Adventure Game Studio

Tomorrow is International Women's Day!

I'd like to ask: how women are doing in the videogames business these days?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Frauentag_1914_Heraus_mit_dem_Frauenwahlrecht.jpg/800px-Frauentag_1914_Heraus_mit_dem_Frauenwahlrecht.jpg)(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/8marta.jpg)

_

Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards looking at all the controversies and hate against new games that dare present strong female characters who aren't objects all while classic heroines like April Ryan and Kate Walker could be strong and nuanced protagonists wearing practical clothes without being questioned or accused of being pandering.

All the same I feel that this community has been great at making everyone feel welcome and that it has greatly encouraged me to keep making games and sharing my thoughts, and I've also been working on a new project with a female protagonist that I plan to add to the games in production thread soon.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/03/2019 22:52:16
Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards looking at all the controversies and hate against new games that dare present strong female characters who aren't objects all while classic heroines like April Ryan and Kate Walker could be strong and nuanced protagonists wearing practical clothes without being questioned or accused of being pandering.

Really? I didn't notice so much hate, almost in my country.   8-0

_

Quote from: TheFrighter on Sat 09/03/2019 08:52:42

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/03/2019 22:52:16
Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards looking at all the controversies and hate against new games that dare present strong female characters who aren't objects all while classic heroines like April Ryan and Kate Walker could be strong and nuanced protagonists wearing practical clothes without being questioned or accused of being pandering.

Really? I didn't notice so much hate, almost in my country.   8-0

_

Well, I think the Adventure game genre has been largely spared from the brunt of it, but I've seen lots of hateful comments surrounding many other games, and to name just one example the latest Battlefield got tons of hate for being "disrespectful to history" by letting people pick the gender and skin color of their avatar in a game set in WW2, whereas the 2004 game Silent Storm, also set in WW2 and you can pick the skin color and gender of your avatar, doesn't have a single review scolding the game for it.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/03/2019 22:52:16
Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards

I think there's a deliberate attempt by miscellaneous bigots to pull culture back to a completely imagined "good old days". If Jurassic Park were released now, people would say "Oh, they made the hacker a girl? She's a total Mary Sue." If Indiana Jones were made now, people would be yelling, "why did they make the baddies Nazis? Talk about virtue signalling! Keep politics out of entertainment!"

I'm not sure the adventure genre is immune either. I recently wasted a morning arguing in this Facebook P&C group https://www.facebook.com/groups/230349270493876/ with a few idiots who make it clear that CERTAIN people aren't welcome in nerd-dom. Last week someone posted the feminist frequency video where a trans woman journalist criticises Leisure Suit Larry because of the scene where a trans woman "hilariously" rapes Larry. Most people were NOT happy, deliberately misgendered her, were homophobic towards me for POLITELY telling them to "fuck off and die", and then started to talk about GamerGate and Cultural Marxism, as if both those scandals weren't totally imaginary. The same thing happened when Chuchel turned orange and they were FURIOUS that developers would deliberately try not to seem racist. Free speech, etc.

It annoys me, not only because P&C games were pioneered by several women devs. But because weird niche interests attract people who feel like outcasts. How dare these twats start gatekeeping? It infuriates me to see these emotionally stunted 30-year olds putting up a "no girls or gays" sign on their treehouse.

GamerGate is imaginary? Didn't what's-her-name publicly apologise for single-handedly making Mein Kampf a best-seller again? I'm paraphrasing.

GamerGate's harassment of women was 100% real. The "ethics in game journalism" scandals that allegedly kicked it off are totally imaginary. Just like the scandal of Sarkeesian "stealing" people's money by doing a Kickstarter to make 5 videos and then going on to make 20 videos, and then several other series of videos.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/03/2019 22:52:16
Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards looking at all the controversies and hate against new games that dare present strong female characters who aren't objects.

Unfortunately I feel the same.
Even now in my legal fight to save Tardigrades from cancellation, I've been accused of discrimination against women since all people were talking about are the male botanist and homosexual male characters. Omitting the fact that I have announced 5 strong female leads in the game since 2014.

My only response is: ¯\_(ãÆ'„)_/¯

(https://i.imgur.com/vIJhcRa.jpg)

Quote from: AnasAbdin on Sun 10/03/2019 15:47:32

Unfortunately I feel the same.
Even now in my legal fight to save Tardigrades from cancellation, I've been accused of discrimination against women since all people were talking about are the male botanist and homosexual male characters.

How many of the accusators are women?  ???

_

I can remember 3 women out of my head now, because I was naïve enough to try to defend the project against them. I found out later they were actually sent to bug me deliberately. They did leave a negative impact and some damage. I'm not accusing anyone with anything. It just sucks to be under fire for every word said.

Quote from: AnasAbdin on Sun 10/03/2019 15:47:32
I've been accused of discrimination against women since all people were talking about are the male botanist and homosexual male characters. Omitting the fact that I have announced 5 strong female leads in the game since 2014.

That sounds annoying, but it's not quite the same as people criticising games because they have prominent female characters.

It's true Ali, even though the effect is the same. But then the question of what defines a prominent character comes to mind. A character can be very strong and leaves a huge impact even if used in a very short role. Now we all can agree that most of adventure games have male leads, it sucks but it's true. But this doesn't mean I'd write a story just to fulfill an agenda or prove something to a group of people. If I was inspired to write a story with a female lead I'd make the game, most of my role models in life are women, but I just don't have a story ready in hand with a female lead.

Quote from: AnasAbdin on Sun 10/03/2019 17:41:41
I can remember 3 women out of my head now, because I was naïve enough to try to defend the project against them. I found out later they were actually sent to bug me deliberately. They did leave a negative impact and some damage. I'm not accusing anyone with anything. It just sucks to be under fire for every word said.

Yeah, one of the more frustrating strategies of these types is to, instead of openly criticizing a project they think is too progressive for being too progressive, they make up a false or exaggerated strawman claim that it's secretly bigoted and racist or sexist in the hope that naive people who genuinely think such things are wrong but haven't seen the project in question up close will swallow their bait and do their job for them.

In your case it's especially egregious considering that several female characters are already prominently visible in many of your clips and screenshots, and claiming a story is sexist just because the lead is a man is ridiculous. I consider myself a feminist yet I've too have made games where the central characters are men, simply because that's how I envisioned the characters and because their gender and background did play a role in the stories I wanted to tell, and I'm sure most would agree that just having a male main character or focus on the relation between two men isn't sexist in itself.

Quote from: Ali on Sun 10/03/2019 11:40:38
GamerGate's harassment of women was 100% real. The "ethics in game journalism" scandals that allegedly kicked it off are totally imaginary.

That part happened too. Whether the accusations are true or not is unknown. The fact is the things she had produced up to that point are like hourgames, but some "journalists" had made more out of this than was there, because "OMG IDZ A WOMENZ". But this wasn't gamergate either. Gamergate happened when practically everyone in the gaming press closed ranks when those accusations came to light. They were white knighting hard for the helpless damsel, and they provided most of the energy that went into that little storm. Oh, it happened. It changed the world forever.

You want to deny cultural marxism. These days you are not allowed to say anything that might hurt the feelings of any one, because that person's entire psyche might collapse and they kill themselves, and in the next moment you are expected to believe that this same person is not just capable, but strong. Forget cultural marxism, that was in the 60s. This kind of completely contradictive thinking is logical marxism. Beliefs decreed by the institution.

Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh comrades?

Jack - every single thing you've written is bollocks.

A game dev's embittered ex-boyfriend making unfounded allegations is not evidence of a scandal. The journalist she allegedly had an affair with didn't even review her game! If he had, then HE would be morally compromised - not her. And yet she was the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment, by sexist twats. And the morons they suckered in.

(I don't care if you don't like Quinn's game. It couldn't be less relevant.)

Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, is merely a revival of a Nazi conspiracy theory about (mostly Jewish) left-wing academics and degenerate artists destroying our traditional culture. It doesn't refer to a recognisable ideology, or a social movement. It's an anti-intellectual lumping together of disparate movements and academic disciplines.

GamerGate is weaponized, defiantly ignorant misogyny. Cultural Marxism is a phrase for alt-right half-wits who want to sound clever. If you're taking either of them seriously, I encourage you to reflect a little.

I didn't suggest that she banged all those dudes. I specifically said something like "Whether the accusations are true or not is unknown." I was just making the point that the accusations happened. And the frankly conspicuous actions of the gaming press following the accusations happened too. This last part was the start of gamergate proper.

Yes, of course the bogus allegations happened! But since they were bogus, I was right to say that the "ethics in game journalism" scandal was imaginary. I don't know how you can find it suspicious that some people in the gaming press took the side of an innocent woman who was the target of a hate campaign.

I don't want to hog this thread, we can all enjoy conspiracy theories. But some of these wacky theories do real harm, and hurt real people.

What they did is go off like a flare, like they got their hands caught in the cookie jar. It was conspicuous to the casual observer/gamer.

But yeah, so harmful these opinions that people have. But who will make sure the opinions we are allowed to discuss are the safe ones, comrade?

QuoteYou want to deny cultural marxism. These days you are not allowed to say anything that might hurt the feelings of any one, because that person's entire psyche might collapse and they kill themselves, and in the next moment you are expected to believe that this same person is not just capable, but strong. Forget cultural marxism, that was in the 60s. This kind of completely contradictive thinking is logical marxism. Beliefs decreed by the institution.

That's some ridiculous strawmanning if ever I've heard some. Whenever I hear "you're not allowed to say anything these days" I ask, why hasn't anyone thrown you in prison then? You can't advocate for free speech unless you're also prepared to accept that a great number of people will criticize what you say, and that also means accepting that many people today will criticize opinions they deem bigoted and harassing.

And speaking as someone whom had relatives living in Czechia back when it was ruled by an actual communist dictatorship, I find the casual allusion to one insulting. Back then, speaking up against the state meant you could legitimately end up in prison just because something you said, prisoners were isolated and abused until they were broken and even after they were released, they found themselves pariahs with no future and unable to get any job apart from the most demeaning ones. To compare that to people speaking back against you and some people getting banned from some forums for violating the rules (but still perfectly free to voice their opinions in other forums) is not comparable to a real communist dictatorship.

Quote from: Jack on Sun 10/03/2019 23:30:23
But yeah, so harmful these opinions that people have. But who will make sure the opinions we are allowed to discuss are the safe ones, comrade?

I don't think your stupid opinions are harmful. I think they're stupid. What's harmful are repeated harassment campaigns, led by people who share your opinions, that target women in games.

But Blondbraid is right, your free speech is intact. You can use it to support women-hating crybabies if you want.

Jack: again. Why are you here? And not some Incel subreddit?

Defending GamerGate in a thread about International Women's Day. It would be funny if it weren't so utterly pathetic.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 00:01:17
To compare that to people speaking back against you and some people getting banned from some forums for violating the rules (but still perfectly free to voice their opinions in other forums) is not comparable to a real communist dictatorship.

It's not there yet, but certainly on the spectrum. We already have the protected classes, who no one may speak about unless it's praise. It would be too late to point it out after it becomes illegal.

Not using transgender pronouns could get you fined (https://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-transgender-pronouns/)

You probably think this is great, helping all these strong characters who have no one to defend them, but in reality it's a legal penalty for saying the wrong thing. This was 3 years ago. When they figure out this law didn't help their cause at all, what comes next?

(Go hide in your tent, Khris)

That article makes it clear that accidentally using the wrong pronoun is not going to result in a fine. There's a lot of hysteria around legislation that protects trans people, because bullies like your GamerGate mates love playing the martyr.

Repeatedly and deliberately using the wrong pronoun for someone is bullying. Are the poor bullies being picked on? Boo hoo.

EDIT: Anyway, my point was that the adventure game genre seems to have its share of bigoted dimwits who think they're being victimised by women and minority groups. I'm grateful to Jack for backing me up.

Also, using someone's pronouns costs you absolutely nothing. Why would you want to regularly and willingly refer to someone as something other than their proper pronouns? What purpose does that even serve?

Quote from: Ali on Mon 11/03/2019 00:44:17
There's a lot of hysteria around legislation that protects trans people, because bullies like your GamerGate mates love playing the martyr.

Because it's a legal penalty for not playing into someone's delusions. This is a belief you have, a rather soviet bit of logic (but this is coincidental), which means to you that a man becomes a woman just because he said so. Including any of the dozens of made-up genders, with pronouns including "your majesty". It's just a belief system, and mandating that others have to believe in it too is the lowest form of insecurity.

What if you didn't personally benefit from legislation like this, or if it were about something you didn't believe in? What if you when you passed me in the halls of your building you had to give me the nerd salute and address me by rank, because if you don't help me feel like a real nerd, I could have you fined.

You don't have to believe anything, just respect your fellow human beings (and their harmless beliefs) in this society you are a part of. It's not that difficult.

Quote from: Ali on Sun 10/03/2019 00:52:03
If Jurassic Park were released now, people would say "Oh, they made the hacker a girl? She's a total Mary Sue." If Indiana Jones were made now, people would be yelling, "why did they make the baddies Nazis? Talk about virtue signalling! Keep politics out of entertainment!"

Very well summarized. Go to Youtube, look at the first 10 comments under any video about any pop-culture movie, and there are several comments that are basically along those lines.

In all this what women says? Female developers and female gamers are really concerned about all this?

_

Quote from: Jack on Mon 11/03/2019 01:54:28Because it's a legal penalty for not playing into someone's delusions. This is a belief you have, a rather soviet bit of logic (but this is coincidental), which means to you that a man becomes a woman just because he said so. Including any of the dozens of made-up genders, with pronouns including "your majesty". It's just a belief system, and mandating that others have to believe in it too is the lowest form of insecurity.

Shut up

Quote from: TheFrighter on Mon 11/03/2019 08:14:17

In all this what women says? Female developers and female gamers are really concerned about all this?

Short answer: Yes. There are plenty of women in the industry who've faced death threats and explicit threats of rape and sexual torture for the most petty reasons, just look at Jennifer Helper (https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-16-fan-harassed-writer-jennifer-hepler-leaves-bioware) for one example.

It reminds me of a quote by Margaret Atwood; Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them.

Quote from: Jack on Mon 11/03/2019 00:33:56

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 00:01:17
To compare that to people speaking back against you and some people getting banned from some forums for violating the rules (but still perfectly free to voice their opinions in other forums) is not comparable to a real communist dictatorship.

It's not there yet, but certainly on the spectrum. We already have the protected classes, who no one may speak about unless it's praise. It would be too late to point it out after it becomes illegal.

Not using transgender pronouns could get you fined (https://nypost.com/2016/05/19/city-issues-new-guidelines-on-transgender-pronouns/)

You probably think this is great, helping all these strong characters who have no one to defend them, but in reality it's a legal penalty for saying the wrong thing. This was 3 years ago. When they figure out this law didn't help their cause at all, what comes next?

(Go hide in your tent, Khris)

When it comes to protecting trans people, it's because they are disproportionally targeted for violence, assault and murder more than any other demographic and in some places it's still legal to kill a transgendered person if you were dating them when you discovered they were trans, the so-called trans-panic defense. As late as the 1970's in Sweden, one of the most progressive countries on the matter, the songwriter Cornelis Vreeswijk was involved in a scandal where he had attacked two transwomen with a kitchen knife and the newspapers played it for laughs, and Cornelis even got to publish a humorous song joking about the whole ordeal and remained popular. Just to get this straight, everybody laughed at him trying to kill two persons with a knife and even cut one of them, and there was a law in place that all trans people in Sweden had to be sterilized that wasn't removed until 2013.

If there is a slippery slope, it leans towards society regressing back a hundred years and not whatever imaginary dystopia you think of.
To me, the entire debate on weather society has gone too far and minorities have too many rights is frighteningly similar to the rhetoric that was seen in the Weimar republic before the nazis took hold. In the 1920's, Berlin was seen as a safe haven for queer and transgender people and there was even an institute for gender studies which housed some of the first known scientific text on transsexualism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft), but once the nazis took power (and they were able to take power exactly because the moderates and conservatives thought the nazis would respect the democracy once they were in power) all the writings and teachings of the institute were deemed degenerate and all texts burnt at nazi book burnings and the people teaching at the institute forced into exile, and the persecution of the queer, handicapped and political adversaries on the left became a way for the nazis to test the water and warm up the populous to the idea of exterminating large groups of people.

And I see similar worrying trends in right-wing nationalist movements today, in Hungary, Victor Orban has banned gender studies and an entire academic field of study became prohibited by law overnight. If you are so eager to defend the right of American people to misgender transpeople, all in the name of free speech, would you be equally ready to defend the right of the Hungarian students and teachers to exercise their free speech in order to teach and study subjects that the prime minister's party is uncomfortable with?

Don't do it.
Engaging with Jack and his "arguments" means he has "won". Just don't do it.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Sat 09/03/2019 17:56:36
Well, I think the Adventure game genre has been largely spared from the brunt of it, but I've seen lots of hateful comments surrounding many other games, and to name just one example the latest Battlefield got tons of hate for being "disrespectful to history" by letting people pick the gender and skin color of their avatar in a game set in WW2, whereas the 2004 game Silent Storm, also set in WW2 and you can pick the skin color and gender of your avatar, doesn't have a single review scolding the game for it.

I decided not to buy BF5 because of this. Allow me to explain the difference between the two games you described as examples and why your comparison of the two of them is nonsense:

BF5 was marketed as "the most immersive and realistic historical Battlefield experience to date" while showing non-realistic characters, events, equipment and situations. Dropping a V-1 rocket onto a french field or showing a british soldier with a samurai sword being just a couple examples, and yes, the female soldier with the robot arm being another.
I wound up playing some more Red Orchestra 2 instead, to get my realistic WW2 shooter fix. If BF5 was marketed more accurately for what it was, a fantasy rendition loosely based on a WW2 setting, I doubt there would have been any issue at all, seeing that the Battlefield series has had a proper sci-fi entry before. Instead the developers doubled down and went on to declare anyone questioning their marketing and game not aligning with one another a "bigot" or "uneducated" and stating that such people should "go read a book". Fine ways to alienate your core audience, and from what I've seen the sales were impacted as one can expect.

Silent Storm was a silly WW2 tactics game with nazi mecha suits and didn't pretend to be anything else.

This reminds me: I should really replay Silent Storm. It was good!

Just to place your non-bigoted opinion in context, WHAM, here is you saying there isn't a moral difference between the Nazis and the allies in WW2:

Quote from: WHAM on Fri 09/09/2011 17:13:31
If the Germans had won "The War" we would be having this exact same conversation, except for the fact that we would replace all swastikas with "stars-and-stripes" or "hammers-and-sicles", and instead of talking about how nazi's were evil, we would be talking about how the communists and capitalists were evil.

Names change, ideas do not.

Here's you saying the Nazis did some good things:

Quote from: WHAM on Fri 09/09/2011 17:26:29
I realize they did bad things, AND I realize they did good things.
Hey, isn't that true for ALL ruling powers in the world?

