So sad he isn't as famous as Mike, RPS won't be boycotting Tom I guess.
Two very important points, Urthman:
1) If you're going to indict horror movies as somehow desensitizing people and affecting their capacity for decency, do you do the same for videogames? You probably should.
(For the record, I don't really care for slasher movies, which are a mostly creatively bankrupt subset of horror.)
2) This piece was not at all about "the bullshit women have to deal with in gaming communities". The harassment of women online, in gaming leagues, at conventions, and whatever else you consider "gaming communities" is reprehensible. This piece was about the representation of women by the people who create games, and specifically narratively driven games.
Gran Turismo 3 jumps on bullshit liberal controversies in games? :)
While I appreciate your sentiment, we'll likely jump back onto some liberal pet issue shortly. Probably something about children and violent entertainment, or the unionization of game developers, or maybe licensing gun manufacturers in videogames. Stand by.
Your implying that journalists like RPS have driven any real change in women's roles in video games? I don't think that is an assumption you can make.
I don't disagree at all. There's a lot of intolerance on both sides, and while my aim isn't to jump onto one side or the other in a partisan way, I find it bewildering that people are calling out videogames with so few concrete examples.
My attempt here is to introduce what are, to my mind, some very relevant modern examples of the portrayal of women in videogames. A dopey cheesecake character model in Blizzard's upcoming DOTA is hardly representative of the games I've been playing lately!
Fair point, but it seems to me the "we hate Anita Sarkeesian" dross is as beyond hope as the weeping Nathan Greysons. I'd like to think there's a large enough middle ground worth addressing.
My argument is that the examples I've given are far more representative of the issue than whatever Blizzard got called out for.
I also don't necessarily agree that oversexualized representations of women are necessarily harmful. In bad taste? Sometimes. Gross? Sometimes. Offensive? Sometimes. Harmful? Well, that's a pretty loaded term, but I'm going to mostly say "no".
Yeah, you're probably right. But how much worse can it be than the people angry that I didn't like some particular videogame? Should I really self-monitor what I write based on what sort of people will turn out to comment?
Actually, don't answer that. :)
Top work Tom, one of your best articles I have ever read.
Not that there is not more to do, but sometimes it is hard to see the progressive forest for all the hyperbole trees.
It's interesting to note how the rhetoric of privilege has shifted over the years from "We're just better than those people. They should stop complaining." through "We're not ready for change. Could you stop complaining?" to the current "Oh, we fixed that. All of it. Don't complain!" The elegance of this formulation is that we can pretend to be equitable, to be progressive, to be allies, while at the same time working to marginalize less privileged voices. We aren't sexist any more, so why are women (or other people) complaining about that?
Are things better now than they were some decades ago? Sure. Are they perfect? I don't think so. Yet talking about the problems of gender portrayals in games consistently brings out people to insist that these problems are imaginary, unimportant, or only insincere observations from "social justice white knights." The very "sad" line mocked here was originally not about the current state of portrayals in games but about the rejection of serious consideration of them, the claim that we shouldn't bother thinking about how we portray women because "we're not running for President." It was about those who argue that anyone who does criticize current portrayals can't have sincere concerns.
One thing that I find really odd is when people who will eagerly debate, in minute detail, how particular guns are depicted in Call of Duty or whether a particular class in World of Warcraft is worth bringing to a raid will insist that how our games depict about half our real population is unimportant and something no one cares about. All kinds of discussions of gameplay mechanics can be entertained, but suddenly when gender comes up it's not worth discussing because of "People dying in Africa thanks to post-european colonialism, Thousands of immigrants dying crossing the souther US border every year, Chinese government not granting basic human rights." [sic] to extract a quote from the comments thread of the very RPS piece mocked here.
That said, Tom isn't the type to quibble about pointless minutiae, instead using details to build interesting ideas. I can't readily argue that he's not thinking about things, or unwilling to engage with perspectives other than his own. (I don't agree with everything; for example, I think Anna from Last Light is more of a designated love interest than a progressive representation. The "supporting from afar with a sniper rifle" you say is all Roth can do is also the best she manages, after which much of her screen time is spent as a damsel in distress, then all of a sudden it's romance between two people who've barely met.) Although I don't agree on each point, I will acknowledge there are good examples.
