PALGN’s Roundtable on Sexism and Video Games
Doing my usual rounds this morning I came across a very on-topic roundtable at PALGN. The Australian site’s feature on Sexism and Video Games is a pretty good bit of writing — featuring four writers and an editor (all men) of varying opinions on the severity and impact of sexism in gaming.
Chris Leigh, the executive editor, comes out swinging:
Are games sexist? Personally, I don’t think there can be any dispute - they almost certainly are. On one level, this is hardly a surprising revelation; after all, games are toys made predominantly by boys for boys. In fact, video games are so obviously sexist that a more pertinent question would perhaps be: what does such discrimination mean for games, and the industry as a whole? And the answer is not a pretty one.
Chris’s points are spot-on and articulate. In particular, I applaud his ability to call out the industry for it’s unwillingness to make the sacrifices that they will be required to make in order to be taken seriously as an artform — like, when you create a character like Carla Valenti in Fahrenheit, who is lauded for being more than just her jubblies, don’t turn around and show her nakers in Playboy.
Mark Marrow’s piece in the roundtable is a little less militant, he gets sort of wishy-washy about how showing the “beauty of the female body is an artform” which is a pretty weak argument. We don’t see too many scantily-clad Adonises in videogames, so I’m not really inclined to agree that the developers were thinking of making Lara Croft’s DD costars as some great homage to the works of Boticelli.
He does, however, make good points about the important of context in a game, implying how you can get away with more if the character actually contibutes to the game and isn’t seen as helpless, a victim, worthless, or just a sex object. I don’t think this is healthy, or good, because it just reinforces the same tired crap, but it isn’t a bad idea to consider these matters more seriously.
Neville Nicholson raised by hackles a bit with his opinion, I just found that he was being very dishonest and his faux-essentialist arguments simply didn’t wash.
Whilst most men prefer violent, competitive titles (Gears of War, Halo 2, etc), women prefer social interaction, resource collection and management (The Sims, Animal Crossing, etc). It’s the Hunter-Gatherer instinct at work. There are now far more games that are able to be enjoyed by women than back in the 80’s, when a developer’s idea of a “game for girls” was giving PacMan a bow and calling him “Ms.”
I can’t say this strongly enough. Women have always enjoyed games. We simply weren’t being counted in the numbers, because we were often consuming them second-hand. And I’m sorry, but the idea of social interaction and management verses violence and competition being some throwback to our cavemen days is absolutely insulting. Science has proven again and again that, when raised identically, women can be just as bloodthirsty as men, and men can be just as caring and nurturing as women. The reason women may show a preference to tame games like Animal Crossing over Gears of War is because we’ve been told it isn’t “ladylike” to want to throw smoke grenades at our opponents and pick them off one by one as they run from the area. Similarly, if a little boy enjoys dolls, his parents will freak out that he’s going to “turn gay” and sign him up for Little League Rugby.
He goes completely off his rocker with this one, though:
This can best be illustrated by the phenomenal success of World of Warcraft, as the game features epic battles and heroic characters (which appeals to men), there is also a huge amount of item collection and social interaction.
You see? It’s popular because it’s like a mall and a monster truck rally all in one! Yeah, no woman plays WoW to fight, they’re all mining for fish.
The full extent of his inability to grasp the topic at hand is revealed when he claims that games like The Guy Game, BMX XXX, and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball are not derided by women or feminists, but by male gamers who see them as crappy games attempting to cater to their baser desires. Except, women and feminists do complain about these games. We’re just ignored.
In fact, we’re ignored by one of the other writers in the roundtable: Phil Larsen. Phil claims that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with these games, and that if anything, the real victims are the men, just like those men at the strip clubs, where the women have all the power. Or something. His point got lost in his complete fog of male privilege. Most baffling is this part:
Don’t sit there and wonder about the offence you may be causing to a non-video game playing population. Non-gamers who complains about Tomb Raider or DOA being sexist aren’t exactly a credible source for an argument. How about they ask the opinions of the extremely talented female developers and actors who took part in the process and enjoyed contributing to the game’s creation?
You see? Feminists don’t “get it” because they don’t play the games. How could they understand the need to watch boobs floating around the screen, held aloft by what can only be some sort of anti-gravity bra. They don’t understand the art behind these games.
Sorry, Phil, but there isn’t an area of culture that is magically “exempted” from feminist critique. Feminists might not regularly pic up mags featuring violent rape porn, but we’ll decry that too. And more to the point, a lot of women who do game are upset with the way we’re being portrayed in videogames. We get it all too well.