This Nazi discussion is actually quite pointless, so I will drop it for my part now.
The major difference is that I live in a country that was allied to the Nazis during The War and most of you guys lived, to my understanding, in countries who fought the Nazis.

Here's you saying that criminals aren't really human:

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 06/09/2011 12:14:30

Quote from: Ali on Tue 06/09/2011 11:43:04
Let me remind you, once again, that criminals are the same species as you and me.

We agree to disagree on this point.

Here's you calling for a "final solution" to criminal elements in our society:

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 07/09/2011 12:41:28

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Wed 07/09/2011 12:32:56
However, the solution (if one exists) is not to just shoot them all and say "problem solved". Just like you wouldnt cut your head off to cure a tooth ache.

What you describe is nuking the city where a criminal is caught, and even I would call that an overblown reaction.
What happens in real life is that the dentist identifies the tooth, realizes it is rotten and pulls it, to relieve the pain and keep any possible infections from spreading...

Sounds like my final solution, doesn't it?

(The criminals in question being the poor, predominantly black London rioters.)

So when I say far-right nutjobs are the ones pushing this regressive anti-women, anti-minority agenda, you chipping in doesn't convince me I'm wrong.

"I didn't buy a game because it wasn't exactly like the marketing promised"

Jesus Christ, I forgot about this. Here's WHAM complaining that the Holocaust is "seen in a purely negative light".

Quote from: WHAM on Sat 10/09/2011 15:39:03
On one hand there is never a good reason to start a war.
On the other hand there always is a good reason to start a war (For the Nazis it was mostly Lebensraum and international political power)

How I see it, the main reason for the Nazi regime's anti-Jew plans was twofold: Jews were a minority and thus easy to turn into scapegoats to unite the majority of the German people. In addition, in many areas it was the Jew populace that held great sums of money in gold, stocks and investments, and "relieving" these people of their riches was an easy way for the Nazis to fund their plans.

When you dig deep enough, there is always a reason for things like this. Whether or not it's a good or a bad thing depends on who you ask and how well the offender does his job.

If the Nazis had won the war, I highly doubt we would be here, pondering on "the poor Jews" and their misery. However, since the war went the way it did, the event we have labelled "the Holocaust" is seen in a purely negative light. No, I am not saying the Holocaus did not happen, nor that it wasn't a terrible thing to do, but what I am trying to do is have historical perspective and neutrality on the subject, instead of jumping on the global "oh the poor Jews" -bandwagon.

You're a fucking fascist.

Quote from: Khris on Mon 11/03/2019 13:16:51
"I didn't buy a game because it wasn't exactly like the marketing promised"

Clarification: I didn't buy a game because it wasn't what I hoped it would be, despite the game having been marketed as something I would have wanted.

Quote from: Ali
So when I say far-right nutjobs are the ones pushing this regressive anti-women, anti-minority agenda, you chipping in doesn't convince me I'm wrong.

You characterization of the BF5 issue was incorrect, so I corrected it so that people who were not perhaps as aware of the background could be made aware.
I have no issue with games that have minority or female characters, as long as the characters make sense for the setting and premise of the game.

As for the rest of my quoted statements (from 2011? Neat! I didn't realise I had a fan!), I stand by every single one and am happy to discuss or debate them elsewhere.

Yes I remember that thread, because I tend to make a note of WHO IS ACTUALLY A NAZI SYMPATHISER.

I don't know what BF5 is. It wasn't me who brought it up.

Holy crap, did things go off topic!
I mean, Gamergate was mentioned!
That thing's so old, that I made a comic about it two years ago, and it was old news even then!

Here's a shameless plug by the way:
(http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/images/comics/126/1628acdb390f81b6212c96d9cc4ba6cd1878610588.png)

Now to get back on topic.  :-D

The reason why I feel as though people are annoyed with things like International Women's Day, and the Battlefield fiasco, and so on, and so on. Isn't because of women. But because of the political correctness that's constantly being shoehorned in. People are wanting to rebel, because of how annoying it is. I mean, there's nothing inherently wrong with women in BF5 when you consider other similar games, which has the same thing, and which didn't cause any controversy. It was the way it was presented that was the problem, and the way they reacted to people disliking it.
Everything with women in it is being weaponized. I think a good example is the recent Wonder Woman film that came out a few years ago. I know someone who was actually going to go out of her way to NOT see it, because she thought it was just going to push an agenda, just because of how the news made it out to be. It's a damn good movie as well!

It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.
Of course you've also got the sexist pigs. Unfortunately on both sides. But loudmouths like them are present everywhere. And can usually be easily ignored. It's when you lump everyone who disagrees with you into that group that there's a problem.

As for how women are doing in the video game business these days.
As far as I can tell. Roughly the same as before. Make of that what you will.  :)

Quote from: Ali on Mon 11/03/2019 13:22:39
Yes I remember that thread, because I tend to make a note of WHO IS ACTUALLY A NAZI SYMPATHISER.

I take offense at being called a Nazi sympathiser as it is not a realistic or accurate depiction of my character. Same goes for the term "fascist", which you seem to be using incorrectly as well.
Don't worry, friend. I forgive your ignorance. Just please stop saying such nonsense so that we can remain civil.

WHAM: I fully agree that you are a fascist and a nazi sympathizer.

Danvzare: It is exactly that ignorant, simplistic, broad-brush and nuance-free thinking that pushes young frustrated men into the arms of the alt-right.

Khris: If such is your characterization, then there must be some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication. As before, I'll be happy to discuss, but it might be best not to hijack this threat with further unrelated chatter on the topic.

Danvzare: As with most modern issues of equality or inequality of the two genders, I think you identify the issue quite correctly. There was and is a natural trend toward a more balanced representation, but the hasty push for immediate change at the cost of other merits, such as artistic integrity, results in pushback and missteps that could have been easily avoided.

Quote from: Danvzare on Mon 11/03/2019 13:25:50
It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.

This is the same imaginary bad guy again. What "overcompensation?" Are the majority of video game characters women? Are most games marketed towards women? Are the majority of devs women?

You said yourself that women in video games are doing about as well as they used to. So what has the hostile pushback been against? It's been against a small handful of female creators, characters and performers who DARED to try to exist in nerd-bro-land.

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 11/03/2019 13:27:40
Don't worry, friend. I forgive your ignorance. Just please stop saying such nonsense so that we can remain civil.

Fuck you. Of course I'm not going to be civil with someone who uses the phrase ""oh the poor Jews" -bandwagon". Extremely fuck off.

Quote from: Khris on Mon 11/03/2019 12:05:54
Don't do it.
Engaging with Jack and his "arguments" means he has "won". Just don't do it.

I wish it was that easy, but many people just take a lack of answer as silent approval instead.  :(

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 11/03/2019 12:56:45

Quote from: Blondbraid on Sat 09/03/2019 17:56:36
Well, I think the Adventure game genre has been largely spared from the brunt of it, but I've seen lots of hateful comments surrounding many other games, and to name just one example the latest Battlefield got tons of hate for being "disrespectful to history" by letting people pick the gender and skin color of their avatar in a game set in WW2, whereas the 2004 game Silent Storm, also set in WW2 and you can pick the skin color and gender of your avatar, doesn't have a single review scolding the game for it.

I decided not to buy BF5 because of this. Allow me to explain the difference between the two games you described as examples and why your comparison of the two of them is nonsense:

Battlefield 5 did have the soldier's race and gender be historically accurate in the campaign, it was just in the multiplayer you could freely choose it for your avatar, and multiplayer fps by their nature aren't meant to be realistic simulations of war when people can effortlessly bunnyhop across the map and anyone can use any weapon without training. But even if you think it ruins your immersion or was a bad creative choice, do you think the developers deserve the death threats they got over the game?

And the female soldier in the trailer did not have a robot arm. It was an arm prosthetic, and it was accurate to what was available at the time, just look at this photo of a real prosthesis next to the woman in the trailer:
(https://i.redd.it/wpwynr488xz01.png)
And real people like Virginia Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall) and Douglas Bader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader) did get sent on dangerous missions into enemy territory despite having prosthetics. They're not exactly like the character in the trailer, but said character is not completely made up from nothing either.

Also, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus also got a ton of hate for being "an SJW game" and featuring women and people of color despite being an alternate history sci-fi game with nazis on the moon, so you can't use "historical accuracy" as an argument there.

QuoteThe reason why I feel as though people are annoyed with things like International Women's Day, and the Battlefield fiasco, and so on, and so on. Isn't because of women. But because of the political correctness that's constantly being shoehorned in.

The problem is that to a lot of people in anti-SJW circles, merely being a woman is seen as a political statement, and merely saying that you want women and minorities to receive the same respect as the men in the majority is "political correctness gone mad".

I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 13:37:10
Battlefield 5 did have the soldier's race and gender be historically accurate in the campaign, it was just in the multiplayer you could freely choose it for your avatar, and multiplayer fps by their nature aren't meant to be realistic simulations of war when people can effortlessly bunnyhop across the map and anyone can use any weapon without training. But even if you think it ruins your immersion or was a bad creative choice, do you think the developers deserve the death threats they got over the game?

Absolutely not. Harrassing people is never a solution, and I think the only real action people should have taken if they felt the devs made a mistake here, is to not buy the game.

As for the prosthetic arm: historically it makes no sense for a person with such an injury, male or female, to be running around jumping out of buildings in France. The female character here feels like an unrealistic and forced attempt to create the "ultimate cool girl" character. Fine from a marketing perspective, but unfortunate in the eyes of the players who view Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

Quote from: Ali on Mon 11/03/2019 13:36:35

Quote from: Danvzare on Mon 11/03/2019 13:25:50
It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.

This is the same imaginary bad guy again. What "overcompensation?" Are the majority of video game characters women? Are most games marketed towards women? Are the majority of devs women?

You said yourself that women in video games are doing about as well as they used to. So what has the hostile pushback been against? It's been against a small handful of female creators, characters and performers who DARED to try to exist in nerd-bro-land.

Holy crap! What is with the sudden spike in hostility!
I haven't seen this kind of shit storm, since Trump was elected.  8-0

The "overcompensation" isn't me saying that women are getting MORE representation. I'm saying that what representation they are getting, is being pushed more.
Am I making sense?

Look. Forget it. I'm out.
This is getting more hostile than when we talk about verbcoins. And at least then, people actually try to figure out the full intent of what someone is trying to say, rather than simply trying to find something to disagree with.

I recommend others to do the same.
Or at the very least. Wait a little bit before responding. I remember reading a long time ago (during a course I did) to never respond on a forum when you're emotional. And clearly this is a touchy subject for everyone here.

Quote from: Danvzare on Mon 11/03/2019 13:25:50I know someone who was actually going to go out of her way to NOT see it, because she thought it was just going to push an agenda, just because of how the news made it out to be.

TFW you have to go out of your way to NOT see a movie.

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 11/03/2019 13:41:51Fine from a marketing perspective, but unfortunate in the eyes of the players who view Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

TFW you are a player who views Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

Comrades,

Don't be too hard on Jack. I won't adress her directly because her insecurity in its lowest form expresses itself in seeing „white knighting“ and „cultural marxism“ everywhere. Her delusional belief system even goes as far as stating that a gender applied to you is something „natural“ and comes with your sex while a self imposed gender and pronoun are crazy soviet shenanigans. Jack just wants to speak up against the protected classes on their high horses before it's too late and thus must mandate that others have to believe in it.

In all seriousness though:

I'm glad that the AGS forums are still among the few rather nice places in the net where right-wing conspiracies and hatred (being defended by referring to „freedom of speech“) are not welcomed and don't go unchallenged.

The misogyny, especially as it expresses itself in the internet â€" from hateful comments to all the death threats - is disgusting. Defending all the despicable thoughts and behavior as freedom of speech is a poor disguise. Whining about censorship while spreading the hatred and even turning around the truth by playing the victim is as pathetic as it is common behavior nowadays. Many men babble about being treated unfair while all they really want is to protect their privilege to treat women (and many other people) like shit without having to fear consequences.*

Really, the misogyny is breath-taking.


*This is sometimes described as „These days you are not allowed to say anything that might hurt the feelings of any one“. These are some really hard times...

Edit: Phew! A lot of new comments. Mine may not be up to date ;)

Quote from: Danvzare on Mon 11/03/2019 13:52:01
Holy crap! What is with the sudden spike in hostility!
I haven't seen this kind of shit storm, since Trump was elected.  8-0

The "overcompensation" isn't me saying that women are getting MORE representation. I'm saying that what representation they are getting, is being pushed more.
Am I making sense?

I don't think I was actually rude to you, but it's possible that some of my anger at WHAM for being a fash has spilled over.

I still think what you're saying doesn't make sense. How can "overcompensation" be the right word if women aren't getting MORE representation - at worst, wouldn't that just be "compensation"? What makes it worthy of a hostile backlash? Is it reasonable to hold the victims of hate campaigns responsible for the existence of those hate campaigns?

Quote from: Danvzare on Mon 11/03/2019 13:25:50
It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.
Of course you've also got the sexist pigs. Unfortunately on both sides. But loudmouths like them are present everywhere. And can usually be easily ignored. It's when you lump everyone who disagrees with you into that group that there's a problem.

There's no point on the political spectrum that is inhabited exclusively by saints, but I think it's a false equivalence to talk about "both sides" as somehow equally bad in this case. For example, it's been demonstrated in several studies that women face significantly more threats and harassment online, and that the harassment they receive is more violent, sexual and gendered. That women expressing views labeled feminist (or sometimes just opposed to the "alt-right") are particularly targeted is readily seen. This is a problem beyond "the Internet is full of assholes", and needs to be acknowledged in debates such as this if it is to proceed on a sound basis.

As for "can usually be easily ignored" – no, that's no longer true. For one thing, that level of harassment of individuals can be traumatic in itself; for another, the most hateful voices are successfully making a lot of the Internet inhospitable to mainstream participants (just look at any unmoderated comments section on anything even vaguely related to politics), driving out any positive dialogue and creating radicalizing echo-chambers (assisted by some really bad algorithmic biases in services like YouTube and Facebook), which is a real democratic problem. I mean, you just said you're withdrawing from this thread, and this is nothing compared to the vitriol seen in many online spaces. Thirdly, while the so-called "alt-right" is still relatively small overall, it now wields real political power in a number of countries, and is able to punch above its weight online through targeted campaigns. For example, Captain Marvel was recently targeted by a flood of negative user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes: receiving more ratings before its release than Avengers Infinity War has racked up to date. This obviously had nothing to do with the quality of the film, just a backlash against a film about a female superhero and the mildly feminist girl-power stance of its marketing. Stupid as it may seem, film companies do care about things like this, and are generally conservative in trying to avoid controversy (no matter how ginned-up).

In that context, I think it's only natural that other criticisms (e.g., according to trustworthy reviews I've seen, Captain Marvel is only so-so) can sometimes be mistrusted as a front for hostility based in misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. After all, on the Internet, it very often is. If your position is one that is mainly taken by bigots, you might have to be pretty careful how you express it if you don't want to be taken for a bigot. (And also, maybe if the web is overflowing with criticism ranging from reasonable to hateful of something or someone, and most of it inspired by bigotry, you don't have to add your voice to that choir even if you have valid points.)

Snarky:
(https://media.giphy.com/media/5xtDarmwsuR9sDRObyU/giphy.gif)

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 13:37:10
I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

Much has been made about this, it seems to be your entire basis for why people should be censored when not speaking highly of the protected classes. But how many of these threats have been confirmed as real? You accused people on the other side of the spectrum of complaining that "progressive" games are bigoted and racist, in a fantastically devious attempt to make others think such things are wrong, but do you really think just "the other side" is capable of this kind of duplicity? Ali made the bold statements that 100% of the hate was real, even though gamergate itself was not. Is it impossible that some pantyfa type sent themselves a bunch of death threats with swastikas on them, just so they can say "look how attacked we are"? Is everyone on your side good? Is it impossible that there were some Jussie Smolletts on the "good" side of gamergate? 100% real?

Shut up

I honestly can't be arsed to read all of this, I'm not sure what has prompted Khris to say shut up so many times, but it's hilarious!!! I also think, in my honest honest opinion, that political/heavy discussions like these, shouldn't be done over a forum. It won't work, and it always result into namecalling. Concerning Captain Marvel, the people flooded it, because Brie Larsson has said some inflamatory things over the past few weeks, and people were trying to get back to her by downvoting the movie, cause people are dumb sometimes, and can't separate an actor/actress from a movie. I haven't seen the film, but I've seen the Room and Brie was fantastic in it!!

What I personally think, I am 300% with any diversity as long as it's not there for the sake of diversity. A badly written character is a badly written character no matter what minority it represents.
I think also we need to move on from "why isn't Batman asian/black/trans/whatever" and actually instead of trying to change a character that applies to a demographic, actually write new characters that represent and are more relatable to people.

"Be excellent to each other" is what I think we should all do.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16
I honestly can't be arsed to read all of this, I'm not sure what has prompted Khris to say shut up so many times, but it's hilarious!!!

I don't think you would find it as hilarious if you actually read the context. If you can't be bothered to read any of the previous posts, why are you taking time to write a long reply?
Snarky has basically already debunked your argument in his post.

Quote from: Jack on Mon 11/03/2019 21:12:32

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 13:37:10
I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

Much has been made about this, it seems to be your entire basis for why people should be censored when not speaking highly of the protected classes. But how many of these threats have been confirmed as real? You accused people on the other side of the spectrum of complaining that "progressive" games are bigoted and racist, in a fantastically devious attempt to make others think such things are wrong, but do you really think just "the other side" is capable of this kind of duplicity? Ali made the bold statements that 100% of the hate was real, even though gamergate itself was not. Is it impossible that some pantyfa type sent themselves a bunch of death threats with swastikas on them, just so they can say "look how attacked we are"? Is everyone on your side good? Is it impossible that there were some Jussie Smolletts on the "good" side of gamergate? 100% real?

You haven't actually read any of the stuff me or Matti or Snarky has written on why this stuff is dangerous if that's your takeaway, and you still haven't answered my question about the Hungarian ban on gender studies.

Real criminals like Eliot Roger, Alek Minassian and Breivik have been radicalized online and have killed real people because of their beliefs, and when death threats and hatred is normalized it's only a matter of time until someone else is emboldened to kill or hurt people, and what you see as harmless jokes they see as approval of their abuse, and the hatred is real, unlike the "censorship" you imagine.

But seriously, wasn't it enough that you got the World Suicide Prevention Day thread locked thanks to your "jokes" and prevented everyone else from sharing their thoughts there, are you going to derail this thread until the Moderators lock it down too?

It seems impossible to have conversations with people who refuse to engage with reality.

Insubstantial and malicious allegations against women are spun into an absurd "soviet" conspiracy, while *years* of actual, well-documented harassment, and violent misogynist attacks are all being faked by professional victims. It's like talking to flat Earthers, but not fun. I can forgive the sheer stupidity of it, but not the essential lack of compassion.

