Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rock Paper Shotgun Feature An open letter

FAO Volition/THQ, Re. Saints Row Marketing

By John Walker on July 25th, 2011 at 2:44 pm.

Look at all the naked women oh no wait.

Dear Volition/THQ,

I’m really looking forward to Saints Row: The Third. While I didn’t much enjoy the original Saints Row, Saints Row 2 was one of the most entertaining open city games I’ve played, and by the looks of the trailers for the third game, it’s heading even further in the direction of anarchic fun that so delighted me. So I really want to ask you to reconsider your current marketing strategies.

This weekend you announced your “quality assurance team” for Saints Row: The Third, in the form of Penthouse Pets Heather Vandeven, Justine Joli, Heidi Baron, Shay Laren, Ryan Keely and Nikki Benz. You accompanied this with puns that suggested sexual interaction with the player, such as their involvement promising “to ensure a satisfying Saints Row experience whether playing alone or with a friend”.

I understand that the development team, and the game itself, believes in the philosophy of equal opportunity offending, where all targets are considered fair game. While I take issue with this way of thinking – as I believe it ignores the hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury – I understand this is the perceived justification behind the antics that accompany the series’ publicity.

My SR2 character.

I think such publicity betrays the content of the game itself. When I played Saints Row 2, I played as a strong, confident Hispanic woman, who made up one of extremely few such female characters in all of gaming. And while of course the game contained depictions of women as gormless bikini-clad bimbos, they were among a cast of other strong women, and as such appeared in context as a parody of a particular group. Not a particularly brilliant parody, nor perhaps an entirely helpful one, but certainly one within the above-mentioned philosophy.

However, despite the variety within your games, the notion of women being anything other than a transporting mechanism for breasts seems to be absent without. Attending the surprisingly wet and chilly E3 this year, and finding that the car park’s sponsorship by Saints Row: The Third included a group of shivering models in purple bikinis required to perform the service of washing your car for you… well, it rather stuck in my craw. The sight of those poor women in their skimpy swimwear, in the middle of LA’s grimy, grey interior on a grimy, grey day, did not endear me toward your game.

SR2 offered some confusing choices.

Your lead producer, Greg Donovan, states that the Penthouse models have been hired because of “a number of key factors”. These are:

  • their passion for Saints Row
  • their sense of style and Saints Row attitude
  • their desire to give every player a unique, over-the-top, unforgettable experience

“In the end,” he continues, “their selfless efforts are going to put a lot of smiles on a lot of faces.”

I do not know if any of the models listed are fans of Saints Row. I have no way of knowing. It would seem, to me, a large coincidence if all these Penthouse regulars happened to be into the games. Not impossible, certainly. But I’m still going to go out on a limb and guess that their “passion for Saints Row” may not have existed before their first pay-check. What is less ambiguous, however, is the suggestion that their alleged involvement in the QA process of Saints Row: The Third will result in some sort of sexual gratification for the player. I would contend that their involvement at this level of the game’s development could carry over the sexual suggestions implied via their being people who regularly pose naked for pornographic magazines. It seems also worth questioning whether their participation is entirely “selfess”. Are they not being paid for their work? This would seem like serious exploitation were it the case.

It seems from your recent press release that you intend to release DLC in the future that features these women. You say this is “a rare homage to the dedicated developers charged with quality assurance,” which you say has previously been a “thankless” job. This does seem a touch insulting to your genuine QA team, and also concerns me that this marketing angle will indeed be influencing the game.

Where are all the muscly men in the ads?

I am not convinced that through these marketing techniques, which some may consider somewhat exploitative of and disrespectful toward women, accurately reflect your game, nor promote it in a useful way. While I do not doubt that there is a significant contingent of potential players who will be attracted to damp, servile women in bikinis, or porn stars pretending to work on the game, I can say that as one person I find myself put off a game I’m otherwise extremely excited to play. You do yourselves a significant disservice when your marketing suggests your game is unsophisticated, masturbatory material, when it is in fact wild, anarchic mayhem and gleefully violent nonsense.

Yours sincerely,

John Walker

__________________

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352 Comments »

  1. 25/07/2011 at 14:50 CaspianRoach says:

    I’m sure that this is just a joke and they won’t let unqualified people to somehow influence the game designing proccess. They’re not that stupid.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:13 FakeAssName says:

      THQ is though!

      remember when they got fined for dumping a shit pot of propaganda for Homefront on San Francisco, most of which ended up in the bay.

      I have every bit of faith that THQ would let these bimbos write down whatever stupid ideas they can think of after being partially asphyxiated by their implants each night, and then turning them in to Violition with a note saying “make it happen.”

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:08 medwards says:

      Is this some advanced form of trolling? Or are you seriously that oblivious to the content of the post?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:12 ResonanceCascade says:

      After thinking it over a bit, I’ve decided that this is the best post ever.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:17 mjig says:

      Yeah, I hope they won’t let unqualified people ruin the game, otherwise they might actually listen to John Walker’s bleeding heart nonsense.

      Phrases like “While I take issue with this way of thinking – as I believe it ignores the hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury” are comedy gold, and I’d suspect that the whole article was sarcastic if it weren’t for his work in the past.

    • 26/07/2011 at 12:33 ShaunCG says:

      @FakeAssName
      “I have every bit of faith that THQ would let these bimbos write down whatever stupid ideas they can think of after being partially asphyxiated by their implants each night, and then turning them in to Violition with a note saying “make it happen.””
      I’m glad to see that John’s comments about sexism and respect have really resonated with you.

      @mjlig

      Yeah, that whole treating people fairly thing, and that whole understanding history business. What a load of nonsense eh? Good job we’ve got you around to point out that it’s all about the lulz.

    • 27/07/2011 at 14:20 Tenk says:

      @ShaunCG, yeah, because nothing scream social equality like tiptoeing around poking fun at one particular group of people, implying that they couldn’t take a joke.

      –Really people. this bleeding heart, Over-PC nonsense is more harmful to equality then making sexualized jokes, because the jokes imply an acceptance of said group as opposed to acting like a time bomb entered the room when one shows up. to be fair, I can understand how y’all’d be confused, considering the “have your cake and eat it to” -SOME- types have, where they want to be treated specially if it’s in their benefit but god help you if it isn’t in their favor. come on, really?

    • 29/07/2011 at 14:15 ShaunCG says:

      @Tenk I didn’t realise that “I have every bit of faith that THQ would let these bimbos write down whatever stupid ideas they can think of after being partially asphyxiated by their implants each night, and then turning them in to Violition with a note saying “make it happen.” was a gentle joke that no one would object to having made about them, as opposed to a jab at THQ that drifted into contemptible and misogynistic territory.

      If you disagree then I suggest you try that comment out on a few models and see how many times you do / don’t get a slap in the face.

      “Really people. this bleeding heart, Over-PC nonsense is more harmful to equality then making sexualized jokes”

      No it is not. You are wrong.

      Generally speaking, the people who are criticising the sort of unquestioned and lazy sexism inherent in this sort of approach marketing are the people who have made some effort to understand feministic critiques on social patriarchy, male privilege, the male gaze and other such concepts. The people who argue against such criticism are typically males who are ignorant of such ideas and who have little grasp on what their male privilege actually means in terms of their worldview.

      If you have a cogent, coherent argument that is one thing, but brash and baseless statements like the one I have quoted above do not qualify. Nor do straw men like the ones you proceed to tear into.

  2. 25/07/2011 at 14:50 Cooper says:

    Thank you, John.

    The sleep-walking, unthinking sexism which pervades the games industry veers between boring and depressing.

    I too played a confident black woman in SR2, precisely because such characters are lacking in general, especially in games. That the Saints Row series allows for this is something to be celebrated, not hidden.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:36 LionsPhil says:

      Quite. Also,

      You do yourselves a significant disservice when your marketing suggests your game is unsophisticated, masturbatory material, when it is in fact wild, anarchic mayhem and gleefully violent nonsense.

      is one of the most amusing sentences I have read in quite a while.

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:03 dethgar says:

      “pervades the games industry society”

  3. 25/07/2011 at 14:52 Tei says:

    Fact of life: fat people (and hypermuscular dudes) have tits. Is not socially aceptable to show in public with a “Male Brassiere” (see image sr3m.jpg, then again see sr3m2.jpg). But for some reason, is not socially aceptable to show in public withouth one, if you are a girl.
    Is that fair? I think not!.

    • 25/07/2011 at 14:57 CaspianRoach says:

      Fact of human biology: people are attracted to female mammaries because of our reproductive system.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:03 JackShandy says:

      Tei, you’re fantastic.

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:13 Tssha says:

      It is this line of logic that has made it legal for women to go topless in Canada…provided it’s legally acceptable for a male to go topless in the same situation. The law restricting such behaviour, applied only to one gender, was ruled discriminatory by the courts.

      Whether it’s socially acceptable is another, whole more convoluted matter I won’t discuss here. Nonetheless, the thought amused me and maybe stirred up a bit of national pride. Canada is truly a model for egalitarianism.

    • 29/07/2011 at 16:52 NegativeNancy says:

      @Tei: Fact of life; pecs are not tits.

  4. 25/07/2011 at 14:55 Rikard Peterson says:

    I hope you get a reply.

  5. 25/07/2011 at 14:55 pipman3000 says:

    They should of had that guy in the cat costume shoot octopi into people’s faces.

    • 25/07/2011 at 14:58 pipman3000 says:

      Fat guy in a hotdug suit spraying people with shit.

      Spray a little shit on Raven Software for not making more Heretic/Hexen games. (Activision didn’t shut them down yet right?)

    • 25/07/2011 at 14:59 pipman3000 says:

      It’d be way less gross then booth babes IMO

      Septic Tank Shower: Disgusts me less then casual misogyny.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:21 FakeAssName says:

      Raven’s still alive and kicking, Singularity didn’t exactly knock off socks but Bobby has been having them work on DLC projects for COD (if you can call that alive).

      if you really want to see more games in the vein of the old Raven games you should pay attention to Human Head and the Prey series (most of the founders split from raven after Avtivision bought them and started HH).

  6. 25/07/2011 at 15:00 Skeletor68 says:

    This kind of stuff always makes feel a little embarrassed to be a gamer.

  7. 25/07/2011 at 15:01 Burning Man says:

    “the notion of women being anything other than a transporting mechanism for breasts seems to be absent without”.

    I don’t get the sentence structure there. Can someone explain “absent without”?

  8. 25/07/2011 at 15:08 Symitri says:

    I played a female Asian character with the extreme ‘cockney’ male accent.

    On an aside from that note,the marketing campaign hasn’t bothered me at all until this point. And even with this, I’m still not bothered. This is from somebody who found EA’s campaigns for Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space 2 and even Shadows of the Damned to make me feel terribly icky in different ways.

    The game is an incredible over-the-top parody of the genre and their marketing campaign is just more of the same. While I’d like to see booth babes gotten rid of, none of the other stuff has been particularly harsh yet. Maybe my opinion will change over the next few months as we get closer, but it hasn’t even come close to a point where I feel I have to make a stand on this issue.

  9. 25/07/2011 at 15:09 RuySan says:

    I disagree with the notion that every piece of entertainment must be directed to every gender, ethnicity and social class.

    If Volition wants to market this game to a specific niche, let them be.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:16 Nalano says:

      You’re right. We don’t have near enough WWII games from the Nazi perspective.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:24 Cunzy1 1 says:

      Anyone read anything about the difference between making a product for a target market and discrimination? There’s a theoretical fine line dividing the two.

      This kinda stuff isn’t anywhere near that line however. Video game marketing is almost as offensive as cosmetics marketing

      If there is a spreadsheet somewhere showing how crap like this actually transfers into increased sales I’d like to see it.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:30 FKD says:

      I disagree as well, and they should be allowed to gear their game towards whoever they want. I think part of the problem, part of what John was saying, and certainly the way I feel is that this is not simply a one time case of “But we are just trying to market towards a different group!” so much as it is..once again..the same old thing. Actually marketing to a different group would be a actual nice change (and by that I am not meaning, “Oh we made Bejewled because we think lonely housewifes will get a real kick out of it”).

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:13 Nalano says:

      @ Cunzy

      “Anyone read anything about the difference between making a product for a target market and discrimination?”

      I would imagine the distinction comes when the target market is itself discriminatory. In this case, we’re talking about using real live women as objects to coax horny, horny boys.