Tristan Kalogeropoulos’s piece is a little more standard — he doesn’t really take any risks, but I was compelled to ruminate on his second to last paragraph:
There have been some great examples of video game characters that have been created as full and complex individuals, which is essentially the opposite of sexism. Alyx Vance of Half Life 2 or Beyond Good and Evil’s Jade are indeed shining examples of how to both accommodate appealing visuals and also create incredibly multidimensional characters. Both showing feminine and masculine aspects of their personalities. Leon of Resident Evil too, is a character who is relatively complex and does not have his masculinity dial on 11 with his feminine characteristics turned down to zero.
Leon is a pretty good protagonist, all-in-all — except that so far as I’ve seen, he’s still running around trying to rescue Ashley, who spends most of her time being fireman-carried screaming “Leon! Leon! Help!” Alyx Vance seems to be a pretty good pick, as a secondary character. But I dwelled a while on Jade. There’s a reason that so many women-centered gaming sites have a nod to Beyond Good and Evil in them (most recently, the setup of The Iris Network and the Jade Reporting section of Shrub.com). It’s because Jade was such a perfect female protagonist for women gamers.
That game is nearly four year’s old now.
While I’m desperately hoping that the sequels are rekindled, and Ubisoft realizes how much the fanbase has grown since its initial disappointing debut, four years is plenty of time to give us “another Jade.” If videogame developers were as serious about vaulting their trade into an artform as they claim to be, they would have been all over creating games as compelling, complex, and egalitarian as Beyond Good and Evil, which is one of the most critically-acclaimed games in recent years.
But the fact that they haven’t, and they probably won’t, and we’ll be pointing to Jade five, six years’ from now as one of our only perfect examples of a woman protagonist in a videogame that isn’t helpless, stupid, or completely obnoxious. And that really tells you all you need to know about sexism and videogames.
April 9th, 2007 at 10:30 am
This guy’s argument is that women like to play WoW because we like to FARM? Nobody likes that shit. Farming is what you do so you have gold/mats to make things for raids. Did only female cavemen like fat loot? Did only male cavemen like to pwn face? I’m confused.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:44 am
“You see? It’s popular because it’s like a mall and a monster truck rally all in one! Yeah, no woman plays WoW to fight, they’re all mining for fish. ”
Bah! I hate fishing.. it’s soooooo booring!! Mining is all right - but I don’t run around going - where’s a mine, ooh there’s one… crap I have to kill monsters to get to it… It’s usually the reverse (unless I’m specifically trying to make something to buff up my C so that I can kill even more monsters) I’m running around killing monsters when… oh look a mine.. I guess I’ll grab that as long as I’m here. Whereas one of the guys I play with, loves to gather herbs and will actually play just to gather herbs.. so from my POV this author is on crack or something.
April 9th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Oh good lord. Obviously I only play to farm. This is why I’m so abundantly wealthy in WoW. Oh wait I’m NOT! I’m too busy melting faces. But then, we all know female gamers don’t ACTUALLY exist, so I am a figment of imagination.
April 9th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Of course they’re right. I play Warcraft because I get to sew pretty clothes, not because I like to melt faces.
Gracious no. I’d never do that.
April 9th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Wait… are you… are you suggesting that gaming habits are… *gasp*… completely unrelated to our gonads?!
That’s so crazy, it just might be true.
Heh. Funny, because I have a friend who works in the industry and I’m constantly telling him “Man, why don’t more games let me customize what I look like? I want to create costumes and get accesories!” Perhaps I’m actually a female gamer and just haven’t noticed all these years? I love games that let me buy crap to change what the character looks like.
God, Beyond Good and Evil was fecking brilliant.
On an unrelated note: MP, I don’t know if anyone else is having this happen, but the site doesn’t seem to be displaying quite right on my computers. Both at home and work, the edge of the page is cut off. Right now, there’s a purple bar along the left side of the page covering up the “L” and half of the “e” in “Leave a comment”, and the infobar on the right side (with your blogroll in it) covers up the last few characters of text in the body.
April 9th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Hmmmm…. did this start Friday afternoon? If so, it’s the Windows Vista post– the graphic is pretty large and it might be screwing up the style sheets.
April 9th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Nope, it’s actually been this way since I started coming here. I assumed it was my computer, but I noticed today that it displays the same way at work and home.
April 9th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
It’s the Windows Vista graphic on my end. When I click on the header for an article, the stylesheets work just fine.
