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[in this context]

And, for the record, of course I wasn't "making at joke" at Blondbraid's expense; I was posting a nice painting.

Sorry, Blondbraid, but in my view you are the one who jumped at me, when the painting I posted had nothing to do with you and wasn't against you. Of course you are free to react to it as you wish, but you shouldn't be quick to attack others.
Furthermore, I am not sure if you are seriously asking me to defend Munch to you. Don't you think this is a little bit surreal? (instead of the apt, which would be expressionistic)

If that was the case, why didn't you explain that from the start?

I thought I gave a pretty thorough explanation of why I thought that the picture was inappropriate in this context, and it's not about the picture in and on itself, but the fact that you chose to include it in this discussion knowing the subject matter.
If it was just about wanting to post a nice picture, why here in this discussion and not make your own forum thread for posting classic paintings?

Also, do you think it's fair to say that I'm attacking you when you have more or less accused me of being obsessed with porn;

Hm, I think you should try to be civil. The painting I posted is famous and elegant, not some material of pornography. Maybe you are the one who is filled with such views, and can't help attributing them to others? :/

And compared me to an Islamist fundamentalist ruler;

I am reminded of those cool and feminist arabian princes, who always cover up ancient statues so that the genitals aren't visible. A serious ability to appreciate high art..

I have tried to give you the benefit of a doubt, but you've kept putting words in my mouth.

And why do you only try to back down after you saw another forum member agreeing with my points?

[*smiley face*]

I am reminded of those cool and feminist arabian princes, who always cover up ancient statues so that the genitals aren't visible. A serious ability to appreciate high art..

This kind of conservatism can be universal, of course. Pope Pius IX actually had statues' genitals removed. But I think you're missing the point Blondbraid has been making. No one is taking offense at nudity per se - I like Munch and I like that painting. But the thread is about sexist representation of women. No one is saying all depictions of women are sexist, so just posting 'good art' of a naked woman doesn't say anything particularly meaningful. I can see why Blondbraid would read it as a cheap joke at her expense, though it sounds like that wasn't your intention.

That said, it's impossible to argue that the man and woman in Munch's painting are represented in the same way just because they're both naked - the woman is standing upright and facing the camera, blocking our view of his genitals. This follows the same pattern as the argument that male and female superheroes are both 'idealised'.

Well put!

I wasn't aware of the girl in the painting being tied to Munch's fiancee. I suppose this ties to myself not caring about Munch's love life, but caring about nice paintings
Also I don't think you have a point regarding the stance of the models. I am sure one could project weakness to the person lying down on the bed, and power to the one standing up and looking at the audience in a defiant manner. Furthermore, usually if you are dead you are the weak party by default ^_^

And what about my point about the man being drawn without much detail and having his private parts obscured by the naked woman, while the woman's naked body being in full view and the most detailed thing in the painting?
And again, I found it inappropriate to post this in this discussion, and if you truly cared about discussing that painting and weren't trying to troll, you would have read up more on the context beforehand and shared your thoughts on how it
presented the characters in it in your first post with it rather than jump straight to post a huge nude painting and say "how about this? *smiley face*".

You also haven't acknowledged any of my complaints about the fact that you used several rude strawman arguments against me and my words, and paired with the smileys, it feels like you're just going to try to joke away any criticism.
I tried saying in my first reply to your post that I didn't want to attribute it to any intentional sexism, but every reply you give makes it harder to do so.

I don't think they're floor tiles, but shadows cast by the columns.

It does seem so, but where's the light coming from? If it's the sun than the shadows cannot have different directions 

Indeed, the only thing that would make sense perspective wise was if there was an asymmetrical grid on a glass ceiling in the room and a light source above that ceiling.

[you're the pervert]

Hm, I think you should try to be civil. The painting I posted is famous and elegant, not some material of pornography. Maybe you are the one who is filled with such views, and can't help attributing them to others? :/

Let me get this straight, you're asking for ME to be civil, yet you simultaneously go "Maybe you're the pervert for calling out my inappropriate post"?

I never said the painting was pornographic, what I am trying to say it that it's really inappropriate for this discussion.
If you'd have posted it in a thread on art history, that had been one thing, but this is a thread where people have specifically complained about gratuitous inclusions of naked women in media,
and your answer is to post a giant picture of a naked woman in it? What answer did you expect?

You probably didn't notice, but the man in that painting is also naked.
He is, moreover, dead.
Hardly a case of treating women differently in media

I am reminded of those cool and feminist arabian princes, who always cover up ancient statues so that the genitals aren't visible. A serious ability to appreciate high art..

