A Response to Ars Technica on the Portrayal of Women in Media
September 4th, 2008 at 6:55 pm (Gaming)
Ben Kuchera reported today on Ars Technica that the Women’s Rights Committee of the European Parliament has issued a report in which they make the assertion that women aren’t portrayed very well in electronic media, including video games. They’re asking for this trend in stereotyped portrayals to change. I think that’s awesome and well overdue. I wish our government here in the United States would ask for something like that instead of alternately ignoring the industry and screaming about it being terribly dangerous in some nebulous and unclear way.
Kuchera goes on in his article to discuss this statement about the portrayals of women in video games. He claims that it’s an unfair statement to make and that the Parliament is incredibly vague about what they’re asking to change. I’m sure they are vague (you’d be hard pressed to find a government document of this nature that isn’t vague), but they aren’t wrong. He states that the videogame industry is getting better in their portrayal of women, and I would agree with that, although I don’t think I think they’ve made as much progress as he does.
Where I really take issue with him is his claim that videogames are no worse than movies in this area. He says “The truth remains that, in a movie rental establishment and a video game store, it’s just as easy to find games that treat women well as films, and that should be applauded.” This is simply untrue. There are games that “treat women well” (or at least portray them realistically and respectfully), but they are not so easy to find.
If you walk into a video store, it’s pretty easy to find a movie that portrays women pretty well. They’re the movies that are marketed to women. The romantic comedies, the sisterhood-type bonding movies, and the heartfelt family dramas all have many, many titles with realistically shaped actresses, realistically flawed characters and competent women who aren’t always ordering their lives around a man. There is a good smattering of such characters in just about every other genre of film as well. I’m not saying film is perfect, because they absolutely have a long way to go in their portrayal of women, but good women characters and female-friendly stories are not unheard-of there. They’re just not nearly as common as they should be.
If you walk into a videogame store, you’re going to have a harder time finding a game with the same qualities in gender portrayal. First, you have to find a game with female characters, which is not always as easy as it sounds. Then, you have to find one where they are both realistically shaped and clothed. This is extremely difficult, especially if the box art is most of what you have to go on. Finally, you need a character with depth. This is very hard. Even if her whole story revolves around the men in the game, she must stand alone as a person and be believable or she’s little more than cardboard. It’s a rare find in a videogame. Alyx Vance is one in a million. Portal is downright unique.
So I’m thrilled about the report from the EU. I’m glad that Kuchera wrote his article bringing attention to it. I have to say, though, we haven’t come nearly as far as he’d like to think. The EU is very right in the seriousness of the issue. This is a big issue. It’s bigger than we usually want to admit and it’s something that should be talked about and that we should be working to change.
Funky J said,
September 5, 2008 at 7:31 am
I’d like to know which movies “directed at females” portray them “realistically and respectfully”?
Most I’ve seen portray women as mothers or wannabe mothers, bitches for other women to hate, or love interests for men.
And don’t even get me started about the whole “young female who’s accidentally pregnant” spate of movies – not one single movie discusses something all women are faced with in this situation – abortion – because hollywood doesn’t think young women can deal with it adequately.
If that’s a sign women aren’t being treated “realistically and respectfully”, then I don’t know what is!
Nekojin said,
September 5, 2008 at 8:53 am
Two points:
One, it’s ALYX Vance, not ALEX. Minor, I’ll admit, but it’s a telling detail.
Two, the Portal protagonist doesn’t have any discernable personality… any personality you see there is simply a case of you projecting yourself onto Chell.
Joe said,
September 5, 2008 at 9:41 am
“not one single movie discusses something all women are faced with in this situation – abortion”
Have you /seen/ Juno? It certainly discusses it. She fucking goes to an abortion clinic! She makes the decision not to go through with it, which I think is a very believable reaction.
I do agree that almost every “romantic comedy” or “cinderalla story” out there is a pretty disgusting portrayal of women, but the men in those movies are portrayed pretty one-dimensionally too, so I think we can just agree that those movies should be avoided by everyone.
Also: Chell may be shell you can project yourself into, but it’s a female shell, and she’s not the “if I have to look at someone’s butt for hours on end it should be a cute butt” kind of female shell either.
