Games Journalism 2014: The Wherever-the-hell-this-has-gone

[porousnapkin]

Ayn Rand joke goes here.

I think it’s because they’ve already been through this process and emerged as mature media. Not that they went through anything exactly like games are going through. It’s a little different because games seem to be starting behind the curve because of who makes and consumes them, and they’re expected to change very rapidly in today’s social media space.

I just think you’re looking at the results and not the necessary process. We’re in the middle of it.

I’m not sure what process you’re talking about exactly, but books are still regularly criticized for social issues (any thread anywhere about Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey, for example, is rife with commentary on how those books portray gender norms). The difference is those critics aren’t treated the way similar critics of games are. Maybe that’s the process you’re referring to.

[Juan_Raigada]

But that freedom is a double edged sword: I also think people should have freedom to hire some tacky sexy ladies for their E3 booths. I see as a waste of money but hey, it’s their problem. But we have to include people who likes them.

While I agree with everything else you have said (as long as critique -not censorship- is still allowed), the booth babes phenomenon is a different issue, since it’s not a creator -> audience relationship (or a market one), but the appearance of sexist signifiers in a workplace (since these fairs are industry fairs were a lot of deals are made. They are a workplace for developers). At that point, your proposed “freedom to hire” infringes on the rights of female professionals that might feel offended while they are working (and thus, have no choice to not be present).

See Brenda Romero intervention in this video (at 48:13) for a much more eloquent and funny explanation of why this is so than I could possibly muster. Really, do watch it…

[TimJames]

Yeah, and book readers aren’t going through an existential crisis or (I assume) sending threats any more than the normal amount you see on the anonymous Internet.

I’m not a sociologist so I don’t know what the process is. I just see A and B and I know we’re not at B but I do know most of us can kick back and wait until we get there without feeling the need to defend ourselves.

[RickH]

Sorry guys, it’s not quite that simple. Let me try to explain.

I’m going to be an optimist and say that most people don’t want to restrict those things. However, they do want to point out how it makes other people feel, especially when it’s the default and shows up more than you’d expect. I look at it more as a style guide than a laundry list of allowed and taboo features.

You are entitled to your opinon, but a free market is a free market. I’m an absolutist on that one. Freedom means other people doing stuff you don’t approve of, and you sucking it up and realizing that’s the only way it can be done. The second you make a list of untouchables, it’s open season.

[Juan_Raigada]

You are entitled to your opinon, but a free market is a free market. I’m an absolutist on that one. Freedom means other people doing stuff you don’t approve of, and you sucking it up and realizing that’s the only way it can be done. The second you make a list of untouchables, it’s open season.

Freedom also means being able to say what you think. I don’t see how what TIm syas goes against free market or freedom at all.

[kedaha]

It’s absolutely misogynist because they are claims that men do not receive for doing the exact same things. It really doesn’t get more clear than that. There don’t have to be direct gendered insults levied at her for the underlying source of HRose’s anger to be rooted in misogyny.

Zoe and Anita among others are being unfairly targeted while the vast majority of men in the industry who do exactly what they do if not far worse go by unscathed, ignoring whether the claims are legitimate in the first place (they’re mostly not)

As I said, you clearly don’t understand what misogyny is as you have many times in this thread linked misogyny as being anything negative said about or done to a female. You have many times demonstrated that you don’t think the motive matters, that the defining characteristic of whether something is misogynistic or not is:

Is it negative/critical? If yes, is it directed at a female? If yes, it’s misogyny regardless of motive or theme or content.

[TimJames]

You are entitled to your opinon, but a free market is a free market. I’m an absolutist on that one. Freedom means other people doing stuff you don’t approve of, and you sucking it up and realizing that’s the only way it can be done. The second you make a list of untouchables, it’s open season.

I think my free market bona fides stand up to anyone on this forum. No one relevant is asking for new laws. But there’s plenty of room for positive social change within a market.

Think of it less as “you can’t do this” and more as “you can do this, but this is how it makes me feel, and you might not have noticed before since it was unconscious, and you may not really care about changing because it’s no skin off your back.”

This is the most effective approach, anyway. I can’t vouch for kids on twitter.

Did you watch her videos? It might make more sense then.

[TurinTur]

BTW, I wanted to talk since many months ago about the correlation between movies, books and games, in this context.

Because lots of these polemic articles talk about characters and their genre in games in a… slightly disingenuous way. I think someone hearing them talk would agree that some games are very sexist, with an intrinsic comparison with other fiction works likes movies and books. But it misses a hidden point, a point that in the other hand actual gamers know very well:
Games aren’t like movies or books. The central point of video games aren’t characters, nor their stories. 90% of games are really action-centric.

What is it in the very core of a game? Actions, being done by the player pressing buttons.

You slash. You roll. You shoot. (action games)
You drive. (racing games)
You jump. (platform games)
You think. (puzzle, strategy games).