April 9th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
in many ways, this is why i hate blogs.
sure, you have the right to disagree with what was written in the article (and on several points, i agree with you), but why post it on some site where you are preaching to the choir instead of on PALGN’s article feedback forum, where the points -might- be heard, and perhaps the authors could respond to your comments?
as you pointed out, the authors are all men, so they (and we, yes, i am male) might not get what females find offensive about games, and it seems that what offends you most is males trying to dictate what you should, and shouldn’t like about a particular game.
on the flipside, perhaps we feel guilty for playing some games, like DOAX and BMXXX that we impose our version of feminist attitude to appear horrified at what we feel guilty about. but in my mind, those games, where the purpose is titilation > gaming are in a minority. perhaps i’m wrong, but that’s my take on the situation.
what i would really like to know, and something i hope you take to PALGN, is what offends you most in “normal” games. it seems to me that you dislike the whole “helpless female” cliche, through your criticism of RE4’s Leon, but then, you also say that the gaming industry is a male dominant one, especially from the development front, so why should it be a surprise that a fairly common fantasy among males (rescuing the girl) is a common theme amongst game plots?
anyway, i think i’ve ranted enough. i really hope you bring your arguments to the PALGN forums, as i think you could seriously set us right as to what we THINK women find wrong with games, to what you actually find wrong with them.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:29 am
I’m glad you’ve all read the article and are discussing the subject. Mission accomplished. The roundtable is not the beginning and the end of the conversation but rather a catalyst to encourage further thought and debate on both the writing within and the topic itself. Each of the views expressed in the article are the writers individual responses to the intro of the roundtable. I think it’s important to remember that it’s not one flowing article. To me it expresses that there are many varying opinions on the topic. Some I may agree with more than others however the fact that this stuff is being discussed is extremely important.
I agree with you Ponygirl, it was an oversight on my part to discuss Leon without going into what was, in my personal opinion, the incredibly sexist character design of Ashley. My bad but in that context I was focusing on what was non-overly masculine character design.
I also believe it is true that you can’t pigeon hole certain games as female or male games. And I don’t think that developing for a specific sex in your games is the answer.
As an aside… hell yeah, Beyond Good and Evil was an great game with great characters and if a sequel was able to iron out the few kinks the original had it would be awesome.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:53 am
Hmmm. Weird.
I bet it’s my browser, then. What browser are you using?
April 10th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Tristan: Thanks for stopping by. I did understand that the article was not a monolith, which is why I responded to each author’s points individually. Writing this blog entry was simply a response to an article that fell square in the middle of my blog’s purpose. While I have deleted the comments (they were just being obnoxious), we’ve gotten a few trolls already to this article — was there an item written in the PALGN’s forums about this blog article? This is why Feminist Gamers exists, really. If you want an idea of the sort of bile that can be directed toward a woman, check out the April Fool’s post. But I absolutely agree with you that it is an important issue (obviously), and I applaud the efforts of you and your fellow writers in dealing with the subject matter–although obviously I don’t agree with all of you.
I agree that we should not develop for a specific sex. Many games out there, as pointed out, have cross-gender appeal. In fact, as you may have gathered, we vehemenly oppose the idea of strictly gendering games, because the developers often have their heads so far up their butts that they can’t fathom a woman liking a game beyond “Sim Mall” or other such nonsense. As you can tell from the posting and commenting here, that’s not really the reality of women gamers.
The problem is that games are pretty much developed for a specific sex–they’re developed for men (as Chris pointed out). Developing games for women doesn’t mean getting rid of classics like DOA: Beach Volleyball, it means offering women more games like Beyond Good and Evil so that women aren’t forced to play games with hyper-sexualized, helpless representations of themselves. So when they say “games for women,” they’re focussing on pretty narrow stereotypes about what a woman gamer would want to play, as opposed to what women gamers are actually playing.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Roy: Are you an Opera user? I am, and I do get some short-term screen drawing weirdness while the page loads, and then for a couple of seconds afterwords before it wakes up, but I haven’t pursued my stylesheet too agressively because I figure I’m one of maybe a dozen people who use Opera so the impact was rather limited.
April 10th, 2007 at 6:40 am
Me* — Sorry you misinterpreted me — I was agreeing with Tristan that Leon was a pretty good character (he’s just this side of Bish, which is usually a plus with women gamers), I was just pointing out that RE4 isn’t necessarily the most empowering of videogames. But then, neither is Zelda, and I love that game anyway. It would be nice if there were more high-fantasy adventure games that didn’t lean so heavily on Rescuing the Princess.