And GlaDos is a woman. Err, femputer. With a complicated personality.
Rosepixie said,
September 5, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Funky J, I have to agree with Joe on Juno. And as for movies aimed at women with fully realized female characters with multi-dimensional lives, my best suggestion would be to look at “sisterhood” movies. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Steel Magnolias, etc. Even something like Lilo and Stitch has great female characters! You’re right, movies *do* have a long way to go. I said that. But videogames have farther to go, and that was the point of this post.
Nekojin, I’m sorry I spelled Alyx’s name wrong. Thank you for the correction. I’m not sure what you think is telling about me spelling something incorrectly. I’m a dreadful speller.
As for Portal, I didn’t claim that it was a great game for female portrayal because of character backstory, but it is one. The protagonist is a competent unsexualized woman with what is arguably an incredibly feminine device to work with (the portal gun) and the antagonist is a feminized computer who is deadly dangerous and incredibly scary, but not because of her sex, just because of what it is and how it says things. Portal attracted a huge number of female players and I don’t think it was just because of amazing game design, I think the portrayals they saw of women and female characters in the game were incredibly empowering and satisfying. Portal really is unique.
note said,
September 6, 2008 at 4:13 pm
“They’re the movies that are marketed to women.”
This single line statement detracts from the rest of your argument as most games that portray women in a questionable light aren’t marketed toward women. It simply isn’t fair to compare products that aren’t aimed toward the same market.
Rosepixie said,
September 6, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Out of curiosity, note, what games are marketed towards women? There are pink games and games involving babysitting, but those are all marketed towards girls, as in young girls, children and young teenagers. The only games I can think of that might actively be marketed towards women would be puzzle games, although I haven’t seen much marketing for most of those and they don’t apply to this discussion since they don’t involve people either as avatars or NPCs in any way. Blocks falling or balls rolling don’t really say much about gender in and of themselves. So what games are marketed towards women?
I think that it was a fair statement because the statement being argued against was that the movie industry is just as bad as the gaming industry in gender portrayals. The movie industry includes movies marketed towards women, so they should count. I can give you movies that aren’t marketed just towards women that have great gender portrayals both ways if you want, but I don’t think it’s really necessary (there are even some great ones that are primarily marketed towards men, but again, that just helps my argument).
Alan De Smet said,
September 6, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Poor female representation in video games is an important topic, but I’m not sure movies as a whole are a good comparison. I find it telling that you need to seek out “movies that are marketed to women,” like “the romantic comedies, the sisterhood-type bonding movies, and the heartfelt family dramas.” Video games aren’t good at that sort of story, so you don’t tend to see them. The heart and soul of a video game is the interactivity. How many video games have you seen that have meaninful interactivity about personal interactions between people? Damn near none. It’s not because video game developers are dicks. Well, maybe it partially is. But more importantly it’s because video games are bad at interactive personal human interaction. Assuming you want a real video game and not an interactive movie, you need to stear clear of that sort of interaction.
The level of subtle interaction you’d need to do a family drama is way beyond the technical capabilities of a video game. You can include those elements, but they’d be primarily pre-scripted content that denies the player the essential control necessary to make a game a game and not just an interactive movie. You’re fighting the difficulty of providing an interface that let’s the player express the necessary nuance. You need AI better beyond cutting edge research; it needs to understand and reasonably react to the extremely wide variety of possible player inputs, but individually and as a set.
(For all of the problems, people do try, for which I’m thankful. Façade tries really hard to be a serious family drama. Your actions directly influence the relationship of the married couple you are visiting and thier relationship with you. It arguably represents some of the state of the art. And it fails, badly. I played through several times and kept getting smacked as the game bizarrely interpreted my actions. The interactive fiction Galatea strives to provide a complex, believable NPC and does an admirable job. But only by heavily constraining the environment, limiting it to a single on-screen NPC, limiting the player input and nuance. The resulting game is as complex as almost any of Infocom’s classics, and yet it consists of a single conversation. Something as seemingly simple as adding a second NPC would explode the complexity. A third? Almost unimaginable levels of complexity. There is perhaps 3 hours of game play in it, and that assumes many repeated plays. Interactive fiction is a field that appreciates and praises such work, yet something better has not yet shown up.)
