Oh well. Seems like these days folks are gonna find something to feel victimized about, no matter what.
Imaginary posters in a dystopic future depicted in a video game seems like it’s gonna rank pretty low down on that list.
Yeah I agree, I think RPS are coming from a good place, but have got it wrong on this one.
In particular the idea that there is “no context” irritates me - the context is cyberpunk.
Also I don’t think this was something CDPR were trying to put front and center in their advertising (I think I would have much more of a problem with it if this was the case) - it was in the background of an HD marketing shot released by a 3rd party I think?
This feels a lot like being outraged by the commercials in Robocop. Maybe it’s missing the point.
That said, there has been a wider discussion in games around exactly that sentiment. For a while the tenuous stance of ‘historical accuracy’ has been used by many studios as an excuse as to why they aren’t including people of color or women in some games. The theme is used as a shield to defend a series of decisions that are really quite arbitrary since many other parts of the same games are not historically accurate or actually quite fantastical. ‘Historical accuracy’ is also always just a subjective interpretation and our understanding of different periods is always evolving and interpreted from the framework of current times/mores.
So some in the gaming community might think this is another example of theme being used to defend various decisions. In this case the theme is dystopian cyberpunk future. Again some of this will be arbitrary, selective, and self-serving for all parties. Arguments will point to Mike Pondsmith’s source material to say ‘of course it needs to be this way’ for some decisions while conveniently ignoring all of the other examples where CD Project Red took liberties and strayed from the source material and also electing to ignore the fact that this is a video game where imagination has few limits (besides real-world financial ones).
Now I am not leaning in one direction or the other here, but just wanted to expand the context a little with a larger discussion that I have seen in the last several years in games.
It is also quite fine to engage in really direct and uncomfortable critique of a game yet still love it and want it to succeed. I love the gameplay and world of The Division yet find the power fantasy and social critiques offered therein quite disturbing.
I try to exercise caution about what I tell other people they should feel “victimized” by. (And I prefer the term “concerned”, which doesn’t have the pejorative implications that “victimized” and “offended” do.) I feel caution is particularly warranted by me, since on almost every demographic axis related to identity, I fall into the group that has historically been given preference structurally and socially.
I think of it this way: imagine a new movie that presents a picture of traditional fatherhood from the 1950’s: aloof, sparing with affection, demanding, disciplinarian, and absent at work most of the time. This is a rough sketch, distilling the feeling of a generation to a few broad strokes. In actuality the experience of fatherhood in the '50’s was almost certainly far more nuanced and varied than this portrait suggests. And we recognize now that fathers can and should play a much more involved, affectionate, joyful role in our children’s lives. I might point at that picture of fatherhood in the movie and criticize its lack of nuance, its ahistoricity, and its harmful effect on notions of modern fatherhood. And it would be fine to do so; to use the film as a platform for discussion of what modern fatherhood is, what it was in the past, how our past conception of fatherhood informs and is sometimes harmful to our present one. And no one would bat an eye. But here is a trans person saying that a depiction of a trans person in a video game looks suspiciously like tropes that have been used to mock trans people or exploit their images for the benefit of hetero men watching porn. And rather than take her seriously and engage her viewpoint with empathy, the response is to accuse her of playing the victim card and the publication presenting her words as just trolling for clicks.
Yeah bad cyberpunk can very easily end up glorying in the dystopia, rather than critiquing it. And when we have the whole game we’ll be able to see if CDPR’s effort does that.
MixIt up sounds pretty cool, no? You can be whoever you want to be, relax. If you want to be a chick with a dick, mix it up, take a sip. I’ve seen far worse commercials in the real world, and mix it up does not feel so dystopian. It sounds pretty chilled … maybe I am missing the context.
THERE IS NO CONTEXT!!
Agreed, but people need something to rage about.
If you are trans, a not negligible percentage of the world treats you like shit, for your entire life. It seems reasonable to take the stance of being sympathetic to that and to give the alternative view points that are very new to a lot of people a bit more consideration, rather than dive in with the practically worthless “I don’t see the problem myself.”
Here’s the flip side of that:
Her opinion is just an opinion. And it’s, literally, no more valid than yours. Or mine. Or anyone else.
