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[Propman]

Having just gotten back from the storm occurring in 4chan, I can honestly say that the issue has caused the whole board out of whack. Also a bit surprised that they fell before Facepunch, but them's the breaks.

[Rolan7]

The big problem is even among the majority of gamers who DO care about sexuality and gender.

They don't care AS much as a lot of this political diatribe. They want Videogame women to stop having super huge boobs, but few of them would ever say that they are genuinely "hurting women". They want more women in videogames but they wouldn't say they are "excluding women". They think these things are incredibly contrite, aggravating, and stupid but they wouldn't say they are outrageous or hate-worthy.

And honestly I think it is far more worthwhile for gamers to voice their groans and moans to the stupidity in videogames... and I am more charged then that... but I do not believe Anita's videos have had any positive impact in gaming, I do not think the "getting people to think" her videos created have been beneficial at all.

Because Anita isn't about making better games and her videos are just negatively charged. They want people outraged more than they want people thinking.

What should be a call for people to come together and think of their buying choices or their values as far as gaming is concerned seems to just be turning more and more ugly.

But who knows MAYBE that is just for now.

That sounds like me.  I've argued that these comical female characters are harmful to women in vague ways, but honestly I'm not totally sure.  All I do know is that I'm sick of them.  It's fine for characters to look magazine-perfect, particularly in non-serious settings, but I'd love to see more rugged, practical ones.

I'm mainly here to report that Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much my ideal game, gender-issue wise. 

* The various bandit tribes have gender equality because they're subsistence looters, no time for housemaking (they rape captives, but that's because they're vicious subsistence looters with no respect for human dignity.  I expect that male captives get raped too, sometimes by female bandits.)

* The NCR has full gender equality because it's a relatively enlightened democracy.  Was essentially founded by a female president-for-life.

* The Vegas gangs are somewhat male-dominated because they're all about imitating pre-war society.

* The Legion is incredibly sexist because it's built around a rigid, vicious monoculture.  (one issue with the game is that they're cartoonishly evil, but I understand the idea in theory)

* All the strippers (pretend to be) bisexual, and several are male...  Makes sense, since they're trying to get money from female NCR troopers.  Several NPCs are LGB.  Most of them are subtle about it, because it's a incidental quality of their character - which is wonderful to see. 

The game contains several incidences of rape and sexual slavery, and at least two quests where you help people recover from it.  It's amazing to see a game dare to tackle such issues maturely, and with no glorification at all.  This isn't Leia-in-a-bikini, it's people who are fine on the outside and broken on the inside.  Much more than I expected from an RPG-FPS.

Mainly it's just so good to see women fighting alongside the men...  Realistic women who use the same weapons and armor as the men.  (So most of the bandit women are half-naked, but that's because ALL bandits are half naked psychos).  Most games don't have the depth available to a character-based game like Fallout, but they could have female NPCs and enemies who aren't fragile half-naked doll-like spellcasters/charmers...

[Fniff]

*snip*

New Vegas, eh?

Spoiler: I Was Looking For Some Place To Put This (click to show/hide)

RING A DING DING

Aside from that, New Vegas both a good game and progressive.

[MrWiggles]

DnD Next has explicit wording on what gender you can play in DnD. This got some folks really excited...

I don't care. If anything I'm a bit dismayed. WoTC has handle gender equality pretty well. Where the support for WoTC when they used all female pronouns in their hand books, or the fact that about half the characters they used for the class standards are female? Oh, and not all the character are obviously just Eurocentric Caucasian. Lots of nice skin tones rainbows with those characters.

But folks get excited when there some text to remind you that you can pretty much whatever, that, to me, is just a big reminder of Rule Zero in table top RPGs. Disregard the rules when they get in the way of fun. -- So if you wanted to have poly gendered pan sexual character, and that was something important to you as a Role Player, then you've probably already found a group that encourages it, or doesn't care about it. Don't take 'doesn't care about it', as a negative. Its apathetic, as in the group not against, nor for it. Its just there. And these two groups will play that way even if the rule book explicitly stated that you can't have any gender you want. Why? Rule Zero.

For me personally, you have to really go out of your way in a game to make gender and sexual orientation a thing that actually matters in the game. Such as, say Mass Effect places much more effort on make gender and sexual orientation a thing.

[Willfor]

DnD Next has explicit wording on what gender you can play in DnD. This got some folks really excited...

I don't care. If anything I'm a bit dismayed. WoTC has handle gender equality pretty well. Where the support for WoTC when they used all female pronouns in their hand books, or the fact that about half the characters they used for the class standards are female? Oh, and not all the character are obviously just Eurocentric Caucasian. Lots of nice skin tones rainbows with those characters.