To address the OP's question, this recent thread from Jessica Price is not encouraging https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1105186403741134849

Quote from: Blondbraid on Mon 11/03/2019 23:36:24
Real criminals like Eliot Roger, Alek Minassian and Breivik have been radicalized online and have killed real people because of their beliefs, and when death threats and hatred is normalized it's only a matter of time until someone else is emboldened to kill or hurt people, and what you see as harmless jokes they see as approval of their abuse, and the hatred is real, unlike the "censorship" you imagine.

But seriously, wasn't it enough that you got the World Suicide Prevention Day thread locked thanks to your "jokes" and prevented everyone else from sharing their thoughts there, are you going to derail this thread until the Moderators lock it down too?

I thought it was them darn video games that made the kids shoot people. Oh right, there wasn't internet in those days.

The joke in that thread was hilarious, it was followed by tomes of shocked descriptions of gross emotional victimisation and swearing, and then the thread got locked. Because jokes like that cause real hurt to real people and school shootings too. At the very same time you can't lament that they're not allowed any more, because obviously you can still say anything you want (as long as there's no conceivable way that anyone at all would be offended by it). This doublethink, which is expected of everyone, to me has an exceptionally soviet ring to it.

Regarding the Hungarian false equivalency: My problem with misgendering becoming a legal offence has nothing to do with rights, it's about not wanting to be forced to share anyone else's goofy beliefs. I don't trust in rights because I'm old enough to know how fast they get taken away when they're not convenient.

Quote from: Ali on Sun 10/03/2019 00:52:03

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/03/2019 22:52:16
Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards

I think there's a deliberate attempt by miscellaneous bigots to pull culture back to a completely imagined "good old days". If Jurassic Park were released now, people would say "Oh, they made the hacker a girl? She's a total Mary Sue." If Indiana Jones were made now, people would be yelling, "why did they make the baddies Nazis? Talk about virtue signalling! Keep politics out of entertainment!"

I'm not sure the adventure genre is immune either. I recently wasted a morning arguing in this Facebook P&C group https://www.facebook.com/groups/230349270493876/ with a few idiots who make it clear that CERTAIN people aren't welcome in nerd-dom. Last week someone posted the feminist frequency video where a trans woman journalist criticises Leisure Suit Larry because of the scene where a trans woman "hilariously" rapes Larry. Most people were NOT happy, deliberately misgendered her, were homophobic towards me for POLITELY telling them to "fuck off and die", and then started to talk about GamerGate and Cultural Marxism, as if both those scandals weren't totally imaginary. The same thing happened when Chuchel turned orange and they were FURIOUS that developers would deliberately try not to seem racist. Free speech, etc.

It annoys me, not only because P&C games were pioneered by several women devs. But because weird niche interests attract people who feel like outcasts. How dare these twats start gatekeeping? It infuriates me to see these emotionally stunted 30-year olds putting up a "no girls or gays" sign on their treehouse.

As I see it, either you allow criticism or you don't. You don't get to choose whether criticism is allowed based on whether you agree with it.

When I see someone saying complaining about a black Stormtrooper, I say to myself, "well, that's not how I feel about it" and move on with my life.

I apologize.

Quote from: Jack on Tue 12/03/2019 01:10:01
, it's about not wanting to be forced to share anyone else's goofy beliefs.

So am I getting this correct, you think that being transgender is a "goofy belief" and you really want to misgender trans people because you don't think they're legitimate? Because the vast, vast majority of people are gonna ask for he/she/they. And even if it was an exotic pronoun, is it any different from having an unusual name?

That moment when Jack is talking about other people's "goofy beliefs".

Jack: shut up

Everybody else: don't quote him. Don't engage with him or his "arguments". If you do, he "wins". Just don't.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16
What I personally think, I am 300% with any diversity as long as it's not there for the sake of diversity. A badly written character is a badly written character no matter what minority it represents.
I think also we need to move on from "why isn't Batman asian/black/trans/whatever" and actually instead of trying to change a character that applies to a demographic, actually write new characters that represent and are more relatable to people.

Amen to that. Taking existing characters and twisting them to fit something new can work (see some of the weird alternative universe Batman comics), but the readers will start to feel something is off when such changes are done to serve some ulterior motive or agenda. That's when you get pushback and fans abandoning a product. We need more interesting characters, stories and settings. As long as they are well made and interesting, small details like gender or race of a character become the spice that completes a character, giving them flavour and helping them stand out. But if that identity is all the character is (Look! I wrote a transgender Mexican communist superhero! Why don't people like my creation?) then it all falls apart.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16
"Be excellent to each other" is what I think we should all do.

Tell that to the name-calling bigots, eh? Not a shred of civility or manners in some people.

TFW the only fans you care about are disgusting young white males, and they are abandoning your product.

Also, look! The fascist is demanding civilty! That's a new one.

Quote from: Gurok on Tue 12/03/2019 01:19:43
As I see it, either you allow criticism or you don't. You don't get to choose whether criticism is allowed based on whether you agree with it.

When I see someone saying complaining about a black Stormtrooper, I say to myself, "well, that's not how I feel about it" and move on with my life.

Criticism is fine. I was talking about abuse and bullying that's designed to discourage feminist or left-wing criticism. As well as being homophobic and transphobic, a number of people in the Facebook thread I mentioned called for the OP to be banned because she posted a video where a trans woman criticised Leisure Suit Larry. So I'm not overly panicked about the 'censorious left'.

We have to agree that there are limits on acceptable discourse if we want to have a worthwhile and respectful conversation. That's why forums have moderators, and why comment sections are hellish.

If our conventions allow the abuse of gay and trans people, but you can't criticise Al Lowe's jokes, then I think we're in trouble. If we tolerate the abuse of people for their sex, sexuality, etc. then some people are driven out of the conversation and we lose their input.

On the other hand, if our conventions say we must be polite in response to "Nazis had their good points," then we're doomed.

WHAM: Did you read the link on Virginia Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall)? She was a Brittish spy who fled across the Pyrenees on foot whilst hunted by the Gestapo and did it all with a prosthetic leg, and was so good at guerrilla warfare she got to train three battalions in how to do it. People with prosthetics did get sent behind enemy lines and into enemy territories in WW2, even if it wasn't common. The battlefield trailer takes a lot of liberties, but it's clearly not marketed as gritty and realistic. There is a tank decorated with a statue horse head, people doing crazy acrobatics and a guy with a sword on the battlefield, but somehow, it's the woman who got everyone up in arms over breaking immersion.

Quote from: Khris on Tue 12/03/2019 07:59:02
That moment when Jack is talking about other people's "goofy beliefs".

Jack: shut up

Everybody else: don't quote him. Don't engage with him or his "arguments". If you do, he "wins". Just don't.

Jack's proven himself as a hypocrite who thinks his right to make "suicide is gay" jokes in a thread specifically meant for safe discussion is more important than the right of those genuinely suffering to have a place to share their experiences without being mocked for it, thinks fining people for willfully misusing pronouns is a horrible violation of free speech but Hungary banning anyone from teaching and discussing gender studies isn't, and willfully misunderstands or ignores any arguments against him in order to accuse everyone who disagrees with him of wanting soviet dictatorships.

And I never claimed Eliot Roger, Alek Minassian and Breivik became criminals because of video games, I say it's because they were radicalized in the internet in their echo chambers where people "joked" that women and minorities weren't human for long enough that they started believing it for real, and they left behind manifestos explicitly explaining this. Even if the vast majority of people even in those forums just thought they were making edgy jokes or "just telling it how it is", some people did start believing it for real and use it as a justification for killing real people.

To anyone else reading this, here is a link to the suicide prevention thread (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56449.0;all) Jack got locked down, and you can see for yourself whether Jack's description of the thread in his comment above is accurate.

Quote from: Gurok on Tue 12/03/2019 01:19:43

As I see it, either you allow criticism or you don't. You don't get to choose whether criticism is allowed based on whether you agree with it.

When I see someone saying complaining about a black Stormtrooper, I say to myself, "well, that's not how I feel about it" and move on with my life.

Like Ali said, no one want's to ban criticism, but bullying and harassment isn't criticism, and there is a double standard where explicit threats and slurs hurled against people criticizing pop culture is brushed off as just harmless jokes and something that should be tolerated while anyone speaking up against the abuse gets painted as an evil boogieman trying to censor everything.

Sorry if I have a hard time just bowing my head down and accepting it when one group of people says that I am less than human and makes jokes about how people like me should be abused and mistreated, and everyday in the news I see new stories of people like me getting killed or abused so it's not just jokes to me, and a group of "enlightened centrists" then comes along and says that I'm just as bad as the people sending death threats because I want there to be forums where I can speak out freely without fear of facing threats and harassment just because of a trait I was born with.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 09:40:17
WHAM: Did you read the link on Virginia Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hall)? She was a Brittish spy who fled across the Pyrenees on foot whilst hunted by the Gestapo and did it all with a prosthetic leg, and was so good at guerrilla warfare she got to train three battalions in how to do it. People with prosthetics did get sent behind enemy lines and into enemy territories in WW2, even if it wasn't common. The battlefield trailer takes a lot of liberties, but it's clearly not marketed as gritty and realistic. There is a tank decorated with a statue horse head, people doing crazy acrobatics and a guy with a sword on the battlefield, but somehow, it's the woman who got everyone up in arms over breaking immersion.

Nobody is questioning whether or not people did some great feats of endurance, skill and resilience during a time of war, prosthetics or not. Alas, when the head producer of BF5 went on twitter claiming that "women served as frontline troops and fighter pilots just as men did" while also professing that he felt the need to lie about such things to his daughter because "otherwise she'd feel left out from history", that raised some eyebrows. No wonder said head producer quit the company just before BF5 released. I'd imagine there was some pressure to be rid of him.

As for the trailer: that was my key issue with Battlefield 5 to begin with, though. They said "realistic and immersive" and the first trailer gave us the exact opposite. No wonder there was backlash. Add to this the same aforementioned producer claiming that he "wanted to make Battlefield more like Fortnite" because his daughter wanted to have flashy clothes in daddy's game, and... yeah. Wrong genre for that.

Quote from: Khris on Tue 12/03/2019 08:53:38
Also, look! The fascist is demanding civilty! That's a new one.

It's not nice to call Dualnames a fascist, Khris. Get your act together.
Truth be told, I am starting to think you are a bit confused as to what "fascist" means. Look it up sometime. It'll do you good to civilize yourself.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 09:40:17The battlefield trailer takes a lot of liberties, but it's clearly not marketed as gritty and realistic. There is a tank decorated with a statue horse head, people doing crazy acrobatics and a guy with a sword on the battlefield, but somehow, it's the woman who got everyone up in arms over breaking immersion.

Lol, that were my thoughts immediately when I learnt about the whole issue. I posted similar comment on ags discord few months ago. Did not want to post this here earlier because thought it's trivial (well, still do).
(The WW2 shooters have long became something like a "ww2-punk" where all that's left from ww2 are general references to the epoch. An attraction where players run around shooting people like in any other tournament game. This random BF5 video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK5vuPeEoX0) I found begins with a soldier occasionally shooting rocket launcher (panzerschreck?) on the run, dropping it then getting another one from the backpack.)


Reading something like a twitter post (https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1105186403741134849) linked above always leaves me in a mix of confusion and disbelief, thinking that my social experience is way too little to understand what is going on. I worked twice in a companies where there were women programmers. In one of them, we were porting some mobile games, at some point the relation of men and women was 1:1 (this could also be because the company was hiring students). In another there was one female programmer who was treated as a senior colleague.

Was it about game industry in general or in USA? Do they speak of company's attitude or players' attitude that discourage female developers? I knew there are lots of unhinged assholes in the web (partially why I tend to ignore social networks), but it's bizzare to hear people are actually leaving jobs because of that.

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 12/03/2019 10:46:04
Truth be told, I am starting to think you are a bit confused as to what "fascist" means. Look it up sometime. It'll do you good to civilize yourself.

I dunno man, should we really be more civilized by the standards of a dude that thinks the Nazis did good things (they didn't, they were evil and completely incompetent), that people are just jumping on the bandwagon of "those poor Jews" and not being rightfully mortified by a systematic genocide of over six million people, and that we should murder any criminals in cold blood. And when given an opportunity to disown these statements, doubled down on them.

I dunno man, is that civility?

The fascist doesn't like being called a fascist! That's a new one.

Holy fuck you people like to write.

1-ignore all media writing on Sarkeesian and just watch her videos, they have lots of important insights and she speaks clear English, She is a good speaker.

2-Again, ignore media, if you want a fun movie, watch Captain Marvel, it's also has graphically amazing moments. And lots of nostalgia.

I lost track of all the arguments, but yeah, those two things caught my attention. Also, people attaching historical realities to Battlefield are delusional, next thing they will ask realistic physics and complain their characters don't die for lack of hygiene.

Quote from: Scavenger on Tue 12/03/2019 11:41:51
I dunno man, should we really be more civilized by the standards of a dude that thinks the Nazis did good things (they didn't, they were evil and completely incompetent), that people are just jumping on the bandwagon of "those poor Jews" and not being rightfully mortified by a systematic genocide of over six million people, and that we should murder any criminals in cold blood. And when given an opportunity to disown these statements, doubled down on them.

I hate to derail the thread further, but since I keep being attacked, I feel the need to defend myself.

"dude that thinks the Nazis did good things"
> While I do not think it lessens any of the bad things the Nazi regime did, I believe their actions promoted certain avenues of industry and science that have had positive impact on human society. See for example: advances in rocketry allowing space exploration, with both US and USSR rocket programs being based on German wartime advances and run by captured german scientists.

"the bandwagon of "those poor Jews"
> I've never questioned the existence of the holocaust. Hell, I've been to Poland and seen Auschwitz myself, I know full well what the realities were and what the impact of the systematic destruction of the Jews in Europe has been. My only issue with the subject is that people who were not part of the issue are using that particular point in history to milk it for personal gain, while forgetting many other equally meaningful manmade disasters that killed as many or more people. I wish only to promote historical accuracy and balanced perspective, rather than mythmaking.

"murder any criminals in cold blood"
> I've never said this. I have said, however, that I support the death penalty or any other useful end-solution to the worst of criminals in situations where the burden of proof is overwhelming. I do not see any issue with a 100% veritably proven serial child-rapist being cut open to harvest organs to save more valuable lvies or to educate medical students. Such extreme individuals have no worth in society and do not deserve human rights.
In cases where the amount of proof is lesser or the crime is lesser, current levels of punishment are mostly agreeable to me (although Finland has a particularly lax system of laws when it comes to many crimes, such as a child molester walking free after just 2-3 years in prison, which I find is inadequate punishment).


Once again, I remain mystified which one of these statements makes me a fascist.

Quote from: Khris on Tue 12/03/2019 11:54:09
The fascist doesn't like being called a fascist! That's a new one.

It is, isn't it? I'm pretty sure actual fascists and neo-nazis wear such titles with pride.
I await an apology, that is all I have left to say on this matter, and should anyone wish to further slander me, feel free to do so via Discord, email or PM so as not to further divert this thread.

The fascist doubles down on his fascist rhetoric while still insisting it's not fascist. That's a new one.

Here is WHAM saying we should shoot protesters when protests turn violent:

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 09/08/2011 11:29:31
When a peaceful protest turns violent, the truly peaceful protesters, if they have a brain cell between them, will leave the area when the police arrive.
Thus all thats left on the streets are the hoodlums and anarchists. I say "if they don't follow orders, shoot a few, see if they learn a lesson".

I quoted you saying you "realize [the Nazis] did good things" and lamenting that "the event we have labelled "the Holocaust" is seen in a purely negative light", and you said you stood by those remarks. When Khris calls you a fascist, you wheedlingly imply he's "uncivilised".

You see the good side in fascist regimes, while also advocating murderous authoritarianism.

You're a fascist.

And I'm shocked you haven't been banned from this forum.

Quote from: Ali on Tue 12/03/2019 12:08:32
Here is WHAM saying we should shoot protesters when protests turn violent:

I'd like to ask what is the alternative that civilized societies suggest? Like when the protesters (or "protesters") start breaking property and injure policemen?

I'm pretty sure this thread is headed for a lock anyway, so what the hell...

Again, I stand by my word and think that "protesters" who harm people and property, lighting fires and injuring police officers, should be suppressed to allow an actual discourse and demonstration to take place.

Quote from: Ali on Tue 12/03/2019 12:08:32
You're a fascist.

And I'm shocked you haven't been banned from this forum.

I am equally shocked your uncouth and slanderous arse has not been banned from this forum.
Alas, for the time being, we shall simply have to agree to disagree on matters of principle and politics.

At least I can walk away from this farce with my dignity, while you can simmer in your hateful rhethoric and buzzwords like the bitter little things you appear to be.

Have a pleasant day, everyone.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16
Concerning Captain Marvel, the people flooded it, because Brie Larsson has said some inflamatory things over the past few weeks, and people were trying to get back to her by downvoting the movie, cause people are dumb sometimes, and can't separate an actor/actress from a movie.

I'm not sure what you heard, so just to be clear, this is what Brie Larson was reported saying:

"About a year ago, I started paying attention to what my press days looked like and the critics reviewing movies, and noticed it appeared to be overwhelmingly white male. So, I spoke to Dr. Stacy Smith at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, who put together a study to confirm that. Moving forward, I decided to make sure my press days were more inclusive. After speaking with you, the film critic Valerie Complex and a few other women of color, it sounded like across the board they weren't getting the same opportunities as others. When I talked to the facilities that weren't providing it, they all had different excuses."

"Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I'm not … [but if] you make the movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie and review your movie. [Audiences] are not allowed enough chances to read public discourse on these films by the people that the films were made for. I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn't work for him about ‘[A] Wrinkle in Time.' It wasn't made for him. I want to know what it meant to women of color, to biracial women, to teen women of color, to teens that are biracial."

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16I haven't seen the film, but I've seen the Room and Brie was fantastic in it!!

Agreed!

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16What I personally think, I am 300% with any diversity as long as it's not there for the sake of diversity. A badly written character is a badly written character no matter what minority it represents.

The flip side of that is that a well written character is a well written character no matter if their demographic identity was chosen for the sake of diversity. And diversity also opens up room for other, interesting stories.

Making Spider-Man black got us Into the Spider-Verse. Making Starbuck a woman added some great texture to the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Turning Willow gay provided character development, storylines and dramatic scope for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Creating a fantasy world inspired by Chinese culture instead of medieval Europe gave us Avatar: The Last Airbender. All these decisions were made partly out of a desire for better representation â€" not just for ideological reasons, but because it broadens the appeal to a wider audience, and as a creative decision because it feels more true to the world.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16I think also we need to move on from "why isn't Batman asian/black/trans/whatever" and actually instead of trying to change a character that applies to a demographic, actually write new characters that represent and are more relatable to people.