Given the difficulties, it’s not surprising that game developers play to their strengths. Graphics, combat AI, world simulation, puzzles. Hopefully game technology will improve and will support more styles of play, but it’s not there yet.
If you limit yourself to movies that keep the personal interaction to a minimum, what are you left with? Mostly action movies. Suddenly video games and movies look a lot more similar. Overwhelmingly male protagonists. Unrepresentative body types. Highly sexualized women. This is not to say that this is a good situation, just to point out that claiming that movies are a whole are better isn’t a useful comparison.
Erik said,
September 7, 2008 at 10:09 am
And in the same video game store many if not most of the male characters in these games also are not realistically clothed or proportioned. But no one ever seems to cause a stink at all of the game characters that look like Chippendales dancers now do they?
Dan said,
September 7, 2008 at 11:17 am
Let me see if I understand…
Religion can actively promote sexism, but that’s ok. The government should not be involved if I raise a child in a sexist religion. Even if the religion clearly states that women should submit to men, as in the case of Christianity, it’s ok.
There are sexist videogames, but that’s not ok, even if this kind of sexism is just used as a form for (male) escapism. The government should be involved and put pressure on the videogame industry to change things.
Why?
Robin said,
September 7, 2008 at 5:33 pm
The assumption that entertainment aims to (or has a responsibility to) accurately reflect the real world is where your argument falls down.
“First, you have to find a game with female characters, which is not always as easy as it sounds.”
So you’re saying it’s difficult – sorry, sometimes difficult(?) – to find a game with female characters. How, exactly? Every fighting game, every RPG, most action, adventure and sports titles generally make the cut.
“Then, you have to find one where they are both realistically shaped and clothed.”
A misleading and arbitrary restriction. How about the male characters? How about the female characters in films? How about the female characters in cartoon serials marketed at kids? How about the how the characters are written as well as visualised? At a fundamental level people want aesthetically pleasing entertainment. Or do you think that we all desperately want to buy games/films with people who look just like us on the box?
“Finally, you need a character with depth. This is very hard. Even if her whole story revolves around the men in the game, she must stand alone as a person and be believable or she’s little more than cardboard. It’s a rare find in a videogame. Alyx Vance is one in a million. Portal is downright unique.”
Translation: “I have played very few character-driven games.”
This idea that only games/films that fall into a marketing category that corporations associate with women can communicate anything worthwhile to a female audience is patronising and bizarre.
“Portal attracted a huge number of female players”
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back this up?
Portal is hardly the first game to have a prominent female antagonist/narrator role anyway (System Shock 1+2 for example).
“The only games I can think of that might actively be marketed towards women would be puzzle games”
So we can take it that you think that the majority of games are marketed along gender lines. Maybe fifteen years ago, not any more. Who is Spore marketed to? Guitar Hero? The Sims? Any first-party Nintendo game? Everyone.
Or perhaps you think that games with sci-fi and fantasy themes (e.g. WoW) are making some gender assumption, in which case, considering the gender split of the fanbase of this kind of material in other media, I’m surprised you assumed male.
To sum up, I think that calling for government intervention in artistic expression is always a dangerous course of action, all the more so if you’re basing your argument on such an incomplete view of games.
Hibernian said,
September 7, 2008 at 6:16 pm
“First, you have to find a game with female characters, which is not always as easy as it sounds. Then, you have to find one where they are both realistically shaped and clothed.”
Why do you feel you have to play as realistic character, the same sex as you?
Not many characters in games are realistic, male or female and if i wanted to follow the same criteria for picking games as you than even as a male gamer i would find a difficult time.
Rosepixie said,
September 7, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Hibernian asked: “Why do you feel you have to play as realistic character, the same sex as you?”
I don’t. I didn’t mean just avatar characters. I’m talking about NPCs as much as avatars. But I do want my characters to look believable. This means that if given the choice, I don’t choose male characters who look like they shouldn’t be able to put their arms down at their sides because of the musculature in their shoulders and arms or female characters who I’m certain would have massive chronic back pain and no ability to menstruate from their massive breasts and tiny waists. I’m perfectly happy to play a goblin guy as long as it looks like it really could stand and walk around.
