Poison's legacy: Newest God of War won't have female enemies

[Ivo]

However, I think the line under the headline is quite direct:
"Sony Santa Monica says that its upcoming prequel to the God of War series will not contain any violence against women."

(...)

So yeah, sorry if I jumped to conclusions

Were there many actual women enemies in the previous games? I don't consider harpies as women, they are female "monsters", like there are in Castlevania Medusa heads or Succubus.
Greek goddesses (I don't know if they appear as enemies) would be a bit of a thinner line if they appear in completely human appearance though.

Ivo.

[threetoed]

Let's start by talking about journals.

Aside from the impact factor itself being a highly flawed system, the argument doesn't hold water here since we're talking about Game Studies research vs. psychological research. Games and Culture is THE preeminent journal for Game Studies scholarship (which is what we are discussing here) and is published quarterly in a field without many other journals or stand-alone academic programs. The Journal of Interpersonal Violence is a middling-to top 1/3 or so journal that sees monthly publication in a field that is saturated with many journals and programs (thus it has more articles that then get cited much more often that would ever be the case for quarterly journal in a more obscure field). So comparative the impact factor doesn't really make sense, since we aren't comparing equal publications and the scale doesn't account for the field of Game Studies.

You were the one who brought up Games and Culture as a good way to understand the affect that games have on us, therefore comparing to other journals that talk about how games affect us.

I was puzzled by that because Games and Culture seems to be mostly theoretical (in the social science sense) articles, with few empirical studies of game violence. The one empirical study on violence, "The meaning of Race and Violence in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" is qualitative, mostly consisting of asking kids how playing the game makes them feel. Since most people who study the effect of violence are talking about subconscious effects, it's useless to ask people's opinions about how it affects them. It doesn't seem like you will find much useful, scientific studies of how we are affected by game violence in Games and Culture currently.

Also, you don't seem to understand how Impact Factor works. It takes the number to times articles from a given journal were cited in a given year/The total number of articles in the past 2 years. So, it is normalized for the amount of publications a journal has: it is a per article measurement. The other things you mention: Games and Culture isn't published very often, the field is small, it's the top journal, etc. should make it easier for it to have a higher Impact Factor, since the small number of quality papers in the field would make it more likely that they would be cited by other people in the field.

Games and Culture may be a good journal to read critical gaming theory but not to figure out how violent content in games affect people.

Even more problematic, they only SHOWED some select scenes from GTA IV, they didn't let players play the game for themselves or come to understand anything about the context for violence.

I would like to see some proof that putting violence in context actually lessens the affects that it has on people. You keep making this claim, but you never support it.

Likewise, why would playing the game and being the one perpetrating the violent acts make them less likely to affect you? Since your involvement is higher and your identification with the person doing the violence in greater, the literature would predict a larger effect.

B) Their own qualifying statement seems germane to our discussion.

Although the design employed in the current study resulted in robust findings, the results are still limited in terms of generalizability to other populations. Future studies may expand this area of research by attempting to obtain a more representative sample of gamers. As indicated earlier, the majority of gamers in the United States are male, with an average age of 34. The majority of the study participants were female, with an average age of 23.

A few points here. The study that showed that gamers as a whole have an average age of 34 comes from the ESA and they are counting a broad definition of gamer. The relevant group to our discussion would be the age of people who play God of War or GTA, which I'd guess was lower. If you use the membership of the Playstation Network as a proxy for PS3 players, the average age is 28. Which, while not the same, is closer.

Do you honestly think, knowing the vast consensus in the literature about how violence in media affects people, that looking at an older age group is really going to change things? As you note, the actual research is well done.

Also, from the developers' point of view, this criticism of the article is basically arguing, "It's OK, the product I make for a living only makes the younger part of my male audience more likely to be unsympathetic to female victims of sexual violence." I guess some developers could convince themselves of this makes it alright, but it seems to require a level of intellectual dishonesty that I wouldn't be comfortable with.

Lastly, of note, the people affected by the violence are the intended audience. The average age was 23, well above the age of majority and the M ESRB rating label. The targeted audience are the ones who are becoming less sympathetic to female victims of violence.

No, my argument is that the violence itself is not sexual in any way - he isn't doing anything that can be easily construed as sexual to her. Yes she is sexual, yes she is the victim of violence. That isn't the definition of sexualized violence.

Allow me to remind you of the definition that you posted:

Sexualized violence is a crime of power. It is an act of violence performed in a sexualized way. It is about control, hostility and assertion of power— it is not about sex.

Emphasis mine.

Again, a scene that is "violent" that features someone "sexual" is not necessarily one of sexualized violence. It is a fine distinction but an important one.

Once more you are making an assertion and not an argument here. You give no reason fro anyone to believe that it's a fine distinction or even what that distinction would be. This is an especially questionable assertion since your own chosen definition of sexualized violence seems to go out of the way to claim that it's not a fine distinction.

