Tropes vs Women in Videogames

[Lint]

Discuss?

Part of me wants to wait until the other parts come out. In part 1 atleast, she seems to show alot of Solid Snake, while ignoring that Meryl, Sniper Wolf and other women play an important part of the games, while not exactly being an "damsel in distress". Meryl, in particular, is a huge part of MGS4, and is never in distress more then most male characters. But I found the video interesting and can't wait til the other parts come out

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Id say Otacon is the damsel in Solid Snake.

[Colly]

Id say Otacon is the damsel in Solid Snake.

I must have missed that scene.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

They both cried after. But Octacon cried more. Damsel.

[GoGo Yubari]

I would fully expect to see Metal Gear Solid discussed, but perhaps not until an appropriate character trope comes up. Definitely wasn't going to be in this first one because the actual examples were mostly based around franchises started in the '80s/early '90s.

[SeanDMan]

There's parts of it I disagree with.

Your point about Metal Gear is one of them. She didn't mention the numerous times that Snake gets captured and tortured and needs rescuing, sometimes by female characters. It's a classic debating point of highlighting what fits your narrative and discarding what doesn't, but to use her own words, videogames don't exist in a vacuum: if you criticize games for making torture victims out of it's female characters you have to acknowledge that bit where Solid Snake is naked as the day he was born and is electrocuted to orgasm and beyond. To do otherwise does a disservice to your arguement.

The other part where she lost me was on her points about Double Dragon. I'll again use her words:

"It's a sad fact that the majority of the world's population still clings to the sexist belief that women as a group need to be sheltered, protected, and taken care of by men."

There's an element to that that's true, but on the other hand, there's VAWA, there's The Istanbul Convention, there's UN Declarations against violence towards women...

As a society, we treat women as being uniquely incapable of defending themselves against violence perpetrated on them by men. There are various reasons for this but on the whole when a man hits a woman it is generally considered to be an abhorrant act, perhaps only shy of sexual assault and infanticide in terms of the horrible crimes department. If we treat women as a group that must be protected against violence then;

1. Women are always going to be the target of violence in fiction because we're socially conditioned to see this as unacceptable (much more unacceptable than if the victim was male).

2. Someone is going to need to rescue the women in question (and the UN is busy).

So, to a certain degree, we're always going to see violence against women in media, with men being the ones to come to the rescue. If you see this as problematic then we either need to change the discussion about the nature of how we view violence (and begin to treat it as universally unacceptable instead of more acceptable if the victim is a man) or we need to change the way we write fiction in general (the replacement of the antiquated hero stereotype with something more modern, such as a policeman on a bike perhaps). Either way, the cliche is unlikely to change for a while.

So accepting that, it's probably better to look at examples of where it's done right (a good example I can think of is Lucy McClane in the Die Hard movie; she's tough, intelligent, and you get the feeling if she wasn't outnumbered then she could probably handle herself okay). To Sarkeesian's credit, she did that, but her effort in that regard seemed half hearted. Zelda is basically killing Ganon for you in Ocarina Of Time by perforating him with light arrows; the fact that you also hop in and beat him about a little with a large sword is just because games are meant to be played and not watched. This, again, goes back to my earlier critique about her ignoring what doesn't fit her narrative.

I've watched all of the Feminist Frequency videos and I find myself agreeing with her more than I disagree (with one pointed exception; the idea that Lego is a tool of the patriarchy meant to keep poor little girls down) with her general points but find the way she approaches her analysis to be problematic. There's a saying in science; there's two ways to reach a conclusion. Either examine the evidence and form a conclusion, or form a conclusion and examine the evidence in a way that supports it. It's fine that she has an agenda but she is presenting a far too one sided picture of the issues for my tastes. I find her a bit like Michael Moore in that regard. In Moore's defense, he's more thorough in his books. Maybe she's limited by her medium, but all the same it's the medium she chose.

Either way, I look forward to the rest of the series.

[Vamp]

2. Someone is going to need to rescue the women in question (and the UN is busy).

So, to a certain degree, we're always going to see violence against

women in media, with men being the ones to come to the rescue. If you

see this as problematic then we either need to change the discussion

about the nature of how we view violence (and begin to treat it as

universally unacceptable instead of more acceptable if the victim is a

man) or we need to change the way we write fiction in general (the

replacement of the antiquated hero stereotype with something more

modern, such as a policeman on a bike perhaps). Either way, the cliche

is unlikely to change for a while.

