Women In Video Games

[Saturnine Tenshi]

She actually nailed that one, and I don't say that often about dubs.

[Alex Heat]

To be fair Jack the artist who designed a lot of these chars got pissed with Kotaku and posted on FB that maybe he'd enjoy another picture of three burly men touching each other. So yeah, using a homophobic joke isn't any better. Me personally? I'm disgusted by a lot of anime. I'm a man, I appreciate eye-candy don't get me wrong. But I'm fucking tired of having a character with huge tits or a little prepubescent girl with a slutty outfit and panty shots. I can appreciate the beauty of a woman without Mount Bustmore staring at me. I don't need to watch an anime about mechs fighting robot where every single female rider has gigantic tits and everytime somebody hits their mech their bazongas defy gravity.

 

I liked Penny Arcade's joke though. I kind of agree, in a gross way.

 

This about sums up my opinion on the matter.  I can deal with hypersexualization and all that, but it's just so old hat that I'm sick of being all over the place.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Thursday posted a response somewhere to something that I thought covered this properly and now I can't find it. :<

[Mister Jack]

 

I sure am finding a lot of stuff related to women and games recently.  I'm not even looking for it on purpose, it just pops up.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Because it's a thing right now, and it wants its boobs in your face. Oh, found the post in the "peeves" thread:

 

 

I fully support anyone who wants more of new Lara, more of Chell, and Faith, and Nilin
(had to look that one up). All those characters, whether they are
silent protagonist or fully acted out roles are characters that I
enjoyed or look forward to playing as. People who say "Oh great, this
game has boobs in it, how sexist!" is an idiot. "Less games with boobs"
means less games overall. That's not what I want. I don't care if those
games exist, if I don't like them, I won't buy them. What I want is
*more* variety. More games with well written characters that are all
races, genders and ages. That's how you effect positve change. Not by
bleating about what has already been done, but by demanding more from
the future.

[Strangelove]

Just what Cooking Mama needs, 

NSFW...

 

http://newsimg.ngfiles.com/170000/170166_mamaweb.jpg

[Waldorf and Statler]

@Jack: there's a first parter as well. And that's where I began my love affair with supercodplayer1995 (the indian kid at the end)

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Forgot to mention the Atelier games. They have their fair share of strong and/or capable female leads. Not the slit-your-throat-and-fuck-your-wife types that some folk seem to be clamoring for, though. And with the exception of three games, all the main characters are female. In those three exceptions, you can be either.

[CorgiShinobi]

I'll come off cliche, but a female character I've recently cared about is Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. We saw a lot of guys go into a kind of obsession because she was presented like a real female human being. Sure, she had some attractive attributes to her character, but those changes were implemented further down the storyline as an expression of her rapid shift to maturity.

 

I don't think you can avoid any female video game character to not gain some following based upon her character design. It's like that in life too: either you stay content with the outward appearance, or take the opportunity to know the character.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Elizabeth was just plain a good character. She disagreed with your actions. She didn't always trust you. She was far from black and white. She was even surprising at times. Male or female- These are the things I like to see.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

This is an interesting article that touches several bases, including white knights, how they're smacked down and the difference in the way men and women are treated in these hyper-stylised designs (sexual vs. power fantasies).

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

This is an interesting article that touches several bases, including white knights, how they're smacked down and the difference in the way men and women are treated in these hyper-stylised designs (sexual vs. power fantasies).

 

I stopped reading when the money part was brought up. Do we really need to repeat that every time? Anyways, yes, I really liked that the article pointed out that these buff men are a power fantasy and not a sexual fantasy. Good distinction between the way the characters are designed. tl;dr article could have used some streamlining to fit my attention span because I'm selfish

[Hot Heart]

She disagreed with your actions. She didn't always trust you. She was far from black and white.

 

Disagreed with your actions? Miranda Lawson.

Didn't always trust you? Miranda Lawson.

Far from black and...

Damnit, so close...

 

Honestly, though, I think the BioWare writers do a good job with female characters (or, you know, characters in general). It's the overt sexualisation that undermines it all.

[TheMightyEthan]

Miranda at least had a good reason for her physical body being crazy sexy.  As far as dressing like that, that's another matter.

[Hot Heart]

Don't forget the leery camera angles.

[Waldorf and Statler]

all of u juz madd she didntnt luuuurv u as much as she luuuuuuuurv my sheperd.