The commenters at this site were pointed in the direction of PALGN, and we tend to behave ourselves in other forums, which is more than can be said for some of the people from PALGN who came here and trolled our comments (they’ve been deleted). I encourage you to have a look around the site, particularly the threads about April Fool’s Day, you’ll see why we’ve set up this space–because we need a safe space to respond to discussions about women in videogames. We’ve written extensively on gendering and messaging in games, I admit we do like to rant a bit, but you would too if you’d suddenly become this darling subject and everyone around you was pontificating on what you wanted based on stupid stereotypes rather than doing a more careful survey.
The most important point to remember when reading this site — which a lot of our trolls seem unable to grasp, is that we all really love games. The better the game, the more likely we are to go into its gendering messages.
———
* I nearly didn’t let your comment through moderation, because of the obviously fake email address… which is a good sign that you’re a troll. Your comment really didn’t warrant the anonymity.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:23 am
sorry, but i don’t leave my email anywhere if i can help it, just a personal quirk i guess. i guess i’m glad that my words spoke louder than my actions.
i also feel disheartened to hear that there were some trolls presumably from PALGN, we are usually a well behaved bunch of people, and we don’t tolerate trolling on that site, and we try to instill a belief that opinions are there to be heard, and that intelligent debate is a good thing, as well as preferring to keep it civil. seems it didn’t rub off onto some of the people. =/
—
i didn’t actually mis-interpret you regarding Leon and RE4, i just didn’t really explain myself very well, and dropped Leon’s name as a marker as to what i’m talking about directly. perhaps i should’ve said “Criticism of Ashley” rather than “…Leon”.
i would also like to know of other games that present women in an appropriate light. i know Jade comes up a lot, as does Carla Valenti (despite the Playboy spread) but what are some others?
i’d also like to reciprocate the invitation to join the forums of PALGN and give some counter-views to the male dominated arena there. a few females have offered their opinions, some parallel to your own, some not, but this topic does deserve a broader spectrum of responses, and despite being well-intentioned (well, some of us), we are males afterall, and can’t really speak for the female gender, as much as we’d like to think we can.
we also really love games, and quite often it is obvious to see when our baser desires are being pushed ahead of playability. most of us are intelligent enough to know that DOAX is not designed as a Beach Volleyball game first, and i’d guess that more than a few of us are annoyed at this type of marketing.
however, like i said in the previous reply, another desire of ours is being pushed when we have to rescue the Ashley’s and Zelda’s of gaming, it mightn’t be politically correct for the girl to be the one in distress all the time, but when a gaming has to appeal to the lowest common denominator, in gaming, that’s males.
April 10th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I understand that you don’t want your email addy out there — believe me, I understand. I take privacy pretty seriously, and I don’t (never have, never will) trade or sell email addresses. But, you’re putting me out a bit. You see — the blogging software I use automatically moderates comments from an unknown email address. I have to allow your comments through, then go into the database tables and change your email to something else so that all of the trolls who use me@you.com (which is a lot), will still get trapped just because your comments weren’t trollish and deserved to be heard. Please do me a favor and use a different address that doesn’t require the exta work. Hey, you might even trust me enough to use your spam catch-all email address.
—
Well, the point I was trying to make is that really, we don’t have a lot of canonical women characters. There’s a reason women gamers keep talking about what a great game BG&E is even though it’s 4 years old now. It’s because we just aren’t getting the characters.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Me- What is so unappealing about the hero rescuing a guy friend? Too much teh gay? Like how everyone makes fun of Frodo and Sam-wise? Or do guys just like the helpless victim female - even though they are annoyed by them at the same time.
Re: Female Heroines in games… umm.. I could name several that would’ve been really kick-ass if they weren’t ruined by the misygonist “women got to be weaker than men, but hey we’ll let them be better at magic… white magic that is, not that ultra kickass black magic… that’s for boys, nyah!” mentality. /rant
April 10th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Hey, “Me” - instead of asking Mighty Ponygirl to go out of her way to oblige you, and participate in a forum which has already been a source of harassment for her, if you’re really interested in women’s perspectives on gaming, maybe you could take a little more initiative to educate yourself? You seem to be really sincere in your desire for greater understanding, which is cool and all, but it’s not fair to expect a couple of feminist bloggers to do all of the work for you, exactly when and where you want it done.
I recommend reading the archives of this blog, to start - it’s pretty new, so there’s not that much to wade through! After that, you could start checking out some of the many blogs by women gamers that are listed at this directory.
