the least conventionally attractive female hero is
Zarya, who was created specifically to counter concerns about all the earlier
female heroes looking the same. But she serves to show how limited the options
are for female characters, with people citing to me her “strong jaw” and
“facial scar” as making her completely unattractive. Yet she doesn’t vary that
strongly from the norm, with a standard, youthful face, and even manages to have tropes like the boobplate incorporated into her armour.Then you have the conventionally unattractive male heroes. Roadhog
is a great character and representation for fat men, but we so rarely see
any female characters who look like that. Because they can only fall
closer to the centre on the spectrum. This is easily demonstrable by comparing
Roadhog to the chubby Mei, who adheres more closely to “acceptable” standards,
being completely covered in thick fabric that obscures her actual size, and
being shown as flat stomached and large breasted in her concept art. Roadhog,
on the other hand, is unapologetically and obviously large and round.To put it shortly, in Overwatch, the men get to be anything and everything, whereas the women fit into a series of similar archetypes (source).
And this isn’t just about Overwatch, it applies across
games. Male characters get vastly wider options, whereas female characters are
stuck in the same rut of conventional attractiveness. And even when male
characters fall into these same standards, which they often do, they are still
more likely to look realistic and not to be outright sexualised. Those are the
main differences.
Despite what some assume, we don’t deny that male characters have their own share of common design tropes (which, paired with characterization cliches, make up their own bingo game), we just ask not to claim they’re equivalent to the issues female characters have.
It is really important to not conflate problems of generic male hero design with problems of sexualized heroine design. They come from completely different places and it’s dishonest to treat them as interchangeable.
As @feministgamingmatters says, not only Overwatch (or Blizzard) is at fault, but I’d note it makes a great case study material. As a vastly popular mainstream game with a very big cast, it allows us to make comparisons across the characters and to point out reoccurring patterns.
And yes, even with the existence of generically attractive male character, both in this game and media as a whole, male heroes still have more moulds to fill than their female counterparts.
~Ozzie