I think the best examples of narrative, though, really think about their story and characterization, including their representations of both men and women. They don't settle for lazy stereotypes in place of characters, but make a real effort. Someone who doesn't even want to talk about how his game represents women because he "isn't running for President" doesn't seem likely to be part of this progress. Granted, careful characterization probably isn't that necessary for a MOBA, but I don't think Dustin Browder's unwillingness to engage can be defended by the examples you present, because they just aren't coming from the same place. "We’re not sending a message to anybody. We’re just making characters who look cool." Like it or not, with Blizzard's huge audience, it's sending a message to lots of people. It's certainly easier not to examine it, but what underlying notions shape this aesthetic, this notion of what "looks cool"? Games don't exist in a vacuum, and like any sort of creative endeavour are shaped by and influence their surrounding culture; popular though it is in these discussions to claim that they're "just games" and therefore meaningless, that just isn't so.
Although this particular piece from RPS uses rather immoderate language, I at least appreciate that RPS cares about these issues and is willing to talk about perspectives other than my own, introducing me to works I might otherwise never have found. Aside from broadening my perspective, anyone who cares about others has to acknowledge the worth in talking about how the culture that's grown around games affects actual people, and how people talk to and about women (and other marginalized groups) in online games. I'm not going to suggest that any developer can easily fix all this, but for the sake of real people it's at least worth thinking about what you're doing beyond "does it look cool?" Sure, many developers do at least make some effort, but does this mean we can't always hope they'll do better?
And Tom, just watch as the people who really don't care at all about women or their perspectives flock in to congratulate you. They'll absolutely love a piece about "gender discrimination" filled by paragraphs of flippant dismissal. Sure, you make it clear that you're talking about "portrayal", which reminds me that I don't think the RPS piece you mock ever actually claims there aren't any decent portrayal of women in games. But people will be loving this because it fits in the cultural narrative which tells us that things are good and we're en route to equality, an excellent excuse not to care at all, not just about fictional portrayals but about the harassment you rightly decry.
And women as McGuffins? As "central mysteries" and "catalysts for redemption"? As plot-driving devices for the dude in charge to use to win the game and find his way through the story? I don't think men can be these things, because they're too objectifying.
The strangest thing about "gender representation" to me that I haven't seen anyone touch on for games is just the fact that it's a male dominated industry in terms of creation.
When the main creators of the games are all guys, of course most things will be from a guy's point of view. Until that changes all the representations of women will still be a little stunted i think. Was it the description of Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite... or was it Elika from Prince of Persia, where the chief description of the girl was "she's just there to make you look cool". But just looking through a "gaming experience" through a male lens will definitley skew the experience in a way, no matter how good the intentions are.
The closest analogue would probably just be the comic book industry, where there are oversexed spandex wearing superheroines or illogical armor choices for fantasy warrior women.
Personally I think we're slowly getting there, but it will always be limited by the fact that guys are always at the helm of game creation. That coupled with the fact that coding/software creation is a male dominated field means that it will probably take even longer.
Finally, the most interesting thing i've found is that the game with the "strongest" female role was playing the Saints Row series as a girl (specifically Laura Bailey's voice in 3/4). The juxtaposition of a whole gang being led by a girl was pretty cool. If you ever get the chance, I'd recommend it.
Btw, i am a guy.
When I read this post I thought that Tom's account had been hacked. I prefer the "speaking truth to power" Tom Chick. This is some other Tom Chick. Especially that last sentence. Wow.
you may not realize this but he's quoting another article. a lot of this post is a direct quote. here's the link:
OKAY THEN. Thank you, Guest. But now that I get the reference, I'm still confused. I read the referenced piece, I re-read this piece. What is the message here? Other than Grayson's writing style is extremely silly.
Stop what? Using logic rather than basing everything off of "muh feels?"
Pretty obviously, the piece is calling out the RPS guy for already being jaded and cynical and melodramatic, and refusing to see that games, in fact, aren't all that "gender biased." Folks at RPS and Kotaku like to go on and on about how games are a sexist medium, but in doing so, they overlook the inconvenient fact that most titles -- and certainly the biggest titles -- simply aren't sexist at all. Those sites put their agenda ahead of accuracy. They rage about some game's sexually provocative female skins as if they're the second coming of slavery, instead of seeing the progress that's been made.
Yeah, let's find a comfortable middle ground between people who want to keep gaming a smelly boys' club and people who want to make gaming an inclusive space for everyone.
After all, we don't want to make things *too* equal do we?
No, I just read something like your fourth or firth bit of "liburls is bad, sleazy, whiny people whut wears a fedora" and I just couldn't handle it anymore.
I thought I had misclicked somehow and been redirected to a Fox News forum.
It always strikes me as odd how much democrats/liberals hate fox news. There's one conservative news station. One, why does differences in opinion bother you people so much? It's like oh hey we're the party of tolerance! Unless you disagree with our ideology.
And you picked Elizabeth from BioShock, a character with no agency whatsoever that exists solely to serve the narrative of the male protagonist, as an example of such to what end?