Adam Baldwin and Conventions

[USS Triumphant]

Well, the GTA games are very male-centric criminal power fantasies..
But there is no specific focus on women in those games, like you get more money from female pedestrians than from male ones if you kill them...

Prostitutes. And I've heard people laughing about killing them afterward so they can do the deed AND get their money back on more than one occasion. Yes, I know it's a video game and they aren't real women, but that still seems pretty sick.

Reward in what way?!?
I know you can pick up money from civilians you can kill (indiscriminately) in games like GTA or Saints Row or the old Carmageddon, not sure about other games....

Answered your own question here.

I can remember a time, not so long ago, when we could draw Lines between Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, Ok and Not Ok. No discussion, no need for stating cases or parsing words, just a very easy-to-draw Line. And everyone knew where it would be drawn, and agreed.

Wonder if that time ever really was? Swear I can remember it.

There was a time when it seemed that way a lot more than it does now, and I'll admit to missing parts of it sometimes, too, but the problem was that too many things - like gay, women's, and minority rights - ended up on the wrong side of the Good/Bad equation. And when the status quo was stated in such stark terms, that made the places where it was wrong even harder to fight against.

If no one gets raped, and the term 'man game' is fucking ridiculous, and you can't be in the middle....what's left? Or right?

Actually, what it is is this:

Posit: "I believe women are misrepresented in gaming, treated as sexual objects instead of equal partners. I believe this might lead to men treating women poorly in every day life."

Response: "You're trying to take our games away from us! You don't even play games, you cunt! Fuck you, you whore slut hag. I'm going to fucking rape you! I'm going to kill you, you fucking bitch! Watch out because you don't know when I'll do it, but you're going to be fucking dead, bitch!"

Choose which side you want to be on.

To be fair, I think that's slightly oversimplified, because there IS a third side....

Other Response: "I'm a mature person who realizes that games are just that: games. Not reality. And there are some studies that show that people that can vent their fantasies - even violent or otherwise inappropriate ones - in games are LESS likely to commit bad acts in real life. But I acknowledge your discomfort, and perhaps..." :sees the other response: "Oh, good lord! Shut your stupid mouths, you idiots! These are real people in the real world, not other players on a PvP server!" :turns back to the Positer: "Um, I'm not with them...."

My point being, there ARE a few voices of reason among those that dissent not necessarily from the posit, but from the conclusions about what needs to be done about the posit. They're just relatively few, and being drowned out by stupid and hateful trolls.

Or more to the point, each person's statements have to be evaluated individually - start collectivizing them too much and you end up with guilt by association that may be undeserved.

 

[JD5000]

Hey Triumphant....I'm not going to go out on a limb and say we have a twig to stand on, but it's nice to know someone is generally on the same branch.

 

[{ Emilia }]

I'm willing to accept that you are doing the 'Devil's Advocate' thing here, and encouraging people to think about their own views. You have repeatedly mentioned that those that disagree with you seem 'locked in' on their viewpoints. I agree with you on this.

1) I'm not sure how repeating the same lies and misinformation over and over qualifies as "encouraging people to think about their own views".
2) People aren't "locked in" on their viewpoints because they're stubborn. They're siding against the gamergaters because it's a disgusting movement based on lies, bigotry, sexism and misogyny.

We're not CNN. We're not pretending every discussion is held by two equally valid sides that are both okay. Sometimes people are wrong and hateful opinions and agendas don't deserve respect.

Not choosing a side doesn't mean you're being more reasonable than others. Opposing certain viewpoints is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I think I'd like to stay in my apparently imaginary grey area, in which women that play games are not treated as 'sex objects' which is bizarre enough as a concept, nor called 'cunts' for any reason really. It's kinda pleasant here, I welcome anyone who wants to join me to do just that.

That's not a gray area. I would imagine that's where almost everyone in this thread resides. That's the ideal, and it's how things should be.

"Let's treat women like people" shouldn't be an extreme position!