The woman that you, as Kratos, murder in God of War is clearly meant by the developers for you to think of in a sexualized manner. What about that scene can be interpreted in a way in which the developers did not want you to associate her sexuality with the violence you are doing to her? Look at the camera angles in the short cutscenes, they are all about emphasizing both her body and your power over her.

I don't know if I would say that the one particular scene is "ok" - it is still disturbing. It isn't sexualized violence, though.

Do you think that this scene will affect men in the same way as scenes selected for the various research studies that examine media violence and their affect on men? The definition we give to it won't change the effect it has.

As for context, the GOW games feature almost every woman in the game as half naked, as is keeping with the particular vision of ancient Greece they've chosen to utilize (one that is shared by many many other texts, I'd add). Neither Kratos nor the other characters draw attention to this characteristic of the world except in the sex scenes found in the games, which are not violent. In other words, the game clearly has moments where sexual acts are committed and defines them in a particular way (non-violent) and it also has lots of sexual imagery/attractive characters (male and female) that are defined in another way (subject to violence like everything else). You can't just conflate the two ideas and create "sexualized violence".

1. I'd like to see that list of texts that support this view of ancient Greece.
2. The devs are still responsible for the choices they decide to put into the game. The fact that they chose a concept of ancient Greece that would allow them to put in this type of sexualized violence, in no way justifies their choice to include the violence.

Which women in God of War are not normally topless? Kratos wife, Athena, etc.
Which women in God of War are normally topless? The women in the sex scenes, the woman you murder int he gears, etc.

So, the women are you supposed to sexualize are topless, the one's you aren't, aren't.

Also, the sex scenes in the game are non-violent, in that they are consensual, but the the game makes the same (or an incredibly similar) noise when you hit the correct QTE input as it does sometimes for Kratos using his blades, explicitly linking sex and violence.

Also, the vision of male sexuality the game offers is one of dominance. Women constantly offer themselves up to him, Aphrodite's handmaidens are somewhat horrified but also turned on by one sex act that Kratos does to Aphrodite, and Kratos' power is such that he causes vases to fall off nearby stands. The sexualization in these games for males is a power fantasy: men have the power, women are sex objects.

[dsheinem]

Games and Culture seems to be mostly theoretical (in the social science sense) articles, with few empirical studies of game violence...It doesn't seem like you will find much useful, scientific studies of how we are affected by game violence in Games and Culture currently.

I personally place more stock in critical cultural studies than I do in social scientific research. At the end of the day, this might be the most significant sticking point for us in arguing about the worth of this article. I don't find the kinds of research done in most social scientific journals about media effects to be very useful or consistent with what I see the historical cultural value of media to actually be. I see a lot of value in "hard science" disciplines, but negligible scholarly value in most "soft science" like what this article does.

Also, you don't seem to understand how Impact Factor works.

I understand how it works, but the journal in question (Games and Culture) doesn't have a "field" that is recognized by the impact factor measure. I may have been a bit fuzzy about how they count cites - I'll give you that - but I am right in saying it doesn't really mean much of anything to an emerging field like Game Studies.

I would like to see some proof that putting violence in context actually lessens the affects that it has on people. You keep making this claim, but you never support it.

I don't know off hand any research that "scientifically" proves that watching a video game produces different emotions/responses than playing it. I know it becasue I have done both and talk to many people who have done both, and the experience is not the same. You won't get the same kind of emotional response/resonance from watching something like Journey or Dear Esther (two recent picks off the top of my head) as you would from playing it.

Since your involvement is higher and your identification with the person doing the violence in greater, the literature would predict a larger effect.

You wouldn't understand anything about character motivations and narrative context and you wouldn't self identify with a character from watching a game. "Larger effect" doesn't mean that it will have the SAME effect as watching only amplified.

Do you honestly think, knowing the vast consensus in the literature about how violence in media affects people

I think that the "vast consensus" of this literature you refer to is wrong, especially as applied to games. A big part of the problem is that most "game effects" researchers are adopting methods from a long history of social scientific media effects research aimed at passive media, not interactive media. Furthermore I think that the research is usually ridden with the kinds of problems like participants' varying definition of concepts and varied reporting as a result. Again, "good social scientific research" to me just means that it was done following proper conventions (e.g. finding statistical significance), but in many cases - especially as it relates to games - it doesn't mean that the ultimate findings are very useful in answering questions about the cultural value or impact of games on individuals or populations.

Again, a scene that is "violent" that features someone "sexual" is not necessarily one of sexualized violence. It is a fine distinction but an important one.

Once more you are making an assertion and not an argument here. You give no reason fro anyone to believe that it's a fine distinction or even what that distinction would be. This is an especially questionable assertion since your own chosen definition of sexualized violence seems to go out of the way to claim that it's not a fine distinction.

