Sexism in games (Kingdoms of Amalur case study)

[AEmer]

Dude, that's fricking funny.

Are you seriously saying that's sexist?

[Jetsetlemming]

You put too much weight in labels. It's definitely an ad by assholes for assholes. You can decide for yourself if having an ad directed at men under the presumption that girls don't care about games, they care about flowers, so get your girlfriend some flowers so you can play your videogame is sexist. If you're having trouble understanding any issues with the ad, try actually reading it, and note lines such as "Let 1-800-Flowers.com take care of the one you love while you take care of your enemies" and "the age old question: game or girlfriend?".

[Jetsetlemming]

Martin Luther King Day is coming up and your black friend wants to recognize the day, but you just want to play videogames, and violent videogames don't mesh with somber acknowledgement of the fight for civil rights and the only kind of people that care about them. Preorder Call of Duty 9 and get $10 off a Malcom X Chia Pet.

[Jetsetlemming]

Christmas is coming up and your religious family wants you to spend the holiday with them, but you'd rather play World of Warcraft, a pagan, mystical game that obviously no religious person would be interested in. Preorder Galaxy of Starcraft, play it alone, secluded from your family, and get $10 off a Rudolph statuette to excuse your absence with them.

[Jetsetlemming]

Earth Day is coming up and your Democrat lover wants you to keep all the lights in the house off to reduce energy usage. Preorder Oil Tycoon 3 and get $10 off a tree for them to hug.

[Jetsetlemming]

Soon it will be [an observed day we assume you do not care about] and [someone you're supposed to care about and respect] wants to observe it! Preorder [a videogame that we assume they distaste] and get $10 off [a worthless token for them to make yourself feel better as you insult them and your relationship with them by selfishly spending all day playing videogames, giving them a shitty present as if that makes up for it].

[Jonas]

A list:

1. You can stop it with the double posts. I'm sure you could have made your point within one post.
2. This is an advertisement. Not a videogame.
3. We already know the advertising industry is fucked in about a thousand different ways. Let's stay on the topic of videogames.
4. Even with all of the above, I'm not convinced this is sexist. I think it's just hitting the usual more or less destructive stereotypes as advertisements tend to do, and this time they happened to be split along gender lines because it's Valentine's day*.
5. If you stop focusing on the little bullshit that doesn't matter, maybe we could get around to talking about the huge bullshit that keeps everything fucked up.

* What this advertisement strongly suggests is that men don't care about romance and women don't care about videogames. This is not discrimination, it's just stereotyping. In fact since I'm sure we could dig up loads of statistics to support it, it may not even be stereotyping but rather generalisation. Generalisation is basically the fuel that feeds the infernal machine of the advertising industry. Now, don't get me wrong: I believe generalisation fosters stereotyping and stereotyping fosters sexism, but I don't believe this is sexism because you have to apply an unfair amount of interpretation to make out that this advertisement says that men are bad at romance and women are bad at videogames.

[gamer0004]

Look at any yoghurt commercial. Those feature stereotypes worse than this

[Jetsetlemming]

A list:

1. You can stop it with the double posts. I'm sure you could have made your point within one post.
2. This is an advertisement. Not a videogame.
3. We already know the advertising industry is fucked in about a thousand different ways. Let's stay on the topic of videogames.
4. Even with all of the above, I'm not convinced this is sexist. I think it's just hitting the usual more or less destructive stereotypes as advertisements tend to do, and this time they happened to be split along gender lines because it's Valentine's day*.
5. If you stop focusing on the little bullshit that doesn't matter, maybe we could get around to talking about the huge bullshit that keeps everything fucked up.

* What this advertisement strongly suggests is that men don't care about romance and women don't care about videogames. This is not discrimination, it's just stereotyping. In fact since I'm sure we could dig up loads of statistics to support it, it may not even be stereotyping but rather generalisation. Generalisation is basically the fuel that feeds the infernal machine of the advertising industry. Now, don't get me wrong: I believe generalisation fosters stereotyping and stereotyping fosters sexism, but I don't believe this is sexism because you have to apply an unfair amount of interpretation to make out that this advertisement says that men are bad at romance and women are bad at videogames.

This post makes me really confused as to what you view as "sexism", because typically people talking about it include "more or less destructive stereotypes" under that umbrella. Of COURSE most advertising is terrible bullshit. Beer ads, sports ads, diamond ads, yogurt ads, cleaning supply ads, appliance ads. Doesn't mean that a single shitty example should be ignored because it's in a sea of shit. When you've got an entire forest of shit trees, you've got to start chopping at some tree in it. It's hard, and more importantly less interesting to me, to talk about entire industries in sweeping generalizations compared to discussing individual pieces of that industry to demonstrate the common issues with it.
Again, though, I never outright stated it as sexism, merely posted it, demonstrated why I find it ridiculous, described it as an ad for assholes by assholes, and asked everyone else to form their own opinions on it.

And yeah, that last post out of that string probably can just stand alone. I was just having some fun with it, Jonas. :3


Edit: Ok, actually, let me make one serious point, in regards to your subtext- stereotypes can be very harmful, regardless of their specific content, to the group being stereotyped, and are typically included under the banner of prejudice and discrimination. Stereotyping black men as fast runners, for example. Sure, being a fast runner is a good thing. But what if you're black and not a fast runner? An unspoken variation of that, that rings just as strong, is that "black men should be fast runners". These kinds of positive stereotypes can become very negative influences on people who match the group, but not the trait. See also: Asians and math, gay men and fashion (I've actually known gay men who actually had real self esteem issues over not matching the expected 'fabulous fag' archetype) or women and motherhood. Stereotypes about groups are a key foundation of racism, and frequently form a restrictive cage around these groups, regardless of how particularly "destructive" you might read a certain stereotype.
Where I found that ad, it had multiple responses from women, including lesbian women, utterly disgusted by the attitudes about their sex contained within.

