The kind of people who are offended that female avatars exist in a game are the kind of people who will be offended when you take away the option to disable female avatars in a game. The kind of people who care so much about it that they’ll raise a stink about it are bad people. They’re the kind of people who invent pejoratives like social justice warrior, or, before that, feminazi, and no one should give one good damn what they think.
I don’t think anyone is offended by the existence of female avatars. I think we have played many games where the options existed to make a female avatar version, like KOTOR, and nobody said anything about it. Many people by default use the female avatar (we have a thread about here on the forum, where people say so). If anything female avatars are a popular option for veteran players.
Could be something else that is stirring the fires of unhappiness, like the feel that they are paying for a product, and this product is being used to push a political agenda. A political agenda that among other things, want to kill some people power fantasies, and is againt Bikini Armour, because is unpractical.
For some anarchist, violence is necessary. If you chose to burn a car, to voice your problems, and the car is abandoned, the police don’t come, everyone is Ok with it. You don’t make a strong argument. If you burn a police car, and it end with people on the hospital and your statement in the news, you made your voice heard.
So, I am a very naive person, and not very smart. But I am not that naive. Maybe people *want* this conflict we have. They need conflict. So they attack a group of people (gamers) that are both very loud and very weak. The same thing TV do. That is a political decision on strategy.
I love how you always keep your posts so general Tieman that it’s possible to interpret them a few different ways. And there’s room for at least two interpretations.
In one case you could be talking about how Gamergaters are attacking female gamers and harassing them and in general making their lives miserable. Or you could be talking about how people are attacking gamergate people, and classifying them as ‘gamers’ in this statement. Or you could be talking about how people like Joe Liberman used to blame games after things like Columbine. Or you could be talking about EA and most Battlefield players being attacked by the few people offended by female avatars drummed up as a fake outrage. Or you could be talking about gamers who ‘care about historical accuracy’ being attacked by SJW types who want to put female avatars even in historical settings where they certainly don’t belong.
I’m not sure that your idea of this conflict being something a group external to gamers want from gamers is anything but a conspiracy theory with no real basis in facts. It certainly seems like gamers of different types arguing with one another with little input from outside the group.
I think when feminist talk about The Patriarchy, they don’t talk about a real shadow governement, a big conspiration of males that in secret organize themselves to put womens down. But a infinite number of forces that have that result, withouth an actual organization.
Anyway, it would be fun to imagine everyone talking about the Patriarchy like some sort of conspiracytheorist. But I don’t do that. But, It would be fun.
–
I undertand your post. I will try to do better in the future.
There are, though there’s more that have just been misinformed. Regardless, it’s not really fair to compare, say, having a group of people parroting some no name journalist without thought with a group of powerful people making sure nothing changes in Hollywood or gaming companies - you can definitely easily live without social media, you can’t easily change your whole career.
Honestly, really, most uses of the term that I’ve seen are to stifle discussion, so exactly that, but in reverse.
They probably are, just as they were against a female Starbuck, a
female Starfleet Captain, a black Starfleet Captain or (shock, horror!) a black female lead in Star Trek. A very small, very vocal group of people that drags others into it when they’re fought.
I’m not arguing that you’re wrong (as my first sentence says), I’m saying what’s right doesn’t depend on who’s most vocal and inflammatory. If you passively consume calmer online forums, you’ll eventually notice a pattern of small bits of stories of people being abused. Now, some of those are fake or exaggerated, I imagine (people love drama), but no group would fabricate so many posts for so many years: it’s clearly an issue. You can see them with regards to gaming groups just as any other. It’s also an issue that it’s used as false attack against someone, but it’s a lot rarer, as it’s often just an interchangeable excuse.
If someone wants to rant against female leaders in antiquity or that a 15th century central European country should have more black people, then, as you say, they just want a fight (to be fair, that is everyone at some point). If it’s about how it impacts people, then there’s something real there, even if the target might be the wrong one. The trick is a rational, fairly calm discussion, but that’s not something this fairly anti-social introvert can help with.
Why are you even talking about the other side? This is a guy who very like made up a scenario to get a bunch of other men angry about something that literally didn’t happen. The fact you feel the need to lecture “both sides” in this scenario is just straight up ridiculous. You have one group making simple requests to have some games cater to them more and then you have another that is flipping out because an older game changed nothing… nothing changed! They’re freaking out over a handful of female generals… literally.
One of my favorite Total War memories goes back to the Medieval 2 Days. In that game there were bishop agents, and a Papal mechanic. Not super important, but there. Bishops could ‘level up’ by doing certain things, most particularly going out into non Christian territory and converting it.
Agents could have attributes, some negative some positive. Sloth (I don’t remember the in game term) for generals that lived in high wealth cities for extended periods could come, and it reduced their leadership as their troops didn’t respect a pampered rich boy as much as the general slogging around and roughing it. Neat system, not hugely consequential given that weight of numbers was more important.
Anyhow bishops could get promoted to Cardinals, giving certain bonuses, and the pope would be chosen from among the cardinals. One attribute for bishops was ‘secretly female’. It was mostly a negative, as it had a piety penalty (for lying essentially) but not entirely negative.