Well, not only is the man's sensitive area mostly covered up by the naked woman (her sensitive areas painted rather detailed in comparison), but the painting casts the man as a sympathetic victim and the woman as a murderer,
and in the context of the scene, painting them both as naked and the man lying on a bed also draws upon sexist stereotypes of women as evil seductresses using their sexuality to entrap men in order to harm them.
Just because they're both naked doesn't mean that the nudity is automatically equal.

Furthermore, don't you realize how sexist it is to equate me criticizing your post of a man's painting with Saudi fundamentalists?
I'm not imposing a ban on all nudity, or banning people from watching the original painting,
I'm critiquing the fact that you posted a nude painting a male artist did to get back at his ex when people were discussing how gratuitous depictions of female nudity was problematic.
Don't you realize just how many misogynists have used that exact same comparison whenever a woman has complained of objectifying images of women?
If you want a decent discussion, I ask you to lay off with the childish and insulting comparisons and accusations.

Of course Munch could have painted something less emotional - in fact he could have done this with every other work of his, the price would just be that we wouldn't know of him today.
In this way, this is very much on-topic. Art isn't tv celebrity politics, and important artists have their subject matter, always from personal issues.

I only see it as on-topic in the sense that it looks like it could become an example of Lewis's Law if you're going to keep using strawman arguments.

...why do I have a sudden urge to play Settlers III again?

Really?
Personally it gives me the urge to play Age of Empires. 

My first thought was how much it looked like Age of Empires 2, which isn't a bad thing considering how popular it was.

I will admit, you've definitely nailed that Sierra art style.

I agree, my only issue is that the floor tile perspective seems a bit wonky in the top left background, but otherwise they look neat.

Glad to be of help, and I've already edited my comment.

Thanks! On second thought, maybe some more context (medium-to-big spoilers this time):

Spoiler

Here's what makes the naked/dressed options (not) work in my opinion:

Without revealing too much, the scene is about the princess angrily confronting the journalist and the journalist completely turning the tables on her and verbally defeating her. The "twist" I mentioned is that at the moment of her triumph, the journalist stands up in the bathtub and it turns out that after all the bullshit about transparency, she's been wearing a strapless swimsuit the whole time, making her the only dressed person in the room. It's not the subtlest of metaphors, but I think I can make it less on-the-nose in execution than it might sound in writing . It obviously doesn't work with the princess dressed though, the journalist would still be underdressed compared to her.

What works in favor of the dressed version is that the princess' character arch is her being dishonest (one of those people who go out of their way not to tell a direct lie, but their skirting around the truth ends up being worse than lying) and eventually learning what real honesty is. So her wanting to stay "covered" works for the character and the journalist could use it against her, managing to embarrass her for not wanting to get naked. It could be a cool villain moment if I manage to get the dialogue right, it would showcase the journalist being clever, manipulative and good at bullying people, managing to turn a disadvantage in her favor through sheer shamelessness. This is probably too abstract without the actual dialogue, but it works in my head . I'd have to sacrifice the swimsuit twist though.

[close]

(sorry for making this about me and my game btw, I think it's somewhat relevant to the topic, but feel free to ignore me )

Well, seeing that context, I personally think

Spoiler

the version where the princess stays dressed sounds more thematically interesting. As for the swimsuit twist, you're right that the dynamics change with the princess dressed, though you could probably still make a comment on how the princess is honest about covering up, while the journalist pretends to be bare and transparent but hides it. Like, after successfully making the princess feel embarrassed for wanting to stay covered, she rises up to show she too is covered while just berating the princess for it.

[close]

As for the bubble bath in the screenshot, did you watch this Robin Hood: Men in tights scene for inspiration?

[you're the pervert]

Hm, I think you should try to be civil. The painting I posted is famous and elegant, not some material of pornography. Maybe you are the one who is filled with such views, and can't help attributing them to others? :/

Let me get this straight, you're asking for ME to be civil, yet you simultaneously go "Maybe you're the pervert for calling out my inappropriate post"?

I never said the painting was pornographic, what I am trying to say it that it's really inappropriate for this discussion.
If you'd have posted it in a thread on art history, that had been one thing, but this is a thread where people have specifically complained about gratuitous inclusions of naked women in media,
and your answer is to post a giant picture of a naked woman in it? What answer did you expect?

I still think it is jolly poor form, I must say. Falling out takes a certain grace. Like a cat.

It's an expression of strong emotion. Those tend to be "poor form". It's what artsy people do.

I still think there's a difference between say, Fransisco Goya painting terrifying paintings to deal with the horrors of the wars and Spanish inquisition he'd witnessed in his homeland, and Munch painting his fiance as a murderer because he couldn't handle a bad breakup.