Again here the slipperiness of language - I understand those definitions to be suggesting that sexual violence involves the touching, maiming, or utilizing of the sexual organs, sexual postures, etc. Nudity alone does not equal sexual in each and every context (violent or not).

1. I'd like to see that list of texts that support this view of ancient Greece.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient ... 80&bih=927

https://www.google.com/search?q=ancient ... 80&bih=927

^^(much of these NSFW, obviously)

2. The devs are still responsible for the choices they decide to put into the game. The fact that they chose a concept of ancient Greece that would allow them to put in this type of sexualized violence, in no way justifies their choice to include the violence.

For reasons I have stated, I still don't see what they include in the game as sexualized violence. I understand now why you do, but I don't think we're going to agree on this as we have different views of what is "sexual" in the games.

Also, the sex scenes in the game are non-violent, in that they are consensual, but the the game makes the same (or an incredibly similar) noise when you hit the correct QTE input as it does sometimes for Kratos using his blades, explicitly linking sex and violence.

This is a very good point that I hadn't considered - one that is markedly different than the scene in that video which I don't see as sexual. I think I would agree with you that THIS is an example of sexualized violence in the game. It is also something that you'd have to play to really pick up on and would be hard to understand if you were forced to watch a video in experimental research.

The sexualization in these games for males is a power fantasy: men have the power, women are sex objects.

Yes, I agree. Again, though, this is a different argument than one that argues that the game features sexualized violence.

Also, my apologies for dismissing your argumentative acumen earlier - you've actually done quite a bit better since then at making your point well and forcing me to consider my position a bit. This is now a good debate, I think - one that is able to get at where we might agree and disagree and - maybe more importantly - be able to figure out why. I hope now that you continue this provocative repartee! (no, that isn't a synonym for sexualized violence )

[pierrot]

Here's a definition of sexualized violence from Canada's Women's Sexual Assault Center:

Sexualized violence is an overarching term used to describe any violence, physical or psychological, carried out through sexual means or by targeting sexuality. Sexualized violence encompasses all forms of unwanted sexual contact as well as name calling, sexual humiliation, and sexual targeting.

The Anti-Violence Project adds to that:

Sexualized violence is a crime of power. It is an act of violence performed in a sexualized way. It is about control, hostility and assertion of power— it is not about sex.

Those definitions most assuredly do NOT fit the scene you included in the video nor any other scene in the God of War games.

I haven't actually played any of the God of War series (nor do I particularly care to) so I can only offer my opinion based on the accounts given in this thread of the scenes in question.
That said, I believe those definitions of sexualized violence that you provided very much do fit the 'gear scene' in question.

I would hope that we can agree that by those definitions, the act of throwing a rock at someone for being homosexual is an act of sexualized violence--this particular act of violence with two parties that does not, in fact, include any form of sexual contact.
Now, from what I gather, this woman was not the only method of jamming the gears, which would (I believe) indicate that her sexuality was the impetus for this act. Putting aside for a moment the objectification and misogyny represented here, I can see no other motive than for this brooding, alpha male archetype to assert his dominance and power over a meek and cowering representation of female sexuality.

I don't think it's an entirely unfair criticism to say that I'm hyperbolizing slightly to make a point; especially considering that my frame of reference is as a third party. However, even examining it in a less sensationalized manner, I think it's clear that these two characters' sexualities are highlighted in the violence, making it an act of sexualized violence.

Anyway, I don't really care what they do. Hearing about this scene has damned the series entirely for me, regardless of whether or not they intend to tone it down in future titles.

Also, I know I'm dredging up something that's already basically been buried, but anyone who feels that the word "uppity" doesn't have racist or sexist connotations: Take a trip to Harlem, and wear a sandwich board that says "Uppity __________." See if you make it out alive.

[dsheinem]

Now, from what I gather, this woman was not the only method of jamming the gears

From what I recall, she was the only method.

which would (I believe) indicate that her sexuality was the impetus for this act.

I don't see how you make this leap. The impetus for the act is that she was there and, like everything else in the game, could be made to fit Kratos' purpose. 9 times out of 10 he does similar things with men to get through traps or advance.

Putting aside for a moment the objectification and misogyny represented here, I can see no other motive than for this brooding, alpha male archetype to assert his dominance and power over a meek and cowering representation of female sexuality.

Just becasue she is topless, I don't see that as sexual dominance per se.

think it's clear that these two characters' sexualities are highlighted in the violence, making it an act of sexualized violence.

Again, no. There are points in the game where sexuality is highlighted, and I disagree strongly that this is one of them. Again, there is lots of nudity in the game - not all of it is necessarily there for a "sexual" function, though.