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:19 ffordesoon says:

      @Nalano:

      Actually (and I realize how this sounds, but hear me out), I would rather like to see the release of an FPS (or an action game, or blah-de-blah) wherein the player is an instrument of a regime of comparable malevolence. Not the Nazis, for obvious reasons (not least of which being that it would make me sick to my stomach to the point that I couldn’t continue playing the game), and perhaps not any other real regimes, but perhaps a fictional Evil Empire of one sort or another. I think that such a game, done tastefully and without gratuitous titillation, could make some fascinating points about the seductive nature of Empire, say, or the allure of fascism, and this hypothetical game could do so in a way that no other medium could.

      All of which is far too heady for a discussion of a Saints Row title, but there you go.

      Anyway…

      WHERE ALL MY COKE-SLINGIN’ ASIAN SISTAS AT!? WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    • 25/07/2011 at 23:41 VelvetFistIronGlove says:

      ffordesoon: Have you played Far Cry 2?

    • 26/07/2011 at 08:32 Erd says:

      Didn’t Company of Heroes have a campaign from the german perspective.

    • 26/07/2011 at 09:56 jymkata says:

      @Nalano
      I’d play it

  10. 25/07/2011 at 15:11 obvioustroll says:

    OMG women in bikinis, someone call the police!

  11. 25/07/2011 at 15:11 MiniTrue says:

    Dear John Walker,

    http://tinyurl.com/response57

    Sincerest regards,
    Someone who understands Saint’s Row: the Third.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:14 Jubaal says:

      Sadly you clearly don’t understand his article.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:19 MiniTrue says:

      Oh, I understood it. I just thought it was pretentious games “journalism” (read: hobbyism) incarnate, typical of a hobbyist writer trying to legitimatise what he writes about to the extent that he passes for a journalist. Such is the offense that I have taken at this ludicrous “letter” that I shall no longer be returning to this site. I fear that the cancer that infests Eurogamer and Kotaku has moved to RPS now.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:27 LennyLeonardo says:

      Aw, no! Come back!

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:29 Koozer says:

      Hehe, nice one.

      You are joking…right?

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:29 sinister agent says:

      What a terrible shame. Now who will challenge us with their carefully-considered debating points? We’ll have to ship in at least three or four schoolchildren to match that kind of quality output.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:31 Latterman says:

      no more low-pixel bad-quality quickmemes? a shame.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:37 Trousers says:

      I gotta agree with minitrue. This may be really rude, but this article and many by John before it just SCREAM “Please hire me to write about Serious Business, or if I must write about video games, PAY ME LOTS” Padding the resume at the expense of your loyal starving flea bitten readers.
      This is just a guess though, one that tingles at my immature nether regions much like these Penthouse Ladies.

      edit: I don’t know what a quess is

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:48 tyrsius says:

      I absolutely love it when self-righteous people like yourself get so offended by a single writer on a single article that they threaten to leave the entire site.

      Good riddance, you worthless hypocrite.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:06 Alexander Norris says:

      Yes; John Walker, who has a Wikipedia page and has written for a number of publications including (and I quote from his Wiki page) “PC Gamer (credited since issue 75), Total Film, Linux Format, Cult TV, Edge, NGamer, Windows XP, PC Plus, Official Xbox Magazine, Gamesmaster and PC Format,” is clearly some amateur blogger who desperately wants a job as a games journalist and is running RPS into the ground in order to get more stuff on his CV.

      He is absolutely not an intelligent person writing articles about an important issue in video games which retarded, reactionary trolls have decided to comment-bomb with their disgusting, outmoded opinions that ought to get them shot.

      And nothing of value was lost.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:06 timmyvos says:

      Minitrue doubleplusgood reaction johnwalkerarticle, john walker commit thinkcrime against Volition. Minilove has been alerted. Big brother is watching. (Did I do this correctly?)

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:11 Pinkables says:

      I don’t always agree with the opinion articles on RPS. Often i do. None have come anywhere near to offending me though.
      Furthermore, misogyny in the games industry is hardly a new topic for John, so i would question how contrived this article really is if these are sincere beliefs.

      Or are you looking for purely objective reviews of games? Metacritic is probably the closest you’ll find.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:20 Yosharian says:

      Sod off then.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:28 Nick says:

      hehe.. John Walker is a hobbyist.. hehe

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:38 sinister agent says:

      Walker’s hobbies are healing, crying, and now apparently he’s branching out into writing about games.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:46 stahlwerk says:

      I hope he’s better at writing than that other thing.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:57 noom says:

      Edit: I have to stop reply failing like this…

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:12 Hanban says:

      The people have spoken MiniTrue!

      You are retarded! \o/

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:14 MiniTrue says:

      “PC Gamer (credited since issue 75), Total Film, Linux Format, Cult TV, Edge, NGamer, Windows XP, PC Plus, Official Xbox Magazine, Gamesmaster and PC Format”

      All hobbyist publications.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:20 Chris D says:

      “Such is the offense that I have taken at this ludicrous “letter” that I shall no longer be returning to this site.”

      And back in just under two hours. Well to be fair that’s stilll longer than the average period from dramatic flounce out to “and another thing!”

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:20 Pinkables says:

      I’m genuinely uncertain here. Do you mean he’s a hobbyist, or that he writes primarily for publications pertaining to hobbies?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:26 Ralphomon says:

      So trying to address part of the sexism endemic to the majority of the games industry is a shallow attempt to legitimise games rather than basic human consideration for others? We’re better off without you.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:38 TenjouUtena says:

      I think his implication here is that games journalism isn’t ‘real’ journalism because John isn’t writing about grown men putting on special clothes and wrestling each other of control of a preselected object.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:24 Pinkables says:

      ^Excellent summary. This is pretty much what i suspected and your ridicule echoes my sentiments exactly.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:29 TsunamiWombat says:

      I’m almost certain he’s just doing a double troll. I think. I hope.

      Thats what i’m going to tell myself when I try to fall to sleep tonight anyway. No one could possibly be that sanctimonious, to post on a gaming website, when they don’t even believe gaming related journalism is real journalism. Or that they believe Mainstream journalism is real journalism.

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:27 ffordesoon says:

      @MiniTrue:

      Yeah, how dare John Walker – a grown human being with dignity, self-respect, and years of experience writing about a medium he loves passionately – request to be treated like the adult he is by the makers of a game he’s quite looking forward to? How dare he object in a reasoned and fair manner to a marketing campaign he finds troubling on a fundamental level? How dare he have the intellectual courage to believe that maybe – just maybe – these crazy “electronic games” are more than toys for stupid children, and that perhaps we should hold them and their makers to some sort of standard? How dare he take video games – perhaps the only genuinely new form of art created in the last fifty years, and certainly the only one with near-limitless potential – seriously? You’re right, it is a sickness! Why can’t the stupid enthusiast press just regurgitate the questionable PR handed to them and write puerile lists asserting that one pretend lady’s pretend mammary glands are quantifiably superior to another pretend lady’s pretend mammary glands? Why do these dumb hobbyist man-children always have to state their dumb opinions on their dumb websites that they – and not you – maintain? It sickens me!

      In all seriousness, you haven’t been coming to RPS long, have you? If you do some digging, I think you’ll find the RPS Hivemind has been “infecting” others with this alleged “sickness” since its inception. That’s kind of the point.

      Oh, and incidentally, you might want to steer clear of gaming entirely in the future, because this particular “sickness” is going to become a full-blown pandemic in about, oh, five years or so. Mass media have a way of, you know, becoming legitimate without your permission.

  12. 25/07/2011 at 15:14 Pedanticjase says:

    I wouldn’t have even known about this stunt if RPS hadn’t drawn attention to it

  13. 25/07/2011 at 15:15 Nalano says:

    I do hope they get the message.

  14. 25/07/2011 at 15:15 Tony M says:

    My reaction to SR3s previous (cat) marketing video:
    “WTF awesome! I’m forwarding this link on to all my gaming friends. Looks like this game might be something new and full of energy”.

    My reaction to Penthouse girls used to market SR3:
    “Sigh. This tired old crap again?”

  15. 25/07/2011 at 15:16 MiniMatt says:

    Honestly I agree with the sentiment whole heartedly but I find little merit in this approach at changing industry behaviour. It strikes as educational in tone, hoping the marketing execs will wake up and go “hmm, yeah, perhaps our campaign could come across as playing to crude stereotypes; perhaps it might not be the best way to market our games in the 21st century”. Now, education is not what these people need, they already know, nobody’s that stupid, at least nobody able to tie their own shoelaces and sit on a toilet the right way round.

    What they really need to be told is not words of wisdom but simply to “cmon, just grow the feck up, this is getting cringeworthy and I’m simply not going to give this rubbish the attention it craves”. There may or may not be no such thing as bad publicity but what I can guarantee is that marketing people fear more than anything is NO publicity. You’ve given them publicity. I’d be tempted to simply drop their PR people a private line saying “Heyas, RPS here, erm, well we’re not going to run anything on your latest porn-star campaign as well it’s a bit crap.”

  16. 25/07/2011 at 15:17 Jubaal says:

    Thanks John, it is always refreshing to see you championing these causes in the industry.

    Keep it up good man.

  17. 25/07/2011 at 15:18 GT3000 says:

    Le sigh. RPS, the crusading force for gender equality in the gaming industry. It’s admirable but it always comes off as apologetic. Almost like RPS is that white knight that scolds the bad gaming industry and profusely apologizes to the damsel he believes to be rescuing only to see her leap back into Gaming Industry’s badboy arms.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:22 Tony M says:

      Who is the “damsel” in this analogy?

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:24 GT3000 says:

      Women. I suppose if we had to specify a particular group in this whole endeavor, the booth babes who were inadvertently shivering in the cold as well as the pornstar game-advisors*.

      * = In name only mind you.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:05 Salt says:

      I don’t think the purpose of the article is to be a white knight and rescue Heather Vandeven, Justine Joli, Heidi Baron, Shay Laren, Ryan Keely and Nikki Benz from their employment on an ad campaign.

      Rather it’s to point out that such an ad campaign leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth of many potential customers.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:24 Urthman says:

      Poor GT3000. He thought those Penthouse models were actually gamers who like to play Saints’ Row until John came along and ruined his fantasy.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:37 GT3000 says:

      @Salt

      You’re missing the point. RPS gets preachy. RPS loses the entertainment value when they get preachy. Anyone with common decency can infer that these marketing gimmicks appeal to base audiences. I’m just trying to grapple with RPS’ incessant gender crusading or their odd sense of British humor. If this article was supposed to be satire then it fell down a flight of stairs and on her face. If it wasn’t then stop talking about their low-brow marketing techniques and tell me about Saints Row: The Third’s gameplay/plot/etc. Nobody is going to remember this shit when the game releases.

      @Urthman

      Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:43 stahlwerk says:

      While I can’t be totally sure, I don’t think this letter is satire.
      RPS is as much about the games as it is about the people making and playing them, something one might even call “gaming culture”, in contrast to the gaming barbarism of the Tribes of the Plains.
      In other words: deal with it.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:29 Ralphomon says:

      Yeah, this ain’t satire. Gender issues and sexism in gaming are serious business (said with no trace of irony). I think RPS, as a good games news site, has a right or even a responsibility to ‘get preachy’ at this kind of thing.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:29 John Walker says:

      It’s not satire. It’s occasionally sarcastic, but it’s what I was thinking, so I wrote it down.

  18. 25/07/2011 at 15:20 Alaric says:

    Let’s pass a law that requires all games to be politically correct. All developers must also hire an equal amount of people of all races, both sexes, all age groups, all wealth levels, and all handicaps. That is the only way to make games which will no longer perpetuate the shameful tradition of hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury.

    Also… KILL WHITEY!!! (Especially if whitey is male and middle class.)

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:30 Latterman says:

      idiot.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:30 Ralphomon says:

      Straw man much?

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:09 Gonefornow says:

      I agree. The only way to be sure is to force it by Law.
      The perpetuation of the shameful tradition of hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury must be stopped, one case at a time.

      Also… DEATH TO THE MAJORITY!

  19. 25/07/2011 at 15:20 Fiwer says:

    Excellent fake post John, you really captured the essence of what it means to be a whiny tool who fails to grasp satire when he sees it.

  20. 25/07/2011 at 15:22 Trousers says:

    Sex sells, Mr. Rather.

