For as long as there have been people on this earth, there have been people doing shitty things to each other. For as long as I can remember, there are a lot of shitty things that people have done where video games and gamers have had to carry a portion of the blame. It's a trend that is complete bullshit and needs to die because not only is it needlessly damaging to the image of people who enjoy video games as their main, or one of their main hobbies, but it's damaging to the people who have shitty things done to them.
From the pre-video game days of Dungeons and Dragons being accused of raising little Satan worshippers to school shootings being blamed on the likes of Doom, for the longest people have tried to use video games as the reason for shitty things happening. Now, people have even added racism and sexism to the mix of things video games have caused so firing up gaming news can get a little depressing.
Even with the most recent mass shooting tragedy in America, Orlando, there were articles trying to paint gaming as the reason for these things happening. That horrible event happened around the time of E3 so there were a lot of people quick to point the finger and say it's their fault for "glorifying gun violence". Take to a site like Twitter or Facebook and the number of idiots repeating these stupid ideas is ten fold.
Here's the thing, using gaming or anything else as a sort of scape goat for the ills of the world is not only incredibly stupid, but it distracts from the real cause of the issue and basically guarantees that it will happen again. It's a lot easier to attack games for gun violence rather than discuss things like gun control or the sorry state of mental care in America. Whenever you read stories about violence at LAN cafes it's much easier to blame the game rather than examine the probably tragic lives of the victim and offenders. It's much easier to blame games for sexism than actually have the balls to stand up for women in countries where you can be killed for that kind of thing. It's spineless and shows that you care more about shifting blame rather than trying to solve the issue.
Gaming is a huge hobby, a huge industry enjoyed by millions of people. It's also still a fairly young industry that a lot of people either can't or don't want to try to get their head round. When you have a hobby this large there are OBVIOUSLY going to be shitty people around and they are going to do shitty things regardless of their pasttimes.
Using games to scapegoat real world issues is damaging, distracting and cowardly and any writer that's ever taken part in that shit should be ashamed.
So once again Japan make a game thats designed for fans of attractive anime girls and once again easily offended assholes in the west have taken to twitter, tumblr and gaming "news" sites to complain about it. We all know that "misogyny" is the new video game boogie man du jour only this time Koei Tecmo has decided it can't be arsed with this shit and has decided not to make its upcoming bikini girl oogle fest available in the west.
First of all, let's just address the idea of this game being "sexist" because if you dig around the internet just a little bit there are articles out there claiming so. To accuse someone of being sexist or being a misogynist is to accuse someone of hating/having less respect for women based solely on their gender. So you're telling me, that because people enjoy watching attractive women in cute bikinis frolic around on a beach that they are sexist? You're telling me that there are people who write for certain gaming websites that seriously believe that the staff of Team Ninja made this game just because they have a gigantic hate boner for women and want to portray them solely as objects?
What the fuck planet are you from where that could at all be true? Men enjoying seeing attractive women do shit is just human fucking nature, it's hard wired into our goddamn heads to enjoy that shit as men (unless you don't swing that way, but typically). The idea that I should feel bad or ashamed because I enjoy seeing attractive women wearing not much dance around and play sports is insane and anyone putting that idea forward needs a fucking slap. Anyway, aren't all these people writing this shit and complaining supposed to be all about tolerance and equality and shit? So I have to be 100% accepting of homosexuality or transgender people but when I want to enjoy my own sexuality I should feel ashamed? Get the fuck out! If you want to have relations with someone of the same sex or change your gender, power to you, do what ever the fuck you want but don't come telling me that I'm a terrible human being for enjoying titties because if the shoe was on the other foot you'd be labeling me an "oppressor" and sending me death threats, no wonder Koei Tecmo can't be arsed with this shit.
Anyway, now that my rant is done what the fuck does Play Asia have to do with all this? Well they put out some tweets about how Koei Tecmo aren't releasing the game for the west but their copies of the game that you can import will come with English modes on them. This is being met with mixed reactions from certain types of people and while all this debating is all well and good I can't help but feel that people are getting played a little bit here.
