I’m generally pro-boobplate. I mean, I’m not going to go and slap a pair of DD knockers on a Pokemon or anything, but as my friend Scott once pointed out, “I just think it’s hilarious that you’ve been labelled a Social Justice Warrior when you pretty much are the staunch defender of the right of the male gamer to have funny thoughts while playing Bayonetta.” And that’s not to say that I insist on boobplate: I’m equally a fan of Batgirl’s new look. In fact, I freakin’ love it. I like a variety of characters, both male and female in my entertainment, and love great character design anywhere up and down the sexy spectrum. But still, I have no problems agreeing with a lot of Anita’s points, and yet still defending boobplate.
My logic is as follows:
- The point of armor on a female character is not to be realistic or protect the wearer. It is simply to create a marketable character design that is evocative, memorable, easily identifiable and unique. If it’s a playable character, you want someone the player can identify with. If it’s an NPC, you want a character the player can love – or hate. Of course, if your game is about capturing realism, you may be more inclined to make your armor protective, but most games that are about realism end up missing the mark anyway. Note: if people can’t tell what game your art is from by looking at it, you’re doing it wrong, so don’t just copy someone else’s character design. Still, say what you will about the boob window, but Power Girl is INSTANTLY identifiable and marketable.
- The female presence needs to be visible and audible, or your efforts at diversity won’t be noticed. I’m really not a big fan of when studios dress the females to be so much like the males you can’t even tell the difference. Having more female presence in games is good, especially if they are in roles that are roles of action and power, but if you can’t tell that they’re a woman from your game’s standard gun range, all that subtlety is lost and the feminine presence isn’t felt. It’s completely possible to feminize a character and still not make her less badass. Accentuating the curves and showing skin is one way to do that.
- I find the matter to be one of choice. If possible, one should give the player to choose to go full-slave girl Leia, or full diplomat Leia. People should not feel uncomfortable playing a video game. However, I think some critics underestimate how much many women WANT to feel sexy – some feel like a sexuallized object in a bikini, while others see playing Bayonetta as inherently empowering, since she is effectively a femme fatale in complete control of herself and her effect on men. I’m not going to pretend to tell a woman how she SHOULD feel – that’s doomed to fail. Still, the fact that some women enjoy feeling sexy can be seen in the popularity of Cosmo, and the number of sexy vs. non-sexy cosplayer women you see at Comiccon.
- I consider myself personally very sex-positive, and have no problems with men and women who are sex-positive finding this stuff in their entertainment. Which is to say, I like bewbs. This may bias me.
So I have my point of view. Still, I know that a lot of people that have differing opinions – and I respect that. A lot of women don’t want to look like whores, and a lot of parents don’t want their little girls to do so either. One of my huge victories on the SWTOR team was fighting for the ability to ‘mod’ almost any piece of gear, so that men and women could dress up however they wanted without worrying about statistical impact, and made ’em work a little bit to get the sexy stuff – you aren’t going to accidentally look like a harem girl. I think that giving players the choice to make this highly personal decision of how supercharged the sexuality of the character they are playing is really important. Even moreso in social games like MMOs. I fought hard to get both bikinis into SWTOR for the ladies, and then speedos in for the men – after there was a huge outcry for it. (much larger an outcry, I note, than outrage over Leia bikinis being everywhere).
But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think. It also doesn’t matter what Anita thinks. It matters what the players think. If they don’t like the game, they don’t shell out their hard earned dollars. Some audiences love teh sexy. Some really don’t. And a whole lot don’t really give a crap one way or the other.
All of this is merely a preamble meant to point out that I’m not being either a puritan or a prude when I point out this piece “Save the Boob-Plate!” by Orogion. This piece was pointed out to me as a counterargument to my piece “My Artistic Freedom is Fine, Thank You.” But it’s not a very good counterargument. It is, in fact, a very silly piece.
Our kickstarter campaign for Divinity: Original Sin has gotten quite some criticism on its original poster art. Apparently it was deemed to be sexistic and women unfriendly by the way the female protagonist was portrayed: with a bare belly. A bare belly was for some enough a trigger to send our company enough hate and threatening mails to persuade my boss to ask me to change the cover. I did, but did so reluctantly. Disagreeing wholeheartedly with the claim of the artwork being sexistic, the better half of me decided to meet “offended-by-design” people somewhere in the middle.
To be honest, I’m more concerned about her right arm.
So here’s why I cry bullshit.
1) He’s just talking about the cover art. Seriously, I bought the game -despite the fact that it has no boobplate! I was sad because I like boobplate! But it turns out my gnashing of teeth was for naught. Because there, right there in character creation, was teh boobplate! Clearly, this horrible censorship only extended to the web art. You know, the bullshit marketing material game devs use in order to get the ACTUAL art into player’s hands.
