Sexism in games (Kingdoms of Amalur case study)

[gamer0004]

But why would you want to be able to determine whether an NPC is a male or female from far away? If it's an enemy, you kill them, if not, you might walk towards them or ignore them. Gender should not play a role in any of those choices.

[DDL]

God, someone else who doesn't fucking read.

"There are several dark elf enemies over there. You know that the females are assassins* who do horrible spike damage but die quickly, and the males are warriors* who do lower, sustained damage but tank quite well. You thus want to prioritise the assassins. You also know that a group that contains more than 5 assassins is impossible for you to beat, and if you get too close to any group, they'll spot you."

Now add to the end of this sentence either

"All of them look identical"

or

"They are easily distinguished at a distance"

and see which you think is better game design?

I'm not saying TITS is the only way to distinguish characters (and nor, indeed, am I endorsing it), but it is a way, and this is a factor that should not be discounted.

Also, you are all maaaaassive pedants. Jesus.


*you might argue this is sexist in itself, and you might be right, but this sort of shit goes waaaay back.

[Jonas]

Variety is good. Walking through a town, you're not going to look too closely at any of the generic NPCs walking past you, but you still want to get the impression that it's a proper town featuring men and women (perhaps even some children). It comes down to this: if you have women in your game, you want them to look like women. Otherwise you may as well only include men. Incidentally, that's a solution a lot of game developers choose, because it saves them a whole animation set and a whole sound effect set in addition to various gender-specific meshes and textures, and they can get away with it because women always have been and still pretty much are powerfully underrepresented in combat.

The gist of it is this: when developers choose to include women, it's typically because it adds variation, it may add external and internal consistency to the setting (we know women exist in quite large numbers in the real world and we're not really sure how a world without women would function), and if done right it may make the game more inclusive to all sorts of players in general but of course women in particular. And once developers have chosen to include women, they would like those women to be clearly identifiable as women, lest the purpose of implementing them in the first place be partially defeated.

[AEmer]

But why would you want to be able to determine whether an NPC is a male or female from far away? If it's an enemy, you kill them, if not, you might walk towards them or ignore them. Gender should not play a role in any of those choices.

Did you read where the argument originated, or did you just forget? =P

He explained that in some fantasy worlds, it's useful to be able to easily recognize things by using visual ques. Generally, it's very easy to establish a visual que like "female dark elf == assasin". It's one more parameter to play with, and it's especially useful if such features are easily recognizeable.

A game with cartoony graphics should naturally try to build on visual ques as much as possible. The graphics is already naive and symbolic in nature, you might as well use this to your advantage by tying together symbols.

He was simply arguing that a naive aesthetic could make large knockers utilitarian rather than merely pretty. It sounds pretty awkward when you put it like that, but it makes sense, and when there's a purpose beyond mere prettyness, it's a lot less clear if it's actually sexist.

The hotties of Batman Arkham City, for instance, are all pretty for reasons beyond fanservice, and you'll notice that the outcry against the aesthetic employed by that game came under comparatively little criticism for being sexist, as opposed to, say, the npc dialogue.

@ Jonas

You may not be that big a fellow, but trust me when I tell you that several big fellows I know enjoy being sneaky, backstabbing bastards in games every bit as much as you. I think it's just in some peoples nature

As for plate mail... Are you telling me that the kingsguard armor suits in the game of thrones television series don't make much of an impression?

[Jonas]

They're nice I guess, but they don't beat a cool rogueish leather armour outfit.

[gamer0004]

But it's pretty fucking stupid to only have female assassin's; like there are no strong tall females or skinny, agile men. This implies "I want binary appearances [man=1 or man=0] because I want binary roles [man=1 or man=0]." You're just defending sexism with sexism. We want variety in role and appearance, right? We want people in all their variety, small, large, wimpy, muscular, you name it. And depending on these physical attributes different individuals have different roles in combat. The variety way would be "small, skinny person ahead: must be an assassin" and "huge muscular person in full armour ahead, must be a warrior". On average there would be more female assassins and more male warriors because on average women are smaller and more agile whereas men are bigger and stronger. But these statistics (and the underlying distribution in all its variety) should not be reduced to someone being a male or female.

[DDL]

Gnnnnnnnnnnnn

I don't know why I even bother writing things anymore.

[Jonas]

Gnnnnnnnnnnnn

You set yourself up for that one tbh.

Anyway... played any good games lately?

[AEmer]

Gamer, do you comprehend the concept of naive aesthetics? Symbolism? Impressionism? Any of those ring a bell?

Your homework for your next post is to define what these words mean to you.

Here's a hint: Symbolism, and visual ques, are generally completely different from sexism in their intent.

[AEmer]

Gnnnnnnnnnnnn

I don't know why I even bother writing things anymore.

Because some of us think your examples and general attitude is awesome and fun?

[Jonas]

Here's a hint: Symbolism, and visual ques, are generally completely different from sexism in their intent.

See, I think this is why this whole discussion is fucking with everyone's heads. It's a genuinely nuanced issue, and most of us are actually treating it that way, and so we end up seemingly taking one stance on one page, and then the opposite damn stance on the next page. It's totally valid because the stances are addressing subtly different aspects of the discussion, but fuck me if it isn't confusing.

For example: you, Aemer, just defended tying class and function to gender because of symbolism, whereas you previously attacked the idea of reducing the prevalence of large breasts in games (another symbol) by referencing the problems of genuine large-breasted women.

