Anita Sarkeesian bullshitting about how it feels to be a gamergate target - General

Alright xxncxx, why not just explain yourself as you have failed to do so even once in this thread. Explain what your actions are, and are not, and what you think about creative freedom versus inclusiveness or you could just win the argument by rating people funny

[QUOTE=Cone;46970620]that could have been pretty cool tbh, get some brief in-mission dialogue about the characters' Full Metal Jacket-esque reactions to the concept to add some depth to them and the conflict they're fighting in. probably would have been very hamfisted but black ops had a lot of guts for a CoD game[/QUOTE] Yeah after I made that post I actually thought about it and it could have made for a cool little moment where the characters could comment on how war is changing from the battle lines of World War 2 to the proxy battles and insurgencies of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. That said, it wouldn't have been really integral to the plot, and as soon as you get over that immediate bit of expository dialogue they would become a slightly different model of target dummy to shoot in the mobile firing range that is a CoD campaign.

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970549]sexism is the cause because one gender gets an unfair amount of representation, like, what other possible reason would you have for that if people aren't making a conscious choice to include male lead characters instead of females then is it just a coincidence that over 80% of games are male centered? really?[/QUOTE] You're saying it's the cause and providing no evidence for that. How is it because of sexism? The statistics don't prove sexism, they prove there is a large amount of male protagonist. This could mean many things and you can't just assume sexism. The industry shouldn't start forcing itself to shove out games with female leads to fill in a quota and even out numbers. Developers should make the characters they want and no one should tell them they're sexist for not helping even out a statistic.

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970549]sexism is the cause because one gender gets an unfair amount of representation, like, what other possible reason would you have for that[/QUOTE] maybe male writers don't feel comfortable writing female protagonists because of the increased scrutiny they fall under, and they'd rather stick to characters more like themselves because they're more familiar and people are willing to let you do more with them who knows, just the first thing that popped to mind

[QUOTE=xxncxx;46970475]I'm saying there's no reason to not increase representation when it would literally do nothing to alter the "plausible feel" of 100% fictional games. No one is saying that a game trying to actually be realistic and historical has to shoehorn diversity into it, however I am saying, for games that have pretty much no basis in reality, there's no reason not to.[/QUOTE] If there's no reason not to be inclusive email the developers and ask them.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;46970604]What if someone wants to make a video game about a white guy? I get that sometimes characters can be boring (WatchDog's Aiden Pearce is everything that is wrong with modern character design) but I don't think the solution is stifling creativity amongst existing developers but encouraging others to branch out and make their own games. Maybe the problem isn't that Black Ops doesn't have enough females but rather not enough people are willing to make games in Black Ops vein (1960's Cold War era action games) that happen to cast the player as a female or give them female squad members. When you start your own game from the ground up you can take creative license of it which lets you subvert the more realistic tone that a historical Call of Duty might take.[/QUOTE] well, like i said, choosing to make your lead a white dude isn't sexist, that'd be ridiculous, the problem is when the whole industry steers away from female ones. there's no reason why the main characters from tlou, uncharted, re5 or gears of war should be women, but there's also no reason why they shouldn't be, and there's definitely no reason why they should all be white guys with short brown hair and a stubble.

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970711]well, like i said, choosing to make your lead a white dude isn't sexist, that'd be ridiculous, the problem is when the whole industry steers away from female ones. there's no reason why the main characters from tlou, uncharted, re5 or gears of war should be women, but there's also no reason why they shouldn't be, and there's definitely no reason why they should all be white guys with short brown hair and a stubble.[/QUOTE] If individual creators choosing to create male protagonists isn't sexism, why does it become sexism when many individual creators choose to create male protagonists? Are you using some definition of sexism which I'm not familiar with?

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970711]well, like i said, choosing to make your lead a white dude isn't sexist, that'd be ridiculous, the problem is when the whole industry steers away from female ones. there's no reason why the main characters from tlou, uncharted, re5 or gears of war should be women, but there's also no reason why they shouldn't be, and there's definitely no reason why they should all be white guys with short brown hair and a stubble.[/QUOTE] those games all would benefit from diversity in their roles due to the structure of the themes and story that those games exist within. There's many, many games that would work with different paradigms around women or other races. Not all games can though, and this is the main part of my argument with xxcnxx. Some games, like for instance the aforementioned Black Ops wouldn't fit women, unless they changed the background of the story, which they have no reason not to do, but no reason to do either, and if they wanted, as I believe, to present that period historically accurate while altering history in its own way then they had their own valid story based reasons to go with it. They made conciousess decisions and in a specific instance like that there's an argument to be had that there's some creative freedom they should be allowed to play with. Sorry to go all tangential on your Zukriuchen

Resident Evil series isn't really a white male lead game since all the games feature 2 main characters of both genders and in RE3 you only play a female lead. RE4 is the only one where you play a white male lead.

