Kickstarter "Tropes vs Women in Videogames"

[opethfan]

I find the idea of someone deciding that a work is not "art" but a "product", henceforth understood to be lesser and less important than the first to be critically disgusting and nothing but an excuse for censorship and moral control of human expression.

But even then, even if there was such a thing as "art" and such a thing as "product", who is going to decide what's what? Game journalists? A self-selected elite of moral critics? The vote of the masses?

It's dumb. The designers of Assassins Creed have as much of a right to make the game they want to as any other designer. It's their prerrogative as artists, as workers to decide what their creative output should be like and under which concerns it should be released, not yours.

It is up to the creators to say if they see it as art or not. When they were faced with the "why can't you be female in co-op?" question, they could have said "We made an artistic decision to make the game be about male assassins in that time period. That was our prerogative as designers, engineers, and artists." Instead they said (paraphrased), "it's too difficult at this stage in development"

That is the hallmark of it being a product that has to meet deadlines and in context is released yearly.

I would rather reject an American-centric elitist point of view that assumess a certain subculture is relegated to "middle class white males" and attempts to shame me into saying the culture I chose to participate in and identify with is "excluding me from the general public" in an ugly, patronising tone.

Isn't using the term American-centric a little hasty when you're responding to a European-born Canadian? I gave you enough respect to look 3mm to the left of your post to see that you're from Spain - couldn't you have done the same for me?

But since I did look at your location, I found the information relevant to your nation.
73% of males aged 16-24 played games, compared to 56% of females in the same age bracket. That goes down to 53% of males aged 25-34, and just 40% of females. The gap is shrinking, but a lot is due to mobile gaming. In the 12 months preceding the 2012 report I'm citing, 36% of 16-35 year old males in Spain purchased a boxed game, while only 20% of female in the same age group did. The average was 21%. http://www.isfe.eu/sites/isfe.eu/files/ ... _study.pdf

What tone was ugly and patronizing? Am I an outsider criticizing your hobby? No. I'm a white middle class male who's contributed to this site, contributed to the secret fund that released Sonic Xtreme, worked in a video game store while in college, collects Saturn games, etc etc.

As a bookish cinephile with a foodie girlfriend, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this statement.

But you gave yourself that label, not Nancy Drew or some other news commentator.

I think he means that just liking food doesn't make you a foodie or how just liking movies doesn't make you a film buff. Where as with games if you even just like them, you're a gamer.

Exactly. It isn't up to you, it's up to someone else who sees a controller in your hand.

[Erik_Twice]

That is the hallmark of it being a product that has to meet deadlines and in context is released yearly.

I thought your hallmark of what was "art" and what was a "product" was that the designers thought it was art, not that there were deadlines or a certain regularity.

But I think you are missing the issue here. The issue I have is not the distinction between "art" and "product" but that you feel the need to make that distinction in the first place.

I think making that distinction is itself elitist, ugly and critically bankrupt. It has only been used to diminish creative work and exclude entire fields of human expression.

And, in fact, that's what you are doing here. You are diminishing creative works that don't fit your standards as "products" and hold them to a standard (Inclusivity) that you don't hold other creative works to.

I think games should be treated for what they are: games. Nothing more, nothing less. Same with books and sculpture and cooking and movies.

Isn't using the term American-centric a little hasty when you're responding to a European-born Canadian?

It's the view that's American-centric, not you

This debate, like so many controversies and debates in gaming like this very own "Tropes vs Women" debate arise from American views and have American social mores and politics as a backdrop. The idea that people should shed the term "gamer" because it was exclusionary was started by Leigh Alexander (American) and followed by the very American game press.

It's a very American topic and a very American point of view. At worst, you could say it's more accurate to call it Anglosaxon instead of American since most of the people involved are from either the US, Britain or a British ex-colony.

But you gave yourself that label, not Nancy Drew or some other news commentator.

People identify with that label and define themselves that way. They give themselves the label.

The question is, who are you to decide if gamers should or shouldn't define themselves as gamers?

[Ack]

As a bookish cinephile with a foodie girlfriend, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this statement.

But you gave yourself that label, not Nancy Drew or some other news commentator.

I think he means that just liking food doesn't make you a foodie or how just liking movies doesn't make you a film buff. Where as with games if you even just like them, you're a gamer.

Exactly. It isn't up to you, it's up to someone else who sees a controller in your hand.

Actually no, this isn't true. And my girlfriend is a perfect example for why this isn't true, for two reasons:

1) The Foodie term was applied to her by other people. She actually hates the term, but other parties beyond either of us repeatedly label her that way.

2) The Gamer term has never been applied to her. She doesn't play many video games but has a definite love of Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Story, among others, and she enjoys a single mobile game. Based on the generalizations you guys seem to be discussing, this would be enough for people to label her a "gamer," but this has never been the case. Truth be told, I don't think she has much awareness of the term.

Contrast this with myself, who willingly began referring to himself as a "gamer" when I first heard the term back in the late 1990s. And I chose the term because I spent a large portion of my time playing and reading about video games. They had a large impact on my life. No one else has ever forced this title onto me, it was one I adopted willingly out of a love for the medium, just like the terms bookish and cinephile are terms I use to refer to my love of books and film. If anything, you could lump all of it together and argue that I'm a fan of media in general.

