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Abicion
Joined: 03 May 2004
Posts: 50081
Location: THAT PLACE WE GO TO PLAY VOLLEYBALL
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 Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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| BruceCampbell wrote: | See, I don't get this whole feminist farce.
A simple answer for all of this is that men in general have a harder time relating to a protagonist of the opposite gender, while girls don't seam to care. So instead of keeping the 'moral' high-ground, they outrage which places them back into the category they try so hard to escape.
I agree with the Facts vs Feminism, it's a market, and just like every other market, it's meat and potatoes, it's lifeblood, are tropes. Executives look at them as a safe venture. Why do you think the pretty-boy is perpetuated in Japanese media? Why do you think The Expendables was an easy sell? We as humans like to put things into boxes, label things. It makes things 'safe' and more comprehensive for us. Hell, I'm doing it in this article right now.
The honest truth is that women are used to having men care for them, as are men used to caring for women. I find this whole female rhetoric quite lesbian. |
yeah Bruce but what does your stop motion zombie girlfriend have to say about all of this?
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| Quote: | | I thought this was going to be like Centipede! When did video games become so violent and scary? |
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Dice
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 1788
Location: Neverland (Canada)
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| Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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For the record, feminists really helped the status quo in the 60s and 70s (when it was still especially worse than it is today). It may have been more radical, but jus'sayin'.
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Drake
Joined: 09 Feb 2005
Posts: 12732
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| Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Dice wrote: | | And this is ONE video (amidst a series she's planning) specifically about "damsels in distress" and a common complaint deals with: "what about Samus, Lara, and other strong female leads?". There's more to come, fellas, if she doesn't address a**-kicking ladies in the future, then yell. |
But that isn't really the issue though. The existence of a few good examples don't kill the trend at all, so that sort of point is laughable. The explosion of nerd rage against it is laughable too. She just isn't exactly doing a good job at actually analyzing the games (outside of trying to force her own point), and sort of misappropriates the existence of a trope to "they did it on purpose to continue the oppression of women for the empowerment of men" or whatever. While it's easy to see the main points, there's a lot of key factors missing, and the whole subject-object dichotomy thing is dumb.
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Kajitani-Eizan
Joined: 06 Oct 2004
Posts: 1336
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| Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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i'm not saying that samus's presence invalidates the trope, but that it should be mentioned if you want to have a balanced overview of the time period. if you don't mention any examples of NON-damsels, you don't have a balanced overview, and you don't get to have a leg to stand on when people call you out on having a biased position. it is infinitely better to mention that "there were a couple examples of empowered women like samus from metroid, but they're few and far between, and i'll cover that later" rather than skip over it entirely.
as for the money, is there no mechanism to return the money to donators? usually a kickstarter is set up with a goal in mind and stretch goals in mind. i find it unlikely that she had stretch goals in mind reaching up to anywhere near $160,000. i am not pissed (why would you think that??) but simply concerned that she now has a bunch of money she has (or had, as in the past tense) no clear plan for.
as for the argument in general, i agree that it's certainly overdone and should be minimized in the future. however, it's simply a matter of mainstream societal gender conventions. it's generally accepted for guys to save girls. it's not so usual for girls to save guys. that's what the culture is. if you think the idea of girls saving guys is as normal as guys saving girls, that's good for you, but that's not what the mainstream thinks, and it will take a lot to sway that sum total opinion. get back to me once people think girls, on average, are as strong as guys, should woo the opposite gender as often as guys, are as unpretty as guys, pay as little attention to their appearance as guys, etc. all of those traits are considered "dominant" traits, which would be dramatically necessary for the person who is doing the saving.
don't get me wrong, i love strong female characters, and i would love for them to be about as commonplace as strong male characters. however, the majority opinion is not that, and media is a reflection of the majority opinion. to suggest that this majority opinion is wrong is... well, if you're not expecting backlash, you're naive. (obviously, a large group of scum went too far, but the less extreme detractors have some valid points.)
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Mint-III
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BruceCampbell
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:54 am Post subject: |
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| Abicion wrote: |
yeah Bruce but what does your stop motion zombie girlfriend have to say about all of this? |
I don't let her use the internet. Or sit at the table. |
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Miss Understanding
Joined: 19 Mar 2013
Posts: 28
Location: Kawaii desu! Xp
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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Ah! I see we need a game in which the player is the damsel in distress!
Stuck in a small room on the top floor of a tower, you get to wait for your shinging knight in white armor! How romantic!
You can walk small circles through your room, slam your food in the face of the guard, look out the window dreaming of your prince...
And when he finally arrives you run to your bed and pretend to be out cold so he can kiss you awake with true love's first kiss.
Swoooooooooooon~
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Curimuch
Joined: 13 Feb 2007
Posts: 17783
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| BruceCampbell wrote: | See, I don't get this whole feminist farce.
A simple answer for all of this is that men in general have a harder time relating to a protagonist of the opposite gender, while girls don't seam to care. So instead of keeping the 'moral' high-ground, they outrage which places them back into the category they try so hard to escape.
I agree with the Facts vs Feminism, it's a market, and just like every other market, it's meat and potatoes, it's lifeblood, are tropes. Executives look at them as a safe venture. Why do you think the pretty-boy is perpetuated in Japanese media? Why do you think The Expendables was an easy sell? We as humans like to put things into boxes, label things. It makes things 'safe' and more comprehensive for us. Hell, I'm doing it in this article right now.
The honest truth is that women are used to having men care for them, as are men used to caring for women. I find this whole female rhetoric quite lesbian. |
Girls can admire and relate to men but boys can't admire or relate to women.
Try to absorb that sentence
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| Abicion wrote: | Once again Accelerator is convinced something is a deep and brilliant masterpiece despite everyone else pointing out the flaws in it.