    I blame Ariel in the Little Mermaid, none of us will ever be the same.

  21. 25/07/2011 at 15:25 Okami says:

    The new “block” button on RPS is the best thing ever.

  22. 25/07/2011 at 15:27 arienette says:

    I support you wholeheartedly. Marketing like this degrades the industry and players as a whole. But it does strike me as little more than marketing, likely the overall impact on the game will be unnoticeable.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:08 Negativeland says:

      No it doesn’t. It might degrade that particular publisher, depending on your worldview, but most of us are adult enough to tell the difference between a single piece of “art” and the medium.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:01 thegooseking says:

      We can, Negativeland, but non-gamers (who are not also non-voters) often can’t. It’s virtually certain that someone will look at this, roll their eyes and say “typical of video games” because they just. Don’t. Know. Any. Better. Because they heard it on mainstream news. Not that mainstream news never lies, but if you didn’t know anything about games and look at how infrequently they purely make shit up about movies and sports, you might be forgiven for ultra-wrongly thinking that their reporting on games was equally accurate.

      Stuff like this just isn’t helping.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:44 Urthman says:

      I pretty much agree with John Walker here, but can’t resist quoting Old Man Murray on the subject:

      http://www.oldmanmurray.com/news/news3.html

      But what does all this say about gaming and gamers? It doesn’t matter. Look, we’ve got bigger problems that need to be addressed first. 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.

      Which I quote not to defend sexist marketing, but just to say that if your only reason for objecting to sexism is to make gaming seem more respectable, there might be some other issues on the table…

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:55 gwathdring says:

      Old Man Murray is awesome. And fair enough … but that’s not the only reason, for many of us at least.

      I want my girlfriend to be able to enjoy games, or at the very least not to be subjected to sexist crap when I play them in her presence. I never really expected her to be a gamer with me … but then she asked if she could play Portal 2 when I was showing her the humorous opening. And she rather liked it. And I got to have the wonderful experience of sharing something I love with my best friend. I want to be able to do that with more people. When I tell my Mother about Fate of the World (who hated games when I was in High School and blames them for procrastination that could have been blamed on books or guitar as easily) she thinks it’s fantastic, and wishes she could get something like that for her students, only more acutely focused on education.

      There are always going to be people who look down on shooter games I play, on Arkham Horror, on SCION. But I want to be able to share what I love with people who are more open minded about it … and I want to be able to do that without first needing to put them through the decade long process that allows me to ignore many of gaming’s issues and idiosyncrasies. I don’t need gaming to be easier or less complex to make it more accessible. I know how to handle that, which games to pick. But since around half of my friends, including my closest friend who is now actively interested in trying a few games, are women … the way gaming treats women is a problem for me. Even when they do shrug it off the same way I shrug off musclebound men mountains and the way they shrug it off in movies, it’s embarrassing. It’s so blatantly pointless. So obviously unnecessary.

      I don’t want that kind of sexual pandering, it doesn’t excite me and it makes it harder for me to share my hobby with my friends. The rest of the geeky inaccessibility that comes from ordering around toy soldiers I resolved myself to when I picked up boardgaming ages ago.

  23. 25/07/2011 at 15:30 Danorz says:

    i think you might be due another playthrough of saints row 2 because you seem to have forgotten a lot about it, i do think the marketing is a little OTT and maybe forgets that the humour of saints row comes from the fact that everyone in that world is sociopathic and not just the boss and johnny gat, and doesn’t really work because this isn’t that world, but it’s not even remotely out of style with the game, with its long running joke about stripper poles, capturing/spraying shit on prostitutes, ten levels getting busy in a burger king bathroom/strip club called “technically legal” etc etc.

    is everyone a little twitchy now because of duke nukem forever? because that deserved it, this? no, not so much. i thought i was reading ars technica here.

  24. 25/07/2011 at 15:31 Skeletor68 says:

    If you are selling bikinis, bikini models make sense.
    If you’re selling a computer game… gah I don’t know it just makes me think the marketing guys think I’m an idiot. I may be one but when the two things are so loosely connected it just smacks of lowest common denominator.
    Booth babes and strippers, the new ‘stealth section’ in games marketing.

    Don’t get me wrong it isn’t a HUGE deal, just mildly irritating.

  25. 25/07/2011 at 15:35 Serekh says:

    Women aren’t precious flowers who need protection from unscrupulous marketing campaigns. You seem to think that this type of advertising detracts from the game’s true merits, and I agree. Try to stick with that instead of going on a moral crusade.

  26. 25/07/2011 at 15:35 stahlwerk says:

    Sex sells, but mostly to people whom sex sells to. If that’s who volition/THQ want to market their games for…. well, have fun being “that” games company in the future.
    Personally, I blame Al Lowe.

    • 25/07/2011 at 15:56 MiniMatt says:

      Yeah that’s a really good point. My time as a 12 year old boy by chance corresponded with the era in which the average gamer demographic was 12 year old boys. As such I bought Barbarian. It included a poster. I was a very happy 12 year old.

      Now if they want to sell fap fodder to 12 year old boys that’s fine, if they want to sell to other demographics as well then they kinda need to grow the feck up.

  27. 25/07/2011 at 15:40 Julius says:

    Could this be the same Rock Paper Shotgun that brought us the deathless line “games, like breasts, are best pressed closely together”?

  28. 25/07/2011 at 15:43 chabuhi says:

    John, an excellent missive!

    You’ve most eloquently explained why many of us feel that THQ/Volition has crossed over the line into “trying-too-hard-now” territory.

  29. 25/07/2011 at 15:54 El_MUERkO says:

    Now I feel bad :(

    :crywank:

  30. 25/07/2011 at 15:56 Pantsman says:

    Surely more subjugation is historically due the white male upper-class than the white male middle-class?

  31. 25/07/2011 at 16:04 DaFishes says:

    When I read that this Playboy thing was happening, my thought was, “Playboy bunnies? Are we in 1970? There are plenty of hot women who DO play games…could they not find any of those to shill for them?” Guess not.

    The text of their press release reeks of preemptive “Oh come on, honey, get a sense of humor.” Why is it so hard to make a game where you can beat people up with giant purple dongs and NOT include over the top, tired, Mad Men crap? Boobs are great! *Relevant* boobs are better.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:14 stahlwerk says:

      Actually, “boob relevancy” would make a very good parameter to optimize for in most game development processes.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:22 Skeletor68 says:

      I like the sounds of this system.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:13 DaFishes says:

      Sure, I’m all for that.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:46 stahlwerk says:

      It is the only way.

      No seriously, if your female character needs sympathetic-back-pain-inducing breasts for purposes of the story, granted, Chiropractor Simulator 2011 will surely be a hit in some parts of europe. But if there’s no point to them (hur hur) why not go with something more neutral?

      You wouldn’t give a male character in a whodunnit adventure game steroidly huge muscles, would you? It’s just character design 101, really.

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:07 malkav11 says:

      Penthouse, not Playboy. Penthouse is sleazier. Though not as sleazy as Hustler.

      And actually, for Saints Row 2 they did find a porn star who at least ostensibly plays videogames to promote it, Ms. Tera Patrick. Who actually has a role in the plot of one of the DLCs the PC version never got.

  32. 25/07/2011 at 16:09 Armand Van Flicknife says:

    On the one hand, this letter is a bit self important.

    On the other hand, I’ve been reading John’s scribblings since i was a tiny lad hunched over ancient pc gamer issues, and have enjoyed years of rye smiles at esoteric references and belly laughs at assassinations of shit adventure games, ‘cos of his less self-important writings.

    So John, I’m prepared to let this go. Vacuous tittie-girls aren’t welcome in games, sure, but there are bigger problems in the industry.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:18 Dawngreeter says:

      There are people telling me that the country I live in (or rather, country that currently holds me hostage) has “bigger problems” than the meager, unimportant issue of LGBT rights. These people apparently think that we are only ever allowed to deal with ONE SINGLE ISSUE and no more until that ONE ISSUE is solved. They also seem to think that their list of priorities is the One True Priority List.

      To these people I usually say fuck you, you disgusting, horrible, selfish person undeserving of tiniest bits of sympathy.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:21 wonkavision says:

      That’s just what this post needed. Random and inappropriate whinging about gay rights. Kudos to you, sir. You completed it.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:43 Alexander Norris says:

      On the one hand, this letter is a bit self important.

      How exactly is it “a bit self-important?” Because of the tone, or because it’s “stooping” to tackling actually important issues instead of just throwing more screenshots and preview videos at us?

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:50 Jesse L says:

      Armand: how generous. Blocked.

      Wonkavision: do you really want to join the crowd of people constantly telling minority groups to shut up about their rights?

      John: when you’re constantly ticking off jerks, you’re doing the right thing. Keep it up.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:29 Nalano says:

      Is there some sort of zero-sum factoring in to games journalism? Is this taking away from talking about whatever game you’re interested in at the moment?

      Do we never have time to reflect?

      Kinda reminds me how “24 hour news” only really has 20 minutes of actual news, the rest of which is just regurgitating the latest self-made scandal ad nauseum. Hey, we have the time, no reason not to do the report!

  33. 25/07/2011 at 16:13 kevldulf says:

    I guess you guys do not have a very good memory…

    Did you complain when they did this last time, or did you forget that they did the exact same thing to promote Saints Row 2? Last time they hired Tera Patrick to appear in their commercials and they added her to the game with DLC. It sounds like they are doing the exact same thing this time, but instead of hiring Tera Patrick they hired 6 Penthouse Pets.

    • 26/07/2011 at 07:00 pipman3000 says:

      I would of cared if I gave a shit about the series proir to playing SR2.

      But hey if you don’t mention all sexism everywhere then you might as well not mention any sexism at all :D

  34. 25/07/2011 at 16:19 wonkavision says:

    Oh those poor women! Oh good heavens! Mercy oh mercy! WTF is this, Gawker Media?

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:29 Temple says:

      John Walker
      “You do yourselves a significant disservice when your marketing suggests your game is unsophisticated, masturbatory material, when it is in fact wild, anarchic mayhem and gleefully violent nonsense.”

  35. 25/07/2011 at 16:21 Yosharian says:

    Ehm, you do realise this is just giving Saint’s Row 3 a huge PR boost, right?

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:27 Skeletor68 says:

      I get what you mean but this kind of thing, hand on my heart, actually does put me off buying a game, so does it do more harm than good?

      When Duke was near arrival I was waxing nostalgic but the press event inside a strip club, followed by that weird online Duke game started really putting me off. Obviously the bad reviews etc. sealed the deal but the initial BS dampened my excitement.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:39 zergrush says:

      Those are some mighty PR busts, indeed…

  36. 25/07/2011 at 16:25 Baggypants says:

    I for one was outraged at the working conditions of the Booth Ladies at E3. I have downloaded and printed the reference material to remind myself of this blatant flaunting of workers rights.

  37. 25/07/2011 at 16:28 Temple says:

    Help me out here. Someone else reads Kotaku right?
    At work right now so cannot access it.
    Article on there over the weekend about a FPS frat-fest that banned women because the males make sexist jokes at them? Rather than, say, banning those who make the sexist comments. One commentator does say something like ‘Are they going to ban people of colour as well?’ as I’m sure there may be the odd N-word used as well.

    Also, Jezebel had a piece on the very young girls on an American dance show being (basically) told to show more skin by their dance instructor. Led to quite a bit of back and forth over legal prostituition (I cannot say interesting back and forth because, well, it was on Jezebel).

    Anyway seemed relevant. Now I see it is not, basically John is complaining about the marketing direction not the inclusion of the ladies. John you need to put your point at the beginning of the article so when we comment we can at least get in the right ballpark. If still only hitting foul balls. With a cork bat. On steroids. Lost my analogy.

  38. 25/07/2011 at 16:30 Skeletor68 says:

    Can we clarify whether people are focusing on this being degrading to women, or that it seems to cheapen our love of games and is all a bit unnecessary?

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:46 Teddy Leach says:

      If they want to flaunt their tits, that’s up to them. I’m going with the latter option.

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:52 Skeletor68 says:

      I think that is what is more pertinent here. The games should be good enough to sell based on their own content. The gameplay video I previously saw with the people cannon thing made it look like great fun. The marketing campaign tells me that they need extra elements to ‘trick’ us into wanting the game. I’ll be buying a game, not boobs lads. This is all a bit unnecessary, if the game is good I’ll buy it!