Is sexism REALLY the reason that they aren't releasing the game? I mean look at games like Hatred and Hunnie Pop, games that sold fairly well purely on the basis of sticking it to the perpetually offended keyboard warriors of twitter and big gaming news sites. Claiming that there isn't a market for titties and ultra violence in the west is just plain wrong, people love that shit and will love it even more if you actually make a good game with it.
Consider this, Dead or Alive Xtreme hasn't done too well overseas and I'm not sure the figures but I don't think it did too hot in Japan either. The people who make and publish these games aren't idiots, they know their audience well and I get the feeling that this whole Play Asia sticking it to the "SJWs" as they put it is all a big fat marketing ploy to tap into that demographic of people who think that buying a game with bikini girls in it is going to piss people off. Sure, Koei Tecmo SAID it was because of sexism but I'm more willing to bet it was due to shit sales figures and tapping into the big game controversy of the now is their bid to push a few more copies of the game.
If it really was sexism then that's sad that there are publishers who feel they have to withhold games because of a vocal minority of know-nothing twats working for sites like Kotaku and Polygon. If it wasn't sexism and this is all a ploy to push copies then I'm surprised more people aren't catching onto it because it seems really obvious.
None of this really affects me though, I live in Japan where I can get those next gen titties in all their glory! Although being brutally honest X3 is on the very very bottom of my buying priority list once I get round to buying a fucking PS4.
So I've made posts in the past about this kind of issue and why it isn't really important to gaming as a whole but I've never really explained why this thing ticks me off so much, so I thought I'd shed some light.
Just to give the reason I was inspired to do this post, I read a thing on IGN about the new Zelda Triforce Heroes game and here's the link
This fucking hack job writer gets an opportunity to talk with the director of the game, Hiromasa Shikata and what does he ask? He asks fucking questions on if it's possible to play as a woman. WHO GIVES A SHIT?! What a crappy series to ask this question for as well because Link is so fucking androgynous anyway. I have to give big props to Shitaka though because his response was essentially "because we want it that way" which is what all developers should be doing when asked stupid, inane questions like that one.
So just why does all this talk of "female representation" and all the other crap that goes along with it piss me off so much? Well if you believe what you read on most of the internet its because I'm a no-life nerd who lives in my mothers basement and hates women. Except that's not true and the reason it really pisses me off is because almost EVERYBODY making comment on this subject is fucking WRONG and has no fucking idea what they are talking about ever.
The two main arguments that I see flying around the internet are "there aren't enough strong female characters in games" and "there aren't enough women working in games". Both of these points are complete bullshit and have been complete bullshit since the dawn of the fucking medium.
First the whole "women in the games industry" thing. There are plenty of whiny, talentless idiots on twitter and various other gaming websites who will argue that there aren't many women working in the industry and it needs to do more to hire greater numbers of female staff. Well I call bullshit on this point because you can look at the credits list for basically any game ever and you're guaranteed to find a bunch of women on there in all sorts of roles.
Hell, I looked at 3 titles on my way home from work just to make sure I wasn't chatting out of my ass. I looked at the credits list for Bravely Default, Persona 4 Golden and The Last of Us and there were plenty of women kicking around those development teams. Hell, just go look at the credits list for Persona 4 on Giant Bomb and the fucking EXECUTIVE PRODUCER IS A GODDAMN WOMAN!
The reason these hack indies want to make it seem like women aren't valued in gaming is because it gives them an out and an excuse for whatever shitty game they made. Suddenly, their games go from sucking due to having no talent to unappreciated due to gender of the creator. The only other people pushing this idea are the ones who are looking to profit by playing the victim in a so called "oppressive industry". They make up a bunch of bullshit about how awful things are in order to generate outrage and then they have, quite cleverly I might add, found a way to capitalize on said outrage. It's sad, pathetic and it's a point that's INSTANTLY disproved by a quick Google search. These talented women who are making good games aren't speaking up because they are "oppressed" or "undervalued", I'd bet money it's because they are quite happy doing what they are doing.
