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[Zakalwe]

Well Tomb Raider (2013) had some really gruesome death scenes and went out of their way to hurt Lara. In the very beginning of the game she gets punched in the face and then has a large nail stabbed in her gut. I'm sure that the developers had no ill intent but I know it bothered people.

Anyway, I agree with her. It's even small stuff like Shepard punching that reporter. I never thought it was funny, it just seemed really unnecessary.

Issac Clarke?
Leon S Kennedy?
Earthworm Jim?

Plenty of games with male protags have gruesome death scenes. This isn't the issue.

 

[Primethius]

It's weird seeing that be used as an example. I thought people liked the Lara Croft games for prominently featuring a strong female protagonist. Is it also hated because the AI injuring the female protagonist makes people uncomfortable?

I don't think that's the case at all with the recent ones. The writing and characterization of Lara is extremely weak.

 

[Crimson_Echidna]

So is everyone going to get hung up on the "maim and dump" comment so that we don't have to discuss the prevalence of misogyny in video games and video game consumers?

Yep, and people aren't even being subtle about it.

 

[Nerazar]

Lots of games with scantily-clad women, particularly in advertisements and on boxes that are made to sell games. Don't see a whole lot with scantily-clad men.

Here you go.

But in general, it's a difficult topic. There are certain boundaries where censorship should be enforced, but I don't see this threshold with games like Tomb Raider or even GTA. In TR, you play a strong female lead character and in GTA, there's a sandbox which allows everyone to do virtually anything. You will not get many allies if you start telling people that they are sexist, just because they play a videogame.

 

[Griss]

The point is that things haven't gotten much better in the game industry and community, despite everyone disapproving GamerGate. I wonder if she is aware of Dead or Alive Xtreme.

There's nothing remotely wrong with Dead or Alive Xtreme. It's softcore titillation for a straight male audience. There's nothing inherently sexist or misogynistic about that. It doesn't portray itself as anything else, and it features no sexual violence (or sexual conduct besides voyuerism) at all.

I don't think that's the case at all with the recent ones. The writing and characterization of Lara is extremely weak.

It's weak but it's well-intentioned, at least. They wanted to make a great female hero, they didn't exactly succeed. But she's there, and she's the hero, and she does awesome stuff, and she's female. That alone is good. The fact that her character is poor could be down to a whole range or reasons. The recent Rhianna Pratchett interview showed just how complicated writing a character for games is, even with the best of intentions.

 

[Gator86]

So is everyone going to get hung up on the "maim and dump" comment so that we don't have to discuss the prevalence of misogyny in video games and video game consumers?

Without question that is what will happen. Any thread on GAF that touches social issues is always just a looming mod presence away from being the comment section on a goddamn Breitbart article.

 

[TonberrysKnife]

Go home Ashley Judd, you're drunk. Stick to music please.

 

[HStallion]

I do think she muddles up her own point with some of the rather vague and generalizing comments but she is certainly not wrong about how outwardly the gaming industry looks down upon the GG people and their rhetoric and even sometimes does something or says something about them but doesn't really take much action otherwise. The male to female ratio in a lot of developers is not great and a lot of female portrayals across the board can be pretty cringe inducing to just out right bad. I do think its getting better though as we're getting more and more female leads and prominent characters in a lot of games that are decent representations but its still a a long way to go.

 

[fronn]

GamerGate was probably the most disappointing thing to happen to one of my hobbies.

The real issue is a diversity problem... it's a problem in the tech industry as a whole, but the arts especially suffer from it - people build what they see in their minds, and if we're almost exclusively building things that come from one demographics minds, then we're going to have limited set of experiences. It's not about men being terrible or women being amazing (though both are true in certain situations, likewise the opposite), it's just about breadth of experiences.

I think Ashley's focus on mistreatment of women is possibly focusing on the wrong thing - frankly, I'm OK with a mario game having the princess be kidnapped _again_, as long as there's other experiences to counterbalance it (and more than just a sexualized woman as the heroine, because that's not really the opposite).

I thank the indie game market for picking up a lot of the slack and bringing diversity of experience... we're still lacking in proper representation in games with human characters, but we're moving forward.

