This is a comment by Jacobtk on the post “Video Game Critic Draws Hateful Misogynistic Abuse“.
“You assume that everyone agrees that women are objectified. They do not.
“The rest of your response does not answer my question either. My question is why is it wrong to create games for people who make ‘boob-based purchasing decisions’ (and for the moment I will ignore the inherent misandry of that statement).
“The only argument presented is a political one, which your following statement confirms: ‘It’s about sending the message to the people who are creating that product to branch out from the T&A female character because a good portion of the people who purchase games would like to see some actual female characters.’
“That is a political argument that has nothing to do with game play, graphics, or entertainment, the three reasons that men and boys actually buy and play games. The fact is that the vast majority of console and PC gamers are male, and the games that developers and publishers release very much appeal to that audience.
“One can argue that the developers and publishers should create games for different audiences, but that is not the argument. The argument is that developers and publishers should stop making or change the way they make the games that appeal to their core audience because a smaller audience who rarely buys or plays those games does not like them.
“And before you argue that it is because of sexism, even when the characters are neutral (like in Halo), it still does not result in a large female audience.”
Photo credit: Flickr / zawezome
About the Editors
IT’s wrong because most things that men like (hot naked women exposing themselves for men’s enjoyment for example) are verboten.
Don’t ask why, just accept that it is, and do it anyways.
It ain’t a criminal offence.
Yet…
The Wet One
No. It’s a problem because very few other female characters besides T&A-types exist in video games.
I actually think gender is a fairly irrelevant point in most video games, considering the gameplay is always more important than the story.
Consider some of the games considered “the best”/classics – Mario, Zelda, Halo, Metroid, Portal, Half-Life, that kind of thing. All of these games have characters whose genders are irrelevant – Switch their gender and it makes no difference to the game/story. This is because the main characters never actually talk! They’re blank slates for the player to mould their own identity over as they play the game, and I suspect that is a major part of why they have large and diverse fanbases. As such I don’t think publishers should “make games for different audiences”, because the good ones tend to already be doing so by default.
I can’t think of any games that value story over gameplay other than Final Fantasy, and they always have very well constructed female and male characters. The T&A is still there, but they’re also fleshed out characters in their own right so it doesn’t really bother me. What would bother me is if games that use blank slate female characters (Portal, Metroid) used T&A as a marketing tool, because then it does seem a bit like objectification – but they don’t. So yeah, I don’t think there’s a hegemony of T&A characters any more than a hegemony of muscled testosterone-freak man characters, really.
Mario and Zelda suffer from the ‘rescue the princess’ problem, firstly…so yeah gender does matter in those games. Portal and Half-Life are two games that rather purposefully don’t conform to stereotypical gender issues in video games. Metroid is something I haven’t played, but my understanding is actually that they also purposefully made it not conform to stereotypical gender problems (until Other M, that is, and Other M screwed up Samus’s character, or so I’ve been told).
But even in stories where there literally isn’t a story, it actually still sort of does exist, just in character models. Look at Sonic the Hedgehog…why is Sonic male? What tells you that he’s male? It’s all secondary, cultural characteristics…he’s got no breasts or curves (but then he’s a hedgehog so really he shouldn’t even if he were female); he’s wearing tennis shoes and no other clothes and he’s blue. So how’s that a problem? Well, loads of video game designers treat their character models like this: make the male character, then make it curvier and add breasts to make it female (even when they aren’t designing humans). It’s what Blizzard did with the female worgen and the pandarans. It’s what Bioware was trying to do with the turians in Mass Effect (but they gave up and decided to go for no sexual dimorphism). Heck, it’s what they did to try and make a female Sonic…and that was truly terrifying.
Yet there is no actual reason to conceive of character models in this way. They could just as easily start with female models and then modify them to make them more ‘masculine’ looking, but they don’t, because the male model is treated as the default. That’s a problem.
But okay, back to games with stories, I’m not suggesting all games have some sort of gendered undertone to them, or something. I’m not even suggesting that all games need to address gender issues in video games. I’m saying it’d be great if game designers had all of this floating in the back of their minds, so that they understand the ways in which their choices about character models and stories will be interpreted. If they’re going to include a T&A character, it should be a deliberate choice and done with the understanding of what reaction that will garner. At the moment plenty of game designers seem rather oblivious.