In this particular case, the idea that you have some sexualized (apparently trans, although really, it could just be an actual androgenous guy) person in a fictitious advertisement. This is what we see in ads constantly today. From a purely logical perspective, there is nothing about this which constitutes an attack on anyone. If you had some woman in the ad with big boobs, it’d be essentially the same thing… and it wouldn’t be an attack on women, any more than just that kind of sexual objectivication in advertisements is an attack… but it’s not the job of a video game maker to construct some magical fantasy world where all of those things are fixed. Especially in the case where they are making a futuristic dystopia.
Again, if we were to take this criticism as gospel and act upon it, then what’s the result?
It seems like the result is that you would never actually see any trans folks in games. Because, if you remove the part which is supposedly offensive from that picture… then it’s just a androgenous woman in the ad.
Is that better? To just pretend that the trans folks don’t exist at all? For them to not be in the public eye?
If you are to actually improve things for those people, then the end state is that they exist in the same state that everyone else does… that they are accepted by society… and that means that they’re gonna be depicted as sexual objects in advertisements.
What? No. The person in the ad has a gigantic erection bulge with “Mix It Up” and “Chromanticure” and the artist has specifically acknowledged her intention that the character is playing on specific trans porn tropes.
The complaint from some is that this is worse than no representation because it’s actively harmful.
Sexual objectification of women in advertising reflects long-standing social tropes about women and what they mean. It’s not an attack; it’s a reflection of problematic notions in culture that tend to privilege one group at the expense of and for the benefit of another. The solution isn’t censorship, which no one is suggesting or has suggested, but awareness. And one way to raise awareness is to publish social criticism.
Let me turn this around on you. If there is no criticism, what’s the result? It seems like the result is that media content creators perpetuate the social status quo, mostly without meaning to.
A good example is horror movies. We’re only just recently seeing trans folks in horror movies that are just folks, and not defined by their trans status and depicted as a shock value prop. For decades, an LGBTQ person in a horror movie was most likely to be the killer. Their “perversion” being the source of their killer urges. Angela in Sleepaway Camp. DePalma’s Raising Cain and Dressed to Kill. Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Kenny in Terror Train. Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, this despite the book and movie specifically saying Billy isn’t really trans. If they were victims, very often their sexuality (not promiscuity) heavily factored into their deaths. To the LGBTQ community, all these characters were not wins for exposure and inclusion. They actively harmed the community by perpetuating the stereotype that LGBTQ people were somehow messed up, violent, and mentally disturbed.
So they’re apparently making the E3 demo public at Pax West, end of August.
I can’t wait for the frame-by-frame analysis so that I can be told what I should be offended by next.
Roflmao. Nice
Sexual objectification isn’t something which only happens with women in ads. It happens with men as well. It’s perhaps less noticeable to you as a man, but the broad shouldered, square jawed adonis is certainly a dominant feature of many advertising campaigns. Because it appeals to consumers.
But in this case… that doesn’t even make sense.
It’s a fictional advertising campaign from the future. It’s not going to have awareness or some kind of progressive mindeset. It’s just going to be a continuation of the same kind of baseline advertising techniques we’ve always seen. And in a world where trans folks aren’t ostracized, I can’t see how you wouldn’t have this kind of ad.
This makes no sense. The status quo isn’t that ad… you’d never see that ad in today’s world, because trans folks are ostracized by society to a large degree. As a result, they’re largely not represented in mainstream society.
If you remove that ostracization, then you’d see them exist in the same kind of sexual objectification that we see take place with men and women in advertising today.
The point of my question is that if you demand that such things do not show up at all, then the result is that trans folks are being excluded and not treated in the same way that cis men and women are.
But we’re not talking about something with a PLOT here.
We’re talking about a still frame advertisement.
And the reality is, in that kind of advertisement, the person at the focal point is essentially just a prop. And that prop is, some very large portion of the time, an overly sexualized prop…regardless of their gender. Because that’s how ads work.
Now, if there was some actual character in the game, where all they did was walk in and talk about their gender all the time? THAT would be a problem. Because you’re taking a person and reducing them to a prop.
But in the context of an advertisement, that reduction is expected, and has nothing to do with the subject’s gender. That sexual objectification is the standard, regardless of gender.
Is there any real reason this discussion can’t be moved to P&R by chance? I only care about news regarding the game itself. The rest of this is just absurd.
On a related note, thanks @Profanicus for providing me with real, and cool, info!
I think that’s fair. It’s an interesting discussion, and it’s worth thinking about such stuff, but it’s not really related to the game.