Hopeful.

 

[oti]

The industry needs to be called out. It's always good to start a conversation.

 

[Mael]

The industry reaction to this is a pretty big reason why I don't play direct online anymore and won't in the foreseable future.
The mere thought of having to pay for being subjected to this kind of stuffs would make me want to actively seek the destruction of the relevant online networks.

So is everyone going to get hung up on the "maim and dump" comment so that we don't have to discuss the prevalence of misogyny in video games and video game consumers?

As always when gamers talk about less savory stuffs in games we'll have pages upon pages about the technicality while utterly avoiding the subject because that's not something anyone is interested in discussing.
Who want to talk about abusive behavior and how to curb it if it could mean devs would have to move a finger to try to help solve the issue.

 

[Gbraga]

I get the base of the message, and I do agree with it, but I wonder if they're actually making money out of it, specifically.

Like, do we have data that indicates that better treatment of women (and minorities in general) will lead to worse sales? This is the first time I'm seeing this particular reasoning, to be honest. I always assumed it had to do with the devs' mentalities, and not just making something they think will sell.

Like, having an amazing female lead that is also gay in The Last of Us: Part II, will it hurt sales? I personally can't see that happening at all. I'm expecting typical Naughty Dog amazing sales.

They're only profitting off of it in the sense that games have it and they make money when games sell. I don't think it's a direct decision of treating women like shit so they can sell to GamerGate.

If it was, I don't think we'd be seeing improvement from AAA companies, as we certainly did. We know there was some pushback from Sony on Aloy being a woman, but it probably wouldn't stop at "some pushback" if they thought it would actually make the game a financial disaster. And even then, I can't imagine that Guerrilla would portray the game's female characters poorly if the protagonist was a man.

One of the points made for diversity is precisely broadening the target audience, making more people feel like the game is for them, which can lead to a larger userbase. In other words, speaking in publisher language.

 

[Plum]

So is everyone going to get hung up on the "maim and dump" comment so that we don't have to discuss the prevalence of misogyny in video games and video game consumers?

She brings up a good, and new, point but without specific examples there's nothing to put that point on so it all becomes quite difficult to discuss; you just get people making vague points or speculating about what she actually meant. Her point is about hypocrisy in the gaming industry when it comes to women, but who are the hypocrites? The most I can say is that I agree with the general idea, anything else is speculation.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Actually it's probably God of War. You all know what you do to women in those games.

 

[yunbuns]

But what is the issue exactly? That Lara Croft has suffered gruesome deaths in the same way you would find in an RE game?

You should probably ask someone who is bothered by it. I just gave an example based on some complaints I've seen about that specific aspect of the game.

Issac Clarke?
Leon S Kennedy?
Earthworm Jim?

Plenty of games with male protags have gruesome death scenes. This isn't the issue.

Okay but the person asked for example of a game where a female is getting maimed and I answered so I don't know why I need of list of all these characters. I know that Lara Croft isn't the only character that has brutal deaths.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

Well when you look at how the industry does pretty much nothing to combat GG, can you blame her for saying this?

 

[lensoftruth]

She's so hot in the next gen episode. Which is also about computer games

 

[El Topo]

Go home Ashley Judd, you're drunk. Stick to music please.

....what? Did she become a singer?

 

[Complicated]

It's nice when people with influence stand up for this stuff. It's not like voice actors have enough pull to do so they are battling for basic quality of life in their careers. Publishers don't care and developers aren't making any kind of stand unless they're independent of publishers. We're seeing more representation than ever even in big games at least, so things are moving in the right direction.

It's good to point at the video game industry and have these discussions along with the ones going on in Hollywood with Jennifer Lawrence demanding equal pay with her male co-stars, and those sorts of things. I'm sure a lot of GG people would say that the GG stuff is a response to games being more inclusive and willing to tell stories from more perspectives than ever. They're fighting back against progress, so progress has to keep pushing forward harder than ever.

 

[Bladenic]

Go home Ashley Judd, you're drunk. Stick to music please.

She's an actress.

Although I'm surprised to see her name attached to this topic, wonder how she became involved.

Regardless, she makes some good points.