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:09 Pinkables says:

      I’m less concerned for the women in this instance, since they are models being paid to model. Personally i’m more offended by the idea that i might be lead to confuse my appreciation for breasts with my anticipation for saints row 3. I know that this is a very cynical assessment of how marketing works, but this is the internet, so i choose to stand by my cynicism.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:43 Teddy Leach says:

      I appreciate both breasts AND Saints Row 3.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:37 faelnor says:

      I absolutely agree with what you say, but funny how I was the only one to say the same thing when Square released that ridiculous DX:HR live trailer a few days ago. Games judged on their own merits. Heh.

      Also, Saints Row was good when it was a GTA clone which tried to remain serious while at the same time collapsing under the weight of its own incidental and absurd humour. Now that it’s officially a joke game, there’s no hope for anything even remotely interesting.
      (“DID YOU PLAY IT HOW CAN YOU BE SO SURE HURR”)

    • 26/07/2011 at 09:06 JackShandy says:

      Hold on, Faelnor, there’s no way selling a game based on sex appeal is equivilant to selling a game based on it’s theme and world. Unless we boot up HR in a few weeks to find it has nothing to do with augmentations, that trailer can’t be called a marketing trick.

  39. 25/07/2011 at 16:33 Noirdeathe says:

    I am now looking more forward to Saints Row 3 as it has additional boobs. My girlfriend is looking forward to it due to boobs AND that giant pink cat thing.

    I am failing to understand how it’s a bad thing? I swear Duke Nukem and Saints Row are tongue-in-cheek for this kind of thing (granted, I thought it was funny) and it’s just part of the OTT gameplay?

    Am I missing something or am I failing to be a sensitive gamer?

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:41 kevldulf says:

      You should be ashamed for not getting your panties in a wad over the marketing for a video game!

    • 25/07/2011 at 16:45 Noirdeathe says:

      Goddamnit! I knew I was doing something wrong!

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:18 Negativeland says:

      Indeed. Will buy for cars, guns & wanton bastardry. The boobs are a nice bonus.

      I find it hilarious that shooting sewage on people, running them over and beating up random innocents with rubber dildos is a-okay, but the bikini-clad women are suddenly a cause for moral outrage.

  40. 25/07/2011 at 16:52 Leeks says:

    Wow, it really is impossible to criticize someone for criticizing overt misogyny if you want to have any hope of not seeming like, well, a huge misogynist. Especially if you’re one of the aforementioned rich (ish), white, male oppressors. But, hey – what the hell?

    The games industry deserves this, no doubt. Not only are women in games almost universally badly-drawn, cartoonish, damsels-in-distress, the use of “eye candy” at major press events only plays to the ugliest tendencies of the grossly male-skewed culture. No argument there. But I’ve got to say, I’m getting pretty tired of rich (ish), white, male fans drawing their sabers and rushing to the defense of the poor, defenseless damsels.

    Women make their own choices and have their own voices (including booth- and carwash girls). And while as the male gaming majority I think we have a responsibility to support and reward progressive cultural shifts in our favourite medium, I don’t see the value in a knee-jerk attack on a game you’re admittedly looking forward to, on a website of fairly significant readership, just because it offends your extremely safe opinions.

    The “safeness” of anti-misogynist sentiment (especially in a culture where it’s a legitimate issue) is actually why I decided to post this, rather than just mumbling to myself and continuing on with my day. What intelligent, free-thinking person could possibly disagree with you? Given what I’ve seen of RPS’ audience, I doubt you’ll reach many dissenters. So what, then, is the point of this? Because from where I’m standing, it sure seems like the answer is: “To express a very unoriginal opinion on a topic no one can debate me on, lest they wish to brand themselves a sexist as*hole, and thus have my unoriginal opinion validated by a fawning choir of yes men.”

    I don’t want to be mean. RPS has provided me with hours of free entertainment, and I love you guys for it. Yes, sexism is bad, and we should do everything we can to purge its insidious presence from this awesome passtime. But – and maybe I’m giving us all a bit too much credit – we knew that, didn’t we? Did we need 800 words of florid prose to remind us?

    Sexism is and has been a problem with the games industry for a long time, and I do think it’s easy to get inured to the symptoms of it. But that is what the game girls and the deplorable caricatures in games are – symptoms. And maybe it’s time that we put aside our vanity and stop flailing our arms whenever a new one crops up, and start spending our energy on the much more difficult, much more dangerous business of thinking about the cause.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:02 stahlwerk says:

      Hm, I wouldn’t call it fighting a symptom as much as putting out fires when they happen. Sure you can ban smoking in the woods during summertime, but still you need to keep those fire engines in working condition, also, people being people, they won’t become any smarter about it by laws. Only if you can show them that it is undesirable for their own safety/wealth if they accidentally plant fires they’ll change their behaviour. That’s also why a lot of tourists don’t give a crap about littering.
      And this is when my analogy train of thought comes to a screeching halt.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:04 Hentzau says:

      “a fawning choir of yes men”? Really? Because judging from this comment thread there’s a fairly even split between people who agree and people laying into John for having the temerity to talk about this sort of thing as though it’s serious rather than LOL BOOBIES IT’S A FREE COUNTRY TELL ME ABOUT THE GAMES. The piece is a little melodramatic, but after the last three or four RPS posts on the same subject met with the exact same reaction I have to say I admire John (and the other RPS contributors) for continuing to push the issue even though it’s become evident it’s not what a significant portion of their readership wants to hear. I’m not sure I’d have the moral fibre to do the same in their position.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:06 4026 says:

      Holy shit, a dissenting comment that’s also reasonably civil! It’s like gold dust, and I only had to trawl as far as page 3 of the comments to find it!

      Not, I’m afraid to say, that I actually agree with you. I think you kind of nailed it yourself:

      “Yes, sexism is bad, and we should do everything we can to purge its insidious presence from this awesome passtime. But – and maybe I’m giving us all a bit too much credit – we knew that, didn’t we?”

      I’d say this comment thread proves amply that you’re giving us way, way too much credit. We clearly don’t all know that. For all that John is 80% preaching to the choir, the preaching still needs to be done from time to time, just to remind people that the issue exists, and is worth caring about.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:07 Skeletor68 says:

      Again, I thought we were talking about how the marketing was lazy and unnecessary not ‘look at these poor women who aren’t capable of making their own decisions, I’ll save them!’. Maybe I’m the one missing the point here, correct me if I’m being stupid.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:05 Om says:

      ” But – and maybe I’m giving us all a bit too much credit – we knew that, didn’t we? Did we need 800 words of florid prose to remind us?”

      Read some of the comments/replies to this article. Not everyone has got the message yet

      And frankly just because this is not a new phenomenon does not mean that people should stop writing about it. Now I’m all in favour of rushing out to help ‘booth babes’ unionise or overturn patriarchal structures in society but John Walker is a games journalist writing on a games website. All that I’d expect from him is to comment on the games milieu. It’d be fantastic if he is a feminist activist outside of RPS but I’d not expect to read about that here

      So yeah, I’m happy to have him continue to flag up these issues/episodes because someone needs to (continually) comment on the relentless misogyny that plagues this industry. The irony being, and it’s important that this is noted, that SR2 gave you the ability to play as a strong female character. SR3 doesn’t need this nonsense marketing and it does (or at least hopefully will) a disservice to the game itself

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:25 Leeks says:

      As a point of clarification: I’m not opposed to engaging with the issue of sexism/misogyny in games or games culture. I just think it deserves to be engaged with in a critically-minded, thoughtful way that presents a thesis a little more developed than the frankly self-evident “women should be treated equally.”

      Which, outside of Leigh Alexander, you don’t really see a whole lot of in the gaming press (not just RPS).

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:46 Jubaal says:

      @Leek – Whilst I don’t entirely agree with your comments I appreciate the way you have put them across in an intelligent and thoughtful way. Now if only a few more people could wipe the foam from their mouths and swallow their bile there would be a few more intelligent debates on this and less spittle-flying ire!

  41. 25/07/2011 at 16:58 noom says:

    So many clueless twunts on here completely missing the point of this post. Either that or wilfully misinterpreting it in order to get on their own soapboxes. Fucking depressing either way.

  42. 25/07/2011 at 17:05 Twitchity says:

    In one fell swoop, they managed to insult females, QA testers, and female QA testers. Smashing job, lads, trebles all round!

  43. 25/07/2011 at 17:12 noom says:

    After much deliberation on this, I think I’m going to have to sadly posit that the problem is not the marketing, but the hordes of slimy mysogynistic gamers that render said marketing likely to be effective. In that respect, posting this as an “open letter” is probably the best way to go, as it’s more likely to reach that group.

    Though it unfortunately does bear saying that it seems to be proving ineffective…

  44. 25/07/2011 at 17:19 Demiurge says:

    Oh wow, you never cease to amuse me John Walker. You care so much about feminism and women’s rights, and yet instead of crusading or taking action against real women’s issues such as female genial mutilation which carries on across the developed world, or even the pay-gap which remains here in the UK to this day, you decide to write pissy lttle emails to toymakers, instead of doing anything which would, you know, actually take any effort.

    But that’s why you write for hobbyist publications instead of any kind of real journal.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:23 cHeal says:

      How’s your campaign against male genital mutilation going?

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:26 noom says:

      You’re a fucking idiot. One of many on here, apparantly.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:27 Demiurge says:

      Excellent rebuttal, Noom, spoken like a true master debater.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:36 noom says:

      Yeah, sorry, patience worn to nothing now. That’s all you’re getting.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:37 cjlr says:

      I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, Demiurge, but writing for RPS is ony one part of John Walker’s life. Do you KNOW he does nothing more to support his beliefs than write “pissy emails”? I don’t really see how you could. You care so much about how much John Walker cares about gender issues, and yet instead of crusading or taking action, you complain about him not doing so.

      But maybe that’s why you’re writing comments on a hobbyist blog, instead of a real site.

      Also: what is a “real” journal?

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:37 Demiurge says:

      Thank you for conceding the argument, I didn’t think it would be that easy.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:37 cHeal says:

      @noom

      Don’t let the mask slip too far…

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:42 Demiurge says:

      Well cljr, You’re the one who is positing the extistence of Mr Walker’s activism, so why don’t you give us some examples? And while your at it, some other publications which aren’t hobbyist/entertainment magazines?

      And I don’t care that Walker cares for Women’s Issues, I care that he likes to post about it on the internet like he does care when not actually doing anything to show a real commitment. But maybe that’s becuase I’m a relic of a time when games writers wrote about games instead of writing diatribes about how much more tolerant and egalitarian they are than the rest of us poor, mysoginistic plebs.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:45 cHeal says:

      @Demi

      How’s your campaign against male genital mutilation going?

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:47 Demiurge says:

      @cHeal

      I’m for it! Elected to get myself mutilated in my teenage years in fact.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:58 cHeal says:

      And maybe John is all for females getting their vaginas cut up because they’re ugly and have low self esteem?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:05 cjlr says:

      My response to you saying “why aren’t you doing that instead of this” was only that you don’t know he doesn’t, and instead is a might stupid word to be using there.

      Again you insinuate that Walker’s activism is confined to this website. He may give his time and money to causes he supports, or he may not. I don’t know. I never claimed to. I do know he seems a decent person, and so would guess he probably does, but that still doesn’t matter. I was only saying that you don’t know either. His private life and actions outside his journalism are irrelevant and bringing it up is pointless. Nice try shifting that burden, though.

      What you think would be an appropriate place to publish something like this, a commentary on a specific case (though part of a real tendency) of gaming marketing. Is a gaming site not a good venue? There were plenty of other articles published today – announcements, interviews, press releases, mod news, demos – that were more straight-up. So maybe you think RPS isn’t the place for something like this. Tough shit, friend, but that’s not your call. I suppose one of the site’s founders might have a right to decide that sort of thing, though – what were their names again?

      Also: the article has absolutely nothing to do with being “more tolerant and egalitarian… than the rest of us poor, misogynistic plebs.”

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:08 cjlr says:

      Cutting off bits of one’s delicate regions strikes me as about the most spectacularly dumb medical procedure since trepanning, but I guess as long as it’s elective…

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:12 John Walker says:

      Demiurge – This is a site about PC games. So what I write here will be about PC games. Your argument appears to be that because I complain about misogyny in marketing a PC game, that I’ve done something wrong. I don’t follow that logic.