Hibernian said,
September 7, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Thats fine if thats what you look for in a game but the circumstances are the same for all gamers.
I think they make these games because alot of gamers do not want this realism and look to be a character which is totally unrealistic as a chance to experience situations they could not do in reality. And just as many male gamers want to be a character with ridiculously big muscles, I’m sure there are many female gamers (and know of some) who do like to play as characters such as Lara Croft and have no problem with he Tripple D cups as shes a confident, sexy and powerful character.
Alan De Smet said,
September 8, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Sadly, Rosepixie, I’m with the other guys here. As a guy, I certainly don’t see any problems with the portrayal of women. You must just be crazy. As other posters have commented, there are literally ones of examples of postive female characters. Sure, one is an insane, murderous computer only ever portrayed as a face (Shodan from System Shock), but it still counts. Every single fighting game is full of bad ass women who can kick your ass while wearing sexy, inplausible outfits. Oh, and Lara Croft is totally sexy, confident, sexy, powerful, and sexy. And she manages it all while still remaining sexy.
And it’s not like men are represented differently in mainstream video games! As Erik notes, all the male characters are like Chippendale’s dancers, wearing wildly inappropriate and highly sexualized outfits! Check out that well oiled chest on the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed! And who can forget the stud Gordan Freeman in the Half-Life series, showing all that flesh. And how about the team of military hotties in Gears of War, or Master Chief in the Halo series; lesser men might wear heavy, blocky armor into a war zone, but these men toss realism aside in favor of something just a little hotter!
A special nod to Dan for pointing out Rosepixie’s defense of sexism in religion. I know it might not be obvious to other posters, since Rosepixie has never written defense on religion on her web site, and even as a personal friend I’ve never heard her bring it up in person. And none of our mutual friends ever mentioned her holding this viewpoint. And it flies in the face of what I know of her ethics. But I’m sure she’s guilty of the implication.
And a joint tip of the hat Dan, again, and Robin. Government censorship is absolutely wrong, and it’s abhorrent for Rosepixie to write here in support of it. Well, maybe not so much write about it, but I’m pretty sure she was engaged in some thoughtcrime about it!
Some people might say that both male and female character design tends to reinforce the desires of heterosexual male players, so male a characters are power fantasies while female characters are highly sexualized. Some people might say that sexism in video game character portrayals is so old that many people fall into the trap of thinking that because it always has been this way it must always be this way. Some people might say that gaming culture is so tainted with male privlege that the men involved are unable to even perceive that there is a problem. Some people might suggest that the bias is so deeply ingrained in the culture that even pointing out that there is a problem seems like an attack on the culture as a whole, leading gamers in the culture to blindly lash out in defense without serious reflection. Some people might complain that such an blind backlash drowns out serious conversation, further retarding actual progress.
But did those people ever consider that maybe there isn’t a problem? Did those people ever consider that things are this way for a reason, and that everyone else is happy? Did they consider that players of action games are overwhelming male because women are inherently wired to dislike that style of play? If these people would just stop asking us to honestly assess ourselves, there wouldn’t be any problems!
I must give you credit for this, Rosepixie, you have truly collected a striking example of mainstream gamerdom here. You should be honored to have such stunning examples here. How could anyone read this thread and think that there is problem?
Froggalpha said,
September 9, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Rosiepixie: Thanks for this. I hadn’t actually seen a decent bit on the disparate design issues on gender in gaming since before portal, and the conversation has been interesting.
Alan DeSmet: While I appreciate Galatea, and love that people are still working on non-linear game design, I think you’re making an assumption here. Video Games are, by their nature, interactive.. but this doesn’t mean that you need full A.I. in order to make a good Video Game, or even good characters.
Take a look at the Adventure game.. Sierra had a bunch of them back in the day, and Sam and Max does a pretty good job nowadays. These are fairly gender neutral in gameplay, and provide a lot of opportunity for character development or even miscellaneous characters.
Perhaps we could look overseas, at Japan’s social sims. I know they have a unsavory reputation, due to some of the “dating” sims, but by limiting interaction in specific ways you can end up with reasonable characterization without massively advancing the software design end of things. These can be made gender neutral, or directed towards either.