Discussing the % of games that are protagonized by a man vs a woman isn’t the same as if was a book or a movie, it has less intrinsic importance, and I feel that’s a hidden factor. Lots of times the genre is almost a background element. Sometimes I read women this, men that… and I think, they barely are fictional characters in first place!! how can you discuss their genre as indicative of anything? Forget “this character is a bad representation of a woman”, usually video game characters are a BAD representation of human beings! And it’s like that because as explained, it doesn’t matter that much what actor is doing the actions, but the action themselves.
In video games not only you can be a woman or a man, sometimes you are an alien. Or an animal. Or a car (to be honest, in arcade racing games I feel as being the car, not a nameless pilot). Or no one at all but an abstract entity (in some strategy games). Or a square (Thomas was alone). The particular genre of a character in this context is a bit more trivial than in books and movies. You can jump and shoot as a man or a woman, in fact some games you play as a woman… and they play exactly the same as other games of the genre where you were a man. In fact in some games you can choose your genre and nothing changes in the story or gameplay, it contextualizes how “important” is genre in video games (less than you may believe at first if you believe all what was written in the article in the first place).

Even in more modern times where games try to have more sophisticated narratives you can notice that first comes the game (what is this? A fps? a rpg? a mmo? what actions are going to be done by the player?) and then in second place, the story. Sometimes in third or fourth place, given the quality. And you can notice how the story and the character are just an excuse to go on killing aliens.

[sclpls]

Freedom also means being able to say what you think. I don’t see how what TIm syas goes against free market or freedom at all.

Exactly right. I sometimes see people equating feminist critics of sexism in games as critics complaining about violence in video games. But where critics of violence in video games have made several efforts to lobby government to restrict sales of games, last time I checked I didn’t see any comparable effort from feminist critics. In other words, they are simply engaging in robust debate. I find the criticism of feminist critics from people with a libertarian point of view to be very confusing/potentially misguided.

[Juan_Raigada]

As I said, you clearly don’t understand what misogyny is as you have many times in this thread linked misogyny as being anything negative said about or done to a female. You have many times demonstrated that you don’t think the motive matters, that the defining characteristic of whether something is misogynistic or not is:

Is it negative/critical? If yes, is it directed at a female? If yes, it’s misogyny regardless of motive or theme or content.

I think you might be misunderstanding. Saying something negative of somebody because they are a woman (that is, saying something negative that you wouldn’t say if the person was a man) can be understood as misogyny. That’s what he is referring to and you are failing to read. Not that the criticism is refers to the sex of the person, but that the criticism wouldn’t happen if the target was a man (because the critic wouldn’t feel the need to criticize).

Granted, whether some of these critiques are misogynistic (in this sense) or not depends on whether you believe they would be directed towards men had men been the ones doing whatever was criticized. Statistically, there has been way more criticism (and harsher) towards women in these issues that towards men, which points to the “probability” that there’s some misogyny behind some of these criticism.

[Juan_Raigada]

Even in more modern times where games try to have more sophisticated narratives you can notice that first comes the game (what is this? A fps? a rpg? a mmo? what actions are going to be done by the player?) and then in second place, the story. Sometimes in third or fourth place, given the quality. And you can notice how the story and the character are just an excuse to go on killing aliens.

Or if you don’t want to watch the video: You are not talking about books and films when you do your comparison, but about movies and novels. That is, neither of those forms are more about narrative than games are. The specific genres of fiction and documentary films, and novels, are, though. Finnegan’s wake (and a lot of poetry) is not about the story at all. the lords of the rings (for example) is.

What’s important about a game depends on the game. That is on the specific cultural product, more than the medium. If way, way, way more time has been poured on art (representation) and story production than in gameplay production (pretty much every AAA title, from GTAV to The last of Us) why should I give more importance to the gameplay? It doesn’t seem even the creators of those games thought it was the most important thing.

And polls suggest people buy games for the “story” first (although these polls are some years old)…

[CLWheeljack]

BTW, I wanted to talk since many months ago about the correlation between movies, books and games, in this context.

Because lots of these polemic articles talk about characters and their genre in games in a… slightly disingenuous way. I think someone hearing them talk would agree that some games are very sexist, with an intrinsic comparison with other fiction works likes movies and books. But it misses a hidden point, a point that in the other hand actual gamers know very well:
Games aren’t like movies or books. The central point of video games aren’t characters, nor their stories. 90% of games are really action-centric.

What is it in the very core of a game? Actions, being done by the player pressing buttons.

You slash. You roll. You shoot. (action games)
You drive. (racing games)
You jump. (platform games)
You think. (puzzle, strategy games).

Regardless of their relative importance or quality, the narrative layer of games does exist, and it is presented to the player at virtually all times. This is compounded by the fact that game narratives / world have potentially much longer periods of engagement (i.e. a game isn’t a fixed length). The content of the story may lack nuance or creativity, but the underlying assumptions of the world are still present the entire time. The narrative many people are talking about is not the narrative of what the character does, it’s the narrative of what happens in between those actions.