2) You know who told him to change the art? His boss. If I had a dollar for every time my boss told me to do something stupid (including, I might add, more than once making breasts BIGGER or outfits SKIMPIER) — well, I wouldn’t need a boss anymore. But here’s the thing: I’m not building my vision. I’m building HIS vision. And ultimately, the boss’ job is to know the whole product and own and defend that vision, including not just art but also things like business realities (see below), license pressures, publisher demands, CEO pressures, technical limitations, and where you want the studio to be positioned in the future. Plenty of bosses ignore that pressure, and say ‘fuck it! Let’s go watermelon-sized!’. In this case, the game was being kickstarted, which means the boss had to care very much about delivering a game that people were willing to kick money into prelaunch.
If you think those boobs look ridiculous here, you should see them in motion. Sadly, they are the best part of the actual game. Yes, I bought it. Because bewbs.
Incidentally, young people hoping to break into the industry should note that this could definitely be read as calling your boss out as a pussy for caving and making a stupid decision based on an angry mob. This is trending close to ‘career limiting’ territory. Just saying.
3. And the boss wasn’t reacting to the media. He was reacting to his market.
I tried googling every combination I could think of of ‘divinity’, ‘kickstarter’, ‘announcement’, ‘sexist’ and ‘women’. The number of JOURNALISTS I found who mentioned this: zero. Hey, maybe I missed one. What struck me more was how few sites announced the game at all. Which goes to the point I made last weekend: the real problem with the games press is how much it sucks to be one of the small guys. And here’s the secret: it really doesn’t matter if the press says it, because even if the press notices it, a new shiny object will come along the next day and they’ll report that. It only really matters if the player base objects.
And I *DID* find a fair amount of player discussion about it. Not a lot, just comments here and there about how the original art made them feel uncomfortable, or how they appreciated the new art based on factors like realism. I didn’t really see any ‘hate’ — well, except from the people who were angry they changed. Now granted, I can’t see the ‘hate mail’ described by Orogion, but sheesh, I can’t even begin to tell you how much free game design advice I’ve gotten from fans, some quite angry, in my time working on Shadowbane and SWTOR. Much of the time it’s very contradictory. We have a lot of people who want more same sex romance in SWTOR, and we have a lot of people who don’t any of that stuff they consider icky in their games at all, for example. It’s up to the team leadership what core artistic vision and values to embrace, and which fan feedback to toss the curb – sometimes ignored, and sometimes with a nice note on the boards.
4. A lot of times, decisions like this are just corrections of myopia.
One of the things I don’t think most people realize just how often bad game design decisions just sneak through, just because we’re too close to the problem. We don’t SEE that we’ve made a mistake. One example is that, when we shipped SWTOR, we accidentally forgot to make the ‘Darth’ title achievable by the Sith Warrior player class. An incredibly stupid oversight caused by a junior designer and a writer who didn’t understand how much this would seem like it was obviously missing.
The value of Anita’s videos is often in showing how unconscious, reactive decisions can have bigger ramifications than designers intend. Here’s an article about how Wonder Forge recently shipped a DC based game and simply forgot to include any women heroes or villians – including Wonder Woman! Wonder Forge responded admirably.
First off, let me just say that we screwed up, and everyone here knows it. It’s an internal regret for our team that we did not include female super heroes in the game. And it’s a personal regret because so many of us are parents of daughters, who understand firsthand the importance of developing playthings that are inclusive and convey to girls a sense that they can do or be anything. I myself am a mom of 3- and 4-year-old girls and I share your views 100%.
Which is to say, it’s FINE if you want to make a sausage factory for a game. But as a designer, it’s sure embarrassing to realize you did it by accident. And if the decision bugs fans, but doesn’t hurt the core integrity of the artistic vision, who gives a shit?
5. The article talks nothing about the LOADS of feedback we get going the other way.
Yep, we get that too. From people wanting a few more clothing options and bigger jugs, to people whose fantasies about their companion characters are a little more… let’s just say ‘rape-y’. Needless to say, a lot of these get discarded as not matching up with our core vision. But it’s not just press our players!
The more pernicious people are the guys who sign the checks. The Last of Us had to fight in order to keep Ellie on the cover. Sony pushed for it. They refused. Because of artistic integrity. In FAVOR of more diversity and inclusion. I hear the Last of Us still did okay.
Look, not every game should embrace full jiggle technology. If you’re making Maxim Online, then sure. If you’re making a Nora the Explorer game, not so much. And if you’re making something in the middle, there’s going to be a constant struggle trying to find the right path between your artistic vision, and ensuring that you meet the demands of a market. And the more expensive games get to make, the more frequently The Powers That Be will need to ensure that these games in the middle have boobplate levels that, at least, don’t alienate more customers than they bring in.