 

[BigJake]

Yes, quite odd that JD5000 thinks that's an "imaginary gray area." That's basically what the Feminist Frequency videos are about.

 

[USS Triumphant]

That's not a gray area. I would imagine that's where almost everyone in this thread resides. That's the ideal, and it's how things should be.

"Let's treat women like people" shouldn't be an extreme position!

"Um, I'm not with him...."

My wife and daughter are both women, and both gamers, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm beyond such "sexist" things as CHIVALRY (and I, to be perfectly honest, hope to never be), but if anyone ever makes a legitimate threat against either of them, period, or keeps them from doing something they want to on the basis of their gender and I'm aware of it, it is going to be on like Donkey Kong. (Not that that's much of a worry for me - they're both redheads in the truest sense. )

But I do think the issue to what is and isn't acceptable in games is a different issue than what is acceptable in real life. Lara Croft (for example) isn't a woman. She's a collection of pixels and computing processes shaped like a woman (such that, yes, I found it more comfortable to say "she" rather than "it" just now - but I do the same thing with my car). If the argument is that the behaviors in games toward those characters translate into behavior in real life, well, I'm definitely willing to have a broader study done and then consider what we need to do based on its results. But the studies I've seen say that generally, the opposite is true, and I think that what we will really find is that a lot of these asshats are the grown up versions of kids whose parents let computers and console games babysit and raise their kids such that the kids are unsocialized in MOST ways, not just in how to deal with the fairer sex.

 

[Rincewiend]

Well, the GTA games are very male-centric criminal power fantasies..
But there is no specific focus on women in those games, like you get more money from female pedestrians than from male ones if you kill them...

Prostitutes. And I've heard people laughing about killing them afterward so they can do the deed AND get their money back on more than one occasion. Yes, I know it's a video game and they aren't real women, but that still seems pretty sick.

It's a gameplay mechanic, but it's not a goal in the game...

Reward in what way?!?
I know you can pick up money from civilians you can kill (indiscriminately) in games like GTA or Saints Row or the old Carmageddon, not sure about other games....

Answered your own question here.

But not just from the female NPCs...
I think there is a big difference between "You can kill female NPCs to get stuff" and "You have to kill female NPCs to get better stuff than from male NPCs"...
The last one would be focussing on specifically going after female NPCs instead of being a indiscriminat virtual killer...
You can also kill females and kids in The Sims by making sure they get an accident so you get ghosts, doesn't mean you have to do it and you can do it to male characters as well...

Off-course, only since the past console generation(PS3/XBox360) are we getting games where stories and characters can be deeper and more complex, so things like misogyny and racism can be better portrayed and experienced...
And i'm glad there are games, like the recent Tomb Raider, where i'm not saving the girl but i am the girl and i'm kickin' ass!!!
More positive/better potrayals of women in games will go a long way to make more of those GamerGate people more receptive to women in the industry, i hope ...

 

[{ Emilia }]

USS Triumphant, I'll give a little constructivist theory 101 for free.
The way we see reality is a construction that's based on our past experiences, values and other aspects.
The media we consume is part of that experience and thus constitutes a tiny part of the "data" our brain uses to construct "reality"; the way we think and see the world.

Nobody claims that raping a woman in a video game is automatically going to turn every man into a rapist. But promoting sexist or racist behaviour by including them in a game environment on a large scale, basically making them ubiquitous, reinforces the view that sexist attitudes and old gender models are "normal".

Again: Games/media are just a tiny part of this "construction" but that doesn't mean we should simply ignore tendencies that are kinda worrying.

And then there's also the fact that creating game worlds that are essentially hostile to women also alienates female players. It reinforces the view that gaming is a "men's club". What we need is more "inclusion" and less "exclusion".

Obviously that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any games with sexist content. The problem is just that right now there are way too many of them.

 

[USS Triumphant]

It's a gameplay mechanic, but it's not a goal in the game...