 

[lensoftruth]

Actually it's probably God of War. You all know what you do to women in those games.

Yeah. God of war is pretty damn embarrassing in that regard

 

[conman]

She's right, and the last couple of years have proven that most (if not all) of the criticism originally leveled against GGers and the games industry was way ahead of the curve.

 

[Mael]

Go home Ashley Judd, you're drunk. Stick to music please.

There is nothing wrong in gaming and if there's a problem it's not real, etc, etc

 

[Back-In-Black]

Well Tomb Raider (2013) had some really gruesome death scenes and went out of their way to hurt Lara. In the very beginning of the game she gets punched in the face and then has a large nail stabbed in her gut. I'm sure that the developers had no ill intent but I know it bothered people.

Anyway, I agree with her. It's even small stuff like Shepard punching that reporter. I never thought it was funny, it just seemed really unnecessary.

It bothers people for females to get hurt? And, Shepard can be a female. We don't need to place females (and thus fictional female characters) on pedestals. Glass figurines that are delicate and incapable of being handled but with the subtlest of caresses. What game's should aspire to are well rounded female characters not eye-candy used for male titillation. Nothing is wrong with a female character being punched, stabbed, or even brutally murdered so long as the context is right within the game's narrative.

 

[The Mango Sentinel]

Well Tomb Raider (2013) had some really gruesome death scenes and went out of their way to hurt Lara. In the very beginning of the game she gets punched in the face and then has a large nail stabbed in her gut. I'm sure that the developers had no ill intent but I know it bothered people.

Anyway, I agree with her. It's even small stuff like Shepard punching that reporter. I never thought it was funny, it just seemed really unnecessary.

Shiiiiit....that was one of the best parts of Mass Effect. Gave me a good laugh for about 10 minutes.

 

[JusDoIt]

She's an actress.

Although I'm surprised to see her name attached to this topic, wonder how she became involved.

Regardless, she makes some good points.

If you saw her speech at the Women's March last Saturday you wouldn't be surprised to see her speaking out about this.

 

[HellforLeather]

The Tomb Raider reboot is pretty infamous for the many creepy, moaning, death scenes of Lara Croft.

Huh? I dont get this argument. The whole game was violent as fuck. So yeah, Lara has some uncomfortable death scenes but she also mows down hundreds of men with pretty equally violent finishing moves like stabbing them in the neck with arrows, blasting them in the chin with a shotgun, or shooting them execution style point blank in the face with a pistol

 

[RuhRo]

She's completely right.

 

[Linkura]

The free market has to demand that before it happens. Right now, the gaming market is still primarily men so most games will be catered to that audience. Can't blame developers for doing what they feel ( and ultimately will ) sell more copies of their game.

And that is her point. They are profiting off of misogyny.

 

[Curufinwe]

How do you unlock the "Maim and dump Cindy" side mission?

 

[chrominance]

I'm guessing this thread is going to go badly, so maybe this is futile, but I think when she says "main and dump women for sport," she's not literally saying "games where you, playing as the protagonist, go around maiming/dumping women solely because it is fun." I don't want to speak for her, but my interpretation was that it was meant in a more general sense: games where women are maimed as part of the story, that happen to be presented as entertainment. An example of this is the women in refrigerator trope where the death, injury or attack of a female character that's close to the protagonist drives the narrative forward and gives the protagonist a reason to take action. It's not that you're supposed to literally enjoy watching a woman get maimed, it's that the story requires that a woman get maimed to fuel the revenge fantasy that you ultimately play out for entertainment purposes.

She's not wrong. Variations on that trope (i.e damsel in distress) are used as justification in tons of games, including ones we consider fundamental to the medium like Mario.

 

[Arkeband]

Yeah. God of war is pretty damn embarrassing in that regard

This trophy in 3 was pretty unsettling in retrospect:

I didn't do it... But I wish I did!
Kill the Poseidon Princess

...refers to choosing not to rape a naked woman. Instead, you throw her into a grinder.

 

[Takuan]

I'm guessing she's citing GTA.