That’s not censorship. That’s capitalism.
I think what GG missing out on a lot is that even people like Anita say it’s alright if you like these things she’d just like to see like. It’s fine to like sexy characters and even boob plate, it’s just having less than 99% of armors being boob plate would be nice.
Also I can see thing coming, please stop spouting off ignorant bullshit and learn the difference between being sexy and being objectified.
I don’t know if it’s what Anita would say, but my point of view is that it feels like we’re leaving entire universes of potential games on the shelf because we self-limit on audience. I don’t want to take away the games that I love (and I do love me some Soul Caliber) but, for example, there’s a real shortage of games for the ‘young adult girl’. Did you know there’s no Twilight game? As stupid as I find the series, I find that stat amazing.
There almost was. I was supposed to work on it and then the powers that be decided it would be wiser to make a “Scene It!” version that came out… to no one’s notice. Only Twilight product to bomb completely.
Forget Twilight — why is there no Hunger Games G… Hunger Game?
I mean, it has game in its TITLE. It’s a story based around a deathmatch. Why isn’t there a game about it, other than that the story views the game as a horrific event that pleases the masses and making an actual game of it would be a touch ironic? It’s not like game CEOs have been aware of dramatic irony before…
There are a couple of iPad games. One’s a side scroller, one’s a talking head RPG.
Hilariously, the First and Second Hunger Games were very interestingly designed in terms of a game within a game, also in reference to the current reality / game show climate. Even a point system with the sponsors and “pre-show”.
It’s a shoo in – heck even a third person shooter cheap knock off a la that Gears of Potter adaptation would work.
It’d be perfect for a multiplayer shooter where you use specific skills and the environment.
I don’t either. What I mean by less than 99% is we make more games without things like boobplate so the % goes down instead of taking away current games or series.
I think one thing that would be interesting is having a AAA release of a Nancy Drew game.
I actually think we can RAMP UP on sexy armor, if we embrace some of the principles I talk about (i.e. being sure it’s an unlockable choice, not in your face).
Men tend to be achievers. Making them work to bikiniize a character will give them a great, visceral reward to work up to, but make that art aesthetic skippable for women (and men) who think that stuff is juvenile.
As long as we have the options of putting the guys in equally skimpy outfits, sure.
AKA: Is it sexist? http://i.imgur.com/6woDIVf.jpg
The difference is very case by case. If you only look at a character and don’t care about the character other than by looks, then that character and its look is an “object,” rather than a “being”.
It is TOTALLY POSSIBLE TO OBJECTIFY A MALE CHARACTER. This is arguably done all the time, without much complaint. Duke Nukem is a prime example of an objectified male character that implies a certain depth that is never shown. As a result, unless he’s doing power-fantasy shit or spouting one-liners, it’s impossible to care about what happens to him.
Putting guys in skimpy outfits implies that there would be a market for people who like to look at dudes in skimpy outfits while they play the game.
Is there such a market? Absolutely. But it wouldn’t be me.
“I don’t know if it’s what Anita would say,”
well, she’s literally stated that sentiment in more than one of her videos, right at the beginning so you can’t miss it.
OK fair enough. My primary problem with a video format like hers is it’s a real pain in the ass to go and search for something you think you heard her say once.
Actually she is publishing transcripts for all her videos on http://www.feministfrequency.com.
This makes me very, very happy. Wish I’d known this a month ago.
Given that she says these things “profoundly impacts how real life women are perceived and treated” and “help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women.”, kindly explain how you’ve rationalized that she is fine with them existing?
It’s not harmful due to it existing on its own, but rather because it’s the standard.
I won’t put words in her mouth, or anyone else’s, but the goal has always been to diversify the status quo, not purge it and replace it with our own bias.
We’re mostly in agreement here. Boobplate, in itself, is not the problem. It is the ubiquity of boobplate that is the problem. As long as it is the default, feminists will work to change it. We need a variety of options for all players, so they can express themselves according to their tastes. If that means turning half of your “sexy” clothing into more, dare I say, fashionable and diverse items, then so be it. I’d rather see 75% of female character clothing options be ‘realistic’ (i.e. something someone would be able to wear IRL) than 75% be ‘sexy’.
As I mentioned previously, I think that unless your character is ABOUT sex (i.e. Bayonetta), then your female character should have a variety of outfits she can choose from that runs the whole gamut. Let people tailor their experience to their liking.
You’re ignoring ~70% of the “Save the boobplate”-post in regards to what is happening on various outlets from a developers POV and only take out the minor part in regards to his particular project. The artist in question is speaking in broad terms and takes his own project as an example of that.