      I don’t understand your rationale for “instead of”, either. By this logic you should rush screaming to a passing milkman that he’s wasting his time delivering milk instead of raising awareness about women’s rights. It’s my job to write about PC games, as frivolous a job as that may be. Within the realms of this job an issue of misogyny was raised, so I attempted to address it. It would seem a bit strange if I were to write about female circumcision on RPS, unless there were to be a game raising awareness about it. There should be, and I would gladly write about that too.

      What I do outside of RPS isn’t accessible by you, so again it seems a bit odd to make your judgments based on the contents of this post.

      Also, you do yourself a disservice by your suggestion that I’m claiming to be more “egalitarian” than anyone else – I wrote this assuming agreement by the reader.

      You seem to have fired your rage in the wrong direction.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:42 Ralphomon says:

      @Demiurge: because we can only concentrate on one feminist issue at a time, right? I doubt that John Walker in his capacity as a games journalist could do much about female genital mutilation, but he probably could make a difference to the state of sexism in the games industry. Sure, the issue may not be as SERIOUS, but it could hardly be thought of as not a good thing to try and do something about it, right?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:53 Demiurge says:

      @cljr

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phimosis

      Welcome to the astounding world of biology.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:59 Nick says:

      I seem to remember hearing about John doing voulenteer work with (disadvantaged?) children, if that makes you feel better in some way.

  45. 25/07/2011 at 17:22 cHeal says:

    For the record, I’ve never oppressed or enslaved any racial, ethnic or cultural minorities.

    FYI John.

  46. 25/07/2011 at 17:30 Deviija says:

    Thank you very, very much for making this post/letter, Mr. Walker. I had to register and leave a comment to emphasize how important it is that this trend in marketing/(mis)representing games can lead to alienating a fanbase more than it does to attract it. It signifies that you are trying to gain a very specific demographic and only caring to keep that very specific demographic (the young white hetero male, if that needs clarifying).

    One of the many things I did love about Saints Row 2 is its over the top action and narrative, never taking itself too seriously but still dealing with a central plotline that is taken seriously by the characters involved. It supplied a fun cast of multicultural/multi-ethnic characters that weren’t too stereotypical, that had their ups and downs, but ultimately triumphed at the end of the day. And, most of all, that it allowed the player to CHOOSE from an equal amount of customization for their avatar, be it woman or man. I was able to be a confident, fat black woman and a transgender man with the character creator. Not many other games out there can say they offer all that. What disappoints me and turns me off SR3, as a fan of the series, is seeing blatant marketing and furthering of this sexualization of women (of sex objects, of porn stars, of women there just to get young hetero men off).

    If they wanted to be equal opportunity offenders then they would be hiring male and gay male porn stars as well, and include options to have your prostitutes be men, women, or mixed company. Seeing only women as prostitutes or exploited sex trade objects in the games does say something else about the player’s free agency and the perception of women. I mean, my lady protagonist sure wouldn’t want to subjugate other women, that’s for sure. Personally, I’d prefer a mandatory mixed company (of sexualized genders/prostitutes) in-game and none of this pandering or ‘shock value’/titillation value marketing of a sexualized of anyone. There are many steps forward that Saints Row 2 offered to people, but the marketing and some (social justice) aspects from SR2 could seriously use some overhauling. Thanks again for posting this. :)

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:57 Gnarf says:

      “If they wanted to be equal opportunity offenders then they would be hiring male and gay male porn stars as well, and include options to have your prostitutes be men, women, or mixed company.”

      Because that’s like really offensive?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:31 Nalano says:

      And, yet, kinda sounds like a regular day in LA.

  47. 25/07/2011 at 17:33 D3xter says:

    Did you grow a vagina while writing this article or do you just want a Captain Planet game that badly?

  48. 25/07/2011 at 17:34 Skusey says:

    John Walker, you are a nice man and I like you.

  49. 25/07/2011 at 17:35 Juan_Lebedev says:

    Dear Mr Walker, I too would like to thank you for this post. I think that the kind of Phallic Marauder Dickwolf Dragoons we sometimes get on this forums need this kind of letter to put them in their place.

  50. 25/07/2011 at 17:43 Sinomatic says:

    One thing I’d just like to say, as a slight aside, is how amused I am by people who regard John as somehow playing ‘White Knight’ to us damsels in distress.

    Why is it when he, or any other guy, speaks out about this kind of tasteless nonsense, he is somehow protecting or speaking for us womenfolk? He isn’t. He’s aligning himself *alongside* us. We don’t need saving, and I’m fairly sure John would say the same. He’s simply speaking up as someone with an opinion on the matter.

    I personally think its great when men do speak up in agreement. Why? Because sadly there are plenty of times where if a woman spoke up on this issue she is deemed as some man-hating, bra-burning feminazi, who has no sense of humour and is out to ruin the fun of all straight blokes everywhere. As such, she is safely ignored, insulted or ridiculed. If men speak up too however, its more a case of challenging the culture from both sides.

    The more people who speak up about things like this, the better. I don’t care which set of genitals they’re sporting.

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:56 Demiurge says:

      I don’t know how old you are, but the fact you post on RPS indicates that you are presumably too young to have been around when the feminist movement was fighting overt sexism. Now i’ve often been irked with what I’ve read online with various games pundits opinions on what sexism is, so I asked a few of my female relatives, who were feminists when it meant something, who actually faced discrimination at work et cetera. And they did not, surprisingly, think that racy jokes in computer games were anything for women to actually care about. But you lot who want a cause to safely and comfortably fight from behind your keyboard have latched on to this nonsense. So face it, Women’s lib is a done cause, you’re late to the party. Why don’t you campaign about some real women’s issues in places where women are still not equal. (Which would concern you if you were really a woman and not probably John Walker.)

    • 25/07/2011 at 17:57 Juan_Lebedev says:

      I am also a woman (disregard the “Juan”, it’s a Deus Ex reference and I don’t like to flaunt my femininity), and I have to say that the response to John has been incredibly masochistic. Over the course of my adult life, I could never conceive of entering into a relationship with a man who did not espouse feminist convictions, especially a co-habitual one. People (well, men actually) seem to think that being a “white knight” is a cynical way to “pull birds” (or however they choose to vulgarly express the concept of relationship). In reality, I think it just displays a correct understanding of the feminine (and human) psyche. As a woman, who would you rather go out with: John Walker or Alan B’stard?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:03 stahlwerk says:

      Demiurge, you come across as parody.

      “who were feminists when it meant something”
      What? Just because you (and allegedly your female relatives) can’t see the relevance of the phenomenon in question towards modern, western society in general, it’s worthless to argue against it?

      “racy jokes”
      ha ha, those po-faced feminazis, am I right?

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:05 Jesse L says:

      I don’t feel that blocking Demiurge is a strong enough measure of my disapproval.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:07 Skeletor68 says:

      I like this idea of ‘alongside’. I think that is a helpful way to decribe my own leanings. I don’t want to seem like I speak ‘for’ women when I want to speak in ‘support’ of.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:32 Kieron Gillen says:

      Demiurge’s got a fascinating argument here. It’s a “get back into the kitchen” argument applied to feminism, which is a certain special kind of thinking. I’m also a big fan of an argument saying that prejudice against women is a matter for the past while entirely proving it isn’t. I also like him paraphrasing what some women he know say as evidence, while suggesting someone who’s on John’s side doesn’t exist.

      I’m impressed! Good work, Demi.

      KG

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:48 Demiurge says:

      Welcome to Kieron Gillens’ class in reading comprehension!

      If someone disagrees with you in any way shape or form on gender issues, it is secretly a “get back in the kitchen argument” becuase that is the only argument our poor little minds can conjure up a rebuttal to, rather than what the argument actually is, even in cases when it complains about lack of action on real women’s issues!

      Reading comprehension at a KG level is sure to bag you any job with a webiste about toys for grown men!

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:51 Juan_Lebedev says:

      Demiurge, I bet people like you secretly approve of the British Empire! Honestly, I despair. It was people like you that took us to war in Iraq and the Falklands.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:54 Jubaal says:

      @Demiurge – I actually feel kind of embarrassed for you reading your response. I hope some time in the future you re-read your post and realise how ignorant and ill-informed you have come across.

      Phrases like “feminists when it meant something” makes me cringe on so many levels. It is as if you think that sexism died long ago and the “cool badge” that is feminism now looks rather jaded and dated in modern society. It appears as if you have either been living under a stone for most of your life or you were born with blinkers!

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:09 John Walker says:

      Sinomatic – thank you for summarising that so effectively.

      It’s an interesting phenomenon, this reaction. I wrote what I wrote because *I* am offended by it. Not because the poor widdle girlies are all helpless.

      I found the bikini car wash offensive, and I find this sort of marketing offensive. It really isn’t more involved than that.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:16 Demiurge says:

      Oh god Mr Walker, it’s Mary Whitehouse reincarnate. I thought we as a society were past campaigning against other peoples’ entertainement becuase it fall foul of our own personal ethics. But that was before I found out the RPS was the supreme moral arbiter of taste of course.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:18 Juan_Lebedev says:

      John Walker, I do hope you are not backpedalling! Go get them!

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:27 Kieron Gillen says:

      Demi, man. You’re missing the point. We don’t think we’re supreme moral arbiters of taste. John just thinks this is sexist and I think you’re sexist.

      KG

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:37 Zwebbie says:

      “tasteless nonsense” is a phrasing of Sinomatic that I’d like to call attention to, as I generally perceive these things as a matter of bad taste, rather than mysogyny. Bad taste is something men can be equally offended with. Breasts are nice, but there’s a time and place for them.
      But then, I also take offence at the violence in the game, which John is obviously okay with.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:38 Demiurge says:

      @Kieron Gillen

      You think I’m a sexist KG? Can you please point to anywhere in my posts where I’ve expressed the opinion that women are in any way inferior to men? Or is “sexist” your own personal word for “person who disagrees with me on gender issues”?

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:45 eldwl says:

      @Demi,

      I have to say, I’m pretty confused. This is the internet, and there are many things to read. If something offends you as much as John’s article has (though goodness knows why it has), then surely it’s best just to walk on by and go read something else? Many of us enjoy John’s way of dealing with such matters (hell, he’s far more eloquent than I am, I just thought something alongs the lines of “huh, that’s a bit naff” but rather agree with what he’s written) so please don’t go throwing so much hate at him…

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:48 Demiurge says:

      @edwl

      I have to say, I’m pretty confused. This is the internet, and there are many things to read. If something offends you as much as Saints Row 3 has (though goodness knows why it has), then surely it’s best just to walk on by and go play something else? Many of us enjoy Volition’s way of dealing with such matters (hell, they’re far more eloquent than I am, I just thought something alongs the lines of “huh, that’s a bit naff” but rather agree with what they’ve developed) so please don’t go throwing so much hate at them…

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:26 Kieron Gillen says:

      Demi: The main reason for my flippant tone throughout is that I’m here to have a mock. I’m not here to explain why I think you’re sexist. Your first post in the thread removed any urge I may have had to engage with you, so instead, I’m having a giggle. That you don’t know that you’re being sexist is primarily why it’s funny.

      I woke up in an oddly flippant mode, and have sort of rolled with it throughout the day. I’m normally good at treating fools gladly, but today I figure – “fuck it”.

      KG

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:32 Demiurge says:

      @KG
      Kieron, that is the wettest, wimpiest post I’ve seen in this whole argument. You are now desperately trying to save face after I showed that you threw the word “sexist” about with no justification in a pathetic attempt to delegitimise my perfectly legitmate arguments. Unless you want to explain to me why I’m sexist (Which you can’t, hence why you feign like you “don’t want to”) them I’m safe in the knowledge that I’m not sexist, and I, judging by your awful backpedalling, posted arguments for which you have no actual rebuttals.

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:48 PFlute says:

      @Demi: Well, for one, instead of simply opposing Sinomatic, you went out of your way to talk down to and patronize her. That seems a bit off to me.

      You also seem eager to outright sling insults and bile at the modern feminist movement and belittle their causes, which is an effective way of saying you can’t even respect their opinions, and that you find your own vitriol and knowledge (as a man, I’m assuming) more valuable than a group of women’s knowledge on issues affecting women.