I can't view the video because TalkTalk has decided to be shit but you lose me a bit here. Why can't the someone who saves women in fiction be a woman? You seem to kind of asume that men are going to have to do the saving because that's the way things work, but what's to stop a woman from saving women? And I think most feminists would say that the way we write fiction in general needs to change and that we do need to change antiquated sterotypes, that is part of the point.

She didn't mention the numerous times that Snake gets captured and

tortured and needs rescuing, sometimes by female characters. It's a

classic debating point of highlighting what fits your narrative and

discarding what doesn't, but to use her own words, videogames don't

exist in a vacuum: if you criticize games for making torture victims out

of it's female characters you have to acknowledge that bit where Solid

Snake is naked as the day he was born and is electrocuted to orgasm and

beyond. To do otherwise does a disservice to your arguement.

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I can see your point if we just consider the texts themselves and on the other you're rather taking things out of their social context which is odd since you say videogames don't exist in a vacuum. So I'm not sure. There's two issues at work here, firstly that the establishment of male characters depends on torture and violence, there's the traditional binary opposition of men as active and women as passive. Men overcome violence. Which I, as someone who dabbles in studies regarding masculinity, do see as a problem. But torture scenes involving women, or so the argument would go, tend to have different aims. This is kind o where the social context comes in. Women being tortured carries a lot of baggage in a patriarchal society that still, to a leser extent than before, doesn't see them as equal. If you accept the male gaze principle and apply it to videogames then women being tortured becoems something different to men being tortured.

So accepting that, it's probably better to look at examples of where it's done right

I'm also not sure about this. She wants to challenge not applaud.

with one pointed exception; the idea that Lego is a tool of the patriarchy meant to keep poor little girls down

I love lego, and so I hate to look at it in such a way, but when you consider it has allied itself with Page Three (which is probably a debate in itself) and the stupid decisions it makes with its girls range there's certainly issues to raise.

[King Ellis]

The train of thought is that with video games being mostly a guy thing, it's hard for guys to immerse themselves in the game and project themselves as the all conquering hero when the main character is a woman. I'm sure there are sales figures out there that compare male lead games vs female lead ones. There's all sorts of varying factors other than the gender of the lead character of course, but I'm not sure Wet did overly well. Mirror's Edge though I think did pretty well but still below expectations. Those are two modern ones that spring to mind. Of course we have Tomb Raider out now which has great reviews so that should be interesting to see how it pans out.

Just remembered the stats that were released for Mass Effect 2, listing the most favoured class, average completion time etc etc and, looking them up, it lists 80% of players played as a male Shepard.

[SeanDMan]

I can't view the video because TalkTalk has decided to be shit but you lose me a bit here. Why can't the someone who saves women in fiction be a woman? You seem to kind of asume that men are going to have to do the saving because that's the way things work, but what's to stop a woman from saving women?

I never said that nor meant to imply it. There are lots of strong female characters in videogames. Jill Chambers comes to mind, Lara Croft, Ada Wong, femShep... there are plenty of examples. None of them perfect but plenty of them present. But she never bothered to mention them because they're outside the scope of her discussion, and that's fine. She wants to talk specifically about women as victims, and that's her perogative. It doesn't mean I feel the same way, but I'm going to address what she said, not what she's ignoring.

And I think most feminists would say that the way we write fiction in general needs to change and that we do need to change antiquated sterotypes, that is part of the point.

This is all part of a larger discussion (one worth having, don't get me wrong - I write myself so I'm a strong advocate for breaking cliche in writing) which, again, falls outside the scope of this particular topic.

To answer this and other questions: videogames are an imperfect system inside an imperfect system. They exist as part of a complex; are they mostly a male oriented activity because they're marketted to men, and that turns women away from them? Or are they mostly marketted to men because they're primarily a male oriented activity? Either way, they are what they are; functionally flawed, based on bad cliches of BOTH men and women and bad cliches of storytelling. My issue with taking her perspective is it's focusing your criticism on one issue and neglecting the rest; imagine you order a vegetarian stew. When it arrives, it has lamb, beef, chicken, and pork in it. You're aghast but the person you're with takes a sip of the broth and demands to send it back because it's too salty. Are videogames flawed? Yes. But cherry picking which parts you don't like and blowing them out of proportion isn't constructive, IMO. It's better to promote the good than excentuate the negative, IMO, and if you ignore positive examples in favor of stretching to find bad examples, a lot of objective analysis is discarded in favor of getting YOUR message across. That's fine, she's an activist, she can have a bias and a purpose, but again, is she deriving her conclusion from the evidence or is she presenting the evidence that supports her conclusion?