 

[specdot]

Its been over 2 years since this gamer gate thing started yes? I don't want to derail this thread at all, but can someone please explain to me what Gamer Gate is. Again, not trolling, I genuinely don't know what it is. And Google doesn't help. It's like looking for a definitive answer as to what Moe is.

 

[Atcha43]

After seeing her at the Womens March, she seems a bit crazy!

 

[Neuromancer]

Go home Ashley Judd, you're drunk. Stick to music please.

Yes the solution here is to silence more women's voices because you disagree.

 

[Boke1879]

Well when you look at how the industry does pretty much nothing to combat GG, can you blame her for saying this?

See this is the thing though. The industry itself can't really do much other than say it's wrong and they don't share those views. And obviously be more supportive of people being harassed by this group.

It starts at the top though. I mean you look at games like LoL that have horrible communities. What are people doing to combat that?

 

[Mael]

The free market has to demand that before it happens. Right now, the gaming market is still primarily men so most games will be catered to that audience. Can't blame developers for doing what they feel ( and ultimately will ) sell more copies of their game.

Goddamn, that folding ideas vid is as relevant as it was 2 years ago!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtjZHC5Qyk

 

[BumblebeeCody]

Actually it's probably God of War. You all know what you do to women in those games.

I would still argue that if we are supposed to look at games in a more way similar to music, films, novels then we have to take on these types of subjects. Nocturnal Animals is a recent movie involving 2 female leads that don't have a happy ending. The Girl on the Train is also similar in this aspect as a book and the same can be said for many other forms of media. I guess games are still toys that should stick to being as mindless as it can be.

You should probably ask someone who is bothered by it. I just gave an example based on some complaints I've seen about that specific aspect of the game.

Okay but the person asked for example of a game where a female is getting maimed and I answered so I don't know why I need of list of all these characters. I know that Lara Croft isn't the only character that has brutal deaths.

True and I'm not asking your directly but I get the feeling we're still in a state where you can't have a strong female protagonist that doesn't die in a horrible ways. RE has been doing this since it came out (RE 1: Low Health Jill + Hunter Lunge attack = 6 year old BumblebeeCody nightmares)

Yes the solution here is to silence more women's voices because you disagree.

This. But I'd rather live in a shell where games do not have criticisms from women. (Kappa)

Goddamn, that folding ideas vid is as relevant as it was 2 years ago!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtjZHC5Qyk

Bruh.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Yeah. God of war is pretty damn embarrassing in that regard

This trophy in 3 was pretty unsettling in retrospect:

I didn't do it... But I wish I did!
Kill the Poseidon Princess

...refers to choosing not to rape a naked woman. Instead, you throw her into a grinder.

God of War was particularly bad because people would justify it with it's setting.

I would still argue that if we are supposed to look at games in a more way similar to music, films, novels then we have to take on these types of subjects. Nocturnal Animals is a recent movie involving 2 female leads that don't have a happy ending. The Girl on the Train is also similar in this aspect as a book and the same can be said for many other forms of media. I guess games are still toys that should stick to being as mindless as it can be.

There's no deeper meaning to why Kratos did what he did.

 

[Harlequin]

But in general, it's a difficult topic. There are certain boundaries where censorship should be enforced, but I don't see this threshold with games like Tomb Raider or even GTA. In TR, you play a strong female lead character and in GTA, there's a sandbox which allows everyone to do virtually anything. You will not get many allies if you start telling people that they are sexist, just because they play a videogame.

I think with GTA it sort of starts getting into the issue of a lack of balance. There's not really a big GTA-equivalent game with (a) female protagonist(s) and GTA itself hasn't had female protagonists, either. I also don't think that you can, for example, hire any male prostitutes in GTA games, etc. I don't think GTA would be quite as problematic if it were more balanced in that regard or if the industry as a whole was more balanced in that regard but it isn't and that's what can make it a bit of a problem.

 

[yunbuns]

It bothers people for females to get hurt? And, Shepard can be a female. We don't need to place females (and thus fictional female characters) on pedestals. Glass figurines that are delicate and incapable of being handled but with the subtlest of caresses. What game's should aspire to are well rounded female characters not eye-candy used for male titillation. Nothing is wrong with a female character being punched, stabbed, or even brutally murdered so long as the context is right within the game's narrative.