      You essentially seem to be, in respect to this comment thread, be complaining at women for being concerned about women’s issues. “Get back in the kitchen” actually seems like a pretty decent analogy for your statements in that respect.

      So, yes. A call of “sexist” doesn’t seem like that far of a stretch, if we are to make assumptions.

      Are you also aware that your habit of delivering asinine, sarcastic responses even to people who address you quite seriously only makes you look like that much more of a resentful ass?

      All in all, my monocle’s off to you! Happy trolling!

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:57 Demiurge says:

      @PFlute
      Jesus H Tapdancing Christ on a Moped! Can you dense lot honestly not tcomprehend an argument aginst modern feminism which doesn’t amount to “get back in the kitchen”? If you had actually read my post, I was complaining about supposed feminists not caring enough about women’s issues. But of course you’re stuck in your little mindset that the greatest political aspiration a woman can have is to moan about naked ladies on the internet. You’re the bloody sexist here, is you seem to think that the extent of women’s issues on the world is people disagreeing with your feminist sacred cows on the internet.
      Also, complaining about people being sarcastic on an RPS comments thread? Is this your first time on the internet or are you a barefaced hypocrite?

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:00 FunkyBadger3 says:

      I thought we as a society were past campaigning against other peoples’ entertainement becuase it fall foul of our own personal ethics

      What other possible reason could there be for campaigning against someone elses’ entertainment?

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:30 PFlute says:

      @Demi: You seem to be confused. That’s okay.

      You seem to be holding onto the misconception that being concerned about video game marketing precludes one from caring about any other issues. That is incorrect, fortunately! I find it quite easy to frown at this marketing and then go care about “important” things.

      For future reference, you should likely be aware that what you are engaging in with that line of thinking is not actual strong debate, but a silly tactic known as “derailing” wherein one tries to deactivate the entire conversation without addressing it.

      Of course, we shouldn’t bother at all with distasteful marketing because there’s still a wage gap.
      But why bother with the wage gap when there are children starving in Africa?
      But then why bother with that when we may blow ourselves up at any minute unless we protest nuclear proliferation?

      And so on the turtles continue.

      You also seem to be jumping to conclusions quite wildly, perhaps setting up a straw man or two along the way. My support of this topic (and John for his article) does not entail a fictional world wherein I think women are best attuned to only caring about marketing blunders. As such I think you’ll find a few of your protests debunked quite handily.

      “Also, complaining about people being sarcastic on an RPS comments thread? Is this your first time on the internet or are you a barefaced hypocrite?”

      It is my first time on the internet, actually! Could you direct me to a Gogol text search field? I have some things I would desperately like to find.

      This part concerns me. If you cannot discern the difference between firing off sarcasm appropriately and doing so when people try to genuinely engage you. Well. That’s a bit unfortunate.

      Do have a nice day, though!

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:09 Kieron Gillen says:

      It’s funny. I came back to my PC, because I was thinking “you know why this isn’t your style? Because you just can’t help but think about how it’s just not a nice thing to do to treat someone with complete blankly callous patronization. Apologise for patronizing and just back away from it. Not worth it”. So I’d do that and log off.
      But then I read your last few posts and think

      “Nah, fuck it. He’s just a sexist.”

      Like, obv.

      KG

    • 25/07/2011 at 23:37 John Walker says:

      Certainly not backpeddling, Juan_Lebedev! Just underlining the point that at no point was the purpose of my article to defend poor helpless women who can’t defend themselves. It was, instead, to point out that a game series that is surprisingly good at presenting strong female characters is undermining and devaluing itself by marketing itself in such an overtly misogynistic way.

      Demiurge – Kieron is a smart man who knows it’s not worth pointlessly pointing out the quite alarming beliefs you have stated to you, since such arguments on the internet never lead anywhere useful. That he’s sensible enough to walk away does not give you a victory, I’m afraid. It does make you look a bit of a wally as you continue shouting nonsense after him, of course.

      Were you to present yourself as someone who is open to the potential of education, people would be more likely to want to engage with you. But as it is you come across as a nasty little twit, no matter how much you may think everyone else is so despicable for thinking so. If you would like to have some level-headed dialogue on this subject, please do email me.

    • 26/07/2011 at 01:03 jaheira says:

      @ Juan
      What was wrong with going to war in the Falklands?

    • 26/07/2011 at 01:18 The Colonel says:

      @jaheira: Ha ha. Ha.

    • 26/07/2011 at 02:18 wiper says:

      I just had to post to say how much I enjoyed this particular thread. For one thing, I got to read some well-considered, and well-written support of John’s article. That’s always nice to see. For another, it allowed me to do something I, well, just don’t normally do, and block somebody. Which then led me to discover how entertainingly surreal it is to experience an argument against somebody whose own responses you cannot see. So that was nice.

      But yes, a late addition to this thread, and this comments section in general, but I just wanted to add my own support for the piece. This is an issue which crops up time and again, and it’s even more frustrating when attached to a game that, as many (including John’s original article) have already said, is otherwise so successful at rising above it. It’s been heartening to see that the majority of commentators have agreed with John, even if there has been a very vocal minority somehow offended by somebody daring to bring gender issues into little-old-games.

      I also can’t stop myself from responding directly to Demiurge (and, yes, to unblock him. Entertaining as it was for a moment, I can’t really bring myself to keep people censored. Not least because anyone can change, eventually.). So here goes. Your assertions have mostly been taken apart already, particularly your bemusing belief that being a games journalist and complaining about gender issues relating to games is somehow a terrible thing which precludes a person from taking issue with, or a stand against, other issues in the world, but I want to go back and have another look at your assertion that only silly, young people would think that women had anything left to fight for. Now, I’ll try and be a little bit charitable and assume you’re not quite so moronic as to be trying to suggest that women’s liberation has been completely successful globally, but are rather just the sort of blinkered idiot who thinks it’s over in the West/UK (delete as appropriate).

      I was going to call your relatives blinkered too, but then realised that the only person suggesting that they were “feminists when it meant something, who actually faced discrimination at work et cetera”, as opposed to modern feminists who clearly don’t face any meaningful discrimination, was you. Their only crime seems to be thinking that “racy jokes in computer games [weren't] anything for women to actually care about”, which seems perfectly reasonable. And, in fact, not at all what John, or any of the commentators were talking about. So it’s reassuring to know that not only are you the kind of cretin who denies women today [in the West/UK] are discriminated against, but you haven’t even quite gotten to the stage of basic comprehension, or the ability to relay information accurately to people. So that’s good to know. Maybe when you do learn to read properly, you’ll realise that your view that there’s no ‘real’ sexism against women any more is more than a little flawed. Here’s to hoping!

      Anyway, sorry, I deviated a little there. What I was going to say is: suprisingly enough, you don’t have a monopoly on older female relatives. Let us consider, as a case example, my mother, a second-wave feminist. Now, presumably, as somebody who fought the fight ‘back when it mattered’, she’d understand and accept, like you, that everything’s all sorted now and any fusses kicked up, particularly fusses over silly little things like the sexualisation of women in promotional materials for objects which have no inherent reason to be associated with the sexualisation of women, are completely overblown and irrelevant. Oh, but wait, it turns out that actually she does find that quite offensive. It doesn’t enrage her, but it does annoy her, and strangely enough she doesn’t have a problem with people discussing and complaining about such behaviour. Who’d have thought?

      And why does she think it’s worth complaining about? Well, actually, I’m not going to ask her that, because I’m pretty sure I know this one. It’s because the representation of women in all sorts of media contributes to general attitudes towards women. And both the representations in media, and the attitudes of vast swathes of the populace, are still heavily mired in damaging stereotypes. And these in turn inform the cultural expectations put upon women (and men), which then influence the options open to people. If you want a fair and balanced society, you have to challenge the dominant, damaging representations of the affected group (in this case, women in general).

      Which means that you’re fighting a hydra. You can’t just defeat stereotypes with a single blow, you have to keep chipping away, challenging each example as it comes and gradually helping to move the general perspective of that group to a more rounded one. So, while Volition’s marketing may not be at the same level as, say, the vast majority of power still belonging to men, it’s still a contributor to the wider perception of women as objects for men’s enjoyment, and for that it deserves to be challenged. That it was challenged by so eloquent and intelligent a writer as John is something we should be thankful for, not bizarrely affronted by.

    • 26/07/2011 at 02:38 jaheira says:

      @ The Colonel
      No, really. What? I’m not trolling or baiting or anything. I just want to know.

    • 26/07/2011 at 02:44 TillEulenspiegel says:

      It’s not really an obscure subject. Read a history book (or Wikipedia, for the lazy) to understand the arguments.

      Or listen to Roger Waters’ “The Final Cut”. I recommend that course of action.

    • 26/07/2011 at 02:50 jaheira says:

      @ TillEulenspiegel
      I have. Max Hasting’s book is excellent, the Brian O’Hanrahan (“I counted them all out, I counted them all back”) book that came out soon after the conflict was a good read, and I also read an interesting book by a Harrier Pilot called Sharkey the title of which I forget. None of those are going to tell me why thirty years after the conflict in a video games blog someone decides to use a Falklands reference as a snide remark. I thought it was weird.

    • 26/07/2011 at 12:04 Ralphomon says:

      I have a couple of things I’d like to add to this:

      1: it seems as though, in some of his posts, Demiurge thinks that we’re taking issue with the GAME Saints Row3 itself. As far as I can see no one has done that – the issue is that the marketing is misogynistic and pretty unpleasant. All I’ve seen of the game so far is demos of, as John says, “wild, anarchic mayhem and gleefully violent nonsense” and not anything particularly misogynistic or sexist.

      2: All of you people who get what John is saying, and have displayed considered arguments in support of highlighting gender issues in video games (and how it doesn’t come at the expense of caring about ‘bigger’ issues)are complete badasses, and if I meet any of you I will bake you cakes.

  51. 25/07/2011 at 17:53 Vinraith says:

    Thanks, John, for the sentiment, the well written piece in defense of that sentiment, and for rooting out another gaggle of fodder for the “block” function.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:01 Jesse L says:

      Yeah, no kidding. My ignore list gets longer every time we talk about sexism in games. Soon I may be able to enter one of these threads without spiking my blood pressure.

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:42 Kieron Gillen says:

      I was thinking “Doing an occasional post like this is a public service”.

      KG

    • 25/07/2011 at 18:56 D3xter says:

      Because ignoring someone elses opinion and looking the other way with your fingers in your ears singing “lalala” will make it go away, and you automatically right, great job guys xD

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:08 Nalano says:

      Well, it’s like my opinion of political correctness: Sure, it makes things less overtly horrible, but it only masks the bigotry underneath.

      But then, I live in something of a liberal bastion, and as such my exposure to real mouthbreathers is online, but even that’s more than enough to make me despair.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:19 Vinraith says:

      @Nalano

      I’m only in the habit of blocking those whose opposing opinion is expressed, metaphorically, in the form of shrieking and throwing feces. I see no issue with blocking angry internet monkeys of this sort for two reasons:

      1) “Ignoring the problem” is only a bad thing when there’s something you can do about the problem. As it pertains specifically to the AIM’s in this thread, there’s certainly nothing I’m going to say that’s going to sway them from their colo-rectal self-inspection, so why subject myself to it? Better to continue to support the cause in productive ways, outside of internet fora. It’s not like I’m going to forget there are people like this.

      2) Blocking them in a thread like this means that, should I see their opinion on a game in an unrelated thread, I’m aware of the unreliability of the commenter. In an ideal world we’d be able to tag people with specific observed traits for our own personal use, but “this person isn’t worth listening to” is as fine a grain as we have at the moment so I might as well make use of it.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:31 Nalano says:

      Oh, I’m not pooing on you, Vinraith. I’m just saying that while I like to see all the cards on the table, I simply can’t stand sitting at that table for very long.

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:28 stahlwerk says:

      Okay, I did it. Nice and quiet, now. It’s not like demiurge is more than a troll, so it’s good thing not having to remember to actively ignore him/her.

  52. 25/07/2011 at 18:06 shoptroll says:

    Advertising like this always worries me. There’s a fine line between “sexy” and “exploitative”. I’ll have to see how this plays out, but I remember stuff like XXX BMX and it’s hard to determine if the hype is over “OMG TITS” or the actual gameplay. DNF’s advertising was rife with this stuff and that undermined the game I think (even if it was a disjointed pile of meh).