Depends on what you consider a goal. It might not be a storyline goal, but MOST gamers I know consider it a personal goal to see every part of the game (encouraged by collecting "achievements"). Including that, I guess.

But I'm not sure if the fact that it isn't part of reaching a storyline goal makes it any better, anyway. What you basically just said is that not only is it in the game, but it is *gratuitously so*.

 

[Jedi_Master]

I want my daughter to grow up in a world that doesn't pervasively portray her gender as existing solely for the gratification of men.

TBS, I also want her to take all of your video games and ruin them. I mean every single one. Because it is quite obvious that when a woman takes over a game or even has an opinion about how it should be developed, it is ruined. See: Williams, Roberta.

 

[BigJake]

If anyone is confused as to what Sarkeesian's arguments were, by the way -- I'm replying here on the assumption that we're still talking about that, at least partly -- it's easiest to just watch the FemFreq videos. The ones about "Woman as Background Decoration" seem to have struck the biggest nerve:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZPSrwedvsg[/yt]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i_RPr9DwMA[/yt]

... because the content they highlight is quite embarrassing and their point (which has nothing to do with this being a core mechanic of the games, but rather with their being carefully included options that say nothing very healthy about the design teams' view of male players and how they see -- or should see -- women) is pretty basic and, to judge from the extent to which so-called "debunkings*" have had to rely on misrepresentation and irrelevant nitpicks, hard to argue with.

* Attempted most notably by infamous YouTube demagogue thunderf00t, who I suspect is the major source of TBS' unwavering convictions that Sarkeesian is a "liar," "professional victim" and "self-promoter":

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-tkrxAEWw#t=54[/yt]

 

[USS Triumphant]

constructivist theory 101

I agree, however, I think that this is a much greater concern when children are still in their developmental years. If I play a game, that doesn't mean I'm going to do the things in that game in the real world, but I'm a 40 year old man with established morals, opinions, and patterns of behavior. OTOH, I was fairly irritated with my step-sister when I found out she was letting her kids play GTA 4, unsupervised in a back bedroom when we had Thanksgiving at her house a few years back. They were learning bad things, compounded by not having any adult guidance on what they were seeing.

Maybe we need to actually start enforcing the game ratings. I'm just not sure how you do that through online stores like Steam - or how you do it when "mom" and "dad" can't be bothered to find out anything about what their kids are doing and will buy M-for-Mature games for them no questions asked.

I'm all for the studios reducing violent, sexist, and racist content on their end, too. If Zork and Pac-Man didn't need it, these kids today don't need it either. (And get off my lawn. )

 

[Rincewiend]

But videogames aren't just for kids anymore and it's not a recent develpoment...
I'm 41, if i want to play a game like Tomb Raider or Resident Evil with gratuitus blood and violence i should be able to, just as i am able to watch Game Of Thrones that has the same thing...
I do agree with you on the ratings though and one of the big problems is that a lot of people think all videogames are for kids/teenagers, but most gamers, including you and me, know that that hasn't been true since Resident Evil on the PS1 came out...
That's why some people freak out when Bioware had romance/sex options in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, "won't somebody think of the children!"..
The ratings for those games shows somebody was thinking of the children and gave them an 16+ rating, but the parent's who bought those games for ther prepubescent kids apparently weren't thinking of their children enough to take notice of the rating...

 

[Manticore]

Also, i think the only type of game where you have to kill women are strategy games that have female units or even all-female, amazonian, sides, like the night-elf archer in Warcraft 3...

One game that immediately comes to mind was Red Dead Redemption, where one of the achievements involved tying a woman to the railroad tracks as a train's about to run her over.

 

[Rincewiend]

Also, i think the only type of game where you have to kill women are strategy games that have female units or even all-female, amazonian, sides, like the night-elf archer in Warcraft 3...

One game that immediately comes to mind was Red Dead Redemption, where one of the achievements involved tying a woman to the railroad tracks as a train's about to run her over.