The second point is the whole "not enough female characters in games" or "too many sexist female characters in video games". This is also complete bullshit and can be easily debunked by anyone who knows a single thing about gaming outside of the shit you are spoonfed by major gaming news outlets. There are TONS, fucking hundreds upon hundreds of great female characters in games ranging from protagonists to antagonists and everything in between. Hell, the character I put at the top of this post is a good example of a good female protagonist and I bet half these idiots complaining have never even heard of Koudelka.
Even the idea that a sexy character is sexist is fucking dumb. Take a look at this.
This is the kind of character that would get instantly slammed for being sexist filth, but it's not sexist at all. The developers of this game don't hate women and their intention isn't to degrade them, they are just developing for a certain market. There are plenty of men (and women I've found since coming to Japan) who enjoy this kind of thing and that's fine. I'm sure this animated underboob isn't oppressing you or making your life any harder so just shut up and let people enjoy some fucking fan service without having to be ashamed of their sexuality.
So there you have it. The tl;dr version of this post is that the gender politics thing pisses me off because it's made by clueless fucking idiots who don't know anything about gaming. It's double annoying because these clueless idiots are being paid to write for games.
Well whatever, guess I'm just going to enjoy my games and try to ignore these morons.
The GamerGate controversy rages on after a number of months that I've lost track of. While I've not been keeping too close an eye on it due to most discussions devolving into gender politics and claims of harassment or whatever, something has popped out of the whole thing that has piqued my interest.
For a long time I've not been a fan of gaming media websites and press and I think there are quite a large number of people who feel the same way. There's too much blatant bullshit going on behind the scenes and I hate how I can guess a games final score before I've even opened the web page. In recent years it has been so bad that certain members of the gaming press have taken to just flat out insulting people who disagree with them. The biggest example I can think of this was the whole "gamers are entitled" thing that came with DmC: Devil May Cry. Hardcore fans of the first 4 games were upset with the new direction the game had taken, both stylistically and mechanically, but were completely dismissed by games media as "whiny entitled babies"
So very recently Deep Freeze pops up right out of fucking nowhere. It's a database of people within games media, journalists and other writers and it keeps records with links to evidence of stuff they are doing wrong. It also seems to host articles regarding GamerGate and the state of gaming media as well as providing links to sites that it deems ethical.
It's a strangely useful resource for two big reasons. The first is that now that this exists, it's bound to keep a number of writers in check. If they say something stupid or get caught doing something they shouldn't be, there is now a place on the internet where that shit will be documented and easily available for general viewing. The second is that if you happen across an article that seems a little bullshitty then you can look up the writer or site and see if they are the kind of person or publication who deals in clickbait or may have some ulterior motives.
There are some arguments to be had about certain entries on the site. The big argument against Deep Freeze that I've seen so far is that sometimes they are logging a writers opinion as an ethical breech. For example, a number of writers have a "sensationalist" mark on their profile for docking points from Bayonetta 2 for it's "gross portrayal of women". Given that misogyny is the big game controversy du jour it does seem, at least to me, that the writer is fishing for clicks from a certain crowed but there is an argument to be had that maybe the writer just genuinely does hold that opinion of the game. Inserting gender politics into game reviews may be annoying and disrespectful but holding a dumb ass opinion is not unethical.
Still though, what Deep Freeze is NOT doing is telling you to flat out dislike anyone that it has a file on. It is only presenting you with information so that you can form your own opinion and if you don't like what you see, where to go for your gaming news.
I'm still going to carry on not giving a shit about games media because I don't enjoy reading reviews. I'll look up a trailer and some gameplay footage and make my own decisions. But for those who do read reviews they now have a resource to make judgements on where to get their info from before they make a purchase, which seems like a good thing to me. Depending on how it's handled from here it could mean an improvement for games writing.
More actual and honest games writing and less bullshit seems like a good idea to me.
Don't listen to me though, check it out and make your own judgements on it
In the last couple of days there was a episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit aired on TV where the story was based on the #GamerGate controversy. It was laughably bad, overblown, poorly written and poorly acted.