    The point is, I’m sure there’s a fine game under the hood with SR3. But I’m with John. Sell the game on that. Sell the game on the over the top action, and all the crazy shit you can do in the game. Drawing in porn stars to help sell the game? That seems a bit exploitative (pandering to base instinct instead of the actual product) and derogatory (the women are explicitly used to sell the game) to me. If there’s some sort of ironic or understated message going on here, I’m not picking it up on my radar.

    Vice City used a porn actress as a voice actor in the game. I don’t remember Rockstar using Jenna Jameson as part of the PR campaign (although I could be wrong). Penthouse doesn’t yet have any involvement with the game aside from PR. There’s a difference.

    I’m sold on SR3 as a game because of the footage I’ve seen and what John and others have written about their experiences with it and past games in the franchise. This PR announcement does nothing to reassure my purchase intent nor does it interest me.

  53. 25/07/2011 at 18:17 Vague-rant says:

    I suspect huge swathes of the comments are simply feeding the trolls, so I’ve refrained from replying to anything. Turns out that was harder than I thought.

    In any case, this sort of marketing certainly seems tactless and frankly puts me off Saints Row 3, but then I was never going to buy it anyway. Seems more like shots than my cup of tea. But I do suppose that this sort of marketing does apparently appeal to the audience who buy these games, a fair few of whom appear to comment at RPS.

  54. 25/07/2011 at 18:44 rawtheory says:

    People blocking other people because of their opinions just shows how much this generation has bought into the idea that punishing and preventing thought crime is an acceptable example of law enforcement. I’m willing to bet that everyone here that bashes and blocks differing opinions to the author, childish or not, whole heartedly supports the growth of Hate-Crime legislation, which by definition is thought crime. Welcome to a Brave New World.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:00 Pinkables says:

      A little presumptuous, no? I choose not to read the Daily Mail because i generally disagree with their opinions, but i’m not suggesting that their views should be suppressed. I just exercise my right to not have to read about them.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:06 TeraTelnet says:

      Maybe I just don’t have the time or patience to read self-indulgent comments on a games website any more?

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:07 Anthile says:

      Nope.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:12 John Walker says:

      I think (and would hope) that people are using the block button not because they disagree, but because someone else’s behaviour has been unpleasant.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:39 sekullbe says:

      The widespread inability of people on the internet to distinguish between these very different ideas is astounding:
      * I no longer wish to listen to you.
      * I suggest to others that they no longer listen to you.
      * You are no longer allowed to use my facilities to speak.
      * People should be aware of what you have said, and treat you accordingly.
      * Authority should prevent you from speaking and/or punish you from having done so.

  55. 25/07/2011 at 18:45 Ralphomon says:

    Hooray for John! I am throwing a tiny parade for you right now.

  56. 25/07/2011 at 18:46 Deano2099 says:

    Is it maybe just that it’s not sexist or exploitative enough?

    Bear with me.

    John, like me, is okay with the hugely awful disgusting violence in Saints Row 2 because it’s so over the top and cartoonish. It makes it so obviously ridiculous it sucks the power out of it. This, to me, feels like an attempt to do this with the sex angle. It’s not ‘boobies! buy our game’, there’s this ridiculous thing about them being QA testers when they’re actually Penthouse models and the press release reads like something out of Nuts. Unfortunately it’s just the wrong side of ridiculous and still comes off as a bit creepy. But had they pushed it a little further…

    As for the whole booth babe thing – that’s a choice those women made and it’s up to them. No-one is forced in to booth-babing, this is LA, if you’re hot enough to get a job showing off your body in a bikini for games journalists, then you’re easily hot enough to get a far less exploitative job waitressing or doing bar-work.

  57. 25/07/2011 at 18:47 wererogue says:

    Great article, John. I feel exactly the same way about the Saint’s Row marketing – the previous game was shot through with diversity and equality that I’d have never discovered if it wasn’t for a ridiculously low price on a steam sale. The same is true here – in fact, only in the developer interviews/walkthought videos do they even confirm that you can still fully customize your character.

    I was ready to buy this one at launch, but the marketing has put me off to such an extent that I may well have to wait until I’ve forgotten it before I pick the game up.

  58. 25/07/2011 at 18:57 HopperUK says:

    Thanks for this, John.

  59. 25/07/2011 at 19:04 Quilty says:

    While I cringe almost every time I read one of Walker’s preachy articles, I wholeheartedly agree with the ideas expressed in this piece. I just wish a better writer was dealing with them. I suppose one has to be thankful it wasn’t Kieron; he has more or less ceased to infest the site with his hipsterish snobishness. I wonder what Quinns would have done with the same topic? I imagine he would have at least given it a satirical spin, avoiding this blatantly preachy tone and driving the point home with a more memorable approach.

  60. 25/07/2011 at 19:05 D3xter says:

    Why do you always gloss over the issues of men as sex objects being displayed in said videogames and their marketing, after all there are also damp, servile men being put on display at those trade-shows.

    Usually they also bear similar features: rough jawlines, heavily muscular build, often arms free showing off that particular character trait to everyone and dressed up in uniform with weapons in hand symbolizing the awful notion of men as protectors expected to go wage war while the females and children are left at home.

    There’s even several depictions of said stereotypes in this very own article the author doesn’t seem to take any issues with, why does noone think of these poor, poor men?

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:08 Nick says:

      ^ this is what it looks like when someone only *thinks* they are being clever.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:09 Nalano says:

      Yeah! When will men stop being objectified and passed over for promotion?

      When will men be paid an equal wage!?

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:31 Jubaal says:

      The difference is the men here are not being shown as sex objects. (That guy in your picture is wearing a freakin tent for goodness sake!). The marketing for these kind of muscle men is primarily aimed at men i.e. you too could be this muscle bound hunk, rather than at women as you infer.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:36 D3xter says:

      @Jubaal: That’s only the standard pic, there’s a gallery below with several of these “types”.
      Also the very first few comments on that page seem to generally disagree with your assumption in regards to the marketing.
      If it was true (and all men really wished to be hunks of muscle), the same type of argument could be said in regards to female marketing and women wanting to be voluptuous vixens wielding weapons.

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:07 Jubaal says:

      @D3xter – I’m not saying that I think that all men really wish to be hunks of muscle (Though I could do with a bit of a workout if I’m honest!), I’m saying that this is marketing trying to sell this idea to us. A bit like a lot of the media, especially advertising, pushing the image of unhealthily thin women until people start to think this is the healthy norm.

  61. 25/07/2011 at 19:08 Tristram Shandy says:

    Messrs. Walker and Gillen, and all of you raging against supposed mysoginists in this here comments section, direct your attention here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIdbxahGSwc

  62. 25/07/2011 at 19:13 Vermintide says:

    Eehh. I get the feeling too many games journalists are cuckolded white knights who take this kind of moral high ground not entirely sincerely (not this article, to be clear. I mean Richard Cobbett). I’m no fan of sexism or exploitation of the fairer gender, however you have to consider that these women are themselves making a choice when it comes to putting their generously sized breasts into marketing plans.

    At the end of the day I don’t think any of this is really hurting anybody too much, beyond being a little distasteful when it’s overdone; and when it is, most of us are sensible enough to recognise that. Otherwise I don’t mind if a game tries to appeal to the sexuality of it’s predominantly male audience, that’s just logical marketing.

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:12 Richard Cobbett says:

      Uh… if you say so, I guess. Though last I checked, my stance tends to be more ‘context vs content’, with a side-order of “I personally find X offensively stupid” rather than white knighting, and it’s quite sincere when I do it.

      Not that this is an accusation that bothers me even slightly, mind. As for the cuckolded bit, not quite sure where you think you’re coming from there, but it’s the sleepy town of Wrongington, in the state of Beingwrongsylvania. They think they do good fish and chips. They are, naturally, Wrong.

      But thanks for the feedback.

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:37 gritz says:

      Even if I accept that the women involved are acting rationally in their own best interests, it’s still insulting that a company thinks so little of their customers that this is the strategy they’ve chosen.

    • 25/07/2011 at 23:15 Grape Flavor says:

      @gritz
      I agree. I think the offense here is more that they are treating us like a bunch of sex-obsessed, brain-dead Neanderthals who are swayed by silly stunts, than “oh poor models, how horrible it must be for them to get paid to stand around and look attractive”

  63. 25/07/2011 at 19:14 Wooly Wugga Wugga says:

    Please don’t shout at me but…

    I kind of get that RPS is trying to be a vehicle for social change in gaming but I kind of miss the days when it was just a really cool blog with great writing about a hobby the writers and I enjoy. Now it seems like it spends half its time standing on a soap box preaching the dangers of scantily clad ladies with oversized bosoms to me.

    Gaming can seem like a bit of a boys club and the casual sexism can seem a little unpleasant but the frequency of these articles is getting a little exhausting. It’s like going to your favourite steak joint and scattered throughout the menu are graphic photos of the slaughter process. You know how the meat gets to the plate but sometimes you just want to enjoy a juicy steak.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:29 wererogue says:

      The frequency of these articles is in line with the frequency at which things occur which call commentary upon themselves, and as such is correct.

    • 25/07/2011 at 19:30 TeraTelnet says:

      So … don’t read those articles and read the pure gaming ones instead?

      Personally, I like reading a blog that looks at gaming in a wider sense in the way RPS does.

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:25 Vando says:

      If people are fed up of having to read posts on RPS about misogyny in the games industry, maybe they should direct their efforts at helping to eradicate it? I mean, if it didn’t exist then you wouldn’t have to read any posts about it, would you?

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:03 John Walker says:

      Wooly – no one’s going to shout at you. But while I realise you were exaggerating when you said “half”, I’m not sure you realise to what extent. We have no such agenda, we’ve never sat down and said, “let’s be a vehicle for social change.” It’s the three of us (currently) writing about PC games and the surrounding culture, and we write what comes into our heads.

      But posts like this, whatever a post like this is like, make up a very small proportion of our output, and it’s just a little peculiar to suggest that their occasional appearance significantly changes the tone of the site. Nor indeed that they’re anything new.

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:46 D3xter says:

      Good point Vando, who wants to help me eradicate RPS? Anyone?

  65. 25/07/2011 at 19:39 TariqOne says:

    Good for you, Walker.

    But on the bright side, as you note, Saint’s Row is one of the few games of its kind that lets the ladies get in on the action (take that, GTA, Witcher, and the rest of you phallolocked drivel). That plus coop means much fun for couples who share the gaming hobby.

  66. 25/07/2011 at 19:42 tungstenHead says:

    If these particular QA tester ladies have a “Saints Row attitude” then I must say that this is an unfortunate turn.

    See, when I played SR2, I played as a tall, willowy and very pretty blonde. She wore cocktail dresses and high heels. She did her makeup right and wore her hair nicely. And she wore a plastic novelty crown because she was the motherfucking bitch princess of Stilwater. You did not tell her the crown was plastic. Her scepter was a .50. Her sword was a sword and her shield was Johnny God damned Gat. Her sports car had kneecappers. Her golf cart had kneecappers! She was a scary lady and as the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, defined Saints Row Attitude.

    I have no interest in any sort of pretty woman with Saints Row Attitude. NONE! They are insane! Insinuations of sex with any sort of woman with Saints Row Attitude does not excite me. I don’t think I could count the ways that a night with a woman with Saints Row Attitude could go horribly, terribly, completely wrong. It would surely end in prison or death.

    This is why this campaign is not good! Because women with Saints Row Attitude are not good relationship partners. Not even for a single night. They are terrible people.

    Also, this campaign is not good because of the rampant sexism.

  67. 25/07/2011 at 20:08 Demiurge says:

    Oh sorry guys, I understand if you can’t handle the overt naughtiness of SR3, luckily I’ve found the perfect alternative game for you all to look forward to…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YGu4zQgTvg

  68. 25/07/2011 at 20:22 BobsLawnService says:

    You know – it’s at times like these that I choose to be pragmatic. In these trying days of povery and reccession how else are those charming young ladies supposed to pay for their university tuition?