That seems to be a thing with him. |
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Suikoden2
Joined: 14 Nov 2012
Posts: 1667
Location: Within Dr. Casey's imagination.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Miss Understanding wrote: | Ah! I see we need a game in which the player is the damsel in distress!
Stuck in a small room on the top floor of a tower, you get to wait for your shinging knight in white armor! How romantic!
You can walk small circles through your room, slam your food in the face of the guard, look out the window dreaming of your prince...
And when he finally arrives you run to your bed and pretend to be out cold so he can kiss you awake with true love's first kiss.
Swoooooooooooon~ |
Game of the century easily.
Edit: Also that avatar is very fitting.
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| -Vadio wrote: | | I wouldn't save Tempest world because if the spots dominated it I could turn into a spot and shoot a duck with a laser blade right from Aselia |
My collection of skit faces and etc. |
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BruceCampbell
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Curimuch wrote: |
Girls can admire and relate to men but boys can't admire or relate to women.
Try to absorb that sentence |
There's truth in that statement, but the question that poses is this: 'Can all men relate to women?' I think we know the answer to that question, and it goes both ways. |
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Ryke
Moderator
Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 14102
Location: Québec
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| BruceCampbell wrote: | | Curimuch wrote: |
Girls can admire and relate to men but boys can't admire or relate to women.
Try to absorb that sentence |
There's truth in that statement, but the question that poses is this: 'Can all men relate to women?' I think we know the answer to that question, and it goes both ways. |
...As a man, I'd say without much hesitation that the answer is yes. Not all men do, and not at all times, for all kinds of reasons, and that's the problem.
You can't seriously consider the possibility of solving a problem if you look at it and just go "Well, that's how things are. Huh."
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This space in memory of my 42 Dresden Codak avatars which took a stupid amount of work for absolutely no worthwhile return. |
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BruceCampbell
Joined: 10 Mar 2013
Posts: 24
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:43 am Post subject: |
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| @Ryke That's fair enough. All have the possibility, but the problem is very few are willing, thus perpetuates the cycle of male/female misunderstanding. And the title video is a perfect example of that. |
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Accelerator
Joined: 04 Jul 2007
Posts: 7318
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:53 am Post subject: |
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| Soren wrote: | | BruceCampbell wrote: | | A simple answer for all of this is that men in general have a harder time relating to a protagonist of the opposite gender, while girls don't seam to care. So instead of keeping the 'moral' high-ground, they outrage which places them back into the category they try so hard to escape. |
I hope this is a joke. |
He's actually at least partially right, though. At least among younger males, you'll find quite a few who won't play games with a female main protagonist, while that doesn't seem to be quite as much of an issue for girls.
In some cases (a fair amount of) girls seem to actually prefer male protagonists too, like in Japanese fandoms, while most guys don't really care.
What it comes down to is that male protagonists in games will generally appeal to a wider audience because 1) it's a hobby that generally seems to attract a more male audience 2) There are more guys that will have issues with playing a female character than there are females playing men, because if that were a real detriment to female gamers they probably wouldn't even be in the target audience for general video game releases given how many of them have male protagonists and how slim the pickings are for female protagonists.
So then it's kinda like, these people who are really offended by how video games treat women continue to buy and support them, and presumably enjoy them? I'm all for more female protagonists(half the time I pick that option when there's a gender choice) but it seems bizarre to me to become so invested in a hobby that's so heavy on the tropes mentioned in the video if they really do bother people playing the games that much. |
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Slivius
Joined: 27 Jul 2008
Posts: 1776
Location: Just kidding! It's hot!
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 10:44 am Post subject: |
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Good point Kenny. I tend to base my choice of gender on the design of the character, which results in about a 50/50 gender ratio.
I wonder whether a "damsel-in-distress" kind of game would have more perceived value for the players if they could choose both the gender of their hero and the gender of their damsel at the start of the game.
Those earrings were really distracting btw. They seemed really uncomfortable to me.
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Soren
Joined: 20 Jun 2010
Posts: 5145
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Accelerator wrote: | | What it comes down to is that male protagonists in games will generally appeal to a wider audience because 1) it's a hobby that generally seems to attract a more male audience |
But that isn't true at all. 47% of people who play video games are women
47% of games seems like a pretty wide audience to reach to with games that have female protagonists, even if we are going to say that a female protagonist will repel male gamers.
| Quote: | | So then it's kinda like, these people who are really offended by how video games treat women continue to buy and support them, and presumably enjoy them? I'm all for more female protagonists(half the time I pick that option when there's a gender choice) but it seems bizarre to me to become so invested in a hobby that's so heavy on the tropes mentioned in the video if they really do bother people playing the games that much. |
The tropes are certainly a sign of an underlying issue, but most of the time don't get in the way of the fun.
And if women didn't buy or play video games that would be yet another justification people would pick out as to why they aren't represented well. |
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Slivius
Joined: 27 Jul 2008
Posts: 1776
Location: Just kidding! It's hot!
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Soren wrote: | But that isn't true at all. 47% of people who play video games are women
47% of games seems like a pretty wide audience to reach to with games that have female protagonists, even if we are going to say that a female protagonist will repel male gamers. |
I hate to crush your dreams here Soren =/ , but all this figure tells us is that 47% of the people that participated in the survey claimed to be female and claimed to be play games. How many people did they survey? 100? 2000? 1.6 billion? Did they count people who occasionally play bejeweled on their smartphones as gamers?
Sure, these people are professionals and they make a living with business and consumer research, but figures alone really don't say all that much.
Don't get me wrong, I personally think it'd be awesome if the ratio was 50/50 (or as close as possible), but saying that 47% of all gamers is female based on a (few) survey(s) is ridiculous.
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