The story of the episode revolves around a bunch of gamers who aren't happy with some woman making a game. The reason they are unhappy is not because her game is bad or anything like that but just because she is a woman. Things escalate when she goes to give a presentation about her game and she gets kidnapped, beaten and raped by a bunch of weirdos in ski masks from a site called Redchanit. The episode ends with the cops catching/killing the gamers and saving the woman but she decides to retire from gaming because clearly she is not wanted or some such stupid bullshit.
The whole episode is cringetastic with Ice-T saying lots of stupid bullshit about video games. The worst part is right at the end during a rooftop shootout where they decide to go first fucking person. It's like that one bit from that shitty Doom movie but with the shitness dial turned all the way up to fucking 15.
What's sort of hilarious though is the reaction to the episode from various groups on either side of the controversy. From what I can gather off twitter, the social justice types such as Sarkeesian are not happy with the episode. There are a number of people on that side of the coin though who are playing it up saying that the events that happened in the episode have actually happened despite the fact that no kidnappings or rapes have occurred because of GamerGate.
What's funny is that these people have absolutely no right to be dissatisfied with the episode because they basically wrote the damn script. These are the people who view a disagreement as "misogyny" or "sexism" and a request of proof for their claims as "harassment". It's even been proven that certain members such as Brianna Wu have faked harassment in order to receive more coverage/gain ammunition to use against certain people.
Wu "harassing" herself on Steam but forgetting to log out of her Developer account thingy. This thread was deleted.
These are the people who cherry pick all their information and use great amounts of hyperbole in order to push this quite frankly preposterous idea that women are somehow oppressed and unwanted in gaming. I mean look at this shit.
This is just a small collection of some of the women who are celebrated within the medium. There are tons more than this both recent and from ages past and as long as more women are willing to bring their skills to the table many more will be accepted and appreciated for their works.
The reason why gamers don't like people like Wu and Sarkesian is because they are fucking idiots. Everything Anita says in her Tropes Vs Women series is quite frankly wrong and her examples are cherry picked so fucking hard that I'm surprised the cherry tree isn't completely bare. It's so transparently wrong as well, with anyone having played the games she talks about being able to shoot down her "arguments" instantly but of course this is labelled as "harassment". People don't like Wu because she's constantly prodding GamerGate for a rise so she can play it up and ask for money. "Help! I'm being harassed! <Insert Patreon link>" or saying flat out stupid things such as "I'm risking my life fighting GamerGate" as if we are some kind of heavily armed, anti-woman army.
But what the games media is doing isn't exactly new. It's new for them but in terms of their methods this has been going on for years. Way WAYYY back people who enjoyed table top games such as Dungeons and Dragons were branded as satanists. Back in my youth people would claim that anyone who played games would become a violent murderer. Now the new buzzword du jour is "misogyny" with every gamer being a woman hating basement dwelling nerd or some kind of closet rapist.
The only thing that's different this time round is that the image isn't being perpetuated by news outlets with reports being written by people who no nothing of games. This time it's games media ITSELF putting forward the image that all it's readers and fans are rapists and harassers. At the end of the day though, it's only a case of same shit, different buzzword.
But who in this whole controversy is REALLY being the most damaging to women in gaming? Is it gamers? Well no because I've never met a SINGLE person within this hobby say that the don't want women in gaming and if anything it's the exact opposite of that. Is it companies not hiring women based on gender? Not that either because everything I've heard about the hiring process for these companies is based on skills, not gender. If you are good at coding, drawing, making music, writing or whatever then you have just as much of a chance at a position as anyone else. Hell, in the US it's fucking ILLEGAL to discriminate based on gender and I don't think companies are going to risk their business just to spite someone.
No, the most damaging thing to women in gaming right now is the people claiming to be on their side. Every day the spin this narrative of fear. They lie constantly or spin convenient half truths that push their controversial stories for ad revenue. These claims that women aren't welcome or that they will be harassed out just for being women will only serve to scare them away and we risk losing a lot of talented people as a result. If it was true then I promise you that the gaming community would be right there trying to make gaming a space for everyone to enjoy, like they have been doing since THE DAWN OF FUCKING GAMES. These people are pushing this story for their own selfish means and it's absolutely pathetic.