Well I noticed one of my better bishops had this trait. So I shipped her off to Libya, and traipsing down to Timbuktu. Along the way she picked up a priest follower, and later a child choir boy or some similar thing. Meanwhile getting huge boosts to piety for bringing religion to these heathen lands.
I then proceeded to embark on a campaign of ‘narrowing the field’.
I basically swarmed Rome with assassins, as well as sending them out into rivals lands to kill their bishops. Unfortunately the 1400’s were bad for the bishop of Rome, as in the middle of the century they experienced a decade where no pope lived more than a year. Truly tragic. Truly. Not to mention the eastern bishops found themselves at great peril when exploring orthodox lands. But their sacrifice was indeed remembered by the pope who managed to stabilize things. His reign lasted for 40 years, and was truly a blessed time.
So in my head this female bishop fell in love with a Spanish priest while on the way to Africa, had a child, and spent 15 years working down there to hide from those who would expose her. Once all rivals and threats were dead she returned to Europe and was made pontiff for her I mean his great work in converting Africa.
You obviously don’t respect reality, so you should just uninstall and go read a history book.
First of all, no.
Second of all, what are you doing to even find this stuff?
Third of all, boobs. Basically, it’s boobs.
Serious question, does anyone know if Bowsette is actually popular with women and girls? Based on what I am seeing, I wonder…
Yeah there isnt “another side” here. There are a bunch of dudes who harass women because they dont want them in their hobby. That is entirely the only story here. A bunch of clowns who harass women. Thats ALL “gamergate” is , its all it ever was. There are no two sides.
“Bu, bu, but what about ethics in games journalism stuff Rod?” I hear you say.
They dont matter, at all. Seriously. Lets take the “gamergate” claims as 100% true. A few crooked video game reviews. Thats it.
On the other side of the ledger we have the fact that dozens of games writers and developers have been harassed. Mainly women.
There are your moral scales to weigh right there. Actual harassment vs alleged crooked reviews of … drumroll …fucking video games.
I am a grown man who plays with actual toy soldiers. Pretty sad huh? Yet even my community of fellow history nerds who play with toy soldiers we dont behave like this and we have had actual scams in miniature wargames. You know what happened? Word got out and those small manufacturers or websites went out of business. You know what didnt happen? We didnt go out and harass people. because , you know, its toy fucking soldiers.
Seriously, if any “gamergater” or defender or anyone who gives these pissywillies the time of day reads this I am asking you to take a look in the mirror. You are embarrassing yourself. It doesnt matter how a games maker paints their digital toy soldiers, at all. Its not like there is a shortage of other digital toy soldiers to play with. Just grow the fuck up and let it go.
It’s really hard to tell from twitter. Go browse on Tumblr. I’m pretty sure by experience Tumblr has a higher female/male user ratio.
I’m sure some women like Bowsette, but it also just seems like an opportunity right now to sexy cosplay, at least by the few seconds i scrolled Twitter. There’s no “official look” so anyone can interpret however they want.
Which, after browsing that stuff, i need to go off an say some hail marys, excuse me.
Well I am sure some women like her. I mean yeah the cos-players for sure, but… Bowsette looks to me to be a woman designed to cater to guys is where I am going with this. I think it was designed with women in mind.
I am not a prude, and I don’t mind a number of images, but somehow I think I will regreat searching Tumblr for Bowsette. I’ve been watching the obsession with this character grow for a couple of days elsewhere. Her breasts just seem to get bigger.
I think after a while you learn that certain art styles on sites like Tumblr and DeviantArt are “male” and others “female”. Like that old song about pornography, there’s a difference between female generated art and male made art that you can’t really pin down easily, you just kind of know it when you see it.
Generally male made art tends to exaggerate the sexual characteristics of the female subject. So imo does look like a lot of the art is being made by males right now.
Sure, which is why i think that character was mostly designed with guys in mind even though it’s still perfectly fine for women to like her too.
So back to the idea that “people” don’t mind female avatars. Well I think these guys are just fine with women characters and avatars and leaders in game… when they think and can reinforce the idea that they were put in the game for them. If they think it was put there for women or to help other groups have fun… that’s when it hits the fan.
Aka, I wouldn’t really use Bowsette as some sort of proof that we’re really okay in this area. There are a lot of women characters designed for men in games. I think that is part of the challenge that needs to be… addressed. As far as a know, Bowsette is not in a game… yet?
Oh, yea, i totally forgot about the discussion because the sidebar about #bowsette was so random and unexpected. It’s just fan community stuff that went viral, i wouldn’t really even call it an avatar.
I wasn’t following closely whatever specific debate was going on in this thread, so I’m not supporting or opposing anything here, but anecdotally, the Bowsettes showing up in my twitter feed were a lot more along the lines of the examples in the latter portion of this polygon article:
But while there’s a subset of the internet drawing up-skirt shots of Bowsette, there’s also a branch using this as an opportunity to draw a female video game character with a different body type or more monstrous features than princess ones.
I have no idea what the breakdown was in twitter at large, because my feed is obviously just based on what the people I follow found the most interesting. But if you want some examples of something other than “bowser with boobs lol” without risking a tumblr search yourself, there are some good ones in that article.