[QUOTE=xxncxx;46970359]But letting women fight in wars is TOO unrealistic right? Why is that? Are women not strong enough to fight for their country? Is that why you think its too unrealistic?[/QUOTE] Go outside, have a breather, relax, you're neglecting points presented in counter example and you are fixated on concepts diverging to a subset story telling rules counter to to realist fiction. It's something obvious when one knows black ops 1 being before women in that military branch as opposed to focusing on the future setting games. Even then, were's you're basis of sexism in anything you've presented, to argue in all arguments understanding key definitions all parties commonly acknowledge before opinions are exchanged upon the current subject, even then the subject I'm seeing is a divergences from another subject all together being in argument when your definition of what is sexist might be false among the accepted definition among the active readers present even in what's in the dictionary.

The problem with the "why can't they' argument is that art is, by it's nature, arbitrary. There is nothing that can't be changed, but there are changes that wouldn't feel good to the artist. They thought a certain level of historical accuracy was important. That's as much justification as they need, because that's as much justification as you can ever have.

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970442]because one gender isn't getting NEARLY as many characters as the other, aka, there is a bias towards one gender being in lead roles, aka, sexism. look, this wouldn't be a problem if male characters were only playable in 50% of games. it wouldn't be a problem if they were the majority at 60% or at 65%, but we all know it's not like that there's no sexism in choosing to make your lead character a male, but it's present when you ALWAYS choose to do that[/QUOTE] I'm studying to be a game developer, I'm a male. If when I die at the nice age of 143 and I've only made story based games that feature male protagonists am I sexist? This is a serious question.

[QUOTE=MadPro119;46971105]I'm studying to be a game developer, I'm a male. If when I die at the nice age of 143 and I've only made story based games that feature male protagonists am I sexist? This is a serious question.[/QUOTE] Just take the approach almost every famous writer has ever taken, be an asshole and be angry at the world.

people who care about the gender of the protagonists are stupid and lame I just want to play my games, stop whining about it. The worst people are the ones who just "Can't play a game unless they can choose gender"

[QUOTE=J!NX;46971117]The worst people are the ones who just "Can't play a game unless they can choose gender"[/QUOTE] This is why my friends don't want to play Tetris against me. :(

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;46970346]I don't think you get it. at all.[/QUOTE] This is the person whom said encyclopedias of facts should be actively toned policed in order to prevent "indirect harassment" by diction, and anyone should be able to edit them to avoid offending [I]anyone else[/I] for essentially [I]any reason[/I]. There's nothing to argue about, report and move on. [quote]when the whole industry steers away[/quote] The whole industry does not steer away. An absurdly obvious example is Mass Effect. Off ->all<- the payers that played through to 2 with a single character, 81% percent picked a custom male, and 8% picked a hale-female and the rest to vandermale and custom female. Now here's the interesting thing, 14% percent of the people who played through to 2 were women; so there's an obvious gap in "a person automatically picks based on their gender", to the tune of almost [I]double[/I] the "expected userbase", it wasn't even close to 1:1, and we haven't even covered male users who made a female character. It'd be great if Skyrim character creation became the standard for big games, and thus you could just make whatever you wanted within a range. It's perfectly doable, but due to budget and storytelling reasons is unlikely to become the norm. When I design a character, contrary to popular belief, gender is usually way down on the list, but audience and CONTEXT rule choices, period. By all means if you have a better idea for implementation, I'm all ears and hears.

[QUOTE=xxncxx;46970500]Yup, zombies have a lot of basis in reality. Remember that outbreak that forced Kennedy into the pentagon in '65? Come the fuck on, its an arcade shooter, why is everyone defending it for "realism" whenever someone mentions women?[/QUOTE] Yo, maybe take some high school English and learn the difference between realism and verisimilitude.

[QUOTE=xxncxx;46970404]I'm not saying its required, I'm asking why its too unrealistic for them to do it when the game is not even based on being realistic in the slightest.[/QUOTE] Sorry to jump into the discussion so late but this argument really makes me angry as I've seen it a couple of times already about a different detail. How complicated is this for you? The singleplayer wants to immerse you in 1960's, with a spin of developing some advanced weapon back then. Do you understand, it wants to put you in 1960's as they were and THEN start to steer away from reality. The better you represent 1960's in what ISN'T fictional in the game, the more the player will be immersed in the 1960's. It really irks me when people go "you can't complain about realism in fictional stories". It just boggles my mind how you can think that. Every fictional story is based in our reality to certain extent. Doesn't matter if it has spaceships or dragons. You can't just, for instance, make it so people don't have to eat and not give us a reason for it and then go "but there are dragons in the story, it doesn't have to be realistic". It breaks the immersion. If the story is happening in the past, you want the world of that time to be represented as close to reality as possible. You can go wild with your fiction that's happening in that world but you want everything else stay close to being "realistic". Look at LOTR, it has TONS of fantasy put into the medieval times, and yet I'm guessing if gandalf was driving an enduro motorbike instead of a horse you would not take the explanation "dude it has orcs and elves in it, it doesn't have to be realistic", right? If the devs wanted to add women to the military in BO they would have to give us a reason why it's different from our times. And since this isn't what the story is about, they didn't fucking do it. Simple as that.