Also, as I pointed out, if T&A characters (and princesses in distress) weren’t pretty much the only female characters out there, this really would not be nearly the problem it is. You may not play games for the story, but that story is still there…and it’s becoming more and more important in games, particularly some genres.
“Rescue the princess” doesn’t seem like a problem to me, it’s just a quick story shorthand – There’s also a Princess Peach game where you rescue Mario, and it’s not like Zelda is a damsel in distress, she’s also a ninja (Sheik) who is shown as just as capable as Link. See also Midna in the Zelda games, and the women in the Oracle ones. I can’t actually think of many damsels in video games who aren’t also shown as being capable (Zelda and Peach are also playable in Smash Bros).
The models are a shorthand too – How else are you supposed to represent that a non-human character is female? Females do have breasts and are curvier. They could start with a female design and take those off to make it male, but I suspect it’s just easier to start with the more basic model. I don’t see a problem with that.
The Mario franchise has developed and added all sorts of characters, and yeah part of that is making female character who aren’t just there to be rescued. That’s good; that’s progress. Originally, however, Peach was a princes to be rescued. I’m not as familiar with the Zelda story, so okay that one is better so it seems. But your sentence at the top sort of highlights the problem…it’s a quick story shorthand, because it’s expected. Why isn’t “rescue the prince” a ‘quick story shorthand?’ That’s rhetorical, I understand why…but that’s my point.
The thing with the character models, though, is that female bodies aren’t just male bodies + T&A…it’s a misunderstanding of human anatomy to treat it like that. And with non-human bodies…non-human females don’t need to look like human females. Just take a look at the charr females in Guild Wars 2. They took a look at felines and then developed the charr character models from that…starting basically from the ground-up when creating the female model, instead of just adding breasts. Actually the female charr don’t even have breasts, because felines don’t have breasts, and yet they are female.
I think video games are an art form, not just the artsy types of games, but all of them have that potential. I think justifying bad story and character choices as “shorthand” and therefore acceptable is selling the medium short.
No, it is not. It much easier to add things onto a model than it is to take things away. Doing the latter could mess with the rigging and the bones that modelers and animators use to move the characters. More so, no one builds a model first. They design every on paper or in software before anyone starts playing with polygons. Most of the time, modelers build male and female models just to make sure everything moves rights. Very few games feature a general generic model used for everyone. But even if they did, what difference would it make if the final result looks female?
But they are not the only female characters out there. It really depends on what games you play, and more so what the game is about. Many Japanese RPGs feature a vast array of female characters with difference personalities. They often have characters who look one way and act another just to throw you off. Even when you look at so-called T&A characters, there is usually more to them than their appearance (Lara Croft, Kia, Jill Valentine, Tifa, etc.).That does not happen in every case, but there are plenty examples of different types of female characters. However, you also have to keep in mind that the characters serve the story, so if the story calls for a buxom wench or a damsel princess or a bossy teenager, you put the character in the story. Every depiction is not meant as a slight or an insult.
Alright, let’s pretend it’s really just about the idea that it’s easier to add things onto a model than take them off…then why not start with the smaller model (usually female) and then add the bulk for the larger model (usually male)? Surely it’s easier to smooth out the curves of a female model than it is to take away the bulk and create curves. Right?
Really? You can’t think of any games that value story over gameplay? Here’s a few from my collection.
- Amnesia: Dark Descent is a survival/horror game with some rather problematic gameplay elements. The atmosphere and story are quite engrossing, though.
- Dear Esther is an indie game with a disjointed and cryptic storyline, but its gameplay consists entirely of “follow the path”.
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first person shooter game in the horror genre which is focused on HP Lovecraft’s universe and stories and while the gameplay is passable it is certainly not the focus.
- The Longest Journey and its sequel Dreamfall: The Longest Journey are adventure games primarily focused on telling a story. What gameplay they have is entirely devoted to furthering that aim.
- The Myst series is, I think, an excellent example of storytelling, and after the first game the puzzles tend to be more integrated into that story.
- Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP is a newer game that I still don’t know what to think of, really. It’s clearly story-driven though.