Game companies could skimp on the cutting edge, put some effort into writing, and get solid games with wide appeal. Make them shorter, cheaper, and serialize them online. This is starting to happen on Steam, but I’m uncertain whether it’s a positive influence as yet.
Alan De Smet said,
September 9, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I wasn’t thinking much about adventure games when I wrote post 7. But I stand by my point. I love adventure games! Over the last year or so I replayed almost all of the old LucasArts classics, Seasons one and two of Telltale’s Sam & Max, and I’m looking forward to my next fix of SBCG4AP. But adventure games’ strength isn’t the character interaction. What character interaction is there is heavily scripted, with relatively few states. Player interaction is almost always limited to multiple choices. You can almost always just scrub the multiple choice options, clearing out choices until they’re empty or you win. The real meat of these games is environment manipulation, with a dose of inventory juggling for some games.
Some of these games do offer compelling human interest stories. But they’re pretty much stories told to you between the interactive bits. Your actions have little to nothing to do with the story’s development. If you’re lucky, a few scenes mid-game may have two or three variants, and there might be four or five endings.
I gather the Japanese dating sim games are deeper, but I also gather that it’s fundamentally multiple choice. That doesn’t seem terribly interactive compared to other genres. They seem more like “interactive” movies with a limited number of choices and endings. However, I may be giving them short shrift as they’re not appealing to me.
Froggalpha said,
September 10, 2008 at 12:21 am
You are correct about adventure games, but most action games are single course as well. This does not restrict what characters can be shown, simply how widely you can explore the character. For purposes of bringing games up to speed on gender issues, interacting within a story can be enough to help. I agree it does not provide the depth of character development a more interactive system could.
Depending on the particular example, the sim games can be virtually linear, or can be remarkably convoluted. The best tell notably different stories depending on how you interact with characters and events. Considering how many are almost entirely social in nature, this is about as close as I’ve seen to what you’re describing. Sadly, you could still map out the choices, but for a couple playthroughs it’s not too shabby.
So, for what you’d like, there are effectively pre-mapped scenarios. Japanese Visual Novels are just as pre-determined as Galatea, though with longer scenarios and fewer choices you have more playtime and fewer playthroughs. For now it’s what we have, and I’d like to see more people working with the possibilities.
Scarybug said,
September 11, 2008 at 8:30 am
This week’s “Jonathan Swift” award goes to Alan. Stephen Colbert will have to go without one for a week.
Complaining about sexism in games is not the same as asking the government to censor sexist games. We can talk about it to get game designers to think about it. We can change our buying habits to encourage them. It’s still up to them to do what they want.
Though, I’m personally not immune to the appeal of fanservice, I can certainly see where she’s coming from here. I like fanservice, but there should be more games that portray women slightly less objectively too.
Rosepixie said,
September 11, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I just wanted to pipe up again and say that Scarybug is right, this isn’t the same as asking for censorship in games. I don’t want censorship. I want the trend to change, and that’s all the EU asked for. They didn’t impose rules or anything, they just formally pointed out a problem and asked for change. That’s not the same as censorship. I’m not even asking that there never be a female stereotype ever again in a game, that’s kind of unreasonable. But I do think it’s reasonable for me to ask for the situation to improve (and more than just a teeny tiny bit). That’s what I’m asking for.
Eva said,
September 15, 2008 at 11:37 am
I think there is an important point that some folks here are rather ignoring. I’ve no idea if Rosepixie agrees with me on this, but I would say that the point of getting “more realistic” character representations is not to take away your eye candy but rather the opposite. Please, feel free to make as many ludicrous hourglass, top heavy amazons as you like so long as the character creator will also allow me to make someone who looks more like the average woman or man of my age. I don’t care about other _player_ choices. I care about the restrictions the _designers_ put on the representations I can wear in a MMOG.
I still agree with Rosepixie that we need more non-insane NPCs, but that is a whole different issue.
I also think that folks are ignoring a pool of games that are marketed towards the general audience and towards women. The Wii has created quite a large interest in making games that are gender neutral and marketed more heavily to women but not quite so heavily tied to gender roles. Wii Fit is the most glaring example, but I’m sure you can all think of some others.