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I can see your point if we just consider the texts themselves and on the other you're rather taking things out of their social context which is odd since you say videogames don't exist in a vacuum. So I'm not sure. There's two issues at work here, firstly that the establishment of male characters depends on torture and violence, there's the traditional binary opposition of men as active and women as passive. Men overcome violence. Which I, as someone who dabbles in studies regarding masculinity, do see as a problem.

If there's one positive thing that can come from the modern social justice movement it will be to abolish the concept of preconceptions of gender; things such as the active male, the male overcoming the odds, etc. Metal Gear Solid does great work with Otacon, a male character who at times very much embodies the damsel in distress trope himself. Games, and the fiction world in general, need to start writing characters with less rigid adherance to stereotypical gender definitions; men can be weak, women can rise to challenges, etc. However, NONE of this was mentioned in her videos; she doesn't touch the idea of the men in the games being problematic except to say that games play to typical adolescent male fantasies in the context of objectifying women, a point I sort of agree with her and sort of don't.

But torture scenes involving women, or so the argument would go, tend to have different aims. This is kind o where the social context comes in. Women being tortured carries a lot of baggage in a patriarchal society that still, to a leser extent than before, doesn't see them as equal. If you accept the male gaze principle and apply it to videogames then women being tortured becoems something different to men being tortured.

I don't buy into male gaze principle. I think it's an overgeneralization. I don't think showing torture of women needs to be done for male gaze. Have you seen The Last King Of Scotland? Probably some of the most disturbing casually presented images of torture I've seen in mainstream media and I definitely kept my pants up the entire time.

Again: we're preconditioned to accept that women being the subject of violence is abhorrant. There's a minority of people who might find women being tortured sexually titalating but I don't think it's a majority and I think if we can do it in film and books we can do it in games. But that's a whole different discussion and Roger Ebert doesn't post on EWB.

I'm also not sure about this. She wants to challenge not applaud.

Again, it's fine that she's an activist but she is abandoning objectivity in favor of presenting a biased narrative. That's fine, but it's important to remember that there's a larger discussion beyond the specific one she wants to have.

I love lego, and so I hate to look at it in such a way, but when you consider it has allied itself with Page Three (which is probably a debate in itself) and the stupid decisions it makes with its girls range there's certainly issues to raise.

Again, it's an imperfect system inside an imperfect system. Do you market the shitty sheLego to girls because you think it's what they want, or because you have focus groups telling you it's what they want? I think we forget sometimes that we exist in a world driven almost solely by the idea of free market economies. We have a population of socialists rallying against social causes that have nothing to do with social decisions but are instead aimed purely at commercialism. Am I a fan of the sheLego products they've come out with? Fuck no, they look stupid to me. But so does The Real Housewives, so does TMZ, so does People magazine, there's still a MASSIVE cult of celebrity that (primarily) women buy into. So is Lego making sets trying to take advantage of that? I think so. Is that a good decision? Well it depends on whether you want to reinforce that culture, or move away from it. I don't think Lego gives a shit. I think they just want money, and they're doing what they think they can do to get it.

[Vamp]

Yeah but if you start going down that road you have to consider why that's the case. Why do men have such a difficulty in identifying with women? And if you answer that with "because they're a different sex" (which is a contentious and problematic answer in itself) then you have to ask why more women aren't buying video games? Of course one of the problems there is that identification in movies is a tricky enough subject, identification in video games has whole other variables to consider. Its interesting that when it comes to more traditional slasher horror films there's a train of thought (depending on whether you think such viewing is sadistic or masochistic) that questions whether a male audience identifies with the Final Girl character and how many horror tropes video games have stolen over the years.

Also "because it makes more money" tends not to be an answer feminists are happy with.

Edit:

My issue with taking her perspective is it's focusing your criticism on
one issue and neglecting the rest; imagine you order a vegetarian stew.
When it arrives, it has lamb, beef, chicken, and pork in it. You're
aghast but the person you're with takes a sip of the broth and demands
to send it back because it's too salty. Are videogames flawed? Yes. But
cherry picking which parts you don't like and blowing them out of
proportion isn't constructive, IMO.

You do realise what you've typed here right?

Edited March 8, 2013 by Vamp

[SeanDMan]

Also "because it makes more money" tends not to be an answer feminists are happy with.

The world, however, runs on money, not the feelings of feminists.

[SeanDMan]

You do realise what you've typed here right?

Do you?

[Vamp]

I'm 92% sure that I registered surprise that someone suggested that feminist concerns were a minor inconveniance to real issues.

[SeanDMan]

Well, it might surprise you to find this out, but not everyone in the world believes that women's representation in videogames is a world changing issue.