It could be argued that former articles regarding the issue on those same outlets have been used to frenzy up a vocal minority that now goes bananas whenever it perceives “sexism” hence the author(artist) connects the dots for you but doesn’t go into details.
Nobody wants anyone to ignore capitalism in the form of consumer feedback for the sake of artistic freedom. It’s a straw man.
They simply want the media outlets to stop whipping people up into a frenzy over these issues. Some outlets are quite horrible for doing just that. I’d imagine you would call it clickbait-articles after having read a few of your other articles but it seems to many participants of the ongoing revolt that it’s a general desire among these outlets.
I do address exactly this. Here’s an example of what really happens (this is from SWTOR):
1. Someone notices that there’s no same sex romances in SWTOR.
2. Community manager notices it and says something stupid (“There are no gay people in Star Wars”)
3. Community goes apeshit
4. Press reports on it for ONE DAY, and then moves on to other topics, they never mention it again.
5. EITHER the topic dies and we don’t address it OR
5a. The Community continues to feed on it. In our case, this happened. We put in SSRomances because we had open threads for a YEAR.
I don’t think you understood me, using your example someone noticed lack of SS romances because of the fervor that certain outlets have brought to that particular issue over the years and was furthermore pushed by the community as a result of just that.
That is how it is being perceived by those in the revolt.
So what do YOU think? Are YOU able to consider the reality of the situation in a constructive matter?
Because that’s what it will take for “the revolt” to be resolved. People being honest and reasonable about what is real.
I think there have been a schism within the industry and there will be a cost in terms of lost customers when you decide to push diversity, there is a vocal group campaigning for it now, I assume they represent a larger more silent segment.
It might be outweighed by those that want diversity though. More politics have been added.
Sure there’s been a schism within “the industry.” It’s called, the few people who are making really big games, of the sort you call “AAA”, and the smaller, nimbler teams that are aiming for a lower margin.
Guess which one has all the growth.
Consider also that not all games require a pretense of real people leading real lives with relationships and the like. SW:TOR had that stuff, so eventually the question was going to be asked if same-sex relationships were going to be added.
But, no one cares if Captain Price is going to get it on with one of his squaddies in whatever Call of Duty he pops up in, and no one cares that Super Meat Boy isn’t going to secretly love Dr. Fetus instead of Bandage Girl.
Posit: Girls and women make up roughly half of the human population. Most of them don’t play video games. There is literally no growth to be had within the industry as a whole without considering HALF the human population and why they don’t play video games.
Does that mean every game that’s already being marketed toward men should be changed such that it appeals to both genders?
Of course not, and that’s not what’s going to happen. What will happen is that OTHER GAMES WILL BE MADE, and as a game player you will need to make more informed choices about whether a game is “for you”.
That’s been true since there have ever been video games to play.
We have Youtube now. Don’t know if you want to play a game? Go look up a Let’s Play.
Politics is what keeps us from ripping each other’s faces off like savages. It does not change games directly, and never has. What people want to do, does, at least when you’re talking about the people making the games.
I agree completely which is why I don’t have the faintest idea of why the push for diversity in games is being driven out to the existing consumers via games media, it creates conflicts of interests.
The industry have an interest in expanding the market and it will do so by creating products that is diverse and appealing to the new segments, the industry needs to tell that story to the new segments while praising the existing segments for sticking with them during the transition.
Anything else is mad.
John Cobalt — competition will correct for that. If it turns out that making boobs bigger and floppier is actually the secret to more sales, whoever does that is going to win out. Certainly Namco has been betting on that with Soul Caliber for years.
John Cobalt — competition will correct for that. If it turns out that making boobs bigger and floppier is actually the secret to more sales, whoever does that is going to win out. Certainly Namco has been betting on that with Soul Caliber for years.
Ah I have no doubt about that Damion but if those floppy versions is misrepresented by the press then it’s not a free market to compete in.
The press will also adjust accordingly but that may take quite a while e.g. a few years, I think the current revolt is a refusal to accept that media as it is and that now we will see a range of new and old sites popping up to fill a void that have been shown to exist within written media outlets.
I really don’t consider it anything but an outburst of the consumers to get that change faster.
John Cobalt> Here’s my point of view. There are Plenty of sites that offer the standard ‘extreme, awesome’ kind of coverage. Gamespot and IGN do this very well.
Polygon has a more niche focus, and a strong audience. It’s Alexa is fine. They like different games. That’s okay.
If you don’t like a media outlet, go to another media outlet. Game Publishers are deeply in tune with which media outlets get the clicks, because that’s actually the number we pay them money for.
Damion -> I agree and if you note there have been quite a few charts floating around the twitterverse the last 5 weeks outlining which sites suits those needs as well as various new initiatives.