Gaming and games media would be a much better place without these people shitting it up. No one wants to keep anyone out, we just want to play some fucking video games. We also don't want to be lied to and misrepresented by the people who deliver information about the industry to us, that's all.
Let's just get along and play some goddamn games.....fuck...
Jesus fuck, here I am about to talk about #GamerGate on my blog. It's an issue I've been, generally speaking, trying not to talk about too directly because it's an extremely polarizing controversy and I want this blog to be mostly fun and stuff. However, today I saw a video titled "What it feels like to be a Gamergate target" from ABC news that has pissed me off so much I can't help but write something.
First of all, the video itself. I'm not going to link it because it's complete bollocks that attempts to paint people who enjoy games as horrible human beings and the amount of cherry picking to push certain incorrect points is disgusting. Apart from the video being full to bursting with complete lies about video games and the people who enjoy them it's also biased, one sided bullshit. They interviewed 3 people; Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu and some dude in a shop, all who were anti-GamerGate and all who had nothing to do with the core issue behind it.
This isn't something new, main stream news and media have been trying to paint gaming enthusiasts as horrible, antisocial, fat, dangerous nerds for YEARS so really this whole thing about "misogyny" is just the violence controversy from the 90s with a new lick of paint. That doesn't stop it being any less annoying or wrong. So screw that video, it's full of bullshit and all it does is make gaming an unpleasant thing to be a part of because now there are throngs of morons who will eat that shit up and will judge you on site just for owning a game system.
Now let me say a little something about #GamerGate. For those that don't know, #GamerGate is this big online movement that's been going on for MONTHS now regarding the unethical practice of journalists for big name websites. The only reason women in the industry came up as a topic AT ALL is because that's what people in the media like to hide behind when they face criticism. If you call out and unethical practice, disagree with their agenda pushing in articles that don't call for it OR just disagree with them in general, you are a misogynist, according to them.
Due to this, #GamerGate gets a lot of flak for being this massive hate campaign to try and get women out of the games industry but that couldn't be further from the truth. I'll admit something here; when I'm on the train going to/from my job, I jump on twitter and see what's happening in the tag and to be quite honest with you, I don't see ANY of the so called harassment or anti-women mentality that apparently every single supporter carries. I see plenty of nastiness from the other side but very little from #GamerGate itself.
Also, if #GamerGate is a hatemob designed to stop women from gaming or being part of the industry they are doing a fucking crap job at it. The only people that they have apparently "harassed" are a critic who has nothing to do with it but likes to antagonize trolls for attention and a shitty developer who has made one crappy phone game and likes to antagonize trolls for attention. If anything, I see them doing the OPPOSITE of what they are supposed to be doing, celebrating games made by talented female developers and helping with trying to get their work noticed.
What I'm trying to say with all this is that despite what certain idiots on the internet will tell you and despite the kind of stupid stories that major news outlets push, gamers don't want certain groups of people to stop gaming/being part of the industry. We've been collectively moaning for YEARS about how stale AAA development has gotten and people from diverse backgrounds may help counteract that, we welcome them with open arms.
It doesn't matter about your race, creed, colour, sexuality or what-the-fuck-ever, if you are here to play then you're welcome and that's what it's been about since gaming fucking started. No one who games gives a shit who you are as long as your here to game. If your new to games or a hardened veteran since the days of 8 bit or younger, it's a hobby filled with great people always up for a bit of fun no matter who you are or where you come from.
However keep one thing in mind, gaming is a multi billion dollar industry and when this many people are playing there are BOUND to be a few fucking idiots that could do with a slap. That's the same for any hobby with mass appeal, there's always going to be a small group of fucking morons trying to ruin your day but in the grand scheme of things they don't matter, just take whatever it is in your stride and move on.