I want to encourage you in broadening your horizons, and I’m hoping you’ll understand that it’s really not fair to require women to come into “male dominated arena”s in order to educate you, when we’ve already provided many, many resources in spaces in which we feel more comfortable (and comfort is a big deal in a world where a silly April Fool’s post gets aggressively trolled).
April 10th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Here’s something that I’m surprised hasn’t come up in many games outside of RPGS- let the player choose the gender of the character. Obviously, that wouldn’t work in every game, but consider a game like Ico. There’s absolutely nothing about Ico that requires the player to be a boy and the companion to be a girl. It could be any combination, and play out essentially the same (at least, as far as I remember).
My question is this: Why should games worry about “the lowest common denominator”? That’s what they do when they push crap like BMXXX or DOA: Volleyball. That’s trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Games should be seeking to push the envelope and should be seeking to move the medium to the next level. As gamers, we should expect more from games than the lowest common denominator. I don’t want a game that’s passable- I want new experiences and I want innovation. BGaE was fantastic because it didn’t have to pander to the LCD.
Of course men want to be the hero. That’s fine. The problem isn’t just with men being the hero and rescuing the girl- it’s more (IMO) about presenting a more complete picture. It’s fine to have men rescuing the damsel in distress sometimes, as long as there are other women out there, too. As it stands, the vast majority of women in games are either victims, or sex objects. That’s not a very whole picture. If there were more “real” women in games, then it wouldn’t be a problem when you had some women who were the kidnapped princess, because you could always put in the next BGaE and see a powerful woman, too.
I don’t mind that men are the villains in games, because I know that we’re also the heroes. It’s about telling the complete story- women shouldn’t be pushed over into the Healers/Sex Objects/Kidnapped Princess list. Let them fill the roles that they’d naturally fill… which is to say “the same sorts of roles that men fill.” They’re heroes, villains, victims- fighters, healers, mages, cops, soldiers, detectives, adventurers, sex objects, and everything in between.
I don’t know, maybe that’s my idealism peaking out?
April 10th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Huh. Weird.
MP- I don’t know what happened, but now all of the comments starting at number 5 are fixed, but everything above that is still offset. Oh. Oh!
The blockquotes. Every time there’s a blockquote on the page, the text after it moves more to the left, behind the bar. Weird.
I think I’ve figured it out, though. It’s Pete’s envy, right? You’re jealous because Pete’s East is soooo much cooler than Pete’s West, yeah? =)
(It’s probably a CSS thing. I’m using IE, sadly. My limited exposure to CSS has shown me that it can be sort of unpredictable in how it acts on different browsers. It’s hardly a big deal, I can still figure out what’s being said, anyway)
April 10th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Okay… FF9 - Princess Garnet/Dagger. She was a fairly okay (and even if not as strong as teh males, was at least not as weak str-wise as Vivi and could deal *some* damage physically - which was good, cause using Summon as her main attack really wears out the Ethers… which aren’t as plentiful as would need to be for that strategy to really be practical).
She did seem to need rescuing an unfair bit. From her mother (that’s a whole other topic *why are mothers always absent or the villians?), the crumbling castle, falling, fainting… and she lost her voice for a little bit, which made her unable to concentrate in battles sometimes… which made her suck for that period of time… sigh… and of course Eiko was pretty much the same.. a little weaker cause well, she’s a kid so that’s understandable. Ophelia… Ophelia was good, a bit more than Garnet, because she was always strong (though most of her plot revolved around finding Sir Fratley and then being depressed when he forgot her) Physically she was as strong as the guys, even if her attacks took longer (it did keep her out of battle more- which means she got hit less- so she was SMART too) but she wasn’t really a major part of the plot (unlike Amarant, Steiner and Vivi, but much like Quina).
Quina was definately female, though she was referred to as s/he a lot. So at least the male/female ratio was even. Even male/female ratios are always a good thing IMO. (though I kinda think of her like I do the robot from Chrono Trigger. Something in there as an either/or to appease guys who want more guys and girls who want more girls- so they can pretend it’s whatever they want… or something)
Beatrix was great and strong (although she was a major baddie for a while) though you only got to play her for a little bit (and she wasn’t as badass when you did get to… /sigh what happened to the woman who could take out my whole party in 1 devastating blow? It just goes *poof* the minute she’s on the side of good? Only females on the side of evil can kickass? *grumble*)
…. I’m not having much luck here am I?
