You may remember when Codemasters put out their press release for the Damnation announcement, we felt inclined to mock it everso slightly. Codies responded in generous good humour, leading to this madness. Well now some more screenshots have appeared, and as excellent fun as this game looks like it could be, there’s some more mocking to come.
Specifically about the above.
Damnation is to be a large-scale action shooter, set in levels that boast their vertical as much as their horizontal, bursting with physics-defying stunts. Such as driving along walls on a motorbike. Now, we’re not Tim Gunn or anything, but it would seem that for flinging yourself from rooftop to rooftop, performing daredevil feats, and having shoot-outs in mid-air, this isn’t possible the most sensibly designed outfit for the task.
HELLO CODEMASTERS! IS IT 1972 IN YOUR OFFICES?
Do you see how you’re really rather enforcing the reputation we wish this industry didn’t deserve? Do you not want to offer female characters some dignity?
Er, okay, so that was ranting. But come on.
A rather more respectable collection of screenshots, all of them enormous, here.
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I’m going to have to call a feminist BINGO! here.
Then you haven’t understood my argument. At no point have I defended or tried to justify the depiction of women in games and comics, nor do I think it’s pointless to want to change, I’m questioning the belief that such sexist depictions are any more of a barrier than all the other junk in games, like mutants and aliens and elves and whatever else. If someone thinks all sci-fi is nonsense for teenage boys, Alyx from Half-Life 2 isn’t going to change their mind.
Certainly, but then i’m not making this stretch. That is, i was pointing out the character’s behaviour was effectively giving the player ego/confidence boost and said nothing about the eyecandy factor.
Although since you bring it up, one could wonder exactly what reasons were there to have a female cast in that particular role. And if people were so ready to jump to defense of a male acting in the very same manner she does.
Why wouldn’t they? And more to the point, why would anyone attack it in the first place?
“Oh my god, that guy, he’s… in the game! In the same area as me! Doing ’support’-y stuff! Saying things sometimes! You bastards, Valve.”
Because sycophantic behaviour tend to quickly become irritating. But oddly enough part of male population finds it less irritating when associated with pair of tits…
tmp, unfortunately, speaks the truth.
People would naturally (and to an irritating degree) assume the character was gay rather than simply being awestruck by (in the case of HL2) the almost messianic Gordon Freeman.
I’m sure people would have loved Barney as a side kick, throwing his witty lines and stuff… Also, most squad based games have male, er, squadmates, though they tend to not talk much at all, thanks to the games’ theme if nothing else.
I think you can have males admire other males without making people think they’re gay (not that it would be so wrong if they were) and/or attracted to them. Look how everyone admires Neo in The Matrix or basically how everyone admires most every super hero. It’s all in how it’s presented. Heck, most real world teen males admire their favorite heroes anyway and fight over who would beat who.
Ian brings up a good point, Alexander. In EP2, for instance, Alyx spends a significant amount of time telling you how awesome you are. A lot of characters in the game do it, and most of your accomplishments are accompanied by some sort of congratulation from an NPC. But Alyx is with you through most of the game, so she does it the most. It IS pretty sycophantic.
This isn’t because Valve is sexist, it’s because in playtests, players reacted badly to Alyx being more hostile to the player, chiding them for their failures and asking them to hurry up and such. The reaction tends toward “What a bitch. When can I leave her?” This isn’t conjecture; I remember reading an article on how they shaped Alyx’s behavior a while back, and I’ll link it if I can remember where I found it.
On the other hand, as you bring up, male subordinates in games tend to be silent. They aren’t sycophantic, and they don’t backtalk: they’re quiet and professional. They don’t spend very much of their time telling you how much they admire you. The closest thing I can think of is the marines in Halo games yelling “Sweet!” as you send the Warthog over a jump or something – and even then, that’s less sycophant and more buddy-buddy. If males are subordinate they act the part silently and don’t spend time gushing over how good a job you’re doing.
If they did, we’d find it a little bit weird. We’d assume mancrushery. But it doesn’t seem out of place with a female sidekick.
. . .
Also, on the subject of bust: I understand how the trend started in earlier videogames. I think it had less to do with huge boobs and more to do with being able to differentiate between male and female models despite them being reduced to itty bitty sprites on the screen. For example, Annah from Planescape: Torment. I’m pretty sure the model you see on the character screen is the same one you’ve got walking around in-game, and while the latter doesn’t seem out of place, the character portrait sports off-puttingly huge breasts. If my theory is right, this is simply a result of having to be able to glance at your little isometric figures walking around and pick out the men from the ladies without squinting. It’s the same thing with the hairstyles in the old FF games: you can’t really do much with the facial features of those little sprites, so you need to give them wildly varying profiles in order to make them all look different enough. Hence the hair.
Still, current generation graphics make this less of a viable excuse.
Also: Feminist Bingo is genius. I’m bookmarking this for future use.
It’s also mentioned in the developer’s commentary you can turn on in the game after finishing it. Alyx’ voiceactor (Merle Dandridge) talks quite a lot about her job doing the voicework and the reasonings behind much of her character.
Interesting stuff :)
I don’t think it would be weird or “gay” to have a male sidekick (Barney would fit in well) telling you that you’re doing well in the same manner Alyx does. You would obviously not use the same words and body language, because Alyx is written as a woman and women are not the same as men. There’s nothing morally wrong with acknowdedging that.
True. But the point is that, when you look closely at and scrutinize what exactly changes between how men and women are written, you see some icky things. And it’s these things that, when extrapolated, get you Damnation-style outfits.