Congratulations Misj!

How about The Death of Marat?
[img ]https://lh5.ggpht.com/-d5RlDp2ZxTrQx-THUFQxjBFvGWF5PD6Ro4Sg1C4CVqostkhrM2J0ZrVeBjf=s1200[/img]
Although it has to be said that this painting by Munch (which iirc is titled thus) is very clearly just inspired by the actual death of Marat.

I say it is a shitty thing to just post random nude paintings with smiley emojis next to them into a discussion on media sexism. I don't want to attribute your particular comment to intentional maliciousness,
but I will say there is no shortage of men online who will deliberately post explicit nude pictures in forums to harass and provoke women who dare to criticize sexist images,
and I find it hard to imagine how you could fail to see how blatantly inappropriate this is in the context of this discussion.

As for the painting itself, I think it's unambiguosly sexist of dudes to take a historical woman who never was naked in public during her life and go "but I wanna see her naked anyway".

Ok, thanks for the input. Maybe it would be better if you put your response in a spoiler tab though? Not that I think people care that much, but just in case .

Glad to be of help, and I've already edited my comment.

Going back to sex/nudity in games, there's a dilemma I've been having with my own game, so maybe this is the right thread to bite the bullet and ask what people think. Relatively minor (but not negligible) spoilers for Truth be Trolled follow, if you want to play that when it comes out 10 years from now, read at your own risk .

Spoiler

So I've got this scene in the game. The lady in the tub is a tabloid journalist who likes interviewing people naked in her spa, supposedly because transparency, honesty, no secrets, yada yada. Of course she actually does it do embarrass and dominate them (she's interviewing a naked guy when you first visit the area). There's a visual gag here where thanks to the magic of parallaxing, objects scrolling at different speeds always conveniently align to cover strategic areas, Austin Powers style, so nothing explicit is seen.

So far so good I hope, some mildly naughty fun. Now the dilemma:

At one point, the princess visits the journalist in the spa to confront her about something. I'm considering three options:

1. The princess follows the prescribed "dress code", goes in naked, and she's not happy about it. Again, there are strategically placed objects in the foreground, so nothing explicit. This works for the power dynamic I want between the princess and the journalist and it supports a minor twist in the scene, but I'm worried some people might find it sleazy (as me just looking for excuses to get the girl naked).

2. The princess defies the journalist and marches in dressed. This changes the dynamic of the scene and undermines another idea I've had, but is at least interesting and works thematically in some ways. I also don't have to make a new walkcycle for the princess .

3. A compromise: the princess wears a towel. Kind of "meh" if you ask me, but it is an option.

Would anyone here take issue with any of this?

[close]

From the screenshot, and the context you've given,

Spoiler

even if there is scenery hiding their private parts, it still sounds like it could be interpreted as sleazy by some players if you have the princess having to follow the "dress code" despite being unhappy about it. I don't want to make any definite statements not knowing how the entire scene plays out, but I recommend you read and ponder this page on TVtropes for examples of what to avoid if you go that route.

However, if you want my personal suggestion, why not have her march in fully dressed, but still have the Austin Powers style scenery blockers covering her sensitive areas?
It'd be a fun and novel way to make the scene memorable as well as save you from drawing the extra walk cycle.

[close]

As for the GTA5 image, even without having Reiter's context, I know the series history well enough to easily see it's well in line with what the series is trying to do. It's a game series about bad people doing bad things and being unpleasant to everyone. It's a game series in which you are encouraged to beat up prostitutes, sell drugs from an ice cream van and "Kill X ethnic minorities in Y minutes". I'm pretty sure its advertisements aren't supposed to make people relate to the setting or characters all that closely.

Well, that still presents a pretty nasty and unpleasant picture of gamers, as troglodytes who only want wanton violence, prostitutes, and wanton violence against prostitutes in their entertainment.

As for box arts, I do think that they matter. Of course, it is more about the general marketing material, I suppose. That stupid man on the Cyberpunk box would have been less tired if he had not also featured on so many advert splashes and what-not.

No, I still think that box art does matter. It is, or could be, an encapsulation of your game. Even if the prospective player is not so reliant on the box now as we once were, it is just a waste to make it the most dull thing your marketing squad could come up with. Not to mention that the box art is generally the same art that features in advert splashes, and on the icons you click in the digital game shelf these days. If anything, it should be an invitation to think even more on the matter, as it will make so many different appearances. It is not vital, and I do not think that bad box art has ever made me decide against buying a game, but it does matter. If nothing else, it tells you how deep the fingers of the marketing board goes, I suppose.