I think writing characters "that represent and are more relatable to people" is exactly what media companies and creative types are trying to do. And given that American and European pop-culture has been so heavily dominated by white, straight and (in some genres and types of roles) male characters, one of the ways of doing that is to ensure better representation of other demographics. (And if the argument is that these demographic characteristics shouldn't matter to the people seeking demographic representation, then… what does it matter? If it really doesn't matter, then why freak out because some character is not white, or not male, or not straight? Why are people whining about the heroes of the new Star Wars movies being a woman and a black guy?)

To my mind, geekdom ought to appreciate the value of representation, since so much of the appeal of superheroes, science fiction and fantasy has been as a way for the awkward outsider kid/ teen to feel a connection to these aspirational role models: high school loser Peter Parker who secretly has superpowers, Ender Wiggins who gets bullied for being smarter than everybody else and ends up saving the world. Harry Potter who escapes from his abusive family to learn that he's a wizard and the Chosen One… When some piece of media, some character feels like it's making a connection with you in a way that you don't usually experience, that's really powerful. We should be happy that other outsider groups get to experience that.

Instead, it appears that many of us (the grown-up, mostly white, mostly male, mostly straight geeks) have gotten so entitled that even pointing out that “hey, so much of this stuff is primarily made for this particular demographic group; we should make some more stuff that's primarily for these other people as well”, or “this stuff actually was made for these other people, so maybe let's hear what they think of it” are taken as inflammatory statements that justify boycotts, hate campaigns and outright harassment.

I have no sympathy whatsoever.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Tue 12/03/2019 12:21:02

Quote from: Ali on Tue 12/03/2019 12:08:32
Here is WHAM saying we should shoot protesters when protests turn violent:

I'd like to ask what is the alternative that civilized societies suggest? Like when the protesters (or "protesters") start breaking property and injure policemen?

There are all sorts of non-lethal ways of dealing with violent protests. Like... Britain isn't the best country, but protests here don't usually end with the police firing live ammunition into crowds. Smashing windows and setting fires is bad. Murdering protesters is what tyrants do.

I would like it to be noted, that me (and maybe Khris) being really aggressive towards WHAM has encouraged him to consider withdrawing from the discussion. This illustrates how people withdraw when they are attacked. It's why we shouldn't attack people for things they have no control over like their sex, gender, race and so on.

I think Snarky and Blondbraid make some great points above. Regarding the "diversity is OK, it's the pandering I hate!" argument - what about all the terribly-written pop culture franchises that pander to straight, white male fantasies? What about all the crappy Stallone and Schwarzenegger films? Why have I literally never heard someone accuse them of pandering?

<Mod hat for a second>:

Saying the Nazis also did good things (because “some think our attitude should be one of gratitude; like the widows and cripples of old London Town, who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun” â€" yay rockets!), or that there are other historical atrocities that don't get the attention of the Holocaust, are facile statements next to the enormity of the crime, but fall well short of being bannable. More positive defenses of genocidal ideologies would however qualify.

And it seems to me that when Ali calls WHAM a fascist, that is a sincere belief based on WHAM's stated views, not just a term of abuse. People may judge for themselves how well it fits, but it is not an obviously unreasonable characterization (OTOH, I wouldn't say the quotes given prove it, either). Also not bannable, therefore, though this does not mean it's a free-for-all for all sorts of accusations.

It can be difficult to balance disallowing personal abuse and allowing people to express strong disapproval of views they find abhorrent, and we won't always get it right. So all participants are better off playing it safe: don't say (borderline) shitty things.

Quote from: Dualnames on Mon 11/03/2019 21:58:16
"Be excellent to each other" is what I think we should all do.

That would certainly make moderating a lot easier.

If it helps, I'm happy to replace "fascist" with the more precise "sexist right-wing authoritarian with fascist leanings".

Ali & Kris

Nicely done.
You hijacked the thread about women rights, for your personal hatred & egoism.
You must feel like a real humanitarian heroes now.
When you identify as a feminist & LGBT rights activist and start throwing dirt towards other members, you're not smearing other members...
You are smearing feminists & LGBT rights activists.
People like you is the reason, why so many view negatively these movements and want nothing to do with them.

I didn't mean to dominate in this thread, but I think a sensible conversation is difficult when people start seriously defending GamerGate. I haven't identified myself as a "feminist & LGBT rights activist". I'm not an activist, I just hold the (apparently radical) opinion that sexist hate campaigns and the actual Holocaust don't have an upside.

Holding one person responsible for what others do is wrong. If you want an excuse to view feminists & LGBT rights activists negatively, you don't need me to give you one.

EDIT: I can't believe it's necessary to say this, and I can't be bothered to reply to Jack's comments below but - of course I don't support, deny or diminish mass killings by the USSR. Nothing I've said would suggest I do. I just haven't mentioned them because it's not relevant. Whereas WHAM's views are relevant to my observation that the misogyny and double-standards faced by female developers are related to regressive right-wing online extremism.

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 11/03/2019 13:27:40
I take offense at being called a Nazi sympathiser

Hint: That's literally the thing you're known for on the forums: You're the guy who always somehow adds a sprinkle of Oberschuzkriegsturmfuhrer to everything, and somehow brings edgy opinions (euphemism) to every discussion. You're the neighborhood nazi.

Remember this one? That was a good one :

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 06/09/2011 12:14:30

Quote from: Ali on Tue 06/09/2011 11:43:04
Let me remind you, once again, that criminals are the same species as you and me.

We agree to disagree on this point.

@janleht : That's what womens' rights day is about: Reminding the world that every time someone says "hey, women should be equal to men", there's always some people crawling from under their rocks to say "ACTUALLY please don't make too much noise because you sound hysterical. And that goes for you too, LGBT, black people and every discriminated group. I'm all for freedom provided oppressed people ask nicely". So, you see, no digression here. And I think you're the one who should think twice, not Ali.

Nevermind.

WHAM: Regarding historical accuracy, that if it was truly about accurately representing the soldiers present in the war, wouldn't writing women and minorities out of a story be equally bad as adding them in? Just for example, Call of Duty: World at war took place both on the eastern front and in the pacific, yet we do not see one single woman in the game despite 800.000 women served in the Red army, and none of the Asian groups serving in the soviet army is seen either, and in the pacific campaign we only ever see white Americans and Japanese soldiers, despite the fact that there were tons of native south Asians living in the pacific during the occupation and native american code speakers played a huge role in the US army, and the same can be said for Red Orchestra and a whole bunch of other WW2 games that completely erase the women and ethnic minorities in the Red Army, yet that's somehow seen as an acceptable break from reality, but adding fictional black and female soldiers isn't?

And in Battlefield 1 they did limit female soldiers so that you could only play as a woman if you played as a member of the Russian women's battalion of Death, a real historical group of female soldiers, but it still got a ton of hate for being "historically inaccurate" and accused of being pandering.

Maybe we should rename the thread to 'International Women's Day thread (otherwise known as a place where dudes can hash out past arguments)'?

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 12/03/2019 08:38:18

(Look! I wrote a transgender Mexican communist superhero! Why don't people like my creation?)

Ehi, I could pay for a game like that!   (laugh)

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Tue 12/03/2019 11:10:19

I worked twice in a companies where there were women programmers. In one of them, we were porting some mobile games, at some point the relation of men and women was 1:1 (this could also be because the company was hiring students). In another there was one female programmer who was treated as a senior colleague.

Thanks Wizard! I'd appreciate  more experience of working with women programmers from all of you...

_

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 14:37:13
WHAM: Regarding historical accuracy, that if it was truly about accurately representing the soldiers present in the war, wouldn't writing women and minorities out of a story be equally bad as adding them in? Just for example, Call of Duty: World at war took place both on the eastern front and in the pacific, yet we do not see one single woman in the game despite 800.000 women served in the Red army, and none of the Asian groups serving in the soviet army is seen either, and in the pacific campaign we only ever see white Americans and Japanese soldiers, despite the fact that there were tons of native south Asians living in the pacific during the occupation and native american code speakers played a huge role in the US army, and the same can be said for Red Orchestra and a whole bunch of other WW2 games that completely erase the women and ethnic minorities in the Red Army, yet that's somehow seen as an acceptable break from reality, but adding fictional black and female soldiers isn't?

On the eastern front the female soldiers presence makes far more sense, although even the russians tried to keep female units from direct front line combat for the most part. Including them in Battlefield 5 as part of a Soviet force was something I saw a lot of people on the forums advocating for, as that would have made a lot more sense, and I agree with that. I wouldn't mind including soviet female soldiers in Red Orchestra 2, either, although the devs have long since moved on and are currently working on their Vietnam game.

You also mentioned black soldiers, but at not point have I had problem with their inclusion. The Americans brought plenty of those in, so as part of the US forces those make perfect sense. For the red army the inclusion of Siberien and Mongolian sorts would also make sense, but for some reason those particular parts of the world don't get much representation in media, either. Nor does anyone seem to be complaining of it, either, which is a bit odd.

The issue in the whole Battlefield 5 argument boiled down to the developers outright lying, claiming that something was historically accurate when it was not, and blaming their would-be customers of being ignorant, uneducated and sexist rather than facing the facts. I'm not sure if it was purely misunderstanding and miscommunicating on the devs side, or if they mistook the loud minority who actually did have a problem purely with the inclusion of women in the game as the entirety of their critics and reacted to that rather than the actual complaints held by most.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 14:37:13
And in Battlefield 1 they did limit female soldiers so that you could only play as a woman if you played as a member of the Russian women's battalion of Death, a real historical group of female soldiers, but it still got a ton of hate for being "historically inaccurate" and accused of being pandering.

Battlefield 1 had a lot of other issues, mostly with historical accuracy and the general design of the game, so I decided not to buy into it early on. Thus I wasn't even aware of this inclusion. I'd think this would be another case of a tiny but loud minority complaining of something most people would not find much of an issue. The Russians have a far longer history of allowing females to fight in their armed forces (or rather, lacking the conviction and organizational control of other armies to keep their women away from the front lines) so for them such an inclusion makes more sense. A British female soldier with a missing limb, blue facepaint and a cricket bat leaping out of buildings in France, however, is far more out there.

All said, as I think I mentioned before: Dice and EA had a really simple solution in their hands, of simply omitting the whole "realism" spiel from their marketing and instead being more open and honest about what they were trying to do with the game: a flashy, fun, exciting and free game that was loosely based on World War. Sure, some people would have still complained, but those complaints would have had a lot less ground to stand on if the developers had been more honest to begin with.

Option B: Skip the whole World War 2 setting. They already had Battlefield 2142, why not go for another futuristic game and use that as basis for including all the crazy character models, hair colours and pink armour they wanted and let the players have fun with it? I already answered this in an earlier post, but still... it would have made the game so much more sensible.

Quote from: Ali on Tue 12/03/2019 13:56:25
I didn't mean to dominate in this thread, but I think a sensible conversation is difficult when people start seriously defending GamerGate. I haven't identified myself as a "feminist & LGBT rights activist". I'm not an activist, I just hold the (apparently radical) opinion that sexist hate campaigns and the actual Holocaust don't have an upside.

No one was defending gamergate, I was simply fascinated by your statement that it never happened. I was leaving this thread be with its conflicting logic, marxist posters and all. It was your intellect that dazzled me into responding.

And from the quotes it seems that WHAM was referring to the economic turnaround that Germany had before WW2. Germany had collapsed after WW1, the whole German nation was dirt poor. It wasn't the nazis, but Adolf Hitler that made Germany prosperous practically overnight. Knowing this will give you some insight into why the German people was ready to follow him into hell.

You probably think I'm singing his praises, that I'm a "nazi" too, but this is just history. Things that happened in history, like the soviets killing 11 million Russians (extremely conservative estimate). But this is so dangerous to your world view, you can't even look at it or admit that it is real. Furthermore, you regard people that know these facts as supporting them.

WHAM, Battlefield have had more goofy and less realistic installments in the past, such as Battlefield: Bad Company, or even more extreme, Battlefield Heroes, which was set in WW2 yet full of cartoon physics and you could give your avatar a whole bunch of historically inaccurate gear, so it's not like the franchise was permanently destined to be realistic.

And with both Battlefield and Call of Duty: WW2, the campaign was historically accurate in the roles presented for women, there were less than a handful of female characters and they all were SOE personell or members of the resistance, it was just in the multiplayer people got to choose if they wanted to play as women, and all female avatars you see is because there are people who want to play as women.

And you haven't answered my question, why is it ok to write women out of history, but not add them into historical events? Shouldn't CoD: World at War or Red Orchestra receive just as much criticism as Battlefield got for excluding women from the events where real women fought and died?

As for the executive not wanting his daughter to feel left out, I can relate 100%. As a woman and a history buff, I feel endless frustration at how this is seen as some impossible combination that shouldn't exist and how everyone just accepts the notion that women didn't do anything in the war. I'm sick and tired of seeing countless war movies and video games either omit women altogether or reduce them to girlfriends waving their soldier boys goodbye, brutalized victims that only exist to show how evil the enemy is, or in the best case scenario you get one token resistance girl or femme fatale spy who does nothing but get captured so the male hero can rescue her. And when you do point out that female snipers and pilots and guerrilla fighters did exist, the overwhelming majority of people either respond with disbelief because that's not what pop culture has taught them, or they acknowledge that the female soldiers were all super interesting and they'd personally totally watch a movie or buy a game about them, but it just wouldn't be commercially viable because girls don't care about WW2 and we get yet another regurgitation of the Normandy landings instead, and FYI, there was a woman participating in the landings (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/d-day-150000-men---and-on_b_5452941.html), but not one single story about the landings thought she was worth including in their adaption even as a one second cameo.

One of the biggest reasons I started making AGS games in the first place was exactly because I couldn't find any women in WW2 games that weren't just a token sidekick or a seductress spy or nazi dominatrix played for fan service, so making my own game from scratch felt like the only way I'd get to see a capable and non-sexualized female soldier play a big role in the story. For comparison, anyone wanting to see a heroic white guy as a WW2 soldier have an entire smörgåsbord of hundreds of games in all kinds of genres to pick from, ranging from gritty realism to complete cartoon fantasy.

For that reason, Battlefield and CoD including female avatars feels like a step in the right direction to me. Yes, women as frontline soldiers for the Brittish and the US isn't representative of real history, but at least the developers recognized that there are women who are interested in WW2 and might want to play a WW2 game with a character that looks like them, and just maybe this might pave the way for WW2 games that centers on real historical people that aren't generic american soldiers. Battlefield 5 sold over 7 million copies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KRBeBAWhhQ) and made more than it's money back, and the only reason it's counted as below expectations is because the AAA game industry is broken and CEO's have ridiculous expectations on profits and growth that aren't sustainable.

Quote from: Jack on Sun 10/03/2019 21:27:44Gamergate happened when practically everyone in the gaming press closed ranks when those accusations came to light. They were white knighting hard for the helpless damsel, and they provided most of the energy that went into that little storm. Oh, it happened. It changed the world forever.

Quote from: Jack on Sun 10/03/2019 22:23:25I was just making the point that the accusations happened. And the frankly conspicuous actions of the gaming press following the accusations happened too. This last part was the start of gamergate proper.

Quote from: Jack on Mon 11/03/2019 21:12:32Is it impossible that some pantyfa type sent themselves a bunch of death threats with swastikas on them, just so they can say "look how attacked we are"? Is everyone on your side good? Is it impossible that there were some Jussie Smolletts on the "good" side of gamergate? 100% real?

Quote from: Jack on Tue 12/03/2019 18:15:52No one was defending gamergate

Shut up

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
WHAM, Battlefield have had more goofy and less realistic installments in the past, such as Battlefield: Bad Company, or even more extreme, Battlefield Heroes, which was set in WW2 yet full of cartoon physics and you could give your avatar a whole bunch of historically inaccurate gear, so it's not like the franchise was permanently destined to be realistic.

Isn't that pretty much in line with my point, though? Why didn't they call BF5 one of those? Why did they market it as "immersive and realistic" if they wanted to have V-1 rockets dropping into french fields and japanese samurai sword wielding British officers and all the rest of that?

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
And with both Battlefield and Call of Duty: WW2, the campaign was historically accurate in the roles presented for women, there were less than a handful of female characters and they all were SOE personell or members of the resistance, it was just in the multiplayer people got to choose if they wanted to play as women, and all female avatars you see is because there are people who want to play as women.

You mean the fictional norwegian woman of BF5 who played a role that was historically accomplished by an entire squad of male norwegian soldiers? I see...

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
And you haven't answered my question, why is it ok to write women out of history, but not add them into historical events? Shouldn't CoD: World at War or Red Orchestra receive just as much criticism as Battlefield got for excluding women from the events where real women fought and died?

I don't think it is ok to write women out of history. I've never said so and I don't believe in doing so.
The only thing I object to is trying to represent people, within historical settings, in roles that are not historically accurate. Say: representing black SS soldiers on the german side. Or crippled women in frontline combat roles. Sure, you can do both of those, but please don't claim it to be "realistic".

Saying that Red Orchestra or World at War "wrote out" women by not representing them, when the games take place in conflicts where 99% of the active participants were male, is a bit much though. Red Orchestra 2 takes place in Stalingrad. Sure, females manned most of the anti air guns there, but were pulled back and did not actively engage in direct combat with the german ground forces, which is what the game represents. While I'm sure individual cases exist where female soldiers DID engage in frontline combat, their number is vanishingly small considering the scale of the conflict.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
As for the executive not wanting his daughter to feel left out, I can relate 100%. As a woman and a history buff, I feel endless frustration at how this is seen as some impossible combination that shouldn't exist and how everyone just accepts the notion that women didn't do anything in the war. I'm sick and tired of seeing countless war movies and video games either omit women altogether or reduce them to girlfriends waving their soldier boys goodbye, brutalized victims that only exist to show how evil the enemy is, or in the best case scenario you get one token resistance girl or femme fatale spy who does nothing but get captured so the male hero can rescue her. And when you do point out that female snipers and pilots and guerrilla fighters did exist, the overwhelming majority of people either respond with disbelief because that's not what pop culture has taught them, or they acknowledge that the female soldiers were all super interesting and they'd personally totally watch a movie or buy a game about them, but it just wouldn't be commercially viable because girls don't care about WW2 and we get yet another regurgitation of the Normandy landings instead, and FYI, there was a woman participating in the landings (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/d-day-150000-men---and-on_b_5452941.html), but not one single story about the landings thought she was worth including in their adaption even as a one second cameo.

Again I agree with you. Girls should have rolemodels in videogames and girls should hear about the real stories of the women who did great things for the war cause. They should learn of the females who ended up accidentally participating in dogfights over England while relocating planes from the factories to the airbases. They should learn of the resistance fighters. They, just like boys, should learn history.