[QUOTE=Wootman;46961567]Where the hell did I post that I want to be argued with? I literally just said "Both sides are retarded" that isn't me inviting anyone to argue with. I'm posting a thought. I don't see why I have to explain why I posted that. This is one of the many reasons why the GG side is fucking dumb, you guys expect everyone to argue with you if someone post anything that goes against GG, quit it. It's not helping your case.[/QUOTE] Surprised you aren't full anti gamer with brilliant logic like that. Next up, you'll demand we stop oppressing you for responding to your negative response negativley. It's a lot faster if you just accuse us of sea lioning.

[QUOTE=Tetsmega;46970734]Resident Evil series isn't really a white male lead game since all the games feature 2 main characters of both genders and in RE3 you only play a female lead. RE4 is the only one where you play a white male lead.[/QUOTE] In RE3 you temporarily took control of Carlos during the halfway point in the game. In RE4 you took control of Ashley for a short segment after freeing her. Plus the PS2 and later versions included additional story shit pertaining to Ada, so yeah. Resident Evil has honestly never had a problem with inclusiveness. Some can argue that RE5 was originally racist, but I mean, the game took place in fucking Africa, what did you expect? That's like going to Ireland and fighting a bunch of Asians.

[QUOTE=Solo Wing;46972337]In RE3 you temporarily took control of Carlos during the halfway point in the game. In RE4 you took control of Ashley for a short segment after freeing her. Plus the PS2 and later versions included additional story shit pertaining to Ada, so yeah. Resident Evil has honestly never had a problem with inclusiveness. Some can argue that RE5 was originally racist, but I mean, the game took place in fucking Africa, what did you expect? That's like going to Ireland and fighting a bunch of Asians.[/QUOTE] Eh RE5 is kinda weird, I wouldnt say its racist but fighting fucking black tribal jungle men wearing voodoo masks and chucking spears at me was pretty fucking absurd. Thats the part that tends to make people question it.

[QUOTE=27X;46971186][B]This is the person whom said encyclopedias of facts should be actively toned policed in order to prevent "indirect harassment" by diction, and anyone should be able to edit them to avoid offending [I]anyone else[/I] for essentially [I]any reason[/I].[/B] There's nothing to argue about, report and move on. [/QUOTE] This is rich considering I've never said any of this.

[QUOTE=MadPro119;46971105]I'm studying to be a game developer, I'm a male. If when I die at the nice age of 143 and I've only made story based games that feature male protagonists am I sexist? This is a serious question.[/QUOTE] You should probably just become the Harlan Ellison of videogames and hurl a colorful tapestry of insults at whoever questions any aspect of your videogames. That way nobody will even bother to ask you any questions.

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46970442][B]because one gender isn't getting NEARLY as many characters as the other, aka, there is a bias towards one gender being in lead roles, aka, sexism.[/B] look, this wouldn't be a problem if male characters were only playable in 50% of games. it wouldn't be a problem if they were the majority at 60% or at 65%, but we all know it's not like that there's no sexism in choosing to make your lead character a male, but it's present when you ALWAYS choose to do that[/QUOTE] That would apply if the individuals in question were actual persons and not virtual characters. While the presence of women in stories where it would make sense could be a welcome addition, no discrimination of human beings is taking place here, hence it can't be qualified as sexism.

[QUOTE=_Axel;46974986]That would apply if the individuals in question were actual persons and not virtual characters.[/QUOTE] how does that make a difference, exactly?

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46975059]how does that make a difference, exactly?[/QUOTE] Because you can't discriminate against virtual characters. Sexism is discrimination against persons of a particular gender. You could imagine the reason behind an unbalanced gender ratio in lead characters is based on gender bias, but focusing on a certain type of character when writing isn't discriminatory in itself because those characters aren't actual people.

I personally want well written stories. I don't care about gender, race or age as long as it is written well.

[QUOTE=_Axel;46975102]Because you can't discriminate against virtual characters? Sexism is discrimination against persons of a particular gender.[/QUOTE] i've never said the characters are the ones being discriminated, i'm saying the gender is getting an unfair representation, and that representation happens through the characters and which genders you choose to have them as

[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;46975167]i've never said the characters are the ones being discriminated, i'm saying the gender is getting an unfair representation, and that representation happens through the characters and which genders you choose to have them as[/QUOTE] Representation in private media isn't a right though. People who feel they prefer to create characters that are straight white male aren't being sexist by doing so.

I just gave you a hugbox, better jump back in it you cishet whiteshit rapist LMAO