Well, while physical video game boxes on the store shelves may not be as common today, digital store thumbnails are, and there are way more games out there than what I can keep track of through reviews alone,
and so the thumbnail on the digital store often will decide whether I think a game seems interesting and I want to click the link to find out more, or brush it off as yet another generic game in a genre I don't like and ignore it.

I think it's worth pondering whether that is because many women still are expected to do more of the daily household chores, like doing the dishes, cooking, looking after children. It's more socially acceptable for men and boys to shut themself away in their room and spend an hour on their hobby than for a woman to do it, especially if she's a mother, and will be labeled a "bad mom" if she leaves the kids alone for too long.

I had time to play video games when I came home from school when I grew up, but I also have a dad who did a fair share of the housework.

The same women who frown upon games are usually fine with binging Netflix shows and reading books. It's more about the whole "computers are for boys" thing. Two of the three women I mentioned are technical types, one is a data analyst and is somewhat geeky overall, the other one is a math/physics high school teacher (she's in her fifties and really likes The Witcher 3 and Factorio - pretty cool lady ).

That's a good point, though I think a factor to consider is that books and Netflix shows can be easily paused and put down, wheras many computer games can't be paused and saved at any time without being penalized with lost progress.

Secondly, I think there is a higher entry threshold to gaming, at least AAA games. You not only need a decent computer with good performance, which is usually expensive, but many games aimed at adults will take for granted that you have a lot of previous gaming experience and are already used to most of the standard controls as well as rapid multitasking. Just looking at my dad, despite liking to play Age of Empires 2 when it came, I've noted when I've asked him to try a game with what I thought was pretty basic controls, he struggled immensely remembering where WASD was on the keyboard and having to use both the keyboard and mouse simultaneously to steer the player character, and I imagine it would be even worse for someone with no computer experience at all. From what I've seen, most who got into gaming started as kids, and it's way harder to get into it as an adult, and speaking as someone who used to be a little girl, it's not hard to see why so few girls get into gaming when there are so few quality games marketed at little girls, which feeds into the "computers are for boys" stereotype, and it really doesn't help that up until very recently, the game industry itself was pretty happy to paint this image of what gamers are supposedly like;

I've for real seen people advertize GTA 5 with this image, which makes the Bioshock one look genius in comparision.

No one wants to see Lavrov in a sex game.
It would be even worse than Larry 

I googled him and I can only agree. 

I get to talk to a lot of "regular" people for a living and sometimes I bring up games. Most women I've spoken to play the occasional casual mobile game, but seem almost embarrassed about it because they see it as lazy and childish (and they give me this "maybe you should grow up" look when I say I'm into games ). Other than that, they would recall a game or two they have tried in the past, but they don't play regularly. I only personally know three women who play bigger games on a regular basis, some games they say they've enjoyed include The Sims, Witcher 3, the Fallout series, Factorio, Last of Us.

I think it's worth pondering whether that is because many women still are expected to do more of the daily household chores, like doing the dishes, cooking, looking after children. It's more socially acceptable for men and boys to shut themself away in their room and spend an hour on their hobby than for a woman to do it, especially if she's a mother, and will be labeled a "bad mom" if she leaves the kids alone for too long.

I had time to play video games when I came home from school when I grew up, but I also have a dad who did a fair share of the housework.

[73% male / 27% female]

https://adventuregamers.com/about/advertise

KeyStatistics

80,000+ monthly unique visitors
73% male / 27% female
94% of visitors aged above 20 (70% between 20 and 35)
A primarily pan-Atlantic readership, with a roughly 50/50 split between North America and Europe

Interesting statistics, though it'd be interesting to compare different sites.
At least from these forums, I got the impression that it was more even proportions between male and female visitors.

I suppose Artiom is having a lucky day, but even so, I feel more like a peeping Tom trapped in his head.

This so perfectly summarizes my problem with 90% of games trying to portray sex and undressed women.
When I play video games and a female NPC takes off her clothers and/or get sexual with the hero for little to no reason, or the hero visits a brothel/strip club for some contrived reason,
I don't see anything sexy about it, what I see is, figuratively speaking, a creepy dude working on the game deciding to expose himself and his gross frat-bro view on sex to me.

That said, I don't find it morally reprehensible for the same reasons I don't find excessive (sometimes outright sadistic) violence in games reprehensible. Personally it's not my thing and it's fine to criticize it as a piece of "art", but some posts here feel a tad too judgmental to me. From my experience, most people seem perfectly capable of distinguishing between campy fiction, heightened reality and the real world. I haven't yet looked into that "objectification changes the brain" study, there might be something to that.