[CorgiShinobi]

Those camera angles were there so we could know Miranda's assets as a team member.

 

Of course Ashley said we only liked Miranda because of her outfit, but it's so obvious that with Miranda intel, we could be kept abreast of the current mission objectives.

[deanb]

http://7nights.tumblr.com/post/49375174755/feminism-in-video-games

 

This popped up in my Twitter feed. Maybe of interest. It's pretty good even if you pass over the Dragon Crown stuff.

[TheMightyEthan]

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl

 

This is more about women in the games industry, and really just one specific incident, but I thought it was close enough.

[Mister Jack]

http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/05/damsel-in-distress-part-2-tropes-vs-women/

 

Well, part 2 is out.  Look, I'm not saying that women couldn't use better representation in the gaming world, but it gets a little harder to swallow some of these arguments when she uses the word "misogynistic" like this.

 

[Dee]

I watched that latest video, and while I don't agree 100% with what she is saying, she does sum the ending up quite nicely.

 

"...To be clear, the problem is not the fact that female characters die or suffer.  Death touches all our lives...it's often an integral part of dramatic story telling.  To say that a woman could never die in stories would be absurd, but it's important to consider the ways in which a woman's death is framed and examine how and why they're written."

I think this can apply to why the majority of women portrayed in video games are more often than not sexualized, as well.  The link that Dean posted (http://7nights.tumblr.com/post/49375174755/feminism-in-video-games) is a good enough example of this; however, there are some things I disagree with in terms of how to "fix" or "address" the problem.  Our global culture is widely assumptive in regards to stereotypes and gender roles, and while overly sexualizing a female character isn't technically sexist, I believe it IS encouraging another very polar opposite manner of thinking, which is that a woman needs to be created with larger breasts and embrace her curves and her 'sexuality' to be feminine or just, for that matter, "be someone of the female gender". 

I can only speak from my experiences when I play video games with females in them, and I tend to steer very, very clear of the one's who show the most skin, have the biggest, bounciest breasts and the legs that go for days.  Anything like that sickens me because it is not something I wish to be, nor do I see any value in the over-sexualizing of women in that way because it does not represent your everyday female.  Sure, it's fine for fantasy's sake every now and then, but I can't think of many female characters who are like their men-folk counterparts in that they offer a great deal of variety in terms of looks, but the one that irks me the most is their personalities and the typical video game plot/characterizations(personalities).  Seriously lacking on that front.

[Waldorf and Statler]

lol "harder to swallow"

 

THAT'S RAC- err SEXIST.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

lol "harder to swallow"

 

THAT'S RAC- err SEXIST.

 

Mature.

 

 

 I can only speak from my experiences when I play video games with females in them, and I tend to steer very, very clear of the one's who show the most skin, have the biggest, bounciest breasts and the legs that go for days.

 

I do this as well. I've brought this up before that I think I'm just tired of most tropes and stereotypes in games as a whole so playing as a woman allows me to break away from that a bit. If video games are meant to get me out of the real world and into a fake one that also doesn't mean that women need to be overly sexualized in this fantasy world purely because it's fantasy. It rarely fits the world of the game itself to have women looking like that.

 

As for the specific trope she talks about it I do think that it's pretty lame. Then again, I'd think it was lame even if it was a trope on the other end of things.

[Dee]

 

 

 

 

 I can only speak from my experiences when I play video games with females in them, and I tend to steer very, very clear of the one's who show the most skin, have the biggest, bounciest breasts and the legs that go for days.

 

If video games are meant to get me out of the real world and into a fake one that also doesn't mean that women need to be overly sexualized in this fantasy world purely because it's fantasy. It rarely fits the world of the game itself to have women looking like that.

Agreed.  I get that video games are sometimes used as a means to escape one's reality, and/or the reality we experience on a global level (ie. science fiction, medieval fantasy, etc), but games and other forms of media are also used to help the consumer to step into the world of the same reality but just a different experience.  I find it rather sad that these tropes and stereotypes are so heavily relied on in video gaming because I am forever losing interest in the idea of finding and relating to, even liking, a female video game character.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Oh but you have no problems in men with overly sexualized badunkadunks. Let me tell you ma'am, once Nathan Drake has a flabby man ass I'll take your opinion seriously.....

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