The fact that the Wii is bringing “average” women and men into the gaming population is a huge step forward, I think, since it will encourage companies to start/continue producing these much less sexuality and gender role bound games. Anywhere you put an incentive of money the industry will follow and the Wii is putting it in the right place. It makes me all warm and fuzzy thinking about it.
Robin said,
September 20, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Alan De Smet: It’s interesting that you assume that making (male or female) characters aesthetically pleasing has to be sexually motivated. Rather unbecoming of someone trying so hilariously earnestly to come across as an Internet White Knight, don’t you think?
Laughing Collie said,
September 21, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hi, Pixie. Good for you for encouraging more reflection and awareness on this subject. Further kudos for your patience with the doubtless-well-meaning-but-clueless. I wrote about this on my blog a whiles ago (What Don’t We See?), and had a few rather angry/defensive responses as well. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
P.S. If it’s inappropriate for me to post a link in my comment to you, please feel free to delete it. Thanks!
Robin said,
September 21, 2008 at 6:49 pm
It is disappointing that this discussion has to be dragged down to the level of condescending “with us or against us” posturing.
Obviously all media would be better off with better realised characters regardless of gender, ethnicity or whatever else. Anybody who watches The Wire and laments the lack of other TV drama even trying to meet that standard can attest to this.
This doesn’t alter the fact that characters in games do not perform the same function as characters in drama. They are playing pieces, action figures, embodiments of specific feelings or traits, archetypes, with a few edge cases being called upon to perform any significant dramatic function. Failing to make this distinction skews the statistics (not that the lazy guesses made in the article are backed with concrete numbers, of course). Fighting game characters do not explore complex issues because they’re designed to look good kicking each other in the face.
I didn’t think there were many people still sufficiently isolated from games to fall into the trap of assuming that gamers leer over Lara Croft or look up to Duke Nukem. That’s not what these characters are designed to achieve, in any context. By the way, how is Shodan any less of a positive role model than GlaDOS, Alan De Smet? Good work on selectively choosing male characters to fit your argument too! Except I’m somewhat confused that you think the Gears of War characters are something other than ludicrously sexualised caricatures. We may be burly seven-foot-tall square-jawed hunks, but most people who buy games aren’t so lucky.
The assumption that games are exclusively made by or for heterosexual males is laughable and insulting, as is the fantasy scenario that women are frightened away from games that don’t treat their delicate sensibilities with kid gloves. Women play games about sexy elves and space marines too, and not through gritted teeth, or to make some kind of empowered ‘grrl!’ statement, but for the same reasons than men do.
If you want to vent your frustrations about unequal gender representation, why not address the root of the problem, an education system that fails to encourage women to pursue technical subjects, taking them out of the system entirely regardless of how rewarding games actually may be to them.
With the shift in how computers are integrated into society in the last decade, I would hope that things are getting better on that front.
Eva said,
September 22, 2008 at 10:28 am
Robin, if you’re going to claim that the historical tradition of over “exaggerated” female characters did not original stem from a desire to buy into sexual marketing to males I’m going to think you’re either extrememly young or sticking your head in the sand. Whether or not you think it’s offensive it is a sex sell.
To be very clear, I don’t think any of us are saying you need to make characters hideous to make them realistic, but in part we _are_ talking about standards of beauty. I don’t need to be a 105 pound DD cup to be considered attractive in _real life_ so why the hell should I need to go to that extreme in a game? (Why should that be the only option I’m even offered?)
Please keep in mind that what is “aesthetically pleasing” always has been and always will be very subjective. I don’t personally find extreme body types in games and art inherently offensive, but I want the option of realism and I want at least some of the npcs in the world (in a non-massively multiplayer game) to be more normal. I’m not really interested in playing in a Hollywood fantasy land unless there’s actually a point for it in the game (and I mean like social commentary). I can rent big budget films any time I like if that’s what I want to see on the screen.
Also, I deeply object with your comment about characters in games being no more than playing pieces. This is akin to Ebert saying that games aren’t Art in my mind. I think 1) you are treating a subset of popular games as “the only kind of games that can or will ever be” and 2) have probably not played a number of very good but not highly publicized small games that do have three dimensional characters and well developed plots.