What about some of the women in Valkyrie Profile? I’ve never played it, but I’ve heard it’s a really good game, so there’s bound to be one or two good female heroines in there, right? Right? /whimper… my head hurts now.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Good women in good games include: Kya, from Kya: Dark Lineage. April Ryan, The Longest Journey. Freya, Final Fantasy IX. Kerrigan, Starcraft. Dorna Trapspringer, Neverwinter Nights. Samus Aran, though mostly from the Metroid Prime games — we never see her in a swimsuit in those (that I know of).
There aren’t a whole lot more. Sure, Bloodrayne does a real good job chopping up zombie Nazis, but… she’s Bloodrayne. Why isn’t there an option to play Halo as a female Master Chief? Would it have been prohibitively expensive to record another voice? With aliens, it’s hard to be sure, but are any of the aliens in Halo/Halo 2 female?
I don’t think it’s malice that makes game designers leave us out. It’s carelessness. It’s still sexist. I find myself appalled by Blizzard’s equally careless decision to add corpses hanging from trees to the scenery of Tirisfal Glades, given the history of racism in the United States. Again, it’s not malice. I’m not saying that anyone from Blizzard thought, “Hey, you know what would make this game even better? If we hung a bunch of niggers from the trees.” I’m sure that lynching never even occurred to them. And that’s the kind of thing we struggle against. We’re invisible, overlooked, and when we complain, the folks what’s in power get all offended because a) nobody likes to have their failings pointed out to them and b) a lot of people seem to think that life is a zero-sum game. For a nice clear example of this, consider the bitching that’s come up about ‘casual gamers.’ The guys who are bitching about them seem to think that any accommodation made for a casual gamer is something that’s taken away from them, and it’s not. (There are other reasons, but this is the big one. It’s the same reason my mom always bought two balloons when my brother and I were little, because he tended to pitch a fit if I got something and he didn’t.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
oops…. I meant Freya… I always rename her Ophelia… but I meant Freya… sorry!
Moira- Strange… when I see virtual hangings, I think of old western movies or Halloween… definately All Hallow’s Eve.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I really liked Lulu in FF10 as well (1st female black magic user I can recall & totally kickass with attitude to match!), but her dress? C’mon! Why was that even necessary? Really! I mean it couldn’t be 1 inch higher to keep her boobs from almost falling out? The rest of the dress is great, I love the dress mostly, but the obviously for the guys shot of her leaning forward after winning a battle… ruined a perfectly good female heroine for no-good-reason! Gah.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I did like Lulu, but I absolutely concur on the bustline of her dress thing. That’s most of the reason I left her off my list. (I’m also considering how they used the exact same model in FFX-2 and talked about how she was nearing the end of her pregnancy. Wha?) I probably should have mentioned Sorceress Edea and Quistis Trepe from Final Fantasy VIII, though.
And maybe I’m more sensitive than most white girls about the lynching thing, having grown up in the South. And I’m married to a black woman.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
OMG.. I so did not get that…. If Lulu was near the end of her pregnancy… Where the heck was the baby? It wasn’t in her body that’s for certain! When she said Waka was exaggerating as to when the baby was due… I didn’t think she meant by 9 months, but I guess she must’ve… cause she wasn’t showing at all. And… I know this is one of those worlds that’s recouperating from a millenia of tragedy… but do these people NEVER change their clothes (even a year later?) /sigh.
I’m not much of an FF8 fan. It always seemed to male-centric for my tastes.
Yeah, I’m a while female… so I really don’t have the same perspective on the horrors that are “man’s inhumanity to man”.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I *heart* Dorna Trapspringer. I couldn’t finish SoU, but it was in spite of her, not because of her. She rocked. For what it’s worth, Neeska and Qara are pretty good sidekicks in NWN2.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I think the commenters coming over from PALGN could benefit from reading my article on Harassment, silencing, and gaming communities, especially if they’re still having trouble grasping why we write in spaces that we will be respected, rather than going to their forum and interacting with people who have already shown us that they don’t consider us worthy of respect because of our expressed gender.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
(nods in vigorous agreement)
April 11th, 2007 at 12:18 am
An interesting and well written article tekanji. Trolls or any description, whether they’re being sexist or otherwise, do little to further their cause (in fact i’m not sure they have one besides being irritating an entirely juvenile). I think that it is important however to point out that this sort of behaviour is not representative of the the PALGN ‘community’ as a whole. I think that whilst places like this are important, it is equally as important to discuss these issues in a more general setting where people may be exposed to ideas that they are usually not. (although I can understand why many may choose not to).
April 11th, 2007 at 5:25 am
As you may have ascertained, we have no prohibition against men coming to this site as long as they are respectful. I’m glad PALGN works to maintain a positive environment on its forums — that goes a long way.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
[...] In Games Conference Announced PALGN’s Roundtable on Sexism and Video Games WomanGamers.com announces National Computer Camp [...]