But folks get excited when there some text to remind you that you can pretty much whatever, that, to me, is just a big reminder of Rule Zero in table top RPGs. Disregard the rules when they get in the way of fun. -- So if you wanted to have poly gendered pan sexual character, and that was something important to you as a Role Player, then you've probably already found a group that encourages it, or doesn't care about it. Don't take 'doesn't care about it', as a negative. Its apathetic, as in the group not against, nor for it. Its just there. And these two groups will play that way even if the rule book explicitly stated that you can't have any gender you want. Why? Rule Zero.

For me personally, you have to really go out of your way in a game to make gender and sexual orientation a thing that actually matters in the game. Such as, say Mass Effect places much more effort on make gender and sexual orientation a thing.

Actually, the majority of radfem and inclusivity-minded people have been extremely happy with the art style and direction of 5E. I don't know what people you've been looking at -- probably the extreme minority -- but I've only actually seen the other side of the complaints; the people who are complaining because the art style is too diverse. .___.

[penguinofhonor]

As a Magic the Gathering player, I've seen WotC push gender/sexuality diversity in the past few years with a very positive response. I do think more people need to talk about them and try to get others to follow their example.

[Dutchling]

I remember some drama about Magic when a card's art was revised because it was too rapey.

Spoiler: said card (click to show/hide)

Kinda funny how nobody cared about that card before, but afterwards everyone suddenly did...


Haven't really played Magic long enough to see a trend in genderstuff though.

[Neonivek]

Honestly why does ANYONE care that Garruk is about to kill Lilliana Vess?

She is one of the series major villains...

OHH GAWD!!! are we actually going back to the stupidity of making women permanent "no touch zones" for men, where every single group now needs a token woman SPECIFICALLY to take down female villains because the male characters can't touch them?

Honestly DANG IT ANITA! I am blaming you for no reason... even if... you... kind of can be interpreted as being in support of the "No Zones" making my joke of irrational outrage at you, actually a bit more rational killing the joke.

I don't know Anita is hard to pin down. Since she is often so very anti-violence against women in videogames, but one of the ONLY good ideas she ever had is for games to have MORE violence against women in the form of female mooks. THEN AGAIN she did praise games that have non-violent narratives because they couldn't involve the harming of others... Then again she was against the idea of a female character being controlled and attacking the hero (which honestly... I am sorry Anita, but that is always an AWESOME part of a videogame... I hope any developer ignores that section).

[penguinofhonor]

I always forget Garruk is Hagrid-sized. Also, this is the new art:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are people sure the art was changed for that reason? They give cards new art pretty frequently.

[Neonivek]

They probably changed the art because they are different sections of the story AND different editions but kept the quote because laziness.

[Dutchling]

I'm fairly sure the reason they changed the art was never actually mentioned, although I thought it was before (drama was a while ago).

[AlleeCat]

Have you guys watched Extra Credits at all? I think they bring up a lot of good points about gender and sexuality in video games from a developer's perspective.

My two cents is that I definitely think there should be more female main characters, more gay and trans characters, more variety than "straight white dude with guns goes on an adventure." At the same time, though, I still enjoy games that don't have that variety, and I don't think we should have to shoehorn it into the plot just to be politically correct, because we end up with bad representation, and overall, the plot suffers immensely.

I just want to see games what focus on these characters and what happens if we put them in extraordinary situations. We should be exploring these characters, not pushing them off to the side and saying, "Look! They're there! Are we PC enough yet?"
I liked Cortez from Mass Effect 3. A gay man struggling with the loss of his husband. He grieves, like anyone else, eventually comes to terms with his loss, and even possibly finds new love. He's not played off as a stereotype, and even though he's an ancillary character, we still delve deep enough into his story to get attached. I really think we need to see more of this kind of thing in games, because while "straight white dude shoots things 2014" can be enjoyable sometimes, it's not something the market should be flooded by.

[Fniff]

Here is something to discuss. What would be your way of creating equality in videogames? We all want equality here and we have established that pretty well. What would you do to solve the problem, if you were a game developer? And what is stopping game developers from solving the problem right now?

[Neonivek]

"straight white dude shoots things 2014"

While I agree with you for the most part AlleeCat the thing that always kind of makes me laugh a bit when reading that is the old "Assumed straight" and "Assumed White" and "Assumed Male" aspect with characters where these aren't explicitly known simply because it is our perceived norm.

I only say this because I am wondering how many shooters actually outright state gender preferences.

Still you are right AlleeCat. There is a HUGE difference between Cortez from Mass Effect and lets say Zevran from Dragon age......

I am sad that we aren't past either the: "Ohhhh! We are PC!" and ESPECIALLY the "He's gay... GET IT!!! ha ha ha ha!" (Though we are... staaarting to).