You kind of make my point here as well. Over 1.3 million men invaded Normandy, and only one woman did. Why should that one woman be elevated from the masses onto a pedestal? Because of her gender alone? What about the man who changed the beach with a bagpipe and a sword? What about all the other million and some individual human stories? Why is this one woman more valuable and worthy in your eyes than all the others? She is no less a hero than any other, but neither is she any more so.

What Mr Söderlund said was that he "could not bring himself to tell his daughter that women weren't there" when she asked her father why she "never saw any women in war, running around and having fun in the trenches". He lied to his child because, for some reason, he cannot deal with actual history.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
One of the biggest reasons I started making AGS games in the first place was exactly because I couldn't find any women in WW2 games that weren't just a token sidekick or a seductress spy or nazi dominatrix played for fan service, so making my own game from scratch felt like the only way I'd get to see a capable and non-sexualized female soldier play a big role in the story. For comparison, anyone wanting to see a heroic white guy as a WW2 soldier have an entire smörgåsbord of hundreds of games in all kinds of genres to pick from, ranging from gritty realism to complete cartoon fantasy.

That is awesome, though! I am personally pained by my biggest game project, with a female protagonist, ending up lost due to hardware failure after years of work. If people can come up with interesting female characters and want to tell their stories, I am all for it. Again, just not in cases where doing so conflicts with realism, and the creator lies about that conflict.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 12/03/2019 22:19:31
For that reason, Battlefield and CoD including female avatars feels like a step in the right direction to me. Yes, women as frontline soldiers for the Brittish and the US isn't representative of real history, but at least the developers recognized that there are women who are interested in WW2 and might want to play a WW2 game with a character that looks like them, and just maybe this might pave the way for WW2 games that centers on real historical people that aren't generic american soldiers. Battlefield 5 sold over 7 million copies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KRBeBAWhhQ) and made more than it's money back, and the only reason it's counted as below expectations is because the AAA game industry is broken and CEO's have ridiculous expectations on profits and growth that aren't sustainable.

There is no disagreement here, either. Including female avatars is fine and welcome.
Claiming they represent historical realities in the battlefield, just like the aforementioned V-1 weapons being misused or the completely region inappropriate equipment displayed, is not welcome to me. Others are free to disagree and to purchase and enjoy the game, of course.

The free market will decide in the end. All I can do is state my opinion and decide where to invest my own money.

QuoteThere is no disagreement here, either. Including female avatars is fine and welcome.
Claiming they represent historical realities in the battlefield, just like the aforementioned V-1 weapons being misused or the completely region inappropriate equipment displayed, is not welcome to me.

If that's so, then why is all the criticism I've seen almost entirely centered around women and not that the game is too lighthearted or gritty/realistic for it's intended tone? All talk about how historically inaccurate women are sure makes it look like female avatars aren't welcome.

QuoteIsn't that pretty much in line with my point, though? Why didn't they call BF5 one of those? Why did they market it as "immersive and realistic" if they wanted to have V-1 rockets dropping into french fields and japanese samurai sword wielding British officers and all the rest of that?

Once again, I didn't see the trailer with the swordsman marketing itself to be realistic, and to me at least it was pretty clear from the start that they were trying to make the campaign realistic and the multiplayer a fun playground.

QuoteYou mean the fictional norwegian woman of BF5 who played a role that was historically accomplished by an entire squad of male norwegian soldiers? I see...

Firstly, I didn't say she was real historical person, but that her role as a resistance fighter was historically possible, and similarly all the other campaigns are realistic when it comes to the race and gender of all the characters, but the german tank commander, colonial french soldier and British bank-robber are just as fictional as the Norwegian girl.

Secondly, all other games that feature the heavy water sabotage (like CoD and Enemy Front) also replace the Norwegian squad with their own original hero, the only difference is that Enemy front replaced the Norwegian men with an american dude, yet I haven't seen a single person criticize Enemy Front for that. And as for the Norwegians, I don't think any AAA game will ever make an accurate depiction of their mission because they completed it without firing a single shot and the only human they encountered was a janitor that agreed to leave them in peace, without any action or visible danger. But it's not like the Norwegian men were written out of history either, they got several movies, a TV-series and a Sabaton song dedicated to them. Meanwhile, how many war movies or video games are centered around female soldiers? I found one Russian B-movie about Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Enemy at the gates featured Rachel Weiz briefly helping Jude Law kill a german before being reduced to a hapless love interest in a love triangle.

QuoteSaying that Red Orchestra or World at War "wrote out" women by not representing them, when the games take place in conflicts where 99% of the active participants were male, is a bit much though.

QuoteYou kind of make my point here as well. Over 1.3 million men invaded Normandy, and only one woman did. Why should that one woman be elevated from the masses onto a pedestal? Because of her gender alone? What about the man who changed the beach with a bagpipe and a sword? What about all the other million and some individual human stories? Why is this one woman more valuable and worthy in your eyes than all the others? She is no less a hero than any other, but neither is she any more so.

Because even if women were just a small minority, they were still there, but thanks to decades of pop culture telling people otherwise there are tons of people who legitimately think no women at all participated in the war, that all women didn't want to participate and that women are physically incapable of being soldiers. And I never said that the female journalist needed to be placed on a pedestal or painted as a hero, I just wondered why, out of all the hundreds of movies and games depicting Normandy, they couldn't have a brief 30 second cameo of her before dedicating all the rest of the work to the everyman soldiers who fought there?

Secondly, from what I've seen, the argument that it's ok to automatically write them out by default just because there were so few of them is only ever applied to women and non-white, non-straight people. Meanwhile, William Adams was a white man and one of only a handful of non-japanese people in the entirety of Japanese history to ever become a samurai, yet despite being an extreme minority he's had several books, movies, TV-series and even a big AAA-game inspired by his life, and no matter what historical era or setting, you can easily find a fictional story of it where a white man is included.

I know it's hard to explain what it feels like not being represented to white men, because when boys grow up, they get to see characters that look like them in all possible roles and all kinds of settings, but as a girl, far too often you only get one character who is the token girl, if you ever get any at all, and even stories exclusively aimed at girls still have prominent male characters in them.

I ask you to do a thought experiment and try and imagine a media landscape where male characters are treated the same way and entire genres and forms of media are considered "not for boys". Imagine that some marketing executives in the 80's had arbitrarily decided that boys don't like video games and decided to exclusively market games to girls, and all game commercials centered around girls playing games with female characters, and of the few male characters ever appearing in games, nearly all of them were Justin Bieber-like figures only meant to pander to teen girls. And virtually all games were sci-fi or fantasy games centered around princesses and of the few games that did exist in a historical setting, the developers almost exclusively focused on regency-era romances or similar stuff they thought would appeal to women. Try and imagine a world where no WW2 fps existed because nobody thought they would sell because "boys don't play games" and a AAA game focusing on a male-dominated field would be unthinkable, and the only mainstream games that actually had a wartime setting were games where you had to play as a field nurse tasked with rescuing as many injured soldiers as possible. All games in a WW2 setting would exclusively focus on the nurses doing their job and their interactions with their female colleagues, any part of the nurses lives that featured them interacting with male personell would be deemed superfluous and not included in the games, and the only men you'd ever see would be nameless soldiers who's only job was to cry and whimper whilst waiting for the nurses to rescue them.

Now imagine that one AAA WW2 nurse franchise actually did feature playable men, in that the player could choose to play as a male nurse, and sure, it'd be unhistorical and including male medics and men in historically accurate roles had been vastly preferable, but if the only way you'd ever get a chance to play as a competent male character whom looked like you and you could identify with that was set in an era you were greatly interested in was to play as a gender-swap of a female character, and game developers might only consider the possibility of including more men in historically accurate roles if this game proved successful, but could just as easily use the backlash as an excuse to never do a WW2 game with a male protagonist again, would you be just as eager to criticize it then?

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 11:21:31Meanwhile, how many war movies or video games are centered around female soldiers? I found one Russian B-movie about Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Enemy at the gates featured Rachel Weiz briefly helping Jude Law kill a german before being reduced to a hapless love interest in a love triangle.

I don't personally remember a movie about Lyudmila Pavlichenko (is it the one from 2015? I found it by googling), but most "canonical" female soldier story in Russia (or many former USSR countries perhaps) is "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" based on the novel. There's a 1972th version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFaMcnqCwM), and also a newer film which I did not see. It's curious that according to the novel's author his book was based on a story he once overheard when serving a war correspondent. That story happened to a squad of male soldiers, but he deliberately changed them to females because they were underrepresented in a war stories of the time.

Female soldiers are not unusual in soviet or russian war movies in general. It's hard for me to make a list right out of the head because I never memorized them by this factor. Usually they are field medics or staff officers, but there were exceptions.

PS. Oh, I don't know if that counts, but there's a classic "The Hussar Ballad" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqjgS0hdrEc) about Napoleonic Wars, the main character is a young female aristocrat who joins Hussar regiment disguised as a man (kind of Mulan-like story :D). It's a comedy, but very loosely based on a real person.

I'll just respond to two of Blondbraids key points here.

1) Why did so much negativity in the case of Battlefield 5 seem to be directed at the inclusion of women?

My answer: a tiny minority that got way too much attention, who actually had an issue with women being included. Their voice drowned out the far more numerous but less enthusiastic discussions of the actual issues with the games marketing and resulted in a negative image both ways. Such voices gaining so much attention is an unfortunate reality of modern society.

In conclusion: both the game developers and marketers, and the community around them, dealt with the issue poorly and communicated poorly.


2) Why aren't ware movies and games depicting the tiny minority of women involved more?

My answer: because of the target audience. I've known numerous women in my life, but only a single one among them has ever had any interest in war movies or games. The others had no interest and generally found the idea of discussing or consuming movies or games related to wartime history bland, boring and dull. They were, however, more than happy to discuss things such as royal dresses throughout history, or the marriages and related intrigue across Europe. Meanwhile, among my male friends, almost all of them enjoy such content. As movie or game makers investing large amounts of money into these products, people will want to draw the attention of their target audience. I welcome more varied looks into war and history, and I welcome the inclusion of female characters in those settings, but those will require content creators who actively create and market their work, and for content consumers to find and enjoy that content. Based on the previously mentioned demographics, I'm sure we can both see why those women's stories will not find it easy to find audience in our societies.

As we've seen, female protagonists are finding much more success in non-historical genres, such as superhero fiction or empowering human drama, because those genres are more readily consumed by broader female audiences, alongside their male counterparts. We are also seeing more games with female protagonists in various genres coming in, which is a fine trend and I hope to see it continued.

EDIT: side note
You mention toward the end a scenario about playing a male character in a female dominated genre of games. That doesn't really apply to me, at least, though I know some people who would be bothered. I am quite happy to play games with female protagonists and have no issue sympathizing with them or being immersed in their stories myself. I see what you are trying to say with your hypothetical scenario, but it doesn't quite represent reality in my experience. I'll be happy to be proven wrong here. Would be nice to find more women interested in wartime history to chat with and get more insight into events in those time periods I might have overlooked.

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Wed 13/03/2019 12:04:34

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 11:21:31Meanwhile, how many war movies or video games are centered around female soldiers? I found one Russian B-movie about Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Enemy at the gates featured Rachel Weiz briefly helping Jude Law kill a german before being reduced to a hapless love interest in a love triangle.

I don't personally remember a movie about Lyudmila Pavlichenko (is it the one from 2015? I found it by googling), but most "canonical" female soldier story in Russia (or many former USSR countries perhaps) is "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" based on the novel. There's a 1972th version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFaMcnqCwM), and also a newer film which I did not see. It's curious that according to the novel's author his book was based on a story he once overheard when serving a war correspondent. That story happened to a squad of male soldiers, but he deliberately changed them to females because they were underrepresented in a war stories of the time.

Female soldiers are not unusual in soviet or russian war movies in general. It's hard for me to make a list right out of the head because I never memorized them by this factor. Usually they are field medics or staff officers, but there were exceptions.

I haven't played a lot of russian videogames about war so cannot tell anything about these. I think "Metro 2033" series have a female soldier sidekick, but that's fantasy so maybe do not count.

PS. Oh, I don't know if that counts, but there's a classic "The Hussar Ballad" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqjgS0hdrEc) about Napoleonic Wars, the main character is a young female aristocrat who joins Hussar regiment disguised as a man (kind of Multan-like story :D).

Thanks for the tip, I've already seen "The Hussar Ballad" and I liked it, I'll try and watch the other movie you linked once I find the time!
(Edit: I've seen the "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" now and it's a good movie save one gratuitous sauna scene, and while the rest of the movie is great it's still incredibly frustrating to have to sit through a bunch of pointless nudity in order to see a good war movie with female soldiers, and I can't imagine any mainstream war movie doing that to male soldiers.   :()

However, as for Metro 2033, it's set in the post-apocalyptic future and whilst one of the books did have a female protagonist, the all the central characters in the first game were men and the only women were extras, a mother thanking you for rescuing her son, and a prostitute who only served to set up a joke where the protagonist could get robbed. Not really a great treatment of women, but it was such a small part of the game that I was able to ignore it and play the first game. However, I deliberately skipped out on the second Metro game since while there was indeed a female soldier sidekick, she was a damsel who got rescued by the male hero and later thanked him by subjecting the player to an unskippable sex scene where we see the male hero have sex with her from a first-person view.  :-X And the post apocalyptic society in the game, despite everything else being in ruins, features a theater where women who look like perfect lingerie models dance around in bikinis, which just feels incredibly immersion breaking in addition to sexist and off-putting.

It just highlights the massive and disgusting double standard in some game developing studios, because no one would even dream of making an action game, not a porn game, an action adventure where the player has no choice but to watch the protagonist have sex with a naked man in order to proceed, and if they did it would stir massive outrage amongst all male gamers. In fact, when Final fantasy did try to introduce a male character in a sexualized costume (that was still tamer than what the women were wearing), there was such a massive backlash that they were forced to change his design. (https://www.technobuffalo.com/square-enix-adjusts-mevius-final-fantasys-silly-title-and-revealing-outfit) Meanwhile women are expected to grin and bear it or be labeled as puritans and get told that video games aren't for them.

WHAM: The negativity and hate wasn't by a small vocal minority, the overwhelming amount of comments were about women and they were nasty.

Also, saying WW2 stories aren't made for women because women don't care so it's not worth it is a circular argument. Plus there are women who do care, even if you don't see many of them in your day life. I've never met a single person who knows what the AGS engine is in person, yet here on the forums there's hundreds of people willing to discuss it, and the same goes for women who would like a good WW2 movie or video game with female characters. As I mentioned before, Battlefield 5 sold 7 million copies (for comparison, the entire population of Sweden during WW2 was 6 million people!) and I've met plenty of women online who've played and appreciated it.

People also used to say female superheroes wouldn't sell, because superheroes are for boys, yet both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel made massive hits at the box office, exactly because there was a huge untapped market for that.

You also didn't answer my question on the hypothetical scenario, that if your only option for playing as a character who looked like you in a setting you were interested in was to play a gender-swap of a female character, would you still ask for it to be cut out on grounds of historical accuracy?

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 13:00:40
WHAM: The negativity and hate wasn't by a small vocal minority, the overwhelming amount of comments were about women and they were nasty.

On the internet, a few hundred people can produce thousands and thousands of posts. That's still a tiny minority, and even if their number was larger or their post count higher, they'd still be in the wrong in my eyes.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 13:00:40Also, saying WW2 stories aren't made for women because women don't care so it's not worth it is a circular argument. Plus there are women who do care, even if you don't see many of them in your day life. I've never met a single person who knows what the AGS engine is in person, yet here on the forums there's hundreds of people willing to discuss it, and the same goes for women who would like a good WW2 movie or video game with female characters. As I mentioned before, Battlefield 5 sold 7 million copies (for comparison, the entire population of Sweden during WW2 was 6 million people!) and I've met plenty of women online who've played and appreciated it.

I know that, but the reality at this time is what it is and the big corporations producing content act based on it. I'll be happy to welcome a change to this.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 13:00:40
People also used to say female superheroes wouldn't sell, because superheroes are for boys, yet both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel made massive hits at the box office, exactly because there was a huge untapped market for that.

Exactly. Like I said: I hope to be proven wrong and that more women are actually interested in this stuff. I'd love to see more women in the hobby of wargaming, or populating game servers for the games I play.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 13:00:40You also didn't answer my question on the hypothetical scenario, that if your only option for playing as a character who looked like you in a setting you were interested in was to play a gender-swap of a female character, would you still ask for it to be cut out on grounds of historical accuracy?

My hypothetical self would answer the same as my current one, since it's the best information I have: I personally believe in historical accuracy and would not have an issue with it taking priority in design of history focused entertainment products. Your hypothetical relies in a corruption of basic human nature, however, a focus on the major event and the largest group of people involved receiving the most attention, since they and their families will make up most of the future audience as well.

Let me make a counter hypothetical of the same caliber:
Do you think that, today, more women would play more historical videogames if they represented the historically accurate roles women held during the war? More games about working in factories, worrying about bombs and sabotage? Of manning anti-air listening posts and searchlights? Of manning rear echelon kitchens, supply depots and transport companies?

These are all incredibly important and meaningful tasks, but they do not make for very good interactive entertainment products. Because history is what it is, and the human nature dictates that males want to keep females safe, the role of women tends to be far less exciting in real-world wartime history. There is a reason the entertainment industry focuses on the easily marketable, visually interesting and mentally engaging challenges that are easy to replicate through gameplay mechanics. This reality will continue to limit the visibility of women in videogames about war, due to the nature of the medium.

To add another positive post to a thread that's been pretty negative, I can share the changes I've observed in the AAA industry:

When I started working for the big companies (15ish years ago?), it was mostly guys. On my last big project released, my writing team was split right down the middle and my boss was a woman. My current boss at Eidos is also a woman. Here in Montreal, they have "incubators" (like Pixelles) that help provide mentoring and advice to women interesting in gamedev, which results in some really great people joining our teams. I've always taken issue with people posting on social media about how our industry is a horrible place for women, because it's really not true. Maybe it's just the companies I've chosen. Whatever the case, I think getting more women in there, and in positions of leadership, is the best way to counter this problem.

Every workplace has creep potential and I've only met one of them... years back. I shared what I saw with HR . Our industry is very progressive, especially in Montreal, and they do tend to take these things seriously.

Some people outside the industry assume there's some quota being filled, that we hire any women who apply just to check a box. No. I've always worked with extremely qualified people and they're almost always hardcore gamers. In fact, I've been playing catch-up to two women on my team because they've already played Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 and I am just now getting to them. It's so common now, it amazes me that people still question "girl gamers." I just assume most people under a certain age are gamers these days. My 12 year old is already talking about making games for a living and we have a hard time prying her away from the computer.

When you see diversity in game characters, it's due to the team wanting to tell stories from different perspectives and not some company mandate. It's not a marketing decision. It wouldn't surprise me if "white scruffy dude" is automatically the easier sales route, but you go with what's best for your story. I haven't worked on big multiplayer-focused games, but it seems obvious to me that giving players more options to customize is always going to be a positive thing that will impact sales. 