[gamer0004]

Gamer, do you comprehend the concept of naive aesthetics? Symbolism? Impressionism? Any of those ring a bell?

Your homework for your next post is to define what these words mean to you.

Here's a hint: Symbolism, and visual ques, are generally completely different from sexism in their intent.

I think it would be a very good idea to do this yourself. For assassins, the symbol or impression or visual que is being small and agile, not being feminine. The suggestion that there is any relation, symbolic or impressionistic or otherwise, between females and the art of assassination is preposterous.

[AEmer]

you, Aemer, just defended tying class and function to gender because of symbolism, whereas you previously attacked the idea of reducing the prevalence of large breasts in games (another symbol) by referencing the problems of genuine large-breasted women.

If that's how you understood it, that's not good. That's not what I was trying to do.

I attempted to attack criticism of large breasts in games when that criticism relied on the presumption that such a predominance was objectifying.

And yeah, I get why that's going to be confusing to a lot of people, particularly since I tried to be nuanced about it, and that can make my point of view unclear. However...

@ Gamer

The suggestion that there is any relation, symbolic or impressionistic or otherwise, between females and the art of assassination is preposterous.

You really need to define symbolism and impressionism in this context. You really, really need to, because the way I read it, it makes no sense and I don't understand what you're saying.

[DDL]

Also, if you actually want to go down that route, gamer004: it's a stupid, stupid massive fucking minefield of totally insane proportions, and it really has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Kingdoms of thingy has chicks with excessively massive tits and/or excessive boobarmour. (though for the record, my opinion is: they don't)

Also, if you'd actually read what I wrote, I DID mention the possible sexist attitudes inherent in the "female delfs = assassins, male delfs = warriors" example. I FUCKING MADE A FOOTNOTE SPECIFICALLY FOR THAT.

BUT

I thought that since it was such a stupid, stupid massive fucking minefield of totally insane proportions, people would be happy that I acknowledged it, and then be similiarly happy to gloss over the fact that there is inherent sexism in games (and in fact, in EVERYTHING, EVER) on so many levels, and simply consider my point about exaggerated characteristics (be they size, colour, gender-specific morphologies or whatever) being useful for distinguishing NPCs in games, and that this is probably a factor worthy of noting.

Still, if you really want to go down that route, you're going to have to go back a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG way, and address what will ultimately end up being a silly, silly position to take.

Why can't we have male witch elves?
Why can't we have male witches?
Why can't we have female spacemarines?
Why can't Gordon Freeman be a chick?
Why can't Joanna Dark be a dude?
Why is it pacman and ms pacman, rather than pacman and pacwoman?
Why are almost all welders men?
Why do women get to have TWO X chromosomes? Surely that's greedy?
Why do men get a Y all to themselves? Ditto: greedy.

THIS WILL NOT STAND!!!!11!!2

The fact is, there is a lot of gender-based specificity in basically everything, ever, and whether or not this counts as 'sexist' is based entirely on the reasoning behind it, rather than the segregation itself.

AND, we're dealing with fucking fantasy RPGs, ffffffs.

So if you're going to argue that male dark elves are perfectly capable of being assassins, then what if I said in this fictional game universe "dark elf assassins use magical blades that kill any man who attempts to weild them"? Job done, we now have a totally internally consistent reason for why all dark elf assassins are female. BAM. Is this sexist? No. It follows the exact same reasoning behind the fact that virtually all sufferers of red green colourblindness are male. Is X-linkage sexist discrimination? No. Sexual discrimination, yes (that's the point, after all) but not sexist.

Having a cadre of elite female assassins is not sexist. Hell, even having them built like supermodels is not necessarily sexist, but having them wear leather bikinis, thighboots and pushup bras as armour, without a damn good reason as to why (other than: OMG HAWT), IS sexist....probably.

But anyway, this argument has gone on far too long, and become far too ill defined and stupid, and even I'm running out of angry DDL vitriol by this point...

[Jetsetlemming]

Man, you must have terrible eyesight. I gave my female PC in Amalur a fucking goatee (via chin tattoo) and short haircut and she's still recognizably female from just the appearance of her above the neck.

Perhaps it's my fault for wording my comments too vaguely, but also: fuck you.

If you actually took the time to employ brain, rather than going for hilarious repostes, you might consider what I actually wrote. Are all 'identify NPC X' events done at full, facial close up? No. Often it is advantageous (like in the example of male/female Delf roles I described) to be able to distinguish between people at a distance. If all you can go on is a vague LODmeshed profile on the horizon, you would hope that the profile in question is relatively distinctive. Exaggerated proportions helps things.

Secondly, "I gave my female NPC a fuckstupid face using the face editor of this -already acknowledged as using highly exaggerated features- game, and she still looks female."

Well yes. Congratulations, that's why they use highly exaggerated features. So you can do that. That was exactly my point.

*sigh*

I was poking fun man, don't get all hostile n shit. To make a slightly more serious reply: You need giant hooters to determine the female assassins from a distance? The hair, clothing, weapon, and animation/pose differences a female assassin would have over a male warrior isn't enough?

I mean, maybe I'm biased because I actually like gender differences to be rather vague, but it's still pretty easy to tell most of the time, except in cases where it's not clear even in real life. The other day I was on OKCupid and was reading this very cute chick's profile and then got to the end, at the "You should contact me if" section, realized that it was actually a dude.