I think the consumer had been cornered a bit, the side effects is a result to the initial handling of the complaints.
John Cobalt – Yep on alternative media outlets. My point is that I think you’ll be surprised. Polygon is going to be fine. It turns out that their audience actually cares about social issues.
This article contains some of my logic on that front.
http://www.zenofdesign.com/this-is-the-worst-games-media-ever-except-for-all-the-ones-before/
Of course Polygon will be fine but there have been a certain magic around certain identities surrounding some sites and some of that magic is now gone.
There is a few that have been hurting through this revolt though so while Polygon looks fine, RPS looks like it has taken a rather big hit from all of this.
I’d imagine that e.g. escapist and various other outlets have had an equal growth.
That may be how it’s perceived.
In the case of SWTOR, what happened is that people got mad because a feature that was in previous Bioware games (ME and DA) was missing. Those who are gay, or those who really like pretending they’re lesbians, really, REALLY missed the feature.
In the case of boobplate in general, what’s happening is that as gaming gets bigger, the window of what’s acceptable keeps moving in that direction. The more women get to taste the awesomeness that is gaming, the more they want games that respect them.
And this is important, because the cost of making games is increasing faster than the size of the ‘old’ audience.
A huge part of the problem is that there is a great deal of problems with Anita Sarkeesian’s work (she over-generalizes and comes from a fairly doctrinaire feminist viewpoint) but it’s impossible to have that conversation in between the constant sewer of lies, abuse and threats flowing in her direction.
Right, and I’m having trouble trying to decide which is more of a factor:
1. Game players are so divorced mentally from the decision process about what goes into the content of the video game that they think Anita has more power to influence than anyone else with a Youtube channel that gets a comparable number of hits;
2. Game players are just that flabbergasted by a woman espousing a viewpoint different from theirs, that the reaction is mostly visceral;
3. Game players are burdened by self-loathing to the degree that any negative things said about them or their favorite entertainment is a confirmation of their worst fears and the stuff they don’t care to admit is close to the truth;
4. Game players are less likely to be able to modulate their emotional response to anything, and as such cannot be lukewarm about anything they actually care about;
5. Game players and their social media addictions mean that anything “trending” gets shoved onto their desktops whether they want to pay attention or not, and as a result make them think Big Sister is trying to infect their brain;
6. Game players are more likely to want to treat other people as NPCs, where the method of getting what you want is just pushing all the buttons until you get the right dialogue option.
I still think a lot of otherwise well-adjusted people are going to wake up as from an all-night bender and wonder why they were so mad about this woman on the Internet who talked to a camera.
I, as a 30-or-so years white male gamer, honestly consider most of what Anita says to be painfully obvious. There are points I disagree with, but while it’s a different perspective than my own, it’s not like I can say “But look at all the games where the girl rescues the guy! There’s, like THREE of them!” or “Look at all the games that even have equal numbers of male-sex-objects to female-sex-objects! There’s … does Mass Effect count?”. The bias is there; she’s not wrong. She might be overstating, she might seem not to entirely get emergent gameplay, but … she’s still not wrong.
And I’m still likely to get angry watching her videos, because I don’t like inherent biases in things I love being pointed out, and I don’t like the possibility that I’ve been participating in a sexist bias without wanting or choosing to participate in a sexist bias, and since I am going to continue to do so, I either have to reject her perspective or I’ll feel like I’m choosing to be sexist.
Except, of course, that’s not what she says; and once I give it some thought, that’s not how it works. The problem isn’t really on the micro-level — aside from Custer’s Revenge and its ilk, the general game that uses sexist tropes isn’t bad for doing so. The problem is macro — that so many games use the same tropes, and that there are few examples of reverse tropes. And that problem, in my humble estimation, doesn’t go away by trying to eliminate the tropes; it goes away by including more female characters in different roles at every level of the game. (Including, as Damion points out, as grunt-level ammo-sinks.)
I think the macro-micro point is very relevant. Anita doesn’t want, or think its possible, for all games to suddenly become “Anita-approved”. However, she (and I) both think its possible to make changes to make reliances on these tropes less universal.
As a game designer, one of the primary things I come away with when I watch her stuff is “Man, we’re LAZY.” I mean, the way we tell the same story over and over again with the same stock characters – beyond whether or not it causes sexism or misogyny, its a good reason why AAA games are stomping smaller devs out of existence. They’re telling the same stories, but can’t do it as well as the AAAs. Anita brings that into sharp clarity.
And it’s an important point, and one that only rides shotgun to feminism.
Even if you could wave a wand and magically make all the harassment, threats and defamation disappear, I think there’s still a core problem remaining. Even most of the “moderate” anti-Sarkeesian voices don’t merely disagree with them, they insist that there is something illegitimate about feminists even making the argument.