Big game makers don’t take risks, but that doesn’t mean that the medium can’t convey more than what they’re using it for. Or to state it differently, because 90% of everything is mediocre doesn’t mean you have to conclude that excellence is impossible.
Robin said,
September 22, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I’ve not claimed anything about historical practices, because the games sector of 15 or 20 years ago was unrecognisably different to today. Back then, lurid box (or cabinet) art on display in specialist outlets was often the first exposure most consumers would have to a title. Even by the time Tomb Raider first appeared in 1996, the sexualised marketing was designed primarily as a hook for the mainstream media (a stunt cribbed from Barbarian and still earlier games), not to address consumer demand (although it can’t have hurt).
Regarding standards of physical beauty, this again sounds too much like generalisation to me. Not every female character in every game is unrealistically proportioned or scantily clad, not anything like. Games where avatar customisation has been deemed important enough to be offered (RPGs, etc.) typically do offer the full spectrum of body shapes and sizes.
Maybe I didn’t make my point clear regarding ‘playing pieces’, as it shouldn’t be construed as belittling games. What I mean is that, even in games with a significant narrative/dramatic component, the characters must still serve game functions in addition to their roles in the story. A brilliantly written ally who routinely wanders into your line of fire is going to result in more annoyance than emotional investment.
Conversely, I take extreme offense at the idea that games that don’t *need* a character-driven cinema-aping story are somehow less valid. That’s not the only way that games communicate.
Eva said,
September 22, 2008 at 7:46 pm
See, in my eyes the marketing of today has very much grown out of the industry that was around 5, 10 or 15 years ago. When I look at the advertising poster child female characters chosen for many games, especially MMOGS, I tend to find them pretty uniformly scantly clad, strangely proportioned, and (where applicable) very poorly armored.
To tell you the truth I’m not inherently offended by this sort of marketing, but I do think it has all sorts of affects on people psychologically that we really ought to acknowledge. (Yes, I know games are not, by far, the worst offenders in trying to sell things with sex, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t complain.) Our society has so many problems with body image and self esteem that I just don’t think we really need to add more by having yet another aspect of our media that pushes unrealistic physical body type images on people every day. We could do so much better and still show plenty of beautiful and strong women in our games.
When I brought up standards of beauty I was not attempting to say that everything in every game is built to the same standard (please don’t try to put words in my mouth). I was attempting to say that your dig against Alan related to aesthetics was not very fair. What you see as aesthetically pleasing he may see as offensively exaggerated and vice versa. Everyone has different standards and I don’t think you’re allowing for that in your judgment of others’ opinions.
So… as far as your last two paragraphs go, I think you’re veering off into extremely misunderstanding me. I said nothing about how characters have to behave in a game, since I think this is generally not related to how they look. I do have strong feelings on this topic but I don’t really think they’re relevant to the current argument and to be honest they mostly have to do with my frustration with bad dialog (which can be entirely independent of any gender issues).
As far as the idea that games “*need* a character-driven cinema-aping story”, you are putting words in my mouth again. When I mentioned games with more highly developed characters I was speaking specifically to your point about characters as playing pieces. I suppose I can see how you may have confused some of my last paragraph, but my point there was not to say that most games suck. I was still trying to speak to the idea of innovatively interactive and highly developed characters being rare. Big companies usually don’t try to make them, because they are _hard_. I think this is sad, but I’m resigned to the fact that it is how things are and is not likely to change a lot.
If you want some examples of games that are more abstract (as in not visually realistic) or plot-light that I like, how about Okami (they weren’t shooting for realism), Katamari-damashi (it’s really both), or Mario 64 (I mean come on, the plot is like tissue paper thin…)? I certainly do think that you can make very good games which are not cinema-like or character-driven and over the years I’ve lost nearly all my taste for long RPGs.
Alan De Smet said,
September 23, 2008 at 12:04 am
This discussion has become too entangled, and I don’t see myself as adding anything more of significant value. My posts discussed a blend of my own beliefs as well as what I think Rosepixie was thinking, and in the process became a bit of a hash to further defend.
However, I would like to defend myself from a few things that are simply wrong.
I never assumed and certainly never said that “making characters aesthetically pleasing has to be sexually motivated.”