I don't like it when I see a FemShep doingit either. It's a stupid scene period and it doesn't make sense for a marine to go around punching reporters who more than likely can't even defend themselves. It's supposed to be funny but I don't think it is.

True and I'm not asking your directly but I get the feeling we're still in a state where you can't have a strong female protagonist that doesn't die in a horrible ways. RE has been doing this since it came out (RE 1: Low Health Jill + Hunter Lunge attack = 6 year old BumblebeeCody nightmares).

I think it's more than her just getting hurt and being a woman. I remember people really getting upset about that quote from one of the writers or developers about wanting to feel like they needed to protect Lara or something and then people also feel like the brutal deaths are another example of how far the new games are different from the old ones.

 

[entremet]

GG is awful, but she fails to stick the landing.

The vast majority of enemies you kill in AAA games are men. Look at ND games as well. It's mostly dudes you are killing.

So how are games profiteering from misogyny here? God of War and it's T & A fare?

 

[spectator]

So is everyone going to get hung up on the "maim and dump" comment so that we don't have to discuss the prevalence of misogyny in video games and video game consumers?

The "maim and dump" comment is her complaint. Shouldn't our first (and only?) point of discussion be her complaint? It's not getting hung up on a comment; it's addressing the very point of the topic.

 

[firelogic]

Yeah. God of war is pretty damn embarrassing in that regard

No it's not. In all of the games, you have sex with willing women, and it's off-screen. There was no sex in Ascension. In 3 there was a questionable sequence where you

Spoiler

sacrificed a naked woman to open a door

. So I guess that's one instance out of 6 games in the series. Hardly embarassing.

Plus it leans heavily on Greek mythology. Orgies are the norm.

 

[lensoftruth]

This trophy in 3 was pretty unsettling in retrospect:

I didn’t do it... But I wish I did!
Kill the Poseidon Princess

...refers to choosing not to rape a naked woman. Instead, you throw her into a grinder.

Seriously!? Fucking hell those games really are designed by 19 year old morons it seems

 

[Griss]

Its been over 2 years since this gamer gate thing started yes? I don't want to derail this thread at all, but can someone please explain to me what Gamer Gate is. Again, not trolling, I genuinely don't know what it is. And Google doesn't help. It's like looking for a definitive answer as to what Moe is.

The short answer is
-Ex boyfriend posts shit about Zoe Quinn (a game dev) online
-4chan gets ahold of the post and decides to harass her
-They decide to make it look like she was having relationships with media members to get 'publicity' - again this is just to justify the harassment and was totally baseless
-This somehow becomes a huge group that realises they can harass people under the guise of protesting for 'ethics in games journalism'.
-Some innocent people get suckered in by that slogan but most of them are quintessential 4chan trolls out to upset people and spark shit
-Hatred of women in the games industry is the golden thread tying the whole thing together

I haven't followed it since the start as it bores and annoys me but that was the genesis of it all. Can't put it all more concisely than that.

 

[Korigama]

Damn that sounds harsh. I haven't been following gamergate but what are some examples of games that do this? Mostly RPG anime games?

None of those come to mind with that.

God of War was particularly bad because people would justify it with it's setting.

Case in point.

No it's not. In all of the games, you have sex with willing women, and it's off-screen. There was no sex in Ascension. In 3 there was a questionable sequence where you

Spoiler

sacrificed a naked woman to open a door

. So I guess that's one instance out of 6 games in the series. Hardly embarassing.

Plus it leans heavily on Greek mythology. Orgies are the norm.

 

[krazen]

You guys are kinda acting brand new with that "what, maim and dump women" line.

Yeah, its got shades of "YOU KILL HOOKERS IN GRAND THEFT AUTO" sensasionalism, it doesnt require too much work to find misogyny in videogames. Unsexualized leads are a rarity, female characters tend to all be victims in the storylines, etc

 

[collige]

Ignoring the technicalities of her comment, I'm not sure that I agree with equating the representation issues with the games industry with the abuse perpetrated by GG. They're two separate issues and one is clearly more harmful than the other.