To an extent, I think that also works against games, not in their favor. The nature of telling stories is that you want to focus on the impact it has on the characters. The inability to tell complex stories is going to tend to de-emphasize many of the things that people feel make the stories in books or games worthwhile. Crime And Punishment is “about” murder as much as COD is, but what the audience takes away from it couldn’t be more different.

Edit:
I feel I need to mention one of my favorite examples from the olden days: Raymond Feist wrote a book based on the Betrayal at Krondor games, which were in turn based on his original Krondor universe (Riftwar). I read a review of the book noting that it was not very good, but also that the book specifically cited things like killing enemies and then taking arrows from their corpses, the type of detail that is all too familiar to people who played the game, but was completely absent from Feist’s other books in the series.

[RickH]

I find the criticism of feminist critics from people with a libertarian point of view to be very confusing/potentially misguided.

In my case, it’s because I’ve seen the progression from activist to censor to claiming the right to decide who gets to participate in society and who doesn’t. And then all of a sudden the CEO of Firefox or the president of Harvard is resigning for having an unacceptable opinion.

[RickH]

I find the criticism of feminist critics from people with a libertarian point of view to be very confusing/potentially misguided.

In my case, it’s because I’ve seen the progression from activist to censor to claiming the right to decide who gets to participate in society and who doesn’t. And then all of a sudden the CEO of Firefox or the president of Harvard is resigning for having an unacceptable opinion.

[LMN8R]

People are entitled to their opinions. It doesn’t mean they’re entitled to hold those opinions without consequences.

[Brad_Wardell]

Exactly right. I sometimes see people equating feminist critics of sexism in games as critics complaining about violence in video games. But where critics of violence in video games have made several efforts to lobby government to restrict sales of games, last time I checked I didn’t see any comparable effort from feminist critics. In other words, they are simply engaging in robust debate. I find the criticism of feminist critics from people with a libertarian point of view to be very confusing/potentially misguided.

That’s because libertarians believe that the answer to speech (or games) you don’t like is more speech (or games). If you don’t like violence in a video game then don’t buy it.

My problem with the so-called SJWs is that they seem more interested in silencing “incorrect” opinions/people.

[RickH]

People are entitled to their opinions. It doesn’t mean they’re entitled to hold those opinions without consequences.

Spoken like an aspiring enforcer. The trouble is that enforcing (and getting your way) is so much fun, you eventually make the crimes smaller and smaller just to have something to prove you’re still making a “difference.”

It’s the difference between wanting to end oppression and waiting for your turn to be the oppressor.

[steve]

That’s because libertarians believe that the answer to speech (or games) you don’t like is more speech (or games). If you don’t like violence in a video game then don’t buy it.

Well, based on your own definition, the SJW types are following libertarian principles of using speech to answer speech. But also based on your definition, it sorta sounds like you’re saying the libertarian answer to taxes you don’t like is to call for more taxes.

[porousnapkin]

In my case, it’s because I’ve seen the progression from activist to censor to claiming the right to decide who gets to participate in society and who doesn’t. And then all of a sudden the CEO of Firefox or the president of Harvard is resigning for having an unacceptable opinion.

That’s a great example of overreach. I’m generally skeptical of your viewpoint because I just don’t see those sorts of situations arising in games. If something like that were happening, I’d be right by your side. About the only example I can think of is the treatment of Brad Wardell (which is frankly an impossible to understand situation from the outside but had some pretty unfair responses). But overall, that’s one weird story in a sea of people trying to close any diverse critical discussion of games.

[Nesrie]

That’s a great example of overreach. I’m generally skeptical of your viewpoint because I just don’t see those sorts of situations arising in games. If something like that were happening, I’d be right by your side. About the only example I can think of is the treatment of Brad Wardell (which is frankly an impossible to understand situation from the outside but had some pretty unfair responses). But overall, that’s one weird story in a sea of people trying to close any diverse critical discussion of games.

It’s not really a great example of overreach. He said something controversial, people responded and so did his company. People responding to controversy is not overreaching. No one forced him to resign nor did anyone force Mozilla to act. No one is forcing the game industry to do anything either. The debate is simply loud enough that people are thinking about what has been said for years. Only this time, the anti-women, anti-minority crowd has energized itself and turned on an all out attack on anyone who might suggest, suggest mind you, that conversations should be had.

Some of those games mentioned in Anita’s videos are Bioware games. I remember thinking one of those characters is pure garbage, and another I think part of a story line i didn’t play. Those men were meant to be trash, but she has a point. Even as bad men, it’s all about the man and barely any attention on their victims. I don’t know if changing that would make a difference, but I am not offended or angry at the idea of having a conversation about it. I also think it’s silly to think having conversations will suddenly take away all the games white males want from being made or available. Hell I think some games could go edger and some just use grit and edge as an excuse for lazy story writing.

RPS is right on the money though, the sexism and harassment, there is no denying its a problem. It’s evident it’s a problem just in that last few weeks, and believe me that didn’t just pop out of nowhere. It’s been a problem for years, but now this group, a very vocal, active and influential group, homed in on a couple of targets to make it more obvious.