Of "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" - and the internet - by Firefreak
DDL on 15/3/2013 at 10:16
"Doesn't necessarily" pretty much covers that, though.
"A does not always imply B" is not the same thing as "A never implies B".
As for cultural vs biological, they're not that easy to separate, given that a vast amount of cultural heritage stems from those biological differences.
Lucky for us, a lot of this culture is slowly adapting to give less of a shit about those differences, so most of the current arguments revolve around how fast that change should be happening, and how much of a shove it still needs.
Jason Moyer on 15/3/2013 at 10:27
I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other, just speculating that sometimes gender differences are treated as gender inequality. It would be naive to think that poor treatment of women was down to a difference in biology rather than culture. Then again, women also gain significant benefits from those cultural differences.
Yakoob on 16/3/2013 at 05:11
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
I mean, are you fucking kidding? She's doing what everyone with an opinion and no critical thinking skills does - starting with the conclusion (women are misrepresented in videogames) and then working her way back from that. Where an interesting, thought-provoking discussion would start with "here is how gender roles are portrayed in videogames"
Whats the ponit, hasnt that been established already numerous times by numerous people (which is my whole point - her video, even if sparking a discussion, does not actually add anything new to it).
Poetic thief on 20/3/2013 at 02:12
Disclaimer: Only watched the first half of the video. Too bored to finish it.
Yep. Nothing insightful, even if this is just the pilot episode. Not only is it an exercise in question begging (as a previous poster here pointed out), but, as expected, she just presents the issue with no attempt at offering workable solutions.
I'm a black gamer, and some of the issues we have to deal with are worse. You have to put up with arguments like "Hurlocks and Qunari are okay in Dragon Age, but the presence of black people doesn't make any sense because there were no black people in medieval Europe !" :rolleyes:
I won't be making a video series moaning about it because it boils down to one simple thing: The people who make video games are primarily white and male and not unreasonably, will make their characters based off their own knowledge/experiences.
I still think it would be cool to have an RPG that featured an African setting. Massai Culture for instance is ripe for cool magical effects (no, not voodoo), and interesting familial concepts that would be new to us Westerners such as "Enkishon."
Why doesn't she use that Kickstarter money to fund scholarships for girls going into Computer Science then we can have more female presence on development teams. Nope, she doesn't really give a damn about that, because she'd rather rehash the same old arguments and do nothing about it.
demagogue on 20/3/2013 at 03:31
Quote Posted by Poetic thief
I still think it would be cool to have an RPG that featured an African setting. Massai Culture for instance is ripe for cool magical effects (no, not voodoo), and interesting familial concepts that would be new to us Westerners such as "Enkishon."
This is the best type of response to all of this, the positive spin. Aside from some segment feeling alienated, the fact is settings, player characters and situations not involving white men all the time are interesting in their own right. How often can we be African or Burmese, or Native American before whites arrived, or even a woman that's not just an avatar for a male perspective? Even if a lot of the devs are male & white, asking them to see the world through another perspective is still possible I think.
I personally think the (or one of the potential) great value of gaming is not only being someone much different from myself, but having to seriously deal with the world as that other person like they would have to. Edit: For the record, I have a long list of these kinds of alt game scenarios too.
Muzman on 20/3/2013 at 05:35
Quote Posted by Poetic thief
I won't be making a video series moaning about it because it boils down to one simple thing: The people who make video games are primarily white and male and not unreasonably, will make their characters based off their own knowledge/experiences.
Maybe if you did people might, I dunno, think about the at times limited nature of the tropes and tacit trends they draw from and consider other possibilities.
