Okay, you seem very passionate about pointing out how wrong and bad this is for society, but I'm wondering how consistent this perspective is across cultural lines. Do you specifically see this as a problem for Japan where there should be more attention and focus on it because of how backward you feel their social standards are, or is it something you are interested in discussing for all entertainment?
I don't believe it's a problem specific to Japan. Although, in recent years, the major push towards being more inclusive has been almost exclusively been spearheaded by western developers both big and small while Japan has either stagnated or in worse cases regressed.
For example, do you not find it a little creepy that Bioshock Infinite puts the player in the role of a father figure of a young teenage girl, and spends much of the narrative making the girl increasingly sexy as she becomes more confident of who she is and becoming a woman?
This is a good point, but just to clarify, first of all, Elizabeth isn't a teenager, she's twenty years old. And by the time I was got to that section in Infinite, I was pretty tired of the "girl has traumatic experience so cuts her hair" trope so I wasn't a fan of that scene, I was a fan of Ken Levine reducing her breast size throughout development due to the comments made by players. And making sure her face is always in the center of the cutscenes:
They specifically made her eyes bigger and her face rig more complex for that purpose. Although what I did find amusing was beating the game and then subsequently reacting to youtubers discover that the woman they've been making jokes about was the daughter of the main character. I also want to point to the tone of the conversations, they never sound romantic, or even have the implications of romance in a sort of "naive innocent girl" way. Barring the initial introduction, they speak to each other as adults.
Is it necessary to evolve her design into one where she wears a low cut dress, especially when the game is in first person and you spend much of the game watching her run forward before turning around and looking at you with inquisitive eyes? As an adult playing such a game, that has to be at least a little weird right?
Whoa whoa what? When does she switch to a low cut dress?? I also don't remember her being in the view in the actual game compared to those very scripted e3 demos.
On the subject of improper relationships in positions of authority, how do you feel about the relationship aspects of Mass Effect and Dragon Age? In these games you are a commander with a team under your command. These include men and women who can be courted, and in some cases pressured, into having a sexual relationship with you.
I spent like 60 hours courting Alistair, (you see I was a female elf), and he kept saying he wasn't ready, then the bastard slept with Morrigan. >_> Btw, really not a fan of the binary way in which bioware romances function due to them boiling down to *do this specific character quest and i'll sleep with you*, inquisition was a bit better in this regard as they at least had more character interaction scenes before and after the sex scene. I don't remember characters being straight up pressured into it though, there are mechanics in place that if they say no sex is impossible.
In the case of Mass Effect 2, the character of Jack in particular can be seen as troubling, because it introduces a character who is shown as a victim of child abuse and trafficking, and even after being "saved" by the hero, she exists as a potential conquest for a player who likes "that type of girl".
I think Jack's an interesting example since out of all the romance options in that game, it's easier to have sex with her first, this locks off all sort of interactions with her as she regrets it. But yea like I said, I find the Bioware archetypes too binary, even said as much after seeing the new Asari in Andromeda.
I think this sort of thing exists everywhere in entertainment in varying degrees, and it is the responsibility of the player to assess how okay they are with it. But to have an honest discussion about such things, it'll require people to actually want to talk about what is problematic and why it is.
I'm willing to have a discussion, (evident by my activity in these threads), about the problematic issues behind things like this game for example, or romance in a lot of games. But unfortunately a lot of people are willing to have that discussion and would rather deflect.
Things aren't made in a vacuum. For example, I don't think violent games make people do violent things, but they are very clearly an indication that people enjoy violent fantasies at the very least.
I think a key difference between things like this and violence is that violence is not only much more stylized in the vast majority of games, (regardless of realism or art style), but also much more contextualized in a way that makes it justifiable lest the player be subject to some form of punishment, like being killed by police or desynchronization.
This is something we can talk about without going scorched earth about, and we can recognize that simulating violent acts can be a form of stress release. But somehow when it comes to talking about sexual stuff, all form of communication seems to break down. It's either right or wrong. You're either on one side or the other. It becomes about labeling people who take a stance instead of actually talking about it. Why do you think that's so?
Probably because one side is always much more agnostic, (take a game like AC:Syndicate for instance), compared to the other being at the expense of the treatment of one gender specifically that has been treated in similar ways for decades. And usually it's pretty clear cut what a)the intentions of the devs and marketing team are and b)what the purpose of the game/outfit/camera angle/proportions are.