Remember, games are about FUN! There are a lot of people who would do well to remember that
In certain parts of the internet there's a topic that many many people are discussing and that's the situation involving someone called Zoe Quinn.
I'm not entirely sure of all the intricate details of all the bullshit flying around but I'll try to fill you in to the best of my understanding.
Basically, there's a woman called Zoe Quinn who makes a shitty non game called Depression Quest. This woman cheats on her boyfriend with something like 5 people and the boyfriend who is understandably just a little upset posts a bunch of info about Zoe on a blog. When I first came across this information a lot of people were just waving it away with a "who gives a shit about someones personal life" but after some digging it turned out to be a bit more than just a gossip story about someone cheating on their boyfriend.
The information that's come to light, which you can look up on your own time because I'm not providing a fucking toilet paper long list of links for you, exposes that Zoe was sleeping with other developers and members of gaming "journalism" in order to get her game green lighted on steam and to drum up publicity and all sorts of other shit. A lot of the articles being written by various outlets and their hypocrisy by covering this scandal but exposing other (male) members of the industry for far less also exposes the agenda driven bullshit side of the games "journalism" industry.
Now my explanation might not be enough or my understanding might be wrong but I don't give a fuck.
Anyone with half a working brain has known that games "journalism" has been complete and utter bollocks for YEARS and it's only gotten worse. I don't follow ANY of these fucking sites because they are all complete garbage run by people who generally speaking don't know diddly shit about anything and it's only gotten worse.
Anyone with a working brain can see that scores are being bought and relationships between publishers and the press are being used to generate buzz for a game so they can generate more sales. Shit games getting great scores and a bunch of undeserved acclaim because some money changed hands somewhere probably. All this Zoe Quinn situation is doing is laying it out out bare but we all knew it was going on anyway and we don't need to go on a fucking internet crusade to "take down shitty journalism".
All you have to do is stop reading the reviews from the sites that you KNOW are bullshit. Stop giving them clicks, then you stop giving them money and then maybe one day they'll go away.
It's an almost impossible task anyway since the way "gamers" feel is that if you don't conform to the mass opinion then you are some kind of deviant that should be purged. If I don't agree with the 10/10s for The Last of Us and GTA5 or whatever then I'm just some cunt who doesn't know what I'm on about when really it's the exact opposite and anyone with a lick of taste knows that. But the problem is that there are so many of these twats that you could lay the whole corrupt state of things completely bare for all to see and these sites would still make money hand over fist because opinionless twats need to see the big fat 10/10 for video game du jour so they have a sense of self validation.
Fuck Zoe and fuck games "journalism". Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to actually go and PLAY and have some FUN with a game instead of worrying about if some cunt thinks it's worthy of a good score or not.
How long has this been a thing!? I only found out about it a few days ago and you know after that big gushy post I made about Hotline Miami I'm hyped as hell for this.
So, what does my hype for Hotline Miami 2 have to do with terrible video games journalism? Well have a read of this article on PC gamer.
The title reads "Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number hands-on" so you would expect this author, one Cara Ellison, to talk about the game right? Well wrong, she spends very little time talking about the game and the majority of her post talking about her fucking feelings.
Her issue with the game is that the end of the tutorial features some kind of implied rape scene where the player character has his wicked way with a women and how she feels "betrayed" by its inclusion. You may be thinking at this point that I'm going to go on another "games being sexist" rant, but I'm not, but before I get into the main point I have let me just point something out about Hotline Miami.
This was a screen shot I took last night while I was going through the levels getting puzzle pieces and A+ ranks. If you look just in front of the open door, there is a dead male who has had his genitals blown off. This, if you ask me is just as "bad" as that implied rape scene because you can infer from this situation that he was tortured by having his genitals mutilated before eventually being put out of his misery and shot in the head. Sounds awful right?
Well on the other hand you could just realise that you are playing a game that is making you perform horrible acts against other human beings for points while showing you other horrible acts to bolster the games atmosphere and maybe even make some kind of statement into video game violence if you're the kind of person willing to read into it that far.