April 12th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Sorry, the trolls were probably my fault. I posted to the link here so that the PALGN writers could see this discussion and…I underestimated the number of scared little boys who would click on the link.
April 12th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I did have a jaunt over–I was a little surprised myself. We don’t *know* that they came from PALGN, and I’m a little doubtful because those forums did seem pretty calm comparatively.
Either way, no real harm done, and I do try to stay positive that we may have a few more readers from PALGN, they seem like a pretty smart bunch all-in-all.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
A good insight from a female’s POV.
Naturally, I think it was always going to be difficult discussing a topic where females are generally the prime victims of sexism in video games, though I still think we did a good job of relaying the importance of such a topic and how it often hurts good games.
I still think the industry, and its gamers - and the females themselves - have to grow up in regards to sexism, racism and general violence in video games. I think people often exaggerate the representation of characters in games, merely pointing out pitiful excuses to belittle a game. And an example of this can easily be found with Moira’s comment about the corpses in World of Warcraft - clearly misunderstanding the intentions of why such a feature was in the game; which would obviously have been to create a feeling to an area that has that sort of ‘witchcraft’ feel to it. Again, the whole persona thing is something so many people overlook.
And for those reasons, I personally think that many games do have to take into account many elements of art, and I still don’t really understand why people write it off purely because we aren’t seeing inspiring visuals similar to a Michelangelo art piece. There’s still the creation process, and there’s still a very large focus on creating a scene, an atmosphere and believable personas.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Mark:
What mythago wrote over at your forums are very wise words.
Telling the posters at a feminist gamer site that “females” (what are you, Ferengi?) need to “grow up,” and then dismiss Moira’s uncomfortableness with the lynching imagery as being a clear misunderstanding of the intentions of why it was in the game is extremely patronizing. Before I go any further with this, I want to thank you for coming and posting; and I want to say that I mean what I wrote not just when I was disagreeing with your article in my post, but also when I was agreeing with it, which tends to be forgotten in the heat of argument. (BTW, will Chris make an appearance?)
However, not having lived in the racism-free utopia that is Australia (and yes I say that sarcastically), I can’t speak to how you visualize the imagery of a body hanging from a tree, but here in the states, it’s a very loaded visual. When someone sees a “black body swaying in the southern breeze” there is simply no getting around what that means–and continues to mean. At some point in the writing process, Blizzard should have taken a moment to say “ok, this is going to call to mind lynchings.”
…And just like a bunch of white people getting together to roundtable on racism and deciding that the best way to deal with it is for everyone — black people too — to “grow up” might meet with a few raised eyebrows or critical replies, a bunch of men sitting around pontificating about sexism and making statements like “Sexism isn’t a particularly major problem in video games” is going to raise objections as well.
We have no problems discussing games like Shadow of the Collosus or Twilight Princess or Planescape: Torment or even Grand Theft Auto in artistic terms. But you have to be clear on what art is in order to do that. Games like Rumble Roses or DOA simply don’t subscribe to the artistic medium. It’s like trying to say Mercedes Lackey is art because she writes, and Graham Greene was also a writer. Part of the artistic medium is to push boundaries, to cause people to think in ways that they aren’t used to thinking. Simply portraying every woman as a hottie isn’t breaking any boundaries–it’s not challenging people to think or re-evaluate what they find aesthetic and appealing. And games really do have to decide these things, because either you’re making art, in which case all those people who write “It’s just a game” whenever someone tries to critique the social messaging inside of the game automatically lose, or you decide it isn’t art, in which case, there’s nothing invested to defend, so why get so upset when someone objects to its content? Right now the gaming industry wants to pick and choose when it’s art and when it’s just a game and that’s bullshit.
So, to shift gears a bit — what if Blizzard did want to invoke lynchings in their game? Was it to make an artistic statement about the history of lynchings, or was it to provide a “cool visual” or an “eerie atmosphere” to better-immerse the players? My bets are on the latter, in which case, Blizzard needs to be prepared to defend what can be seen as a cheap appropriation of the horrors of Jim Crow in order to make their game cooler.
Please feel free to look around the site — a good place to start would be to read the articles under the “Women in Games” category. When you begin to see the patterning of the way women are portrayed in videogames, how women gamers are actively disenfranchised and silenced, maybe you’ll understand why we aren’t that eager to believe the menfolk when they totally pinkyswear that sexism in videogames isn’t a big deal.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Oh, I understand why they put the corpses in the trees in World of Warcraft. I’m not sure how that’s witchy, but I get the idea that it’s a place where atrocities were committed. Still, for a lot of folks, ‘people hung from trees’ means ‘lynching,’ not ‘witchcraft.’