Social media tends to make everything look like an all-out culture war,  but in reality I've never seen that drama make its way into any of my workplaces. Obviously I can't speak for other studios and certainly can't speak for women devs, but I can say I've seen a huge improvement. So my answer, as an observer, is yes, it seems to be going in the right direction.

Quote from: Bavolis on Wed 13/03/2019 13:21:02
My 12 year old is already talking about making games for a living and we have a hard time prying her away from the computer.

That there is what I believe will improve women's representation in games. More women of new generations growing up seeing women represented in the mediums they are interested in, and wanting to build up on that and to expand on that. I agree with you that we are headed in the right direction, but it will still take some time and effort to get there.

Quote from: Bavolis on Wed 13/03/2019 13:21:02
..it amazes me that people still question "girl gamers."

The reason for that can be seen pretty easily if you go on a game streaming site like Twitch, which has basically turned into a loosely game-affiliated softcore porn site thanks to a relatively small number of women abusing audiences of young males.

Quote from: Bavolis on Wed 13/03/2019 13:21:02
Social media tends to make everything look like an all-out culture war

This. A little while back there was a fairly big round of whining about the Warhammer 40 000 tabletop game, because most of the lines of miniatures did not have female models to play with. A friend of mine brought it to my attention, having seen his fellow gamers declaring that "it didn't make sense to add women" to the game. He fully agreed with that point of view and laughed the idea of adding female models off as "ridiculous". We ended up talking about the issue for a while, offline, and quickly came to the conclusion that it both made perfect sense within the story and context of the game and would be both visually interesting and helpful in gaining more players to the hobby. Sadly Games Workshop, the creators of the game, seem to have been cowed by the angry traditionalist males in their audience. The loudest voices get the most attention on social media, after all.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 13:00:40In fact, when Final fantasy did try to introduce a male character in a sexualized costume (that was still tamer than what the women were wearing), there was such a massive backlash that they were forced to change his design. (https://www.technobuffalo.com/square-enix-adjusts-mevius-final-fantasys-silly-title-and-revealing-outfit) Meanwhile women are expected to grin and bear it or be labeled as puritans and get told that video games aren't for them.

Doh, it was many years ago when I first realized getting irritated by the "bikini armor" in the games, not only because that's just stupid, but also I frankly think that may be insulting to men too since this assumes that is the only thing they are interested in (or the only way they may like female characters)   (roll)

The women at my work got two cinema tickets each to commemorate International Women's Day.

This rightfully lead to heated argument and debate within the company.
About whether it was better to use them on Captain Marvel or Shazam.

A group of us colleagues went to watch Captain Marvel that night. It was a fun cinema movie.

Quote from: Babar on Wed 13/03/2019 13:55:15
This rightfully lead to heated argument and debate within the company.
About whether it was better to use them on Captain Marvel or Shazam.

Shouldn't they just go see the movie that interests them the most? It is their day, after all. With that said, I don't know why anyone would pick Shazam over Captain Marvel based on the trailers. :)

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 13:29:48

Quote from: Bavolis on Wed 13/03/2019 13:21:02
..it amazes me that people still question "girl gamers."

The reason for that can be seen pretty easily if you go on a game streaming site like Twitch, which has basically turned into a loosely game-affiliated softcore porn site thanks to a relatively small number of women abusing audiences of young males.

Do you mean women-abusing? Or are you saying women on Twitch are abusing young men?

I'm guessing he's trying to say that female Twitch stars are exploiting horny guys by playing on sex in their livestreams.

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 13/03/2019 14:16:55
I'm guessing he's trying to say that female Twitch stars are exploiting horny guys by playing on sex in their livestreams.

Mostly this. The appearance of so-called "twitch-thots" along with other camgirl services has given rise to phenomenon such as FinDom and other forms of abuse that is harmful to the viewers, which happen to be primarily young lonely men, because those happen to play a lot of videogames. (Because the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing rather than as a fun hobby, oddly enough.)

The only instance where I could see these women as being the subject of abuse are cases where they are forced to perform, which is a thing that happens in some parts of the world, too. Saw a documentary recently of cam-girls in eastern Europe, where some were forced by societal pressure or simply lack of other job opportunities to sell themselves, digitally.

"Twitch-thots" are another thing I'd imagine is quite harmful to the image of women in gaming. It makes female gamers appear vapid and money-oriented, rather than interested in the hobby of gaming. They tend to use games as a vehicle to advertise themselves for monetary gain. Meanwhile, their audience, and the male gamers in general, appear as mindless apes drooling over every sliver of bare skin displayed on screen, while sending money to these cam-girls and begging for them to be their "e-girlfriends". Plenty of cases seen already where these "Twitch-thots" are selling themselves. "Pay me 20 dollars and I'll play Overwatch with you for an hour". It often comes off as quite predatory, considering the young target audience age.

On one hand I find it quite distasteful, but on the other it's a matter of supply and demand, so I don't really know how to solve the issue. It's not my place to tell people not to enjoy titty-streamers or to stop people from streaming their bodies alongside some game footage, either.

EDIT: Fixed a poor wording

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 14:41:54
the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing

Ha ha, what?

This has been a very useful thread for identifying elements in this community to avoid. Thanks to Ali, Snarky et al for speaking up against them <3

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 14:41:54
The appearance of so-called "twitch-thots" along with other camgirl services has given rise to phenomenon such as FinDom and other forms of abuse that is harmful to the viewers, which happen to be primarily young lonely men, because those happen to play a lot of videogames. (Because the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing rather than as a fun hobby, oddly enough.)

I think this is very revealing. There's a really interesting article written by psychologists in the 80s called The Metaphorical Logic of Rape (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bp071cs), which I should warn has disturbing content. But I implore anyone with an interest to read it, because it's fascinating and relevant. Saying that women are "abusing" men by being sexy on a gaming website isn't literal. Just like when we say a woman is "a knock-out" we don't literally mean she knocked us out. But an unwitting consequence of these linguistic choices is that they allow us to significantly re-configure sequences of events in reality.

- I'm not sexually attracted to this woman - this woman is DOING SOMETHING to me with her sexuality.
- I'm not choosing to watch this Twitch stream - the women running this twitch stream is ABUSING me with her sexuality.

The woman becomes the instigator, and men's actions - arousal, harassment or, more mildly, a refusal to believe in girl gamers - become much more reasonable reactions. Instead of holding Person A responsible for their actions, it seems much more reasonable to hold Person A's victim responsible. After all, the victim started it. The bad girl gamers ruined the reputation of girl gamers. The bad immigrants ruined the reputation of immigrants. The women haters and racists are no longer instigators of abuse, they're simply reacting.

This is all perfectly logical, and can be presented cooly and clearly by someone like WHAM. But it diverges from reality as much as Jack's conspiratorial mutterings. And it's much more dangerous, because it sounds so reasonable.

EDIT: To avoid clogging up the thread by replying to WHAM:

Yes, cases of online bullying and exploitation are actually abusive - even when women do them. But you've conflated:

- Women who actually exploit people online
- Women on twitch
- And girl gamers.

You've allowed yourself to squeeze all those groups into one. You're holding all of them responsible for what a minority do, and you're justifying abuse directed towards any of them.

Quote from: Ben X on Wed 13/03/2019 14:58:01
Ha ha, what?

This has been a very useful thread for identifying elements in this community to avoid. Thanks to Ali, Snarky et al for speaking up against them <3

You have no idea how many times I've seen in my own social circles how women complain of their husbands or boyfriends playing games and how they see it as "childish" or "a waste of time".
Sure, there are plenty of female gamers, but at least in the current and past generations they seem to be a minority still. Future generations may well close up the gap, though.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 14:59:44
The woman becomes the instigator, and men's actions - arousal, harassment or, more mildly, a refusal to believe in girl gamers - become much more reasonable reactions. Instead of holding Person A responsible for their actions, it seems much more reasonable to hold Person A's victim responsible. After all, the victim started it. The bad girl gamers ruined the reputation of girl gamers. The bad immigrants ruined the reputation of immigrants. The women haters and racists are no longer instigators of abuse, they're simply reacting.

This is all perfectly logical, and can be presented cooly and clearly by someone like WHAM. But it diverges from reality as much as Jack's conspiratorial mutterings. And it's much more dangerous, because it sounds so reasonable.

Fair enough, perhaps a better choise of words could work here, but you do realize that people can get addicted to social interaction? Especially if their avenues for that interaction are limited. This makes real cases of abuse, where a viewer is so invested in the person they are watching and thus easily exploited for money or other means, quite real.

Have you ever watched a video of a teenage kid on a skype call crying his eyes out, because his "Runescape e-girlfriend" told him as a joke to shave his head and now he's bald and being laughed at? That's some nasty stuff.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 14:41:54
Mostly this. The appearance of so-called "twitch-thots" along with other camgirl services has given rise to phenomenon such as FinDom and other forms of abuse that is harmful to the viewers, which happen to be primarily young lonely men, because those happen to play a lot of videogames. (Because the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing rather than as a fun hobby, oddly enough.)

The only instance where I could see these women as being the subject of abuse are cases where they are forced to perform, which is a thing that happens in some parts of the world, too. Saw a documentary recently of cam-girls in eastern Europe, where some were forced by societal pressure or simply lack of other job opportunities to sell themselves, digitally.

I don't think it's just in economically deprived regions of Eastern Europe where women are pressured to play on sex appeal in order to attract an audience, even if the activity itself (sport, music, comedy, gaming, whatever) has little direct connection to sex...

If Twitch turned into a soft-porn cam site, is that because every woman who tried her hand at livestreaming really wanted to be a "Twitch-thot", or because horny dudes disproportionately gave attention to and rewarded a few who did (or who felt they had to), and drove away most of the rest with sexual (and other) harassment? So who's exploiting who? (Actually, that's not the most important question: it's agreeing that the cultural and societal forces that lead to such gendered patterns of exploitation should be identified and addressed. We call that point of view feminism.)

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 15:05:01
You have no idea how many times I've seen in my own social circles how women complain of their husbands or boyfriends playing games and how they see it as "childish" or "a waste of time".

You have no idea how many women in my own social circles are gamers and/or have a neutral to positive view of gaming. Almost 100%, in fact.

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 13/03/2019 15:11:10
I don't think it's just in economically deprived regions of Eastern Europe where women are pressured to play on sex appeal in order to attract an audience, even if the activity itself (sport, music, comedy, gaming, whatever) has little direct connection to sex...

If Twitch turned into a soft-porn cam site, is that because every woman who tried her hand at livestreaming really wanted to be a "Twitch-thot", or because horny dudes disproportionately gave attention to and rewarded a few who did (or who felt they had to), and drove away most of the rest with sexual (and other) harassment? So who's exploiting who? (Actually, that's not the most important question: it's agreeing that the cultural and societal forces that lead to such gendered patterns of exploitation should be identified and addressed. We call that point of view feminism.)

I think the horny dudes came in first, pestering the initial female streamers and gamers, and where demand exists, supply follows. These then feed one another, as with any supply/demand situation.
In cases where both participants are adults participating voluntarily, it's tricky to say if it's actually harmful or just a natural business transaction. When one side of the transaction is underaged and impressionable, paying tens or hundreds of dollars to get to talk to a female streamer, I'd start to lean toward the "this is probably harmful to someone" -camp.

Quote from: Ben X on Wed 13/03/2019 15:12:39
You have no idea how many women in my own social circles are gamers and/or have a neutral to positive view of gaming. Almost 100%, in fact.

Sounds like you've had it good. I've only been lucky enough to encounter a handful of female gamers.
I'm curious, though, what's the rough age range of those friends? I my case we are talking mostly of people aged 26-40 or so.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 14:59:44
Yes, cases of online bullying and exploitation are actually abusive - even when women do them. But you've conflated:

- Women who actually exploit people online
- Women on twitch
- And girl gamers.

You've allowed yourself to squeeze all those groups into one. You're holding all of them responsible for what a minority do, and you're justifying abuse directed towards any of them.

I'd say there is overlap and interaction between all of the groups, but I wouldn't say those groups are all the same. Not all women who are on twitch exploit people. Not all female gamers are on twitch. Not all... etc etc.
What I tried to point out was that the actions of the few were tainting the view of the whole group, when that is not fair or reasonable. Such correlations just tend to be what we human beings do. See for example: someone shoots up a school = all gun owners come under scrutiny.
It'd be a lot more fluid to have these conversations in person or voice. Typing does tend to result in condensing of the topic, and thus easily distorting of meaning.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 14:59:44

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 14:41:54
The appearance of so-called "twitch-thots" along with other camgirl services has given rise to phenomenon such as FinDom and other forms of abuse that is harmful to the viewers, which happen to be primarily young lonely men, because those happen to play a lot of videogames. (Because the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing rather than as a fun hobby, oddly enough.)

I think this is very revealing. There's a really interesting article written by psychologists in the 80s called The Metaphorical Logic of Rape (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bp071cs), which I should warn has disturbing content. But I implore anyone with an interest to read it, because it's fascinating and relevant. Saying that women are "abusing" men by being sexy on a gaming website isn't literal. Just like when we say a woman is "a knock-out" we don't literally mean she knocked us out. But an unwitting consequence of these linguistic choices is that they allow us to significantly re-configure sequences of events in reality.

- I'm not sexually attracted to woman A - woman A is DOING SOMETHING to me with her sexuality.
- I'm not choosing to watch this Twitch stream - the women running this twitch stream is ABUSING me with her sexuality.

The woman becomes the instigator, and men's actions - arousal, harassment or, more mildly, a refusal to believe in girl gamers - become much more reasonable reactions. Instead of holding Person A responsible for their actions, it seems much more reasonable to hold Person A's victim responsible. After all, the victim started it. The bad girl gamers ruined the reputation of girl gamers. The bad immigrants ruined the reputation of immigrants. The women haters and racists are no longer instigators of abuse, they're simply reacting.

This is all perfectly logical, and can be presented cooly and clearly by someone like WHAM. But it diverges from reality as much as Jack's conspiratorial mutterings. And it's much more dangerous, because it sounds so reasonable.

Ali, you raise some good points here that remind of the book Reading Lolita in Tehran, where a girl's sexuality is widely interpreted --and in some cases condemned-- across a spectrum of opinions.

I have never played a Twitch game, so I'm not entirely clear on the social dynamics first hand. Is it common for adult women to look to play games with young boys in return for money? Do people build businesses around this model?

Quote from: man n fist on Wed 13/03/2019 15:31:49
I have never played a Twitch game, so I'm not entirely clear on the social dynamics first hand. Is it common for adult women to look to play games with young boys in return for money? Do people build businesses around this model?

Twitch is a video streaming service mostly focused around games. People can play games, other people can watch and chat with the people playing.
I saw a stream where a Russian lady was doing gymnastics before a camera there, and she'd raised over a 100 000 dollars from viewer donations. Her goal was 200 000 dollars so she could buy a house. An extreme example, sure, but gives you an idea of how lucrative it can be.

And to give you an idea on what a very popular female streamer's feed can look like:
https://i.imgur.com/CMCEHHw.png

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 15:26:11
What I tried to point out was that the actions of the few were tainting the view of the whole group, when that is not fair or reasonable. Such correlations just tend to be what we human beings do. See for example: someone shoots up a school = all gun owners come under scrutiny.

You've done it again. My bad opinions are a consequence of being acted upon by outside forces. These women's bad behaviour has tainted my view of the group. No. I am responsible for the views I hold. If I blame one person for what another did, that's my error.

BTW, which part of the picture of a woman with bare arms the most abusive? Is it the elbows?

EDIT: In response to WHAM's comment below. I clearly said "my" and not "your". I didn't say your view of women was tainted - although I think that it is, evidenced by your reasoning around women and your generalisations about "females". You are, consciously or unconsciously, diminishing and obscuring sexism and prejudice, and that's what was criticising. It may be "what we human beings do", but we also do infanticide and cannibalism, so I'm not interested in arguments from nature.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 15:55:54
You've done it again. My bad opinions are a consequence of being acted upon by outside forces. These women's bad behaviour has tainted my view of the group. No. I am responsible for the views I hold. If I blame one person for what another did, that's my error.

BTW, which part of the picture of a woman with bare arms the most abusive? Is it the elbows?

What are you on about? Where did I say my view of the group was tainted? That I personally viewed female gamers negatively because of the streamers? Or that the image was abusive?
Could you kindly get your head out of your backside and discuss the topic at hand rather than trying to desperately wrangle any and all discussion into fuel for your personal vendetta, please? It is getting rather tiresome.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 13:16:39
Let me make a counter hypothetical of the same caliber:
Do you think that, today, more women would play more historical videogames if they represented the historically accurate roles women held during the war? More games about working in factories, worrying about bombs and sabotage? Of manning anti-air listening posts and searchlights? Of manning rear echelon kitchens, supply depots and transport companies?

These are all incredibly important and meaningful tasks, but they do not make for very good interactive entertainment products. 

I have no doubt you could make a fun and popular game out of factory work, medical personell and anti-air posts, since we've had games like Stardew Valley and The Sims become poular franchises despite being about farming and families/home decoration respectively.

However, you yourself admitted that there were women fighting in the Soviet forces, eastern partisans and resistance groups, and you could just as well make an action game or FPS about them.

But I think there needs to be room for both realistic depictions of history and fun swashbuckling versions of history, but as it is now far too many people argue women should be excluded based on "historical accuracy" but I don't see anyone seriously demanding that all games about men in WW2 needs to deal with them managing lice and dysentery or that we should make the next Battlefield about a guy toiling away in a POW camp or learning to live without legs after getting paralyzed from a stray shell to show men what real history was like.

QuoteBecause history is what it is, and the human nature dictates that males want to keep females safe, the role of women tends to be far less exciting in real-world wartime history. There is a reason the entertainment industry focuses on the easily marketable, visually interesting and mentally engaging challenges that are easy to replicate through gameplay mechanics. This reality will continue to limit the visibility of women in videogames about war, due to the nature of the medium.

And now you've lost me, because firstly, the idea that men naturally want to protect women is 100% a cultural expectation and not some biological inevitability. Not only is the single highest cause of death in women (when you rule out disease and old age) being murdered by abusive men they were in a relationship with, but looking at statistics from shipwrecks, men have a much higher survival rate than women and the only reason most women survived the Titanic was because the captain and his officers held the male passengers back at gunpoint. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130003/Study-sea-disasters-men-better-survival-rate-ships-down.html) It's also ignoring all the women who have been more than willing to risk their lives for their country or their family members, but have been actively prohibited from doing so by both law and a lifetime of being actively prevented from doing physical exercise or learning how to use arms.

QuoteYou have no idea how many times I've seen in my own social circles how women complain of their husbands or boyfriends playing games and how they see it as "childish" or "a waste of time".
Sure, there are plenty of female gamers, but at least in the current and past generations they seem to be a minority still. Future generations may well close up the gap, though.