But anyway I'm getting far too into something that isn't my point. My point is, that these so called "journalists" like Cara Ellison and many others are in the wrong job. That article should have been about Hotline Miami 2, but instead it turned into another rant on feelings and political correctness.
I know exactly nothing more about Hotline Miami 2 after reading that article than before I came across it. All I learnt is that the game is violent and that someones feelings were hurt, but I don't care about the writers feelings and I already knew it was violent so basically the whole thing is a big block of text about nothing at all.
These "journalists" with agendas need to be booted out of this industry, they are completely toxic for it and contribute nothing. They aren't here to talk about games, they are here to talk about false controversy for nothing more than page views and it's getting a bit stupid now. There are lots of sites such as Kotaku who care more about printing bullshit rather than actually talking about games.
I don't want to talk about this shit either, I just want to enjoy games. Really I had planned to write a little mini review for 3D Dot Game Heroes since I just replayed it recently but if the people with common sense don't make it clear that this kind of "journalism" will not fly, then within the next 5 years there will be so many social justice "gaming" websites that finding actual gaming news will be next to fucking impossible.
If you want to talk about social justice shit, make a fucking blog or something and stop clogging up sites like PCGamer.com with this shit. Those sites are for games and game discussion/news and I don't want to read about your fucking feelings on it.
Back when I was a wee lad, when I picked up a Sega Mega Drive controller for the first time at the age of 4, gaming was a simple thing. I was given and objective and I had to fulfil it and stuff would try to impede my progress along the way. It was a simple time filled with simple, yet fun games and the only thing people were worried about was if they could get to the next level or not.
But gaming is evolving, and for the better too! As technology gets more advanced, and developers try to do bigger and better things and maybe one day gaming will be able to stand tall along things such as books and film.
However, we are a long LONG way off anything like that happening, but somewhere along the line gaming lost its purity, and in losing this purity it is behind held back by different groups of people throwing complaints and criticisms at the industry without really knowing whats going on.
A few years ago the big issue was violence in games, and while it's still an issue this controversy has sort of lost steam a bit. People would point at games like Manhunt and cry foul at how its "corrupting the youth" yet were happy to ignore a staggering amount of other media that had extremely similar content.
Nowadays we have sexism, and all the people who seem to be at the forefront of this "gaming is sexist" thing seem to know very little about what the fuck they are actually talking about. I can't go a day on the internet without being reminded how sexist gaming is and how sexist gamers are, and the issue is starting to wear a bit thin.
Yes, there are issues in the industry but people are so willing to fling shit that nothing gets sorted and it all amounts of a bunch of idiots in front of keyboards silently yelling at each other and just making any issues worse. While I'm not sure exactly, I think that this internet shit flinging is having an impact on the developers too! No developer or writer or anything like that is going to want to push the envelope with this medium if all they get for it is people chucking needless amounts of shit towards them online.
People who enjoy this hobby and people who work within this industry need to sit down, and calmly examine the various issues that we have and maybe take steps to sort them out. Gaming will only get better only if the people who truly know whats up are allowed to do things without everyone else throwing in their 2 cents. Too many cooks etc.
DISCLAIMER! I'm not suggesting by the title that it doesn't exist or should not be talked about, there is a decent issue to discuss here, but my problem lies with the way in which people discuss it.
So with that shit out of the way, let's get down to it. I hate this fucking topic too, you go on any website that has an article about sexism in games and the arguments are all the fucking same, claiming this that and the other is all super bad and horrible for women and no one gets any respect etc. etc.
At the end of the day, it's all a load of fucking toss anyway, people are getting mad at all sorts of stupid shit like how a character looks as opposed to anything else. Sure, this is a multi faceted debate, but to keep this blog post from becoming an essay, the depiction of women in games is what I'll be focusing on.