[DDL]

I think we've already established that lots of us are similarly confused as to what you consider sexism, too, though.

More later when I'm not running for a train.

[Jetsetlemming]

I think we've already established that lots of us are similarly confused as to what you consider sexism, too, though.

More later when I'm not running for a train.

Participation in the patriarchy via spreading or believing stereotypes, encouraging or enforcing gender roles, or prejudging a sex based on stereotypes, prior expectations, or expected gender roles. Sexism is not just "hating women", just as racism is not just "hating blacks". We're all racist and sexist on some level, because we're all raised in a culture with gender roles and common stereotypes. The difference is whether or not you accept those gender roles and stereotypes and live by them, and expect them of others, or begin to recognize and understand them, and accept people as individuals based on their own merits.

[bobby 55]

accept people as individuals based on their own merits.

That's a description of a sensible adult. Advertising, I'd argue, is a big step away from sensible. I like and respect my female friends, does that make me a feminist though?

[Jetsetlemming]

accept people as individuals based on their own merits.

That's a description of a sensible adult. Advertising, I'd argue, is a big step away from sensible. I like and respect my female friends, does that make me a feminist though?

What do you think when those female friends reject a typically feminine role (such as having children, or being a teacher, or caring about valentine's, etc) or embrace a typically masculine role (such as playing sports, or being a doctor, or having a penis), what do you think of them? If one of your friends breaks a gender roll and another discourages or disparages them, what do you say?

[bobby 55]

accept people as individuals based on their own merits.

That's a description of a sensible adult. Advertising, I'd argue, is a big step away from sensible. I like and respect my female friends, does that make me a feminist though?

What do you think when those female friends reject a typically feminine role (such as having children, or being a teacher, or caring about valentine's, etc) or embrace a typically masculine role (such as playing sports, or being a doctor, or having a penis), what do you think of them? If one of your friends breaks a gender roll and another discourages or disparages them, what do you say?

This is Australia Jetset, women playing sport is *no big deal, nor should it be. I do have a friend who has decided motherhood is not for her, she lives alone, albeit with her golden retriever. Why would/should I think any less of her for doing so? I can't recall any mutual friends discouraging or disparaging her, but if they did I'd give them my "she's alright, her choice, never has done me any harm" stock response.

* I better add no big deal as in acceptable. A big deal is made of the successful sporting women. The coverage of women's sport by the media is less than the males though, and I think that is more to the point of what's being discussed.

[DDL]

I work in bioscience. At the moment, vetinary bioscience. My lab group is 90% female. Most are either doctors or on their way to being doctors, and many of those are already qualified vets. Science is (more or less) a meritocracy, so if someone is here, it's coz they're clever, not because they are +/- 1 penis.
The idea of stereotypical "gender roles" in actual real life basically didn't occur to me until you mentioned it just now, because at least in the environment where I work, the default role is "scientist": if you want to have kids, they yay, but fucking hell, it'll be hard to fit experiments round that (applies to both sexes). If you don't, then...also yay: more time for experiments and then drinks when experiments fail.
It's not so much that I don't judge: it's that it didn't occur to me that this was something anyone would bother judging people on. Some people get broody, some don't (applies to both sexes), it's never struck me as a specifically female-associated phenomenon (though taking bodyclock into consideration, it's admittedly a potentially more pressing question for women).

So, with respect to games like RPGs, I'm unlikely to be immediately searching for sexist gender-role assignment. Plus in a sense the gender-neutral phenomenon continues: generally when you have male/female options for character generation, the actual gameplay implementation is usually identical: male and female warriors have identical hitpoints, strength etc etc -which is why I find armour designed for sexiness rather than actually stopping blows to be quite so irritating. Amusingly, perhaps one of the best games for female armouring implementation is the mount&blade series (it's basically identical armour for both sexes), a game which is actually, unarguably sexist in its gameplay implementation (historically accurately, admittedly).

With respect to advertising, I think it's mostly been said, but remember: advertising is a truly ruthless ruthless environment. It's about as cut-throat darwinian in its approach as nature is, on an accelerated timescale: stuff that works stays, and often becomes even more exaggerated. It works almost entirely on efficacy, not ethics or common sense, or anything.

Sex sells, no matter whether you agree with this or not. Hell, it's a biological imperative, so will probably ALWAYS be a good tactic, however reprehensible you may consider it. If you want to sell a product to women, there are several tricks you can employ. If you want to sell a product to men, you could use tricks like "powerfulness" (cars and guns) but why bother even using tricks when sex works virtually all the time. Hell, even utter crazies like PETA understand this.
In game advertising, you almost always find adverts for products aimed at a majority male audience feature tits, guns, or fast cars (or all three), because this works. Note in contrast that the adverts for say..the sims (which has a fairly high female following) features basically zero tits, guns and fast cars: it's not that the sims is more enlightened, it's just that tits++ won't help shift more copies of the sims.

All of which brings us to that flower discount advert. In light of the above, it's actually a fairly bad advert. If they dropped the burning clown heads and added some tits, it'd probably sell better (and it's fairly clear from the advertising they're not aiming at women). It's basically a slightly poorly judged pastiche, much in the vein of nuts magazine ("if we're THIS obnoxious it becomes ironic!"), that -like it so often does- misses the mark slightly and just comes across as a bit juvenile.

But really I just see it as a crap advert rather than a sexist one (and to be fair, it really needs some tits).