I don’t think it’s a problem if you treat both your characters and and your costumers with respect.
I’m making the maybe not so wild assumption that the thing we’re having a problem with is that the only way a lot of developers/gamewriters can characterize male and female characters is something like the Terminator for men and Jenna Jameson for women (pushing to extremes here, but just to make a point).
Man, I’ve just finished reading all of those comments and while I must say I definitely learned something today, I’m also making sure to heap praise on the developers of whatever game comes out that manages to make every commenter here happy, because I get the feeling putting a female character in a game is like taking a stroll through a minefield.
I’m not saying I support the lamentable example shown in the post; far from it, it really strikes me as quite stupid, but I don’t tend to hold very strong opinions about stuff like this… it’s just I get the impression that if Alyx Vance is “a terrible example”, we’re not going to have the kind of “realistic” characters commenters are calling for very soon.
However, since all of this has already been run through several times, I’d rather ask: how would you fix the issue brought up a few comments ago by someone who accused the Alyx element in HL2 of being too sycophantic? I’m sure we’ve all (?) been annoyed at one time or another by a character that won’t stop telling you to move on or come on… apparently, though, her constant congratulations are also aggravating and demeaning to her character; if she just stops commenting on anything you, as the player character, perform, though, it starts to seem a little bit like “shut everyone up lest we offend someone’s sensibilities”. Thoughts?
(I also had another question relating to another comment about the “gamer-centered ethic” and people who want to play “normal guys”, but I’m leaving that for after the next comment, if this thread hasn’t completely died yet.)
Next comment (I’m just curious).
Heh. Fair enough.
I’m not sure if the commenter who said “any problems draw attention to the player centered gaming ethic more than anything else” was decrying this particular videogame trope (of having everything orbiting the player character), but I’ve seen a decent amount of people who complain that game worlds seem to be too much about the player’s presence in them, and that they don’t really want to be the one to save the Earth/galaxy/universe. Some say they just want more games where they can play “the normal guy”.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just I wonder what sort of game they want to play, since when I read some of those people’s other opinions it sounds like the “player centered gaming ethic” is actually codespeak for “interesting things happen to the player character”, and I assume (perhaps wrongly) that a game where you play the “normal guy” is a game where nothing really happens or can happen, and I can’t really see how that would be better or more fun than a regular you’re-the-super-megahero game (of course, these are both extremes and there’s plenty of space in between those).
Or maybe by “I want to play the normal guy” they mean they just want to play someone like CJ from GTA:SA or Niko from GTAIV. I’ll never know.
That was probably a pretty inarticulate way of explaining myself but those questions that usually come to me are so vague I can’t really put them any other way.
Well I mentioned that men are mistreated and objectified just as much as women in the way they’re presented like arnold clones. Obviously an average joe’s LIFE wouldn’t make for an exciting game, but you CAN put a more human, more average joe kind of guy in extraordinary situations and have him realistically take them on.
Think the original Silent Hill where it was quite hyped about having an average joe main character who wasn’t even very good at shooting stuff with a gun and often missed etc… Sure you ended up killing an awful lot of things in the game (and you didn’t miss that much, else combat would be worse), but the character was still better than most guys in games, and a step in the right direction, not only in his abilities but also his motives and morals.
As for the world saving missions, yes, those tend to get old also, you can have smaller scale stories that are just as exciting if you present the story properly, make the player care for the characters and what happens to them, and put them in more realistic distress than some comet heading to earth or am evil god getting resurrected.
Think of the Odyssey, the guy just wants to get home dammit, not save the world ;)
The thing is, it is entirely possible to do sexy in a manner that looks damn good but doesn’t insult women or men. It is even possible to do arse-nekkid with a good looking woman and have it not be about sex at all. See… here for example…
http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/4478247.html
See those? Scans from a comic in which a woman is assaulted and threatened, naked, in the shower, and it is NOT rape-or-iffic. If the comics community can even manage it, why the hell can’t the gaming community?
Personally, I have no problem with sexy stuff in anything. The problem is with the assumption that there is only ONE way that things can be sexy. Not everyone likes skinny chicks with big tits, that walk around half-naked and pose like a Maxim model. (Oh and, BTW, as someone who has tried it, posing in most of the ways required not only cocks-out your back but it gives you gas as well).
I don’t find the above image sexy, and I love me some boobage. Just like I don’t find these things sexy…
http://www.amazon.com/LOVEFIFI-Deluxe-String-of-Bubbles/dp/B0011B6NSA/ref=pd_sbs_a_5
Because that sort of thing doesn’t actually have anything to do with the woman involved. She’s just a convenient prop; a realdoll. If that’s your thing, then great, enjoy it. But can’t I please have some sexy, too?
And seriously, regardless of physics-defying stunts… even a light jog without a sports bra, when you have average or larger tits, is PAINFUL. Imagine if someone strapped a fat lead weight to your whatsit and forced you to jump up and down. I could not play a game as a female character dressed like that; it would be disconcerting, and I certainly don’t want to be her.
To quote Old Man Murray:
I took an informal poll of women at the Duluth Center for American Indian Resources yesterday, and overwhelmingly they found it much more pathetic that gamers spend much of their time ordering little pretend army men around. Women at least understand sex. According to my sources, breasts and men’s tendency to be distracted by them are the most recognizably human thing about the whole fucking subculture.
I like the way way way way way above picture. I think it’s funny people are saying it is unrealistic in a game where you drive motocycles on walls O.o (I think that point has already been made. I still find it funny so nehy1)