Nuclear crisis in Korea? Big deal.

Hostage crisis in Syria? Big deal.

Princess Peach kidnapped? HOLD THE FUCKING PRESSES people.

I'm not specifically saying that she's making big deals out of nothing, I'm saying that within the context of "this is what is wrong with videogames", she's taking one specific sticking point that's important to her and blowing it up, beyond the proper frame of context and reference, and with no representation of counter examples, and is presenting it as a massive, horrible issue with popular culture. And while I agree that's got some legitimate points, I disagree with the scope of the issue as she presents it and the way she presents it.

But yes, if you want to be technical, her "feminist concerns" are a "minor inconvenience" to "real issues". When I think about what bothers me more, I think I'm more worried about North Korean nuclear testing than whether Princess Peach got kidnapped in 13 games or if they had the audacity to do it 15 times.

[Vamp]

My problem was that in the context of your metaphore presumably video games made the vegetable stew, and since the only other problem you've mentioned in video games is the portrayal of men (something I don't disagree with) it seems like you're saying that the representation of men is the meat of the issue and the representation of women is some small incidental aspect that is barely worth contemplating.

[SeanDMan]

Oh, okay, no, I didn't mean to imply that at all.

I just meant that there are a lot of problems with videogames today. The writing, settings, characterization, all rely far too heavily on cliches. Too much of videogames are recycled from other mediums. And too much emphasis is placed on making games that make money rather than making games for the sake of making art.

As an artform there is a lot to criticize about the way videogames are made and the final product that is presented.

All I meant to say is that the role women play in games is a small part of that. That may be a problem in and of itself, and again, there's nothing wrong with discussing it, but I think that it needs to be as part of a larger discussion on what is wrong with videogames in general.

The most popular and highest selling games tend to be Call Of Duty games, wherein nameless and faceless male protagonists battle through a world where they are allowed and even encouraged to deal out wanton and indescriminate violence against all of those around them.

There is so much wrong with the Call Of Duty games. If you were to specifically focus on the characterization of females in the games, though, it would be a short discussion. In some games such as the ones she picked out, it's a bigger issue. In the scope of the entire industry I'm not sure it's as big as she implies.

Part of it, though, is that the industry self corrects to where the money is. As more females play games and talk about games, more thought will go into making games females want to play. Marketting towards women is sometimes awful (the aforementioned sheLego, or the terrible idea of making ladies' jerseys) and just as problematic as NOT marketting to them, but at least the effort would be there.

[Colly]

Am I the only one not bothered by sheLego?

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Jill Valentine, Lara Croft and Noriko (Heavenly Sword) are probably all in my top ten lead characters. Noriko stands up for her people when the men run away like cowards, she goes and rescues them too.

I think things are changing. Mario plays out to kiddie stories (princess captured by meanie, go get her!) and numerous Nintendo games take a similar route (not Metroid of course).

The female characters in Metal Gear are pretty strong. His radio support team has a number of strong, professional women too. Sure there are stupid sexy comments but the game is Japanese and they always fit in a bit of adolescent smut because that's what the guys there want.

[SeanDMan]

The stew metaphor was a little sloppy and I apologize for that, I can see why you thought I wrote what you thought I wrote. I didn't mean to say that the portrayal of women is less important than the portrayal of men in videogames. I think proper characterization of characters regardless of gender is one of the issues a lot of mainstream games face. I think it's partly a linearity issue and partly the fact that videogames are overhomogonized, and designed to be as appealing to as large a consumer base as is possible, which usually means the majority as it exists in understanding. That means if the key commercial demographic is young males, then games are designed mostly for young males. This creates problems with characterizing women because properly characterized women are pretty rare when you look at most media for young men (although this is changing).

Also:

Jill Valentine

Right, shit, I called her Jill Chambers earlier. Obviously haven't dusted those discs off in a while.

[Skummy]

Does anyone have figures for how many women work in positions of power in video game companies, or in creative roles on video game projects?

On Sean's point, I agree that the homogenization of character is an issue - female characters in video games tend to be flawed because all characters in video games are flawed - but I'd disagree that the gender aspect is the lesser of those two issues. "Lack of creativity and originality" isn't as much of an issue as "lack of appropriate representation of an entire gender".

Yes, video games are predominantly marketed at young males. But you could just as easily take those statistics to say "women aren't buying video games, and it's because they're marketed in this way". In reality, women over 18 are the fastest growing demographic in gaming. Whether you look at it from a social justice perspective, or from a free market perspective, things should change when taking that into account.