The biggest reason there aren't more women is that for the last decades both the community and developers have been trying to drive them away, both through in-game content like I described in my previous comment regarding the Metro 2033 sequel, but also because so many gaming communities contain trolls and creeps that take active pride in harassing women, and the majority of the other members just spend all their time and effort on insisting that they're not one of them and accuse people speaking up against is of being SJWs who want to look for a conflict instead of actively denouncing the harassers and call them out on it.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 14:59:44

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 14:41:54
The appearance of so-called "twitch-thots" along with other camgirl services has given rise to phenomenon such as FinDom and other forms of abuse that is harmful to the viewers, which happen to be primarily young lonely men, because those happen to play a lot of videogames. (Because the majority of women tend to view gaming as a negative thing rather than as a fun hobby, oddly enough.)

I think this is very revealing. There's a really interesting article written by psychologists in the 80s called The Metaphorical Logic of Rape (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bp071cs), which I should warn has disturbing content. But I implore anyone with an interest to read it, because it's fascinating and relevant. Saying that women are "abusing" men by being sexy on a gaming website isn't literal. Just like when we say a woman is "a knock-out" we don't literally mean she knocked us out. But an unwitting consequence of these linguistic choices is that they allow us to significantly re-configure sequences of events in reality.

- I'm not sexually attracted to this woman - this woman is DOING SOMETHING to me with her sexuality.
- I'm not choosing to watch this Twitch stream - the women running this twitch stream is ABUSING me with her sexuality.

The woman becomes the instigator, and men's actions - arousal, harassment or, more mildly, a refusal to believe in girl gamers - become much more reasonable reactions. Instead of holding Person A responsible for their actions, it seems much more reasonable to hold Person A's victim responsible. After all, the victim started it. The bad girl gamers ruined the reputation of girl gamers. The bad immigrants ruined the reputation of immigrants. The women haters and racists are no longer instigators of abuse, they're simply reacting.

You've really hit the nail on the head, the hate against Twitch camgirls but not the people paying for them and blaming men's lust on women is straight up Frollo-logic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NoDEu7kpg).

Also, the whole implication that men can't control themselves isn't just dangerous for women, but it's also greatly harmful to men who fall victim to sexual abuse, because it reinforces the notion that men can't be sexually abused because they always want it and that anyone sexually abusing a man is basically doing him a favor. A woman on Twitch offering a service and people choosing to pay for that service doesn't mean that she's stealing or abusing the people paying her anymore than hamburger chains are abusing hungry people.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 16:36:29
But I think there needs to be room for both realistic depictions of history and fun swashbuckling versions of history

Said it before, and I'll say it again. I agree. There is room for both and I have no issue with both existing.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 16:36:29
And now you've lost me, because firstly, the idea that men naturally want to protect women is 100% a cultural expectation and not some biological inevitability.

I'm pretty sure some evolutionary scientists will disagree with you here, considering how the human society has evolved. Sure, modern society has changed a lot from our hunter-gatherer days, but to claim that human evolution has entirely surpassed such basic instincs as "protecting the breeding-aged females to ensure the survival of the species" that is inherent in most mammals is a bit much.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 16:36:29
The biggest reason there aren't more women is that for the last decades both the community and developers have been trying to drive them away, both through in-game content like I described in my previous comment regarding the Metro 2033 sequel, but also because so many gaming communities contain trolls and creeps that take active pride in harassing women, and the majority of the other members just spend all their time and effort on insisting that they're not one of them and accuse people speaking up against is of being SJWs who want to look for a conflict instead of actively denouncing the harassers and call them out on it.

There is truth in what you are saying, but keep in mind that in sheer quantity the vast majority of online abuse is still directed at men. And still men choose to participate in these communities, despite being repeatedly called "gay" or "faggot" or "motherfucker" or "nazi" or "fascist" or whatever other colourful language you'd like to insert here, along with the same death threats, swatting attacks and more that are unfortunate side effects of online anonymity that allows people like Ali to throw around some pretty foul things without a worry in the world.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 16:36:29
Also, the whole implication that men can't control themselves isn't just dangerous for women, but it's also greatly harmful to men who fall victim to sexual abuse, because it reinforces the notion that men can't be sexually abused because they always want it and that anyone sexually abusing a man is basically doing him a favor. A woman on Twitch offering a service and people choosing to pay for that service doesn't mean that she's stealing or abusing the people paying her anymore than hamburger chains are abusing hungry people.

Like I said, I agree for the most part, and believe that women should be free to sell their bodies if they want (hey, the 'oldest profession' and all that) just as men should be free to avail them of such services if they want. But when the primary target demographic are children, such as on Twitch, it gets shady as heck.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 16:44:26
online anonymity that allows people like Ali to throw around some pretty foul things without a worry in the world.

I'm not anonymous. Ali is short for Alasdair Beckett-King. It's pretty rich being accused of abuse by someone who has repeatedly excused and diminished abuse directed towards women. The idea that calling people homophobic slurs is the same as calling people with far-right politics "fascists" is laughable. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but you did once lament that "the event we have labelled "the Holocaust" is seen in a purely negative light". And that is, unequivocally, foul.

EDIT: In response to your question below, my comment about the Metaphorical Logic of Rape explains why I think your attitude excuses abusers and blames victims.

Quote from: Ali on Wed 13/03/2019 17:10:16
someone who has repeatedly excused and diminished abuse directed towards women.

I hate to keep asking and not getting answers, but: When have I done that?

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 16:44:26

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 16:36:29
But I think there needs to be room for both realistic depictions of history and fun swashbuckling versions of history

Said it before, and I'll say it again. I agree. There is room for both and I have no issue with both existing.

Then why did you feel the need to make such a huge deal out of how wrong you thought Battlefield 5 was?

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 16:44:26
I'm pretty sure some evolutionary scientists will disagree with you here, considering how the human society has evolved. Sure, modern society has changed a lot from our hunter-gatherer days, but to claim that human evolution has entirely surpassed such basic instincs as "protecting the breeding-aged females to ensure the survival of the species" that is inherent in most mammals is a bit much.

Did you miss the woman murder statistics I mentioned and the link with the scientific study showing that the overwhelming majority of men did not in fact put random women over themselves?
The whole evolutionary science field is dodgy pseudoscience at best and there are huge disagreements among scholars (I recommend reading this article) (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon), plus tons of things people have claimed are biological have already been debunked, just as the phrenology and eugenics that were popular in the 1900's. I really don't want to go the same route Ali did and accuse you of being a fascist, but if you are kind of inviting such comparisons by casually trying to use biological justifications for societal laws and literally comparing humans to animals.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 16:44:26
There is truth in what you are saying, but keep in mind that in sheer quantity the vast majority of online abuse is still directed at men. And still men choose to participate in these communities, despite being repeatedly called "gay" or "faggot" or "motherfucker" or "nazi" or "fascist" or whatever other colourful language you'd like to insert here, along with the same death threats, swatting attacks and more that are unfortunate side effects of online anonymity that allows people like Ali to throw around some pretty foul things without a worry in the world.

Men get more abuse due to the fact that there are more men in gaming circles, but the women who are in those spaces get far more abuse than their male peers and get horrific threats of sexual violence and sexist slurs on top of the same death threats and nazi-accusations men get, Snarky already pointed that out and he's actually working as a moderator.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 16:44:26
Like I said, I agree for the most part, and believe that women should be free to sell their bodies if they want (hey, the 'oldest profession' and all that) just as men should be free to avail them of such services if they want. But when the primary target demographic are children, such as on Twitch, it gets shady as heck.

Then why are you blaming the streamers and not Twitch as a platform for allowing children to pay for their services or the children's parents for not teaching them better? Also, just casually comparing any woman relying on her looks in her job but not actually selling sex is hugely demeaning to them and basically encouraging harassment and lewd propositions to women just because they dress skimpy.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Men get more abuse due to the fact that there are more men in gaming circles, but the women who are in those spaces get far more abuse than their male peers and get horrific threats of sexual violence and sexist slurs on top of the same death threats and nazi-accusations men get, Snarky already pointed that out and he's actually working as a moderator.

From studies I've seen reported you are definitely right, but just to be clear, I'm not claiming any professional expertise on the subject. While there are definitely some people (men and women) who've been treated badly in the AGS community, the sample set of cases I've dealt with is pretty small. If I were to draw conclusions from my experience as a moderator, the group most targeted for abuse is moderators.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Men get more abuse due to the fact that there are more men in gaming circles, but the women who are in those spaces get far more abuse than their male peers and get horrific threats of sexual violence and sexist slurs on top of the same death threats and nazi-accusations men get, Snarky already pointed that out and he's actually working as a moderator.

Very true, at least as far as online gaming goes. It is not uncommon for female gamers to refrain from using voice chat and to quietly pretend they are just another male behind the keyboard to avoid abuse. Females who do decide to reveal their gender expose themselves to a wide variety of harassment ranging from unwanted advances through being singled out, criticized and mocked for every mistake much more than any male player would be, to openly hateful "I'll drive you out of here" campaigns from insecure alpha wannabes who just can't stand being outperformed by a female in a computer game. I've seen guilds/clans boasting about themselves not allowing females into their ranks, which in their understanding was a mark of a professional group.

Sure that online gaming communities aren't exactly courteous, but the juvenile name calling casually flying back and forth during online gaming sessions does not compare to the targeted, constant abuse female gamers are commonly up against. And sure, targeted abuse towards male players also happens but for female players, more often than not it comes in a bundle.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Then why did you feel the need to make such a huge deal out of how wrong you thought Battlefield 5 was?

I feel like a broken record here, but once more: Because it was initially marketed as something it was not and its lead developer was making claims about historical accuracy that had nothing to do with actual history, while abusing the fans of the series by calling them uneducated idiots for not going along with his fantasies, which led me to personally decide against buying the game.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Did you miss the woman murder statistics I mentioned and the link with the scientific study showing that the overwhelming majority of men did not in fact put random women over themselves?

Are you really comparing violent crime statistics, the edge cases of our society, to the general evolutionary nature of our species? Apples to oranges, my friend.
That's the equivalent of saying that "human beings are not biologically designed to survive because some of them kill themselves on purpose!"

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Men get more abuse due to the fact that there are more men in gaming circles, but the women who are in those spaces get far more abuse than their male peers and get horrific threats of sexual violence and sexist slurs on top of the same death threats and nazi-accusations men get, Snarky already pointed that out and he's actually working as a moderator.

One group receiving abuse does not diminish the abuse suffered by another group. And yet there seems to only ever be discussion of why women feel excluded from the online space, while men continue to tolerate the abuse they get and remain. That seems sexist and unfortunate to me, in how the issues faced by men are belittled. However, that is not the point of this thread, and I think we can all agree on the general point that "online abuse, against anyone, is bad". (Well, some people can't, but they're a different breed of animal, and usually dealing out the harassment themselves.)

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 18:27:35
Then why are you blaming the streamers and not Twitch as a platform for allowing children to pay for their services or the children's parents for not teaching them better? Also, just casually comparing any woman relying on her looks in her job but not actually selling sex is hugely demeaning to them and basically encouraging harassment and lewd propositions to women just because they dress skimpy.

There is definitely blame to be placed on Twitch, too, but they are not technically violating any laws and they're making a ton of money off of the practice, so it is unlikely anything will change through their action.
That does not remove the fact that there are predatory individuals who are selling their sexuality and appearance, even if it is not selling direct physical sex, to audiences that are vulnerable to being scammed or led along.
I personally also believe that people who are not familiar with gaming communities may well end up being introduced to them through streamers and compliations of streams on Youtube, and the female gamers represented in those tend to be mostly the titty-streamer variety, which I feel may well feed into the negative stereotypes and make people more inclined to think less of female gamers. (And before anyone shouts at me about it again: just because I am pointing out that I think this is happening does not mean I think it is a good thing. Is that now adequately clear?)

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 13/03/2019 19:03:54
If I were to draw conclusions from my experience as a moderator, the group most targeted for abuse is moderators.

That is probably the one group above all other online groups, regardless of sex, orientation or political view, that gets the most abuse. I don't think I could do it. :D

Look, it obviously comes down to engine performance issues:

Female characters have two dangly bits to animate whereas male characters have only one.

This is known, in profession circles, as The PvP Trade-Off.

In full:

Spoiler

The Puppies vs. Package Trade-Off.

[close]

WHAM, it's not edge cases in society, I mentioned the single biggest cause of murder for women and I specifically also linked to an article about a study of a huge number of shipwrecks, and the men on those ships were not selected criminals, they were a huge number of random people whom happened to be on boats that were sinking and the pattern was very clear, nearly all of them put their own survival over that of random women. Here's the link again: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2130003/Study-sea-disasters-men-better-survival-rate-ships-down.html

Like I said, the more you try to use random made up "biological facts" to justify societal laws, the more you sound like what Ali accused you of being.

Quote from: WHAM on Wed 13/03/2019 19:58:25
One group receiving abuse does not diminish the abuse suffered by another group. And yet there seems to only ever be discussion of why women feel excluded from the online space, while men continue to tolerate the abuse they get and remain. That seems sexist and unfortunate to me, in how the issues faced by men are belittled. However, that is not the point of this thread, and I think we can all agree on the general point that "online abuse, against anyone, is bad". (Well, some people can't, but they're a different breed of animal, and usually dealing out the harassment themselves.)

If you are so concerned about diminishing abuse of men, I want to point out that you yourself are diminishing real sexual abuse of men by saying that something that they choose to do, paying camgirls, is abuse on par with predators coercing children into sexual acts. No one is forcing them to spend money on the girls and to suggest otherwise and imply that all men always want sex and they just can't control their impulses is the exact same rhetoric that's used to dismiss male survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Quote from: Mandle on Wed 13/03/2019 22:19:47
Look, it obviously comes down to engine performance issues:

Female characters have two dangly bits to animate whereas male characters have only one.

This is known, in profession circles, as The PvP Trade-Off.

In full:

Spoiler

The Puppies vs. Package Trade-Off.

[close]

Just like in Assassin's Creed Unity, where after getting criticism for removing playable female characters from the game, Ubisoft explained that it was because women were too hard for them to animate.

Spoiler

(https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/acu-640x400.png)
It turns out they were right...  :-\

[close]

@Blondbraid AAAAARRGGGHHH!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 22:27:21
Like I said, the more you try to use random made up "biological facts" to justify societal laws, the more you sound like what Ali accused you of being.

This will have to be an area on which we disagree with, then. I talk about evolutionary traits affecting the decisions we make as a broader society, such as choosing not to draft women into the military, while you try to equate that to the actions of individuals in a moment of duress or other extremely heated moment. I do not think those two are comparable, and thus I don't think your relating the two has any connection to the point I was making. Laws about matters such as the military draft are drawn up with more sensibility than decisions about immediate survival in a life or death situation.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 22:27:21
No one is forcing them to spend money on the girls and to suggest otherwise and imply that all men always want sex and they just can't control their impulses is the exact same rhetoric that's used to dismiss male survivors of rape and sexual assault.

Sure, I will consent that nobody is forcing people to do anything here. However, among these young male viewers are numerous boys suffering of self esteem issues, bullying offline and online, and a lack of meaningful social interaction. All prime causes of why we have such high suicide rates among men. Such individuals are exceptionally vulnerable to being monetized and taken advantage of, as for them something as simple as getting their name called out by a pretty girl on screen is easily worth tens of dollars of investment. If you do not see anything wrong with that, then once again I must say that is an area where we will simply have to disagree on.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 22:27:21
Just like in Assassin's Creed Unity, where after getting criticism for removing playable female characters from the game, Ubisoft explained that it was because women were too hard for them to animate.

Ah, Ubisoft. Their claim that women would be difficult to animate in their current game was valid in the way that doing so would have required them to use the same skeleton structure for the female and male models, meaning those characters would have needed to be the same height and general build for the animations to make sense. So their excuse basically boiled down to "We don't want to make a female character who is as tall as a male character". Optionally they could have made a whole new set of animations and skeletons, but I can see why that might have been prohibitively work-intensive at the point of development they were at when the statement was made.

Quote from: WHAM on Thu 14/03/2019 07:15:47

Quote from: Blondbraid on Wed 13/03/2019 22:27:21
Like I said, the more you try to use random made up "biological facts" to justify societal laws, the more you sound like what Ali accused you of being.

This will have to be an area on which we disagree with, then. I talk about evolutionary traits affecting the decisions we make as a broader society, such as choosing not to draft women into the military, while you try to equate that to the actions of individuals in a moment of duress or other extremely heated moment. I do not think those two are comparable, and thus I don't think your relating the two has any connection to the point I was making. Laws about matters such as the military draft are drawn up with more sensibility than decisions about immediate survival in a life or death situation.

If laws are the result of sensible discussion and thinking, they are not the result of universal evolutionary impulses left over from the animal stage.
Not only are there culture where a significant amount of warriors were women, such as the Scythians, the Dahomey kingdom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons) and modern day Israel to name a few, the biggest reason women were forbidden from being soldiers is the same reason they were forbidden from doing a huge bunch of other male-coded jobs that didn't pose a risk to the practitioner, and it was because the people in power were afraid that it would upset the social order that kept them in power, and for exactly the same reason large groups of men, such as the jews and slaves in ancient Rome and colonial America were also forbidden from bearing arms, and it wasn't because the rulers wanted to protect them. And just to drive the point home that cultural laws aren't the result of some sensible evolutionary strategy, for centuries women in Europe were prohibited from studying science and medicine at nearly all places of learning, despite it posing zero danger for them and it's objectively stupid to randomly bar 50% of the population from potentially making discoveries that could save hundreds lives, and there's no explanation other than cultural prejudices, so I see no point in discussing it further.

QuoteSure, I will consent that nobody is forcing people to do anything here. However, among these young male viewers are numerous boys suffering of self esteem issues, bullying offline and online, and a lack of meaningful social interaction. All prime causes of why we have such high suicide rates among men.

Then the real issue is that those boys are bullied by their peers and forced to live up to unrealistic expectations from society about "being a real man" that they end up in such a vulnerable state to begin with, and shaming camgirls will not solve any of the problems of bullying and self esteem. I don't endorse selling anything to impressionable teens, but I fail to see how it's worse and more exploitative than say, clothing brands making kids buy them out of fear of being ostracized for not having the right brand.

QuoteAh, Ubisoft. Their claim that women would be difficult to animate in their current game was valid in the way that doing so would have required them to use the same skeleton structure for the female and male models, meaning those characters would have needed to be the same height and general build for the animations to make sense. So their excuse basically boiled down to "We don't want to make a female character who is as tall as a male character". Optionally they could have made a whole new set of animations and skeletons, but I can see why that might have been prohibitively work-intensive at the point of development they were at when the statement was made.