If anyone out there is making blanket generalizations about who is what, then they're wrong, yes, just as it is wrong to generalize in the opposite direction. I was a gamer long before this argument and all of its fallout started, and I will be a gamer long after because it is my ultimate choice to be so, and because I love video games, much like I love other forms of media.

[opethfan]

That is the hallmark of it being a product that has to meet deadlines and in context is released yearly.

I thought your hallmark of what was "art" and what was a "product" was that the designers thought it was art, not that there were deadlines or a certain regularity.

But I think you are missing the issue here. The issue I have is not the distinction between "art" and "product" but that you feel the need to make that distinction in the first place.

I think making that distinction is itself elitist, ugly and critically bankrupt. It has only been used to diminish creative work and exclude entire fields of human expression.

Perhaps I was misunderstood or didn't make myself particularly clear. I feel the distinction needs to be made because the status quo is that games are toys. Toys made (mostly) for boys. And that means the standards and values we assign are completely different than if the product is seen as a piece of art. If American Psycho was a toy rather than a book, it wouldn't be defended as free expression and a work of literary significance. It would be seen as violent filth (which many already do).

Of course, some works (including classics like A Christmas Carol) were definitely potboilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler but those mediums are established and accepted. There is no stigma to overcome, no point to be proven. No one is going around saying that the movie industry is fundamentally sexist and that the consumers of that medium are skewed towards a particular demographic.

So churned out games undermine the reputation of the medium among the general population, which leads to the societal issues we're facing in gaming today.

The question is, who are you to decide if gamers should or shouldn't define themselves as gamers?

Someone who cares passionately about the medium, its potential as the most powerful storytelling device in existence, and someone who is sick of the form being undermined and seen as less than the other mediums we have.

[Erik_Twice]

So churned out games undermine the reputation of the medium among the general population

Which is an issue with the general population and not the medium. It won't be solved by enforcing elitist double-standards but by accepting that there are bad games just like there are good ones.

And before decrying churned out games and potboilers, consider that those games you like and praise might be decrying as one of them just like you are diminishing the value of toys and what you regard as lesser "products" or "potboilers".

The question is, who are you to decide if gamers should or shouldn't define themselves as gamers?

Someone who cares passionately about the medium, its potential as the most powerful storytelling device in existence, and someone who is sick of the form being undermined and seen as less than the other mediums we have.

Caring a lot and thinking the medium is being undermined doesn't mean you get to tell everyone else how to identify, much less other people who also care a lot about gaming, like Ack does.

[samsonlonghair]

I had a conversation on this topic with my female room mate a few weeks ago. Kelley was brisking at Ubisoft's famous gaffe that women are "too hard to render".

I made the point that in 2003 Ubisoft developed and published a game about an intelligent young woman who doesn't have time to bare her breasts because she's too busy using her brain and her fighting skills to uncover a conspiracy. What happened when Ubisoft released this game? It tanked! Beyond Good and Evil was a critical darling, but it was a commercial failure.

In 2007, Ubisoft developed a game about a big muscular dude who kills people for fun and profit. What happened when Ubisoft released this game? Assassin's Creed spawned a multi-million-dollar franchise.

So then I asked Kelly if she was the head of the Ubisoft company, what business decision would she make?

Her answer: "Fuck feminism. I'd go for the money."

[MrPopo]

I made the point that in 2003 Ubisoft developed and published a game about an intelligent young woman who doesn't have time to bare her breasts because she's too busy using her brain and her fighting skills to uncover a conspiracy. What happened when Ubisoft released this game? It tanked! Beyond Good and Evil was a critical darling, but it was a commercial failure.

I'll be honest, I wasn't even aware of that game's existence until a few years later on a hidden gems style article. There's definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy going on; games with female protagonists tend to not be marketed as much, so public awareness is lower.

[samsonlonghair]

Practically every video game journalist worth his salt gave Beyond Good & Evil an A++ 11/10 three thumbs up rating. Still, no one bought it.

You blame marketing? Maybe. Part of marketing is finding the proper target market. Ubisoft was betting that more women would buy BG&E. That didn't happen, and I doubt additional advertising would have changed that much. Alan Coore of Ubisoft was quoted saying, "The game play was there, the technical excellence was there but perhaps the target audience was not there."

The point I'm ultimately making is that Capitalism rules here. Developers will make games with strong, brilliant female characters only when that becomes profitable.

[pepharytheworm]

And yet her middriff was shown the whole time . The funny thing is it's not 2003 anymore, we have had games with female protagonist that have sold well and not overly sexualize them.

[Forlorn Drifter]

And yet her middriff was shown the whole time . The funny thing is it's not 2003 anymore, we have had games with female protagonist that have sold well and not overly sexualize them.

Bare middriff was decently par for the course depending on where you lived in 2003. I remember when I was little, all the high school girls at school rocked middriff until the school banned it.

One thing, a couple of weeks ago, I believe, was Sweden considering putting special labels on sexist video games. Which, I don't see a problem with. But I do wonder who gets to decide whether or not its sexist. There's a lot of disagreement on what is and isn't depending on who you ask, so that could potentially create more problems than it already has. But it probably won't.