Ashley Judd calls out gaming industry in TEDtalk for hypocritical stance on GamerGate
- Thread starter Linkura
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Harsher penalties for abusive online users.
Longer bans for abusive users.
Give developers/admins the ability to listen back to voice audio to prove and ban abusive users.
Those are some ideas, but I'm not sure what else can be done. I hate voice chat with ransoms so I ALWAYS turn it off.
I think a big part of all of this is the disgusting communities on twitter and the lack of moderation. I think Twitter needs to be far more criticized.
Longer bans for abusive users.
Give developers/admins the ability to listen back to voice audio to prove and ban abusive users.
Those are some ideas, but I'm not sure what else can be done. I hate voice chat with ransoms so I ALWAYS turn it off.
I think a big part of all of this is the disgusting communities on twitter and the lack of moderation. I think Twitter needs to be far more criticized.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
cm osi
Member
still, it's made in a free market ruled by demand. you can call the wage gap sexist, you can't call a product sexist because it appeal to one side.
would you feel confident investing millions in a boys only DOAX?
Back-In-Black
Banned
But it makes sense for a space marine to go about committing genocide and punching mentally disturbed individuals suffering from trauma? That reporter scene is a great scene and funny one because of the context of the scene. And, Renegade Shepard is supposed to be a jerk.
Commander Shepard Is Such A Jerk
SomedayTheFire
Member
That it does. So many people champing at the bit to defend he medium rather than try to understand why she, as an outsider, feels this way and how we can all try to see these issues and do better. But no, just jump to the defence of "gaming" as a whole.
No. And I don't know how to answer your post without repeating my point.
Do you think that ridiculous trophy from God of War III was named because the person who decided the name liked it or because they thought it would sell more copies to sexist people?
Just to give an example.
They definitely profit from it because they make money out of the game that has it, but I don't think it's a strategic marketing decision. The devs had this awful idea and went with it, I don't think it had any impact on sales. At least not a positive one.
Do you believe the industry would have to sacrifice sales to improve on this? That's my point, I suppose. I don't think they would, on the contrary, I believe it could lead to larger target audience. I'm expecting The Last of Us Part II to sell A LOT. I'm expecting Horizon to do quite well, too. Maybe not as amazing, but it's a new IP from a studio with not as much of a name for itself as Naughty Dog.
Publishers will market the game the way they think will move the most copies, for sure, and sexuality is part of that, but I can't imagine (and maybe I'm being naive here) that publishers would go around telling devs with the best of intentions to treat the female characters like crap because they want to sell to GamerGate.
Publishers speak the money language. When they promote the diversity in their games, they're also doing it to reach people who feel strongly about it so they'll buy the game. Doesn't mean the reason why it was designed is to sell more copies, diverse games are made that way because the developers also feel strongly about it.
This is very evident when the marketing and game don't actually support each other, like with FFXV. The marketing teams decided that trying to sell the idea that the game had lots of "strong female characters" (they kept using this specific expression multiple times) was a good idea, but the game was still heavily criticized for its portrayal of women. Exactly because what marketing will do to sell more copies and the developers' intentions aren't necessarily the same thing.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
It's being complacent.
Might be referring to FFXV. Big FFXV spoiler:
Lunafreya is killed before you even get to meet her. She probably has 30-40 minutes of screen time and probably half of that is flashbacks.
You can check I was active here during the whole thing in 2014, what exactly has the industry done in regard to GG?
Please enlighten us.
Really? Well, reading the wiki definition of sexual objectification it defines the term in a manner very inconsistent with how I've always seen it.
As far as I'm concerned, sexual objectification simply means appreciating a person's beauty or sexual characteristics without regard to their personality or any other aspect of their personhood or life. And this is something that all humans do pretty much every day.
Anyone who watches porn, for example, I would say is sexually objectifying the performers for their own pleasure - and there's nothing wrong with that - that's the whole point of the exercise. It's how the performers make their wages etc.
Same with DoA, to give a game example. I don't have to give a shit about the girl's characters, I'd just like to see some boobs jiggling. And in the context of the game, that's absolutely fine. It harms no one.
We don't have some moral obligation to discover a person's personality before developing sexual feelings for them. If I walk into my roommates bedroom and see a poster of a model in a swimsuit I'm not a bad person for feeling turned on without asking 'What's she like as a person?' I see her body, and the act of seeing it makes me feel good, in and of itself. That's natural.
We're a highly visual species that values sexual attraction. Expressing and enjoying that in the absence of a meaningful personal connection to a person isn't wrong.
All of this is just imo, of course.
See above.