I mean, the two big GG concerns are SJWs and corruption. Why does disagreement with feminism have to do with corruption? It’s hard to understand unless the assumption is that what Sarkeesian is saying is inherently illegitmate, that the only possible explanation for people agreeing with her must be some kind of insider corruption.
Interesting take on the whole subject. The only quibble I’d have with one of your more minor points, Damion, was the one about sexy versus non-sexy cosplayers at Comicon and it being indicative that some women like to dress up sexily. The comparison fails simply due to the fact that a number of women who aren’t of a certain body type are often actively and severely discouraged from cosplaying /at all/ (and heaven forbid if they want to cosplay a character normally thought of as sexy), so the overall impression is that there are more women who choose to dress in a sexy costume. The fact that there’s /any/ women dressing in a sexy cosplay is proof of the point. 🙂
My personal opinion on boobplate stems from being extremely weary of it generally being the first or often only choice for women when there’s rarely an equal representation for the guys – in games where it’s not being specifically marketed one way or another. One of my first articles for TORWars back in the day went on and on about the plethora of wannabe Slave Leia gear that pervaded the gamespace with only a single piece of stuff for guys for a few months. It got better, but I generally prefer a more equal and diverse representation unless the game is specifically marketed to one gender or another. There’s places in the industry for all of the above. And honestly, I think Conan-style ‘armor’ for dudes is just as dumb as boobplate or no-plate for the ladies. It’s not armor, dammit. Your mileage may vary. 🙂
And to address a point John Henderson said, and I quote:
“Posit: Girls and women make up roughly half of the human population. Most of them don’t play video games. There is literally no growth to be had within the industry as a whole without considering HALF the human population and why they don’t play video games.”
There are more and more reasonably-unchallenged statistics floating about that deny ‘most of them don’t play video games’. We make up nearly half of video game players and more than half of those who purchase video games (MOOOOOOOM, BUY ME A PLAYSTATION!) Sure, there’s probably a considerable chunk of them playing mobile stuff or the ‘Facebook apps’ that most of the rest of us tend to stick our noses up as not being real games (that’s a whoooole other can of worms I’m not opening). But we do play games, and just as frequently or hardcore as the guys do. As to why we don’t often play the same games?
Marketing.
I like to think I’m smart enough to tell when a game is not marketing to my gender, and I react by not buying the game. Even if it’s an IP I love, let’s say someone makes an all Slave Leia Star Wars game (not possible unless Disney loses their collective marbles, but hypothetically), I’m not going to buy it cos it’s Star Wars, because it’s not a Star Wars game that was designed for me, nor would it be marketed to someone like me.
However, it’s only recently that it’s become a thing where we ladies, who have been in gaming just as long as the guys have, are simply being less willing to silently put up with being shunted to only certain kinds of games. We want to be the heroines in fighting games. We want to be the protagonists. We want to wear sensible shoes, for god’s sake. There’s room in the gaming industry for all of us, with all of our preferences. Hell, a number of my friends in the industry need jobs and they could make those games without taking anything away from what we have now.
You’d think that the beancounters would slaver over getting even /more/ money into the hands of the shareholders, but eh, I’ve never really understood the marketing departments.
I do think that incorporating more female body types is a big deal for cosplay. I love the borderlands 2 Ellie character, and cosplay it inspired.
http://kikiama.deviantart.com/art/Ellie-and-Crew-Borderlands-2-Cosplay-361207900
As for ‘half of gamers’ etc, etc. We’re now at the point where more than half of game purchasers are women. However, most AAA games, and most game consoles, are purchased by men. Most of that female activity is still on mobile and web. But that does mean we’re (as an industry) training them to love games. In 5-10 years from now, they may be ready to move on to more sophisticated entertainment en masse – assuming the games don’t alienate them entirely.
It seems to me that both examples mentioned — Divinity’s armor and SWTOR’s same-sex romances — were decided without any data-driven research on actual consumer preference. There was merely an impression garnered from a few self-selected, vocal individuals. If Chris Mancil is right that #GG is about alienation and exclusion, perhaps the currently available feedback channels, even though they look open and inclusive, actually exclude a sizeable portion of the audience, whose input must be gathered in a different way.
AAA devs do a ton of market research on many aspects of the game, and character design is very frequently one of those things. Smaller devs can’t afford to explore issues as deeply.
But believe me that, in most cases, the designers are capable of making that call. Our JOB is to synthesize feedback from players with the artistic vision and the real market impact of that decision.
Damion — I assume you’re familiar with this song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bEGLbCNRqw
That’s magical.
I can attest this is pretty much Damion’s theme song.
Like you can talk.