Yeah, and the irony is that they did recycle most of the animations for Aveline in Assassin's Creed: Liberation from the male character in their previous game, both of which came out before Unity, so it's pretty much entirely down to terrible priorities and project management on Ubisoft's part. Funny how women wasn't a priority but modelling over 30 different customizable costumes the hero could wear was.

[/quote]
So their excuse basically boiled down to "We don't want to make a female character who is as tall as a male character".
[/quote]

Because it's unthinkable that women can be as high or taller than men...  (wrong)

Quote from: Cassiebsg on Thu 14/03/2019 14:15:44
Because it's unthinkable that women can be as high or taller than men...  (wrong)

Indeed, it's completely ridiculous and has nothing to do with reality.
I'm a Swede and every single time I travel abroad I feel like Gandalf visiting the Shire, and I'm not even that tall compared to several other women I know.

Ubisoft really dropped the ball with that one, though "dropping the ball" describes most of what they do. Didn't they recently have a whole issue with first making a character that could be straight or gay or whatever in the main game, then drop a DLC that forced that character into a straight relationship after all.

It's like they try to do a bunch of things, but aren't really aware of what it is they are actually trying to do.

From the topic of sad failures to something more positive: Have people here played A Hat in Time? One of the most fun games I played last year, despite its minor technical issues, and a fun example of a game with a female protagonist I cannot imagine anyone would have a problem with playing.

Feel free to suggest other fine examples of games that have key female characters and were done well. Off the top of my head I can think of a few I've enjoyed.

- Dishonored 2 - Death of the Outsider
- All of the Shantae games
- Portal 1 & 2
- Night in the Woods

And some of the well known AGS ones:

- Heroine's Quest
- The Blackwell games
- Nelly Cootalot

The whole Ubisoft debacle with the DLC that turned a previously straight character gay very much feels like the result of the writers picturing a straight character as the default and forgetting that the base game provided several branching options for their sexuality and personality, and basically wanting to have their cake and eat it by saying that they want the player to choose how to develop their character but not actually spending time and effort to write different endings to accommodate those choices.

It's rather sad and ironic considering that Ubisoft has done great female characters before, such as Farah and Elika from the Prince of Persia games, Jade from Beyond Good and Evil and even in the Assassin's Creed franchise they had a great female protagonist with Aveline, and later Evie Frye as co-protagonist in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.

As for other great female protagonists, I've already mentioned April Ryan and Kate Walker, both whom are great protagonists in great games that still hold up today, and some other good adventure game heroines are:

Fran Bow (https://fran-bow.fandom.com/wiki/Fran_Bow_Dagenhart), from her titular game "Fran Bow", which mixes very dark horror with Fran's childlike and optimistic fantasy, Vella (https://brokenage.fandom.com/wiki/Vella) from Broken Age, who is a teenager chosen as sacrifice to a fish monster but devices a great escape plan on her own, and Anna (https://valianthearts.fandom.com/wiki/Anna) from Valiant Hearts, whom is a WW1 nurse and chauffeur and at several points in the game not only gets to participate in some great car chases but also gets to use her medical skills in the gameplay to save several people.

When it comes to AGS games, I always liked Emily Enough and Jacqueline White from their eponymous games.

I played a game called "We Happy Few" some time ago. It has a very decent dystopian setting and a story, but tideous and repetitive gameplay, so I was left with very mixed feelings about it.

The story is divided in 3 parts where you play 3 different characters whose paths cross at some points. In the second part your character is a female (https://we-happy-few.fandom.com/wiki/Sally_Boyle) who hides a baby in her appartment (having children is forbidden in their town for some reason). Idk how close to realism the depiction of a character was, but it seemed a pretty original experience because on one hand you are much weaker than anyone who poses any threat and therefore have to rely more on evasion and various tricks, and on other hand the baby factor forces you to constantly worry about the time and plan ahead more carefully, because you have to regularly return back to check on her.

I think the majority of Ben304's games have female protagonists, like I can't remember a male protagonist in a ben game. Even Shardlight. The blackwell series, our own Primordia, has Clarity which is a strong female figure, and our 'villain' is a 'female voiced' robot (I'm not sure that's a good thing), Resonance, Technobabylon (transgender), Unawoved

I loved Amy in Shardlight! Also Clarity was awesome and one of my favorites from Primordia.

Kathy Rain.

Quote from: Mandle on Thu 14/03/2019 22:59:38
Kathy Rain.

Absolutely!  I just finished this game last night.  So good.

Quote from: dactylopus on Fri 15/03/2019 09:26:01

Quote from: Mandle on Thu 14/03/2019 22:59:38
Kathy Rain.

Absolutely!  I just finished this game last night.  So good.

To be honest, I signed onto the game play-testers as an excuse to play it ASAP, but I did actually find some issues that were valuable to the devs to make the game better.

I still kinda wish that my idea to have that last, OCD-inducing, Autumn leaf clinging to the edge of the tree fall off and float down onto the grave, just before the end credits roll, had been included but it's still a pretty decent game despite that oversight...  (laugh)

Quote from: Dualnames on Thu 14/03/2019 20:02:41
I think the majority of Ben304's games have female protagonists, like I can't remember a male protagonist in a ben game. Even Shardlight. The blackwell series, our own Primordia, has Clarity which is a strong female figure, and our 'villain' is a 'female voiced' robot (I'm not sure that's a good thing), Resonance, Technobabylon (transgender), Unawoved

I quite liked Technobabylon, and I thought both Latha and Max were great characters in both the "prototype" first freeware chapters of the game and the full length Wadjet Eye version.

First of nine "Women Behind The Games" videos Double Fine are putting up this week:

https://youtu.be/G9vHKWw1qhM

Quote from: Ben X on Mon 18/03/2019 19:02:53
First of nine "Women Behind The Games" videos Double Fine are putting up this week:

What a great video, I look forward to the next part!
Anyway, I also wanted to add another great adventure game heroine I forgot to mention, Kara from the Covert front games.
There are four short freeware adventure games set in WW1 with some great pussels and atmosphere, and here is a link for anyone wanting to play the games:
http://www.mateuszskutnik.com/covert-front/

You are Swedish, Blondbraid ?

Quote from: eri0o on Wed 20/03/2019 10:24:11
You are Swedish, Blondbraid ?

I am, but I don't see what that's got to do with anything here. Why do you ask?

Is "pussel" english or swedish word, or it came into english from swedish? :)

At first I thought it's related to cats :D

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Wed 20/03/2019 14:02:51
Is "pussel" english or swedish word, or it came into english from swedish? :)

At first I thought it's related to cats :D

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Wed 20/03/2019 14:02:51
Is "pussel" english or swedish word, or it came into english from swedish? :)

At first I thought it's related to cats :D

Ah, I see. It's the Swedish word for puzzle, I missed that typo!  :)

Can I just say that I love IKEA food. Thanks for that.

Ahh, Sweden. It's like Finland but not quite as good, and a bit to the west.  :grin:
(The meatballs are nice, though.)

Well, Finland may have many lakes and Angry Birds, but Sweden has Dice, Starbreeze, Macinegames, King and Minecraft.  (laugh)

Quote from: Blondbraid on Thu 21/03/2019 16:50:19
Well, Finland may have many lakes and Angry Birds, but Sweden has Dice, Starbreeze, Macinegames, King and Minecraft.  (laugh)

And Paradox Interactive (roll)

Spoiler

(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w2nVV6f2iPE/maxresdefault.jpg)

[close]

"The year is 1820 AD. All of Africa is occupied by the Swedes. All? Not quite! One small village of indomitable Nigerians still holds out against the invaders..."

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 21/03/2019 18:11:45
"The year is 1820 AD. All of Africa is occupied by the Swedes. All? Not quite! One small village of indomitable Nigerians still holds out against the invaders..."

I wonder if they have a magic potion or something... And a really fat man lobbing rocks at people.

Quote from: man n fist on Wed 20/03/2019 17:36:39
Can I just say that I love IKEA food. Thanks for that.

OMG the meatballs, mashed potato, gravy, and weird fruit sauce kit is heavenly!!!

Quote from: Mandle on Fri 22/03/2019 10:53:46

Quote from: man n fist on Wed 20/03/2019 17:36:39
Can I just say that I love IKEA food. Thanks for that.

OMG the meatballs, mashed potato, gravy, and weird fruit sauce kit is heavenly!!!

Weird fruit sauce kit? It was ages since I ate at an IKEA, so I don't remember any fruit sauce. Typically, the traditional side to meatballs (and most other meat-based dishes) in Sweden is lingonberry jam.

Anyways, I found an interesting article (http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JaneJensen/20140414/215473/WRITING_HOT_MEN_FOR_GAMES_Yes_please.php) by adventure game writer Jane Jensen on her approach to writing video game protagonists.

I actually quite like the thinking of that article.

A ton of men play female characters because they enjoy their games more that way (the most common claim I've seen is "I prefer watching a female character, so I play one", so make of that what you will), so it makes perfect sense for women to enjoy playing around with male characters in a similar way. Whether it be for the looks and titillation (ooh, mancandy!), to experience a different kind of persona and toy around with investing yourself in a character that is different in background, personality and physique to yourself (see also, fat people playing as athletic people or simpletons like myself enjoying Sherlock Holmes games to feel smart) or to just have the change to experience the reverse side of some narrative tropes, it still makes a ton of sense. Games, like movies and books, tend to be a lot about experiencing something you can't experience otherwise.

In my eyes, the whole "protagonists in games need to accurately represent group X so player group X can identify with them" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The whole point of that argument is that players lack imaginations and cannot enjoy an entertainment product unless the protagonist is similar to themselves, and yet we've not had this issue with, say, movies. Or have you ever heard anyone complain that they couldn't enjoy the Silence of the Lambs because Clarice Starling was female? Or are women unable to read the Lord of the Rings because there were no women in the Fellowship of the Ring?

Quote from: WHAM on Sun 24/03/2019 22:28:30
I actually quite like the thinking of that article.

A ton of men play female characters because they enjoy their games more that way (the most common claim I've seen is "I prefer watching a female character, so I play one", so make of that what you will), so it makes perfect sense for women to enjoy playing around with male characters in a similar way. Whether it be for the looks and titillation (ooh, mancandy!), to experience a different kind of persona and toy around with investing yourself in a character that is different in background, personality and physique to yourself (see also, fat people playing as athletic people or simpletons like myself enjoying Sherlock Holmes games to feel smart) or to just have the change to experience the reverse side of some narrative tropes, it still makes a ton of sense. Games, like movies and books, tend to be a lot about experiencing something you can't experience otherwise.

Yeah, I really hate it when people design and write a character just for fanservice, but I've no problem with attractive characters when they are also well written and make sense in context. For example, at the start of the longest Journey, we play as April Ryan in her underwear, but it makes perfect sense in context (she was transported to a dreamworld whilst she was sleeping, and in the dream she's still wearing what she slept in) and she's still a relateable character with a fleshed out backstory, and similarly, Jane Jensen's male characters also feels like realistic people even if they were made for her preferences.

QuoteIn my eyes, the whole "protagonists in games need to accurately represent group X so player group X can identify with them" doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The whole point of that argument is that players lack imaginations and cannot enjoy an entertainment product unless the protagonist is similar to themselves, and yet we've not had this issue with, say, movies. Or have you ever heard anyone complain that they couldn't enjoy the Silence of the Lambs because Clarice Starling was female? Or are women unable to read the Lord of the Rings because there were no women in the Fellowship of the Ring?

Well, I personally see it as a bit more complicated. Ideally, all writers should write whatever characters will make good and interesting characters, but the problem is when nearly everyone decides to make a 30 something white guy with short brown hair, stubble, jeans, american accent and an "everyman" personality, not because they have some original artistic vision with that, but just because it's seen as the default for the people writing them. It's not just about representation, but also because this character type feels stale and overused similar to authors writing protagonists who are themselves struggling authors.

Also, a big difference between games and movies is that a movie you just watch for around two hours whereas in many games, there isn't much story and you spend a lot of time controlling a character on the screen, and so the player often feels closer to a game avatar than a movie character (not to mention most movies have a big cast with many characters taking up a lot of screentime whilst most games are hugely centered on the player character), and so many players want characters they can either relate to or alternatively, find compelling enough to want to spend a lot of time with, and that's hard if a character is created to be a blank slate to project themselves on yet look vastly different from them.

To put it this way, I can relate to Lee Everett from the Walking Dead despite him looking different from me because he's a fleshed out character with thoughts and emotions I can relate to, but if just presented with a blank slate of a male and a female game avatar with no personality beyond generic protagonist traits, I will find it much harder to relate to the former than the latter since there is no personality to relate to, just looks.

Good point. I don't really tend to think of the blank slate characters are proper "characters", so my previous comment didn't take those cases into account.

For the record: The Myst games did the best job at making a blank slate protagonist. No name, no face, no physical attributes of any kind. You are you, a stranger in a strange place, and your actions define you.

Another interesting take on the blank slate character was what Rust (an otherwise horrible game I wouldn't recommend to anyone) did: Your character is generated upon game start. Build, skin colour etc are all random and you cannot affect them or change them, ever. The character you get is bound to your account and the only way to try to get a different one is to create a new account and buy the game again. An interesting take on the whole "you can't choose who you are in the real world, either" -thing I'd like to see experimented with more in better games. In a game like Rust it apparently devolved to "let's kill all the black characters lul" in an instant, because Rust is that kind of game.

Yeah, I've heard pretty horrible things about Rust, similar to Day Z, an online game where new player start unarmed and players kan restrain, steal from and kill other players without consequences,
and that quickly led to some players doing truly horrific things to other players (and players lose a lot of progress if they die, so you can't easily just fight back or log out). One of the less disturbing examples
were a group of players cornering and handcuffing a new player, strip him of all his clothes and equipment and then un-cuffing him and telling him to run only to shoot him in the back. The fact that anyone thought
an online game where players could attack and kill unarmed new players, or restrain them and force them to helplessly watch their tormentors humiliate their avatar is insane, because nearly online every game
I've read about that have such mechanics and no one enforcing rules nearly always end up with a few horrible, horrible people turn the game into their personal war-criminal simulator and use it to sadistically
bully and harass all other players out of the game.

Nearly all big MMO games has a big starting area where killing other players is forbidden and newbies can level up in peace and nearly all online shooters/fighting games make sure all players are
evenly matched in power and experience before being allowed to fight each other for a damned good reason.

It's a real shame about Rust though, since it did sound like a genuinely cool concept to experiment with, and I wish more games would try doing something with it.

Rust was intended to showcase a post-apocalyptic hellscape of a world where people are more like animals, doing anything to survive and thrive, so I think it does its job well enough. It's fair in exactly the same way life is fair (the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must), and cruel only in the way the people playing it are cruel. If a server were populated by kind-hearted people willing to sacrifice their own progress to help others and to build a community, there is nothing in the game stopping that from happening. That just isn't the way we human beings are by nature. Thus it's not really the game's fault.

It's just not a game for the faint of heart, or those easily frustrated.

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 25/03/2019 12:55:52
Rust was intended to showcase a post-apocalyptic hellscape of a world where people are more like animals, doing anything to survive and thrive, so I think it does its job well enough. It's fair in exactly the same way life is fair (the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must), and cruel only in the way the people playing it are cruel. If a server were populated by kind-hearted people willing to sacrifice their own progress to help others and to build a community, there is nothing in the game stopping that from happening. That just isn't the way we human beings are by nature. Thus it's not really the game's fault.

It's just not a game for the faint of heart, or those easily frustrated.

That's where we disagree, because if someone creates a single player game with evil npc's trying to kill the player, or the player can kill npc's, that's one thing, but the think I dislike with games like Rust is that players are allowed to do this to characters controlled by real, living and feeling people. Even if they aren't physically hurting anyone, they are still bullying and harassing real people, and the majority of the bullies almost never confine their actions to just the game, but also keep harassing people in other games and forums that never even joined in the game in the first place.

If someone buys a game about harsh survival in an unforgiving world of limited resources, with no limits on what is allowed, do they still have the right to complain when someone smashes their head with a rock and blows up their home to steal their pile of shiny rocks? I'd say "no". In a game like Rust or DayZ, a lot of things that would count as harassment in other games can and should be considered just another part of the experience, which I think is why there is fairly limited popularity for such games in the long run.

Quote from: WHAM on Tue 26/03/2019 10:23:20
If someone buys a game about harsh survival in an unforgiving world of limited resources, with no limits on what is allowed, do they still have the right to complain when someone smashes their head with a rock and blows up their home to steal their pile of shiny rocks? I'd say "no". In a game like Rust or DayZ, a lot of things that would count as harassment in other games can and should be considered just another part of the experience, which I think is why there is fairly limited popularity for such games in the long run.

Like I said, just because someone agreed to play a harsh survival game where other players might kill them as part of mutual competition, it doesn't automatically mean that they also signed up for racist and sexist insults or players explicitly ganging up on them just for being black or female, or in case of DayZ restrained and forced to watch the other players playing out their sadistic fantasies on their avatars, and I don't think that type of personal harassment is comparable to just killing a player for their loot. And also to repeat what I said before, the kinds of people who do that kind of bullying and harassment don't stop doing that outside the game, the game becomes a place for them to find like-minded and goad each other on, and bullying is bullying even if it's done online.

Geez, just when I thought we were past all this in this thread, do you have to keep defending online harassment?

To get back to the topic of fun games with female heroines, I thought I might share a hilarious game I randomly found by chance that features all three Star Wars leading ladies,
it's called Darth Vader Hair salon (http://www.azaleasdolls.com/characters/game_star-wars-girls.php) and it's just as weird and funny as it sounds, probably the funniest fanmade star wars project I've seen since the Death Star Cantina sketch filmed with Lego figures.

Have you seen this adventure game? :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/581360/FoxTail/

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Tue 26/03/2019 15:24:57
Have you seen this adventure game? :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/581360/FoxTail/

I remember seeing screenshots of it a while ago, the great use of color in the pixel art really stood out to me.

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 26/03/2019 14:24:03
To get back to the topic of fun games with female heroines, I thought I might share a hilarious game I randomly found by chance that features all three Star Wars leading ladies,
it's called Darth Vader Hair salon (http://www.azaleasdolls.com/characters/game_star-wars-girls.php) and it's just as weird and funny as it sounds, probably the funniest fanmade star wars project I've seen since the Death Star Cantina sketch filmed with Lego figures.

(https://i.ibb.co/2Sbjgvy/Darth-Vader-s-Hair-Salon.png) (https://ibb.co/qCZRkNd)
Best day of my life.

Quote from: Durq on Tue 26/03/2019 15:57:34
Best day of my life.

Awesome!

Anyone else willing to try the game and share your screenshots?  (laugh)

Quote from: Blondbraid on Tue 26/03/2019 16:34:04
Anyone else willing to try the game and share your screenshots?  (laugh)

(http://i64.tinypic.com/o8c6c7.png)
Her choice of hairstyle decided her outfit.

Can you give R2D2 a fro?