Her argument is about the hypocrisy in developers, not the inaction, it's in the very title. If it were about complacency why put in the maiming comment? You shouldn't throw claims like that around with nothing to back them up; for people who agree it stifles discussion as that's literally all they can say, for people in the middle they're confused and for people who disagree she has no basis and therefore her entire point is wrong. Discussion to me shouldn't just be a round of agreement.
But I won't 'derail' the thread any further, I'll just say that I agree with all that she's saying, but without examples I can't agree with the "maiming" comment.
Just because they both happen (or even happen to a similar degree) doesn't mean they're the same. Leon Kennedy being maimed and Lara Croft being maimed are two different things and evoke a different reaction in people.
Men and women are different. Culturally, biologically, historically, politically. We can't pretend that applying things to one gender is the same as to the other.
That's the big question. Should GTA just... exclude female NPCs? That seems like an overreaction. They should be treated differently, but I'm not entirely sure what that means.
NOTE: The following is a tangent.
I think, when it all boils down, the biggest issue is that video games are, on average, too violent. The biggest franchises and genres as the industry sees them are shooters, action games, fighting games, so on, so forth. Violence, as a rule, is masculine - it appeals to men and marginalizes women. That's not absolute and that's not a law, but it is a trend worth considering.
AAA games are 90% "guy shoots and/or stabs" and 10% thin plot. Simply swapping that guy with a girl isn't going to change things.
Can you imagine if a vast majority of Hollywood movies were like that? Superhero films, only dumber, with less plot? The entire industry would collapse.
AAA games are 90% "guy shoots and/or stabs" and 10% thin plot. Simply swapping that guy with a girl isn't going to change things.
Can you imagine if a vast majority of Hollywood movies were like that? Superhero films, only dumber, with less plot? The entire industry would collapse.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Being complacent in the midst of a movement dedicated towards keeping women objectified, sexualized when depicted in games as well as dedicated to keeping real women out of the games industry via harassment, doxxing, and threats is absolutely wrong.
Back-In-Black
Banned
I'm not going to pretend that
Luna
Ardyn
with Noctis being brutally stabbed to death by his ancestors including his recently deceased father.
I'm saying they can absolutely do more and should always be looking to improve themselves. Don't see why they shouldn't.
No it's not. Name one mainstream game where the primary gameplay experience is "maiming and dumping women for sport?"
This is probably their biggest incentive to change.
Twitter is the perfect example. No one will buy them because people are aware of its toxic environment.
You have to cut out the tumor before it spreads. Otherwise your service is doomed.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
I interpret that quote as another way of saying the industry doesn't care about female characters. It's a blanket statement but it's a statement that arguably has been true for a long time.
I remember one video that shat on TR reboot for turning an action-adventure into a survival horror.
If not, they should. TED has pretty awesome talks in all kinds of subjects - whether it is something light or hard-hitting like this one.
That said, I totally agree with her approach.
I think you 2 misunderstand my point.
I'm saying they didn't do shit.
Of course they could (and should) do more.
But they didn't and aren't.
Kratos brutally beats and uses King Midas to create a wall he can climb in one of the God of War games. He isn't beyond using someone innocent to fufill a goal. I'll agree with God of War using nudity for player titilation, but targeted violence against women I'm not so sure of. It just seems like a series that revels in violence generally.
Yeah, this is what I didn't like. She worded it in a way that implies the industry is straight up heavily profiting from making games that maim and dump women, which I feel is false. It's also a poor blanket statement.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
....Tomb Raider....Grand Theft Auto....
The intro sequence of ffxv left a bad taste in my mouth with its immediate portrayal of women and I haven't played it since.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Ah yeah I read it like you were advocating ignoring it too!
GTA is a deeply sexist series and it's one of the most profitable series in history.
Isn't GTA kind of a poor example since you can maim or murder anyone in that game? It's not gender specific.
michaelius
Banned
Kratos is supposed to be consumed by hatred madman and that shows it even more.
I fail to see how GTA encourages players to kill women.
Yeah you get money from it, but you also get money from killing men. Plus the police come after you if you needlessly kill people.
Gentleman Jack
Member
Right. I'm not trying to argue about the thematic content, I'm simply providing an example in which a woman in a video game is the intersection of a disposable, sexual object that is the target of violence. Exactly the kind of thing Judd is calling out as unacceptable.
Ah, so we actually agree
. My bad for misinterpreting that.Jeevesmeister
Banned
Actually they shouldn't because they're bad and are nothing but watering down complicated issues so rich people can feel good about themselves for $7,500 a pop. You'd get more bang for your buck going to an evangelical megachurch sermon.