First of all, I'll make a blanket statement about the whole damn issue, SEX FUCKING SELLS, DEAL WITH IT! Almost every industry that is trying to sell something will use sex appeal to push goods. Music, movies, games, fucking shaving razors, perfume and cologne are all fucking guilty of this shit, it's not sexism it's just people like to see a sexy woman or a sexy man doing sexy things, we're programmed as human beings to enjoy seeing that kind of shit. I mean, look at this fucking music video
or this fucking advert
The song is a bunch of women in sexy outfits, using those sexy outfits to attract people to the video, therefore making them money. Also look at that fucking advert, there's a attractive bloke running around with his top off because that's the kind of men women want to attract with that perfume. Is it sexist? NO OF COURSE FUCKING NOT YOU CLOWN! Sex appeal just helps to sell things, it's the same for fucking video games too.
Now, before I go into why the argument itself is a load of arse, I'll say why it needs to fuck off. It needs to fuck off because the people talking about it don't have a fucking CLUE what they're on about, ever. I did a quick google of the issue and found this quote (http://www.vg247.com/2012/04/12/enough-we-must-all-try-to-kick-sexism-out-of-gaming/)
"The truth is that games are sexist in their depiction of women to a
depressing degree. I raised the point on a press trip dinner last year:
how many female characters can you think of that aren’t obviously
designed to be sexually attractive to men? Apart from Shepard, no one
around the table could suggest a single one."
Really? Fucking really? Not a single one? They think that just because is a character is designed to be appealing to a man, it's sexist? FUCKING! BULLSHIT! While it's true there are a lot of female gamers out there, it never used to be that way. For years and years and years, gaming was a male dominated hobby, and probably still is. So if you're a company trying to push products, who are you going to aim the sex appeal at? OH YEAH! FUCKING MEN!
But even if you ignore that whole side of it, this argument is so fucking shallow, most arguments I've seen about the depiction in women in games only EVER focuses on the look of the character, and not what the character is like personality wise or what they are capable of in the context of the game, let's look at one that the "gaming is sexist" crowd would have a field day with.
This is Alice, from the game Shadow Hearts on the Playstation 2. Now look at this shit, if you were making the argument that games were sexist using this picture alone, you'd have so much to say. She's innocent and weak looking, shes wearing a mini skirt and thigh highs, she's designed in such a way that makes you think she needs protecting, thus empowering men etc. etc. etc.
Well guess what? You'd be fucking wrong, on almost every count. Sure, OK, for the daughter of a priest, her skirt length is a little suspect, but it's not like shes oozing sex appeal from every orifice, and there is nothing inherently sexist about a short skirt, I see women in short skirts every time I leave the fucking house.
But let's really think about her character here for a second. The main character, called Yuri, makes a big deal about protecting her yadda yadda yadda, but then spends most of the game having to have his ass saved by Alice. Hell, she gives her soul to a fucking Devil to save this guy, only to stand up to it and attempt to reclaim her soul by killing the devil, USING A FUCKING BIBLE AS A BLUNT WEAPON. Sure, she needs help from Yuri in the end, but not because shes weak and helpless, but because Yuri is holding the magic mcguffin that stops the devil from being immortal.
On top of all that, she fights using a fucking bible, a sodding book. She spends an entire 30+ hour game killing Gods, with a book! Sure, her final attack gives a panty shot, but the game has this feel to it that makes it more anti-men than women. It feels like the game is saying "yeah, you worked SO hard levelling up one of the best characters in the game, here, have 10 pixels worth of panty for your "effort""
If Shadow Hearts is sexist in any way at all, it's against men, not women. Every man in the Shadow Hearts universe is characterised as dirty, clumsy, pathetic, perverted, weak, helpless as well as a load of other negative adjectives.
This whole thing isn't true for just Shadow Hearts, it's true for a fuckton of games where people just see a sexy woman on the box or in the bonus features and write the whole thing off as sexist trash.
Yes, there is sexism in the gaming industry (against males AND females), and yes, it needs to be discussed and eventually put to rights, but the problem is that the vast majority of people I've seen talking about it, don't have a fucking clue and need to fuck off so that this discussion can progress, and not remain as a pathetic playground argument.
Note: I may do some other posts on this issue, regarding not the characters, but the way women are treated in the industry or whatever, we'll see how I feel.