[Forlorn Drifter]

The current problem I see with the debate is that it is being assumed that nudity is sexual. Nudity is not inherently sexual. If it was, men wouldn't be allowed to go shirtless and women wouldn't wear open back shirts and such. (I know some religious groups believe nudity to be directly sexual, but we'll take a non religious view for this argument.)

I just don't see the fact that a girl has her chest exposed makes anything done to her inherently more sexual than anything done to a man with his chest exposed. Breasts are not sexual unless made so...

[pierrot]

Now, from what I gather, this woman was not the only method of jamming the gears

From what I recall, she was the only method.

which would (I believe) indicate that her sexuality was the impetus for this act.

I don't see how you make this leap. The impetus for the act is that she was there and, like everything else in the game, could be made to fit Kratos' purpose. 9 times out of 10 he does similar things with men to get through traps or advance.

Someone mentioned a giant club and some other monster being there, but again, I haven't played the game. Granted, it would be vile dehumanization regardless of the gender of the helpless person Kratos is throwing into the gears. However, that person's gender can determine the nature of the violence. Perhaps Kratos does simply kill ruthlessly and indiscriminately, but if this is not the case, I think it's hard to deny that the sexualities of the parties involved plays a role in the nature of this scene.

Putting aside for a moment the objectification and misogyny represented here, I can see no other motive than for this brooding, alpha male archetype to assert his dominance and power over a meek and cowering representation of female sexuality.

Just becasue she is topless, I don't see that as sexual dominance per se.

You don't find the imagery of a large, half-naked, testosterone-riddled alpha male bearing down on a helpless, full-chested, half-naked woman the least bit sexual...?

Again, no. There are points in the game where sexuality is highlighted, and I disagree strongly that this is one of them. Again, there is lots of nudity in the game - not all of it is necessarily there for a "sexual" function, though.

I would argue that the female nudity doesn't play any role other than provoking a stimulus in the hetero male audience. Our society is not the same as ancient Greece, and I highly doubt that the God of War series holds to such a strict level of historical accuracy so as to make any nudity more than purely masturbatory. If it did, Kratos would probably be fully nude and have sex with little boys.

My point was never about the nudity in the game, though. I think the characters' sexualities are defined clearly enough by the roles they appear to play.

I would also like to note that "sexualized abuse/violence" is not entirely the same as "sexual abuse/violence."

I'm not here to change minds as it's not by my will that another changes. However, I am perturbed by the idea that someone would want to see a domineering male figure throw a helpless woman to her bloody death as much as it does that people appear to demand ever more visceral depictions of decapitation, disembowelment, severing of limbs, etc.

[Key-Glyph]

Just wanted to chime in and say I've greatly enjoyed reading this debate as it's been unfolding.

Thanks guys.

[dsheinem]

Perhaps Kratos does simply kill ruthlessly and indiscriminately

He does. It is his one defining characteristic.

You don't find the imagery of a large, half-naked, testosterone-riddled alpha male bearing down on a helpless, full-chested, half-naked woman the least bit sexual...

I completely understand why someone unfamiliar with the games would see that scene and think so. However, again, nudity is so prevalent in the games that it makes it difficult to see this particular scene as in any way a "sexual" one compared to many of the other scenes in the series that are clearly defined as such in the context of game.

I would argue that the female nudity doesn't play any role other than provoking a stimulus in the hetero male audience. Our society is not the same as ancient Greece, and I highly doubt that the God of War series holds to such a strict level of historical accuracy so as to make any nudity more than purely masturbatory.

The closest thing I can compare the nudity in the game to is something like what I've heard people call "National Geographic nudity" - many women are topless in the games becasue that is the cultural custom (as imagined by the creators), so after a point it isn't especially titillating. Maybe a 13 year old boy would feel differently when playing them (I've only played the games as an adult, but once thought certain issues of National Geographic could function as "Playboy-light" in the days of my emerging puberty [before the internet we had to just make do] ), but the games aren't necessarily created for this audience...but that's a whole other discussion.

I am perturbed by the idea that someone would want to see a domineering male figure throw a helpless woman to her bloody death.

Yeah...see I feel like I have worked myself into this awkward position where my effort to explain a differentiation between sexualized violence and the kind of violence that is found (in most instances) in the God of War series makes me sound like some kind of bloodthirsty violence-hound at best or a rape/abuse-fantasy nutjob at worst. Neither could be further from the truth, actually, and I don't want to see women (or men) assaulted in a sexual fashion in the games I play. In the God of War series, even when playing with a critical mindset, I haven't seen that.

I feel like I should add that I have previously presented some well-received competitively-selected critical scholarship at two academic conferences about the God of War series that takes issue with several things in the series...though issues of gender are not really one of them. This thread has made me consider revisiting that paper sometime in the next few months, so kudos to all for the discussion

[dsheinem]

Just wanted to chime in and say I've greatly enjoyed reading this debate as it's been unfolding.

Thanks guys.

Glad someone is at least reading it!