Really? The PRIMARY point of Tomb Raider is to "maim and dump" Laura for sport? Similar question to the second game: Rockstar titled a "female maim and dump" simulator "Grand Theft Auto?" That seems a bit foolish.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
I don't know alot about Grand Theft Auto
but one thing I do know about it from pop culture is that you can pay to have sex with a prostitute, kill her, and then get your money back.
I've seen jokes about this from high school cafeteria conversations to jokes about video games on TV
I can't believe I have Cidny a chance. I fist I thought "maybe they'll justify this" nope. Refilled my gas tank and saw that cutscene and immediately thought "God damnit SE"
It's not exactly hard,
they can begin with treating their female npcs like regular npcs.
Or really gender neutral.
So you encounter male and female prostitute that you can interact in the same way.
That's already better than having a world of female prostitutes and male policemen.
They probably changed that I stopped caring about GTA something like 10 years ago.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
But she didn't specifically call out the sexual nature of the violence in that quote. She just objected to women being maimed and dumped for sport.
Okay, from that perspective I can understand because there is no male equivalent of the same thing.
Misogyny isn't just a trophy in a game where the designer thought about it consciously nor is it telling game developers to "treat your female characters like shit to sell more to Gamergate bigots". The sexism in the games industry is much more insidious, invisible (to men), and ingrained. This in turn has lead to the faulty and immoral conception that "sexism sells, therefore we need to have more sexism in our products". This isn't just something directly sexist like "I hate women", but simple misogynist request to not have women as protagonists, to not feature them on the cover of a game, to sexualize them for a presumed straight male audience (seriously this is so much everywhere), to not hire them, to exclude them, and so forth. Misogyny in the games industry is
- when you are asked if you are in marketing when you're at a professional conference
- when your peers and the consumers you make games for grope you at conventions
- when your fans think you are a booth babe and want to take a picture with you
- when you're the only woman in the design meeting and your comment about maybe toning down the sexualization of the female characters is met with hostility
- when you make 70 percent less than male colleagues in the same position
- when there is 3/4 men on average at every game company
- whenalmost all leads and executives are white men
- when you're doing video interviews the comments section is a stream of sexist garbage
- when you're being harassed and terrorized by a hate movement your employee throws you under the bus for an invented ad-hoc reason because they don't want to lose sales
- and when you speak up about all of this you are questioned and doubted to an enormous extent (like this thread is a testament of) and while you're receiving harassment and terror from the toxic parts of the gaming community
Read the #1reasonwhy from 5 years ago for examples for more of these examples. The sexism is structural and ingrained and it has been so for decades. And it continues to be reproduced the more people and especially the unaffected stick their head into the sand continue to deny and ignore the problem and question the women who speak up.
EDIT: Or read Amirox's collection of stats: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=957274
They're already treated differently in games. For one example, yes you can murder both men and women in GTA, but its the women you can pay some of them for sex first.
Fellow Gaffers, should I bother answering this ridiculous and myopic oversimplification?
Glitter and Gold
Banned
I mean the devs had to make an effort to render all these elaborate and shocking death scenes for Laura. Nothing in video games is made for players to not experience it and be entertained by that experience on some level.
This isn't really a new criticism for the game
Dear god, I would never do something as callous.
Ah, so we actually agree
Of course we agree here.
I guess I framed my argument poorly.
SomedayTheFire
Member
You can straight up sexually assault women in the strip clubs in GTA V and you're "rewarded" for it. Hell there's one mission that's about creating and publishing sex images of a woman in the game.
hah it was just awkward wording that could have been read two completely different ways!
How is not sexist? DoAx3 consist on taking strong female characters and turn them into straight useless objects, These girls that can kick anyone ass and wall jump around? well, suddenly they're running around a beach in mini bikinis, while they're almost even incapable of even running straight, just so they can fall and you can focus on her body.
Oh, and you can peek while they're changing clothes, dont worry, they'll just be embarassed or a lil angry, nothing more. And of course they'll poledance for you. And let's not talk about the canned VR mode.
I like DOA5 but the Xtreme series is what is it. Atleast in DOA5 they're capable females.
I wouldn't know. I've never tried to have sex with the prostitutes in GTA.
meltingparappa
Member
And yet, the positive broader themes were lost for you and perhaps others who became hung up on a single costume.
Femhype - Conversations from the Final Fantasy XV locker room
I agree with the author's point that Final Fantasy XV is head and shoulders above other AAA games at subverting the prevalence of toxic masculinity. The industry would be quite different if other games with a male ensemble cast followed their example.
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