If I come off as overly sensitive to this (and don’t even get into the troll/junglebunny thing), maybe it’s because I’ve got three hundred years of institutionalized slavery and more than a century of equally institutionalized racism to be sensitive about. There are ways to convey mood without poking at racially or sexually sensitive moods.
A lot of sexist, racist garbage gets swept under the rug of creating that whole persona thing. Would Fran from Final Fantasy XII lose anything in persona if she wore, y’know, clothes? Everything else about her is great — I love the personality, the voice acting — but I keep getting stuck on the way the toon looks. She’s a strong, kick-ass warrior type, and she spends her life in five-inch fetish heels? It makes her less believable. Maybe it’s not important in this particular game, but given the history of how women are portrayed in gaming, it adds up to a whole lot of feeling deliberately left out.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Mark, please stop hiding behind “art”. Like words, images carry messages. When all the female avatars in a game are big-breasted and their armor consists of belly shirts, that sends a very clear message about what the game designers think of women.
Intent is also not a get-out-of-being-a-creep-free card. I’m sure the designers at WoW didn’t mean to evoke lynching; what they meant to do is a little different than the message people received.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say the “females” need to “grow up”. Apparently, you take “grow up” to mean “STFU and hope that the boys stop making comments about how big your character’s tits are.”
April 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
They had to make Fran great to keep feminists from jumping down their throats for creating a “playboy bunny” for their game. Seriously.. ears and all.
Despite that… I love Fran. I even kinda like her outfit… except for that lacy thing… what is it supposed to be an armor/nightgown mesh? Bleh. It’s like Lulu’s dress in FFX… if they just changed one or two things, the outfit would be fantastic… but they just gotta show as much skin as possible, don’t they? /sigh. I do wonder how she manages to run so well in those high heels, it looks VERY painful… hurts my feet just to watch it.. ouch.
April 13th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Somebody should point out to Mr. Nicholson the example of the women’s shock troops in World War 2, who were greatly feared by the Nazis for their ferocity. (THERE you go - let’s see one of those WW2 shooter games, set in Stalingrad, with a woman as the main character. Bet they’ll never do it.)
April 18th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Just noticed this discussion. I suppose there’s not much I can add, but to agree with this site.
Only thing I wanted to say, though, was to the last comment, about women in WW2, was a recent COD. I think it was the second one, during the russian campaign, when I found myself pleasantly surprised to see women soldiers fighting alongside. It placed them at the same competency level as men, very rarely seen in games. I liked it, more than being surrounded by other guys so much.
May 1st, 2007 at 3:44 pm
I love Ivy from the Soul Calibur Series. She can kick ass. The only time I play fighting games is if women are selectable characters.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
ThThere’s a reason for video game women to look beautiful. NOBODY wants to play a game where all the women are morbidly obese, ugly and have hairy armpits. Not even girl games want that. We had Queen Brahne from Final Fantasy IX and believe me, she is one of THE scariest looking video game women I have ever seen. What’s next, a video game where wacko women castrate and mutilate men’s genetalia and killing off all men?
BBBTW, Xianghua from Soul Calibur rules. She actually saves her male friends and is very strong and passionate about her feelings. Plus, she also has a sense of humor too (what more game girls need),
May 11th, 2007 at 5:24 am
Raise your hands if you’re surprised that Aangel runs a porno site. (I’ve scrubbed it out, I don’t want my site linking to that shit.) No hands? Awww…
May 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am
May we assume that AAngelMeiru has been invited to leave?
May 11th, 2007 at 7:06 am
He certainly doesn’t have Carte Blanche to post. I doubt he’ll be back at any rate.
May 11th, 2007 at 7:12 am
I’m impressed, though. Flailing away at strawgamerwomen AND pornsite spam? His kung fu is strong.
May 11th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Let us discuss matters in administrative space…?
I’m always amused that trolls come to this site to flame us for not having a sense of humor. I’m surprised the cognitive dissonance doesn’t cause their heads to explode.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
I think you have to have cognitive ability before you can have cognitive dissonance.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:24 am
[...] clearly brought to my attention when a feminist gaming blog, with the very utilitarian title of ‘Feminist Gamers’, were made privy of their own accord to a roundtable I organised on PALGN. While the topic of the [...]