In the OHHHH! We are PC!: I remember this discussion I seen in a video about LBTG (Dang it I know I got that wrong) where they were talking about books and how while there were TONS upon TONS of books about kids dealing with the consequences of being LBTG, there weren't enough books that simply involved them where their sexual nature was considered tertiary.

In "He's Gay get it!": I remember watching an anime (yeah not a videogame... and I shouldn't count it given... uhhh... Japan isn't exactly.... progressive) but I remember one Harem anime actually had a joke gay harem member... and all I could say to myself was how much better he was then the female leads. Or to say, I honestly feel like they shouldn't have played up him being gay as a joke (Him being oblivious that the main character doesn't like him that way and takes what he says too seriously? SURE). I mean I guess I can understand the humor of unwanted advances, but why do people continuously use "gay" as the punchline?

Not that Female characters don't have the same issues, but videogames have REALLY avoided it... mostly because Videogames actually have better track records than movies when it comes to action...

With women I think the two things you generally see in their story that need to be done a LOT less are: "See, women are just as good as men" and "But, she was a woman afterall"

The "See, Women are just as good as men": Is pretty rare in videogames... but generally speaking it is when something tries to call attention to a woman's success by bringing attention to her gender OR when a woman is set up to "prove her gender's worth"... This is actually pretty dang rare in videogames and the last videogame I've seen that did this was "Other M" but honestly that is the most SEXIST game probably of the last decade. This is the one that FLAT OUT needs to almost die out.

The "But, she was a woman afterall": Though is the opposite so to speak. It is where they have to show that a strong woman actually is weak and has vulnerabilities deep down. Now this is usually handled badly... but I cannot out it on concept alone because, honestly, a strong character having vulnerabilities is actually a good character driven storytelling. The issue is that these narratives often play off that their weaknesses stem from them being a woman... This of course tends to occur in movies FAR more then videogames, so the last time I seen this was... OTHER M the most sexist game in the last decade.

Yeah Other M sucks.

Here is something to discuss. What would be your way of creating equality in videogames? We all want equality here and we have established that pretty well. What would you do to solve the problem, if you were a game developer? And what is stopping game developers from solving the problem right now?

First things first? Toss Anita's videos way! *Joke*

What honestly to me is stopping developers from solving the problem is really two fold in my eyes
1) Demographics: As much as people might say they want more variety in race, gender, orientation... As a whole they don't walk the walk. People talk but that is all it is talk.
2) Developers: MOST developers I would wager are Straight, White, Men who have little experience with lots of women, or other races, or homosexuals... and people write what they know about and basically do it from a secure position.

To me I honestly think that we are actually doing what we need to be doing RIGHT NOW! we are talking about what we like, what we don't, and are asking developers to change to suit our needs. While Developers are hiring different kinds of writers, artists, and developers to grasp this expanding need.

I don't think we need to do anything... more... Lets just keep doing what we are doing.

[Bauglir]

Here is something to discuss. What would be your way of creating equality in videogames? We all want equality here and we have established that pretty well. What would you do to solve the problem, if you were a game developer? And what is stopping game developers from solving the problem right now?

Make video games that have diversity or equality as a core design goal (not all games need all core design goals, to be clear; this is what I would do if my goal was to create equality). Shouldn't be shoehorned in as part of a checklist, but it would be good for more games to have it as a thing. As a consumer, there's not much I can do - even shifting buying habits is unlikely to send a clear message, because of how noisy the market is. There's tons of messages a producer can take from that sort of thing. As a person in general, continuing to talk about it is also helpful in order to reassure developers that this is a niche that can be exploited.

What's stopping them? Most of the time, higher priorities. When you're making a game, you have a shitton of things to balance. If you're going to make a good game, you need to focus on a few core goals and polish your implementation to a mirror shine, whether it's a matter of gameplay, storytelling, immersion, or whatever other things happen to be on your plate. Trying to cram in everything that seems like a good idea makes for an unfocused game, and you run the risk of alienating people who come to associate your cause with "design by committee" or just general unpleasantness.

Moreover, economics. Or, rather, people who think they understand economics and happen to be responsible for making decisions. Chances are, if somebody pitches a game about equality to a big studio, it'll get shot down for not fitting into established, profitable archetypes (which, to be fair, is because deviating from them is a multimillion dollar risk). Obviously, this is self-fulfilling. So ultimately you wind up with three kinds of games that do equality - triple A games that do nothing well and create negative opinion, auteur-driven games with triple A backing who pitched the idea on a different premise entirely and managed to create an engaging game (which is to say, there's a lot of filters shrinking this group), and indie games that convince the public at large that equality is a niche concern for hipsters.