Right...
I actually did that...
More in a "Live out a classic meme" kind of way though and only because i read about it...
If i hadn't known about it i probably never would've bothered to try it...

 

[galleywest]

Also, i think the only type of game where you have to kill women are strategy games that have female units or even all-female, amazonian, sides, like the night-elf archer in Warcraft 3...

One game that immediately comes to mind was Red Dead Redemption, where one of the achievements involved tying a woman to the railroad tracks as a train's about to run her over.

Right...
I actually did that...
More in a "Live out a classic meme" kind of way though and only because i read about it...
If i hadn't known about it i probably never would've bothered to try it...

Lovely.

To add to BigJake's very nice post in the subject, here is this from Jim Sterling of The Escapist, which details the difference between the objectification of women and the idealization of men in video games. I used the Upworthy link because I find The Escapist website goes wonky on me sometimes, plus this site has the transcript. I think it's worthwhile.

 

[JD5000]

I'm already pretty unpopular here, so I'm going to throw this out there for the heck of it.

I have slaughtered countless 'sprites' in video games. Probably billions of them. The majority of those pixels represented what I perceived to be male characters, but I hadn't really thought about that until now.

Were all those Goombas really gender-neutral, which would be reasonable given the biological nature of mushrooms, or was I subconsciously acting out a fantasy in which I destroy, conquer and stomp men?

I think it's barely necessary to mention the Italian connection to my behavior and definitions of the word 'Goomba'....Not only did I kill countless fictional men, I killed countless representations of Italian men. It's all pretty messed up psychologically, if you really read into it.

 

[BigJake]

I think it's barely necessary to mention the Italian connection to my behavior and definitions of the word 'Goomba'....Not only did I kill countless fictional men, I killed countless representations of Italian men. It's all pretty messed up psychologically, if you really read into it.

Why not use this as a teachable moment, JD5000; watch the videos linked above. Is the example you've constructed in any way analogous or relevant to what they say? Is there an argument going on that the objectification of women is an issue because the games are solely about killing women? Why or why not? Can you illustrate your argument with specific examples from the videos that are parallel (or not) to your professed concern about the misandrist implications of the Goomba?

 

[JD5000]

It's snowing like crazy here, I'm not getting strong enough internet to watch videos. However, I promise to watch them.

Bonus points for 'misandrist', I think it's funny that spellcheck doesn't consider it a legit word.

 

[JD5000]

Frickin snow. Still stuck on my phone.

BigJake, I am going to take your advice to heart and use this as a 'teachable moment'. From now on, I'm resolving to take a stand on multi-sided issues based on what the ethics and morals I've been taught tell me I should think. They are rarely wrong, and it's time I stop questioning them. I think it might make me more boring, but at least people will know where I'm at.

So here is the end of my personal proselytizion party.

This 'GamerGate' stuff is total bullshit, and anyone that really thinks it's a reflection on journalism ethics seriously needs their head examined. And probably a haircut, and a ball-washing while you're at it.

Tying a woman to railroad tracks in a spaghetti Western-themed game? It's a trope - Totally acceptable as part of the story, but I strongly recommend not doing that in real life. People that go that far are ****ed up and beyond any definition of misogyny. Or are 'pure misogynists' - I don't care how it's labeled, it's screwed up behavior when it doesn't involve pixels and your imagination.

If game creators wanted to be just a little more imaginative, having a female protagonist tie a male antagonist to the tracks would be pretty cool. Is there an example of this in contemporary film?

I do think imagination should know no limits. Ever have a ****ed up dream you didn't want to talk about? If you say no - I'm sorry for you.

So after disseminating and going along with BS in this thread, I'm setting my POV in stone with this post.

People that think this 'GamerGate' stuff has any merit beyond the license to be an asshole are full of it. There are at least a dozen links to articles in this thread that support this, so I'm not going to go all reference-y.

And done. Thanks for your time.