I never said GladOS was a positive role model. I just brought up Shodan because you did. I had in fact forgotten that GladOS had been discussed earlier. GladOS and Shodan are nearly identical. Of course, I don’t really see either one was meaningfully “female.”
I did not “selectively choose” male examples. They’re who sprang to mind. Thinking a bit more about games I’ve played, let’s see: the anonymous protagonist in Crackdown: another heavily armored tank. Niko from GTA4: hardly the Chippendale dancer Erik suggested. The entire Call of Duty series and Medal of Honor series: reasonably dressed men. The Prince of Persia seris, finally a game with a moderately sexualized character! He’s occasionally running around shirtless. Of course, he loses a few points when you compare him to his opponents. I’m thinking as hard as I can (but remaining too lazy to actually get up and look at my video games.
, and the Prince from Prince of Persia is as sexy as the men are getting. My original point, that Erik was silly suggest games have significant numbers of Chippendales dancers running around.
Robin said,
September 23, 2008 at 10:04 am
Eva: I see what you’re saying about modern game marketing, but the impression that I get is that the really tacky stuff you’re referring to (like Korean MMO boxart) is now seen as being incongruous. And I know that it doesn’t excuse anything, but looking at other media (particularly comics), the amount of casual exploitation used in marketing completely dwarfs games.
Also, it’s sometimes frustrating for creators too that their work is represented differently to their intentions in marketing materials. I recently saw a really saddening example of this regarding Cannon Fodder, a game with a very clear anti-war message, but a title which apparently is open to misinterpretation (in tone) by marketing copywriters.
Thank you for clarifying your position on the games/narrative stuff.
Alan:
“I never assumed and certainly never said that “making characters aesthetically pleasing has to be sexually motivated.””
“Every single fighting game is full of bad ass women who can kick your ass while wearing sexy, inplausible outfits. Oh, and Lara Croft is totally sexy, confident, sexy, powerful, and sexy. And she manages it all while still remaining sexy.”
I guess I just didn’t like what this was insinuating.
Regarding the whole ‘no sexy men’ thing, I think there’s kind of a double standard going on there. Or at least, that equating masculine sexual exploitation to naked biceps is a bit narrow, but I guess that was Erik’s mistake. Kratos, Leon S. Kennedy, Dante, Vega, Solid Snake = arguably sexy game men?
Eva said,
September 23, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I was actually thinking of City of Heros and City of Villians when I made the comments about MMO promotional characters. I don’t have anything against the personas and actual characters of their leading ladies (I quite like some of them), but my impression of them in the advertising art (back when I was actually playing) was overwhelmingly that they had gone in for the exaggerated stereotypes (which are certainly present in superhero comics, but aren’t the only kind of super heroines around!). To be fair to CoH and CoV, they do both have very good character generation tools of the sort I think more games should aspire to.
I agree with you that game marketing is only one drop in the ocean of bad marketing, but I think it’s worth trying to make it better. We need to to fight the smaller battles that we have some chance of winning. I’m not going to flatter myself that there’s any way I stand a chance having any perceptible impact on the problem in the media as a whole. I might (if I’m lucky and diligent) have some small impact on the very small market of gaming and through that some minuscule impact on dragging the whole towards the goals I see as better for society.
And yea, you’re totally right that marketing and the media in general can really suck when they only look at things skin (or name, as you say) deep. I try really hard to keep in mind that they aren’t nameless, faceless masses though. On average both groups are made up of normal people who are just trying to do the best they can at their boring every day jobs. If I want them to do better I need to tell them that I’m not happy with the choices they’re making now.
As kind of an aside, I think the paragraph you quoted from Alan was meant sarcastically towards some of the other folks earlier in the conversation.
Also, I think it’s neat that you’ve brought up the idea of a double standard, since that’s pretty much exactly what I think is going on in the portrayal of attractive women vs attractive men in media (and sort of what many of our arguments so far have been dancing around). I feel like some where along the line mainstream media got the idea that to be attractive a woman needs to be thin, buxom, and darn near naked (or at least wearing very tight clothing or showing a LOT of skin) while a man just needs to be athletic (in any of several body types) and flatteringly dressed.