As a female gamer; clearly, I can’t speak for all of us, but what I do want is exactly what you mentioned – choice. I wouldn’t want, say, slave girl outfits removed from SWTOR, if for no other reason, they’re straight out of the actual movies, so that would be downright silly! (And also there’s the fact that what someone else chooses to wear doesn’t affect me one bit.) Me, personally? For my characters, I’m in the ” why the heck would you run around in skimpy clothes on Hoth” camp, but that’s me.
So, yes. Give us the option to not HAVE to run around with our boobs flying everywhere – and I’m happy.
Yeah, I’m in favor of expanding our market (expand the definition of “gamer”) and finding ways to express a cultural or political message in games (“Make Art”).
I just don’t think that mediums produce art by catering to critics. They find their “voice”, relay their message, and the critics have to catch up. We shouldn’t be in a dialog with critics to appear relevant. They should be trying to make themselves relevant to us and the consumer. And we shouldn’t be trying to expand the market by telling large chunks of it that they don’t need to be part of it anymore.
Critics are useless until they prove otherwise. Gamers are the market until they stop spending most of the money. If the market wants less pandering to base impulses in the form of boob-plate and sexualized marketing, then it’s not our job to argue with them, but to adapt.
It’s all polygons, that mean what the players think they mean, not what critics tell us they “really” mean.
Arguably, you don’t produce art by catering to the market either.
From a business perspective, what matters is sales, sales, and more sales. That doesn’t require art, or McDonald’s would be the pinnacle of culinary artistry.
Art lies in the eye of the beholder.
Given how McDonalds is able to deliver the same burger in Amsterdam then in Prague, i’d say it’s some art.
But yeah, if we speak about the public idea of art, McDonalds isn’t art and one don’t need to be artful to sell stuff. And to be a bit honest here, i prefer buying my food from people not describing themselves as artists.
Sure, but it depends on what you want to consume too. Here’s an easy example: Joss Whedon only gets to spend $350M making Avengers if he makes back more than that. Like, easily more.
As such, he needs to be sure the movie reaches a lot of people. He needs women butts in seats. He needs children butts in seats. His artistic vision needs to work inside of those constraints, or he won’t get to make another movie.
Quentin Tarantino makes edgier stuff. He also works with smaller budgets (75M-100M) because he knows he’s not going to put as many butts in seats.
Sometimes something edgy breaks out and massively exceeds their budget. However, breakout is impossible to predict, and more often than not, breakout is something you can take your kids to (See Guardians of the Galaxy)
Producing art and living from producing art are two different things. There were quite a few great artists who died piss poor. But you’re right about commercial aspect.
The commercial aspect is twofold though. On the one hand it will lead to financiers pushing for projects aiming at bigger audiences, making them most likely a bit more tame. But it also is the reason as to why they’ll push against homosexual or other ‘deviant’ (i hope that’s the right english word, as no offense is meant) protagonists.
What one could question, is if this whole idea auf maximizing audience size will in the end lead to more asian protagonists, or if there’s some sort of cultural boundary/upper limit or such.
Well, ‘living by producing art’ becomes more important when you are responsible for more people than yourself. An author can starve himself for the sake of his art. It’s harder for a movie director, especially as his ambitions increase (indeed, one of the top talents of an indie movie director is knowing how to cut or simplify scenes, or reuse sets).
Once games get out of the indie scene, they’re a lot closer to that reality.
This is not to say that sex can’t sell, though! Hell, the Sims is effectively a ‘Hot Tub Sex Simulator’. Well, not sims 4 so much.
I applaud you for your classification of the Sims and the small part about the Sims 4.
Someone who won’t ever compromise, is a fanatic imho. So yes people have to compromise.
Then again we need to realize that good financial planning is, as you said, just a part. Otherwise Uwe Boll, who to my knowledge made a profit on every movie he did, would be praised as a genius.
A real good question would be where being Indie actually ends.
I somewhat get the feeling that currently a lot of people label themselves indie and deny taking responsibilities for promises they already monetized upon.
Because as soon as you start to monetize on a vision, i think you’ll have to take some responsibility. And not only am i sad about some big name saying it was no longer viable to develop an Alpha, because said Alpha didn’t finance itself any longer, i’m also a bit fearful of what is to come from Star Citizen and what i percieve as unmeetable expectations.
Uwe Boll was shamelessly exploiting “stupid German money” reimbursement laws, which have since been changed since not long after his last crappy movie.
The term “indie” is effectively as meaningless as “gamer”. You can apply it to yourself, and most who do will have a similar answer for what it means, but that doesn’t mean there’s a standards and rules committee to enforce what it means.
All the growth in game development is in small scale projects. ALL of it. You’re effectively going to see the same number of games aimed at big audiences that you already see.