It's hard for me to see it as harmless when female critics have received graphic death threats for criticizing the portrayal of women in video games.

Oh, and another thing! That Bioshock Infinite cover-art is indeed one of the most stupid things I have seen. Of all the evocative things they could have put on the box, marketing chose that. I understand that box-art is of declining importance, but it pays to make it a neat summary of the game or the mood it inhabits. The 'man-in-game-on-box' design philosophy use so very little to tell you so much nothing, and it is a pity.

And Bioshock isn't the only game I nearly missed out on thanks to this idiotic tactic, it was the same with Remnant: from the ashes too; it's a game where you travel to other dimensions and explore fantastic and colorful fantasy worlds,
but the cover is the most agressively boring thing I've seen, same generic deafault dude in grey/brown as always, just with some vines thrown onto him instead of the usual zombies.

As for the "It's just one scene/just one location" argument in regards to the strip club scene however, I'll counter with saying that it only takes one booger on you plate to ruin your dining experience.

This sentence of mine was in regards to the claim that "there weren't any women in the game who weren't sex objects", not to whether this may or not ruin a game. Hence I wanted to give more perspective of the game content.

Well, that's a fair point.

Something ruining a game is pretty subjective imho, guess it also depends on whether you found the rest of the game enjoyable enough or not (or at least tolerable). In "metro" games I was personally offended by some other things in the past (less today though). In COD1, for another example, I was not offended but outright insulted by one of the scenes, to the point where I was considering writing a letter to developers (although later realized that would be a silly idea); yet I still think it's not a bad game overall.

Yes and no, some things are bound to make groups of people more uncomfortable than other things.

When it comes to number of gamers, I think the main Finnish gaming magazine "Pelit" had an article about that a while back. Off the top of my head I think the statistics were basically: There are more female gamers than male gamers in general.

However, this was only true when one looked at all genres combined, and when it came to specific genres the numbers varied wildly. Women dominated player counts in puzzle games and mobile games and other non-or-less-violent genres, whereas males dominated the numbers in wargames and sports games. Certain shooters, such as Overwatch, have increased female participation in that genre, and there is definitely room for such expansion in most other genres as well. It just takes a game that suits the tastes of those female gamers to come out, since it's quite clear that females tend to like different things in games than male players, thematically speaking. And as we kind of saw before, a lot of publishers are still stuck in the mindset that they need to cater to teenage male gamers, which is why a lot of genres remain stuck with that demographic.

There was no breakdown for each specific genre, but based on that broad generalization I'd imagine stuff like point'n'click adventure games would have a somewhat higher female player percentage than male, as they tend toward the thinky and character/story driven.

I think it's in a huge part thanks to marketing. For example, CoD and Battlefield used to be pretty agressively marketed towards teenage boys exclusively, to the point many women, myself included, felt alienated from such games, meanwhile, Overwatch has made a point of showcasing diverse characters in all their marketing, with the added implication that they are aiming for an equally diverse playerbase.

With the boxart of Bioshock Infinite, the marketing explicitly said they wanted the "dude with gun"demographic.

Problem is, if I hadn't seen any other reviews and had to go on the box cover alone, I'd never have bought and played a game that just seemed to be
yet another dudebro shooter about some super generic dude going off to kill things in the name of MURICA.

but from what I've seen of the Metro 2034 scenes, people complained that it came out of nowhere, and there weren't any women in the game who weren't sex objects.

I would agree that that scene in metro comes out of nowhere; and it actually kind of shocked me, not in sexual way, but rather as a very dumb and character and immersion breaking thing. To elaborate, it came right after two characters escape from what was practically a massive war crime location where lots of people died of a virus or were finished of by a "cleaning" team. They then are placed under a carantine, in one small room corner together, even though they are of separate genders and not related in any way. Latter alone looked pretty weird.

Wow, that really just made it worse in context.

But I find the second statement unjust, there are alot of women in Metro series who are not sex objects, in fact I barely remember anything behind that infamous brothel scene. The brothel was 1 scene in 1 location, which may take around 20 seconds of player time if you don't stick around purposedly.

Well, I only played the first game, and you're right that there were many female npc's who weren't sex objects, however, they were all extras in the first game who stood around in some crowded areas but never had any effect on the story, and from what I've heard, Angry Joe may have excaggerated the comment about "all the women" in his review, but I still got the impression that even if some women in metro 2034 isn't sex objects, they are just insignificant extras instead.

As for the "It's just one scene/just one location" argument in regards to the strip club scene however, I'll counter with saying that it only takes one booger on you plate to ruin your dining experience.