That said, the risk of making a small game is that it by definition has a smaller overall margin. So the developers have every incentive to be as targeted with their market as can be, and aim for under-served markets such as … anyone who doesn’t already play games.
@john
Uwe Boll is still doing movies, Darfur from 2009 seemingly even garnerd some good critiques. And i used him exactly to point out that one can make money while being hammered for producing bad movies.
I disagree in that i think the term Indie once had a somewhat more real meaning. But it’s getting more and more hazy when you take this new financing models into account. But sure, even back in the days it was a somewhat loose term.
You seem a bit overdramatizing by saying all growth, but sure small investments often allow for higher risks, which means people are more likely to test new ideas. Or sometimes even forced to try new ways. I think Robert Rodriguez pointed that out once.
There’s truth in your aiming at a niche idea, but i think again that it’s important to point out that this is often also a result of a limited budget. And that Indies also run some small scale (like every human) cost-profit analysis to decide what features to add and what not to add. And especially art dircetion and graphics – which seem to be important for quite a lot of people – seems to be often the outcome of a budget constrain.
I don’t have a problem with stylised sexuality in games that I play (although I have to be honest with the ease of access to free pornography never more than a click or two away on the internet I have to wonder if you want easy titillation there are easier ways of getting it)
However, I think game designers have to understand that if you give players a choice to play dress up with their characters that choice has to be fair and without bias.
A lot of my recent gaming has been centred on SWTOR (one of the reasons I found this blog) and even it has an example of what I have an issue with. Notably one particular armour model that displays differently on male or female characters.
Elder Seeker Imperial Armour (male)
http://tor-fashion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08/11/elder-seeker-imp/ElderSeekerImpMaleClose.png
Elder Seeker Imperial Armour (female)
http://tor-fashion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/08/11/elder-seeker-imp/ElderSeekerImpFemaleClose.png
This is how a game gets it wrong.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I’d like to see the female version removed from the game. I am saying it should equip the same way on a female character model as it does on a male character. Essentially, have both styles for both genders, a new set for females that includes waist and arm wraps, and a set for the males that denudes their six pack and biceps.
It is good to see that this is a rare exception and that the release of cartel market sets with more skin on display applies equally to both genders.
Dramatic Extrovert (Male)
http://tor-fashion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/01/10/dramatic-extrovert/Dramatic-Extrovert-Male-Close-Copy.png
Dramatic Extrovert (Female)
http://tor-fashion.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/Dramatic-Extrovert-Female-Close.png
This is how a game gets it right.
It is an option to use the armour, and it displays the same.
I have to be honest I’m more familiar with the term ‘Chainmail Bikini’, but I guess ‘Boobplate’ is the same thing.
I remember back in the day when the UK gaming magazine ‘White Dwarf’ had more generic content (not just a Games Workshop Ad vehicle)and a letters page, it wasn’t uncommon to see many of the same concerns being raised (this is anecdotal and based off a faltering memory 😉 )Very few games made mechanical differences (although for a while Advanced Dungeons and Dragons limited the Strength of female characters to below the maximum allowable for male characters). Nearly all games have struggled with the use of gender with third person pronouns and possessives using a number of ways to balance it out (and needing to highlight their dealing with it in a preface). And, pretty much every game out there will at some point run into Boobplate territory given that so much of the pick up appeal of a game is on its coverart.
It’s a shame that the ‘Divinty: Original Sin’ decision seems to have been a reaction to appease concerns without addressing the depictions within the actual game. On the same note, I wonder why the complaints didn’t target the ingame depictions as well. Obviously if the game had shipped with a plain black box with a logo and name it wouldn’t have attracted any complaints and the in game art assets would have remained the same.
Sexuality in games, as it is in life, is a particularly strong aspect that will usually provoke similarly powerful emotions.
With regards to graphic depictions I would always err on the side of choice and variety.
Of course that will in part be determined by the style of the game. Those games using a specific Intellectual Property such as Lara Croft have certain constraints placed on them to keep the core character recognisable (although some of the episodes in the franchise have provided unlockable wardrobe of outfits).
While other games, such as MMOs, where the player creates their avatar have far more lee way to apply a choice of items to allow for greater freedom of choice in appearance.
One of things I’d want to point out here is the whole “market” thing. What that means is there’s a market for this stuff, and the social or cultural critic not bound by the ideology of either “side” of the gamergate is then led naturally to the question of the culture driving the market: why is it that games showing women this way are in demand, but not so much games showing the corresponding depictions for men? We may then be led into questions like the male-centric nature of game culture, like why that games should be targeted to males, why there are fewer women gamers, and so forth. Lots of questions, lots of complexity and things to criticize and discuss.