    Would you, John, choose to deny these kind damsels their only chance at a decent education and a cornucopia of options later on in life? Shame on you. Next time you see something like this the only correct action is to take them up on their offer with a smile and, when they are done, reach into your wallet, gather a generous tip (Twenty should do.) And with a lacivious smile and a wink deposit said tip into their G-String. This generous action may just ensure that the lady in question may just be able to procure that matgematics text book she needs to graduate with her PhD in Chemical Engineering

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:36 Bilbo says:

      Even that’s hopelessly misogynist, though – why does our theoretical woman have to get a doctorate in engineering? So you will accept her? And if so, why is your acceptance something she should be working towards anyway?

    • 25/07/2011 at 20:46 BobsLawnService says:

      Because universities don’t offer degrees in Home Economics anymore, silly.

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:29 Teddy Leach says:

      Fuck, reply fail.

      Incidentally, misogyny is a hatred or dislike of women. It’s different to straight sexism.

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:53 Bilbo says:

      You don’t think holding the attitude that women have to achieve high standards academically to be socially acceptable is hateful?

      Misogyny is a central ideology of sexism. The two aren’t as disconnected as you would make out.

  69. 25/07/2011 at 20:26 mwoody says:

    While I take issue with this way of thinking – as I believe it ignores the hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury – I understand this is the perceived justification behind the antics that accompany the series’ publicity.

    Wow, I’m actually offended by this little bit of garbage. If that’s a meta joke, well done.

  70. 25/07/2011 at 20:28 Bilbo says:

    No fun, etc.

    And John, unless Saints Row 2 had a far more branching character development than I’ve realised, your character was strong, confident, but also an amoral mass-murdering piece of shit, so don’t misrepresent the thing

  71. 25/07/2011 at 20:51 FunkyBadger3 says:

    Remember, Sex is *STILL* Wrong.

  72. 25/07/2011 at 21:23 Gnarf says:

    What’s with the writing style? Is it serious post written in the form of parody, or just parody, or what? “I can say that as one person I find myself (…)” is basically how the dwarves in them Paksenarrion books talk.

    And oh, I just decided that these are stereotypical porn-girls. The ones that are trying to make it in the movies but then they end up doing porn, thinking they’ll get a job in a proper movie through that, but then that never happens. Only this time they eventually got other jobs, and then John Walker told the people that hired them to fire them.

    • 25/07/2011 at 21:43 Bilbo says:

      There is something distinctly creepy about it

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:09 John Walker says:

      It was written in the manner of an official letter to a company. I thought that much was obvious.

    • 26/07/2011 at 08:05 Gnarf says:

      Okay. And it pretty much reads like a parody of that. It sounds like you’re mimicking someone else’s style, trying to be overly formal and official-like. I’m pretty sure you could throw in some “thusly” and “in furtheration” without anyone noticing.

      And then you spend a bunch of words trying to “reveal” that the porn stars might just possibly have been hired because they’re porn stars, and not only because they’re great QA people who really understand Saints Row. And you do that by picking apart something the lead producer said that just amounted to “no they’re our QA staff lol” anyway. “Revealing” that that shouldn’t be taken at face value is pretty weird given that no one was expected to take it at face value anyway. And you round that bit off with “Are they not being paid for their work?” What?

      It just really sounds like you’re making fun of things.

    • 26/07/2011 at 09:27 Johnny Go-Time says:

      Preamble: I love this website and its writers and its readers and the people who comment on the articles. I’m not trolling or trying to beat up on John Walker.

      I share Gnarf’s confusion. I couldn’t tell when the letter was being sarcastic and when it was meant to be taken literally. The tone of the letter screams “parody”, and I read each sentence as though it were tongue in cheek – and yet it seems like most of the content was meant to be taken literally. Upon rereading, I am still unable to separate the “obvious” jokes from the serious statements.

      I also think I share Gnarf’s feelings about the use of the ladies on the “QA team” (but don’t want to put words in his/her/it’s mouth.) From the insanity I’ve seen so far in the marketing for this game, adding porn stars to the marketing blitz seems completely appropriate. I don’t always think that’s the case, and I’m frequently annoyed/mildly-offended by the use of booth babes etc. in my own industry, but for this particular game & tone it seems bang-on. In fact, I hope there’s a commercial where they show up for work at the development studio wearing giant bobble-head masks of themselves – and all the programmers are there working on the code while wearing giant Johnny Gat masks. Who wouldn’t want to be Johnny Gat??

    • 26/07/2011 at 10:18 Gnarf says:

      I also think I share Gnarf’s feelings about the use of the ladies on the “QA team” (but don’t want to put words in his/her/it’s mouth.)

      Yeah, more or less. I don’t pay that much attention to the marketing, so I don’t really know. I’d guess they was all, haha, booth babes, let’s go full derp and pretend-hire porn stars for QA. Like that’s how they roll. Or it could just be some marketing person doing stupid marketing, like it’s excactly the same kind of thinking as with the booth babes and that. If it’s the former it’s maybe kind of funny, if it’s the latter it’s kind of stupid (Just stupid marking-stupid, not argh evil sexists-stupid. Like, Marilyn Manson New Shit Dragon Age trailer-stupid or whatever.).

      “Oh you car manufacturer you. It impressions upon me that it is your implicitation to imply that the hood of the car is best advantaged by having women in bikinis besit them. It concerns me that this, in combination with the stated purpose of the car, can be concidered a concerning safety concern, and leaves a poor impression in my mouth regarding your general approach to safety within and without the domain of the motorized vehicle.”

  73. 25/07/2011 at 21:37 Grape Flavor says:

    I am quite concerned by a number of implications I perceived in this letter:

    “I understand that the development team, and the game itself, believes in the philosophy of equal opportunity offending, where all targets are considered fair game. While I take issue with this way of thinking – as I believe it ignores the hundreds/thousands of years of subjugation of very many distinct groups, be they by race, gender, sexuality or wealth, from a position of predominantly white, male, middle-class luxury.”

    So am I to understand that you believe that, despite all humans being equal and thus equally prone to foibles worthy of mockery, that only white, male, middle or upper class individuals are acceptable sources and targets of humor? That due to historical wrongs, said individuals are held as a category to be perpetually in cultural debt, a whipping boy of sorts for society’s collective frustrations despite that many, if not most white, male individuals in this era had nothing to do with said wrongs and revile them just as much as individuals from the historically targeted groups? Please explain this to me.

    The second issue I am concerned with is the implication that heterosexual male sexual imagery is inherently misogynistic unless it is somehow tied to depiction of women as complex individual human beings.

    While I can see the merit in this line of argument, why is this standard never applied in reverse? When “Twilight” features the male characters with their shirts off for half the movie purely for the titillation of the female audience, is this misandry? When a gay college student puts a “beefcake” poster on the wall of his dormitory of a model he knows nothing about as an individual, is this misandry? Yet when similar female imagery is targeted towards a heterosexual male audience you seem to view it as misogyny. Why is this? Is this because you feel that heterosexual males are held in debt as I said above and are thus to be held to different cultural standards?

    Also, why is there the presumption that these women are being exploited and are not taking these jobs of there own free volition? Is a woman not free to be a Penthouse model if she so chooses? And the presumption that depiction of women as “strong” = not sexist and vice versa concerns me as well. Are women not allowed to be vulnerable? Isn’t that just dictating new gender roles by saying women characters must be “strong”?

    (I apologize if the above post isn’t nearly as coherent as it otherwise would be as I am quite hazy right now from medication that has been recently prescribed to me, but these are my concerns and I think they are valid.)

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:01 Quilty says:

      I get the feeling John tends to bite off far more than he can chew. The ability to competently review a game doesn’t necessarily mean one has the ability to tackle all the problems of the said game. Yet John insists on giving his opinions on The Big Issues (I’d even go so far as to say that he makes up these issues in some cases) even though he is incapable of supplying the reader with educated arguments.

      It all comes off as journalism that merely attempts to flaunt some popular terms used in gender studies or feminist writing, while not really understanding the subject. Instead, it distills the complex matter to “poor women, bad men” and shows us some women in tight suits washing a car, as if to say “See?! So sad.”

      In fact, I’d say this entire affair shows us very little about sexism in games and far more about journalists who seem to think they can simply “wing it” based on their limited knowledge of the subject. The quote cited above that attempts to deal with subjugation and the terrible White Male shows this pretty well, I think. It’s offensive to the reader, especially because its approach is so anti-intellectual.

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:30 PFlute says:

      If I can reply quite simply: You should realize that white, straight, middle-class (and above) males are not simply held in some kind of cultural debt limbo because their forefathers have done wrong: They still enjoy many privileges. They are still on top. Essentially, they still have power. This changes the meanings of their actions, and of actions taken against them.

      You may be unaware of this (as is the point of privilege; through never having experienced a disadvantage, a certain unpleasantness, one is given the ability to ignore it or keep up a strong unawareness of it) but that does not make the context in which things exist any less true.

      Also, of course, there’s nothing wrong with women choosing to be in pornography, or with vulnerable female characters. The context is what makes the difference. A vulnerable woman surrounded by a cast of muscle-dudes who is in constant need of their aid is quite different in context from a vulnerable woman who exists next to capable women, or perhaps next to a vulnerable man.

    • 25/07/2011 at 22:58 Bilbo says:

      I hate classism. It’s so bloody easy

    • 25/07/2011 at 23:04 Grape Flavor says:

      @PFlute
      I agree that white, middle class straight males have things pretty good. They have to put up with some bullshit but overall less than other groups. Power isn’t a zero-sum game though. You can elevate disadvantaged groups without tearing down other groups and painting them all as villains or using them as a whipping boy.

      People don’t exist in some pre-defined moral plane just because of their group. That’s bigotry. Humans are humans and we should not be elevated or denigrated based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. That is the basic premise of true equality. Therefore I shouldn’t have to be held in debt when I have done nothing wrong, and those who have done wrong should not be excused just because they are a historically disadvantaged group.

      I don’t buy this argument that each human is merely a numbered cog in some big group-actor and should be treated accordingly. Each individual human being is unique and is responsible for his her own self. Treat people as they individually deserve regardless of historical or even present day actions by one person’s “group” against another’s “group”.

      Group-ism has been responsible for so many wrongs over the years that it shocks me that people still advocate it even in intellectual circles. A person is a person and and in the end anything else is just a construct.

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:29 John Walker says:

      Grape -

      To your first point: I am saying that the belief that it is okay to mock one group, if you mock all groups, is one that tends to be made from a position of the luxury of falling in the largest, most powerful, least oppressed group. I am suggesting that this is a problematic place to begin. I said I recognise this philosophy, but it’s not one I’m comfortable with. I don’t think it’s okay for me to make broad, lazy jokes about one group of people, if I’m equally broad and lazy about any other group that passes my eye. That’s the rationale with which I disagree. Equal opportunity offending just isn’t a philosophy with which I’m comfortable. I tend to prefer to offend ways of thinking, attitudes, or beliefs, rather than race, sex, sexuality, etc.

      Regarding misandry, when it becomes an issue affecting PC gaming, I am quite sure I would want to address it. Its current rise in advertising (men are the poor, stupid, gormless idiots who can’t cope with their sensible, grounded wife to guide them through) is more frequently getting in my craw.

      Your argument makes a big fat pile of no sense here, by the way. You list a few examples of what might be misandry in media other than PC games, decide I don’t think they’re misandry, and then say that I hypocritically don’t think they’re misandry even though I wrote an article here addressing what I saw as a marketing campaign that devalues the game it’s for. That’s fallacious in an impressive number of ways.

      I do not believe for a moment that the Penthouse models are not taking these jobs of their own volition. Of course they are. My argument in the post was that Volition and THQ using such an approach is misrepresentative of a game series that hasn’t shared such values. What an extraordinary thing for you to infer.

      Regarding “strength”, here my point was the paucity of strong female characters in games. Weaker or vulnerable women appear in gaming in droves, albeit generally in a very unsophisticated way, and rarely as playable characters. Generally these women need men to protect them. To have a female character who does not need endless protection from a man is a rare factor in games, and Saints Row 2 happens to be one of the few games to offer it. Should all women be presented this way? Of course not.

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:43 John Walker says:

      Quilty – you write an awful lot of words saying I’m doing things wrongly, but you don’t actually say what it is I did wrong.

      I’m very open to changing my mind, or having my mistakes/ignorance pointed out to me. You have an opportunity to do that.

    • 26/07/2011 at 04:42 delialli says:

      EDIT

      On second thoughts, this doesn’t need my input

    • 26/07/2011 at 05:27 Grape Flavor says:

      @John
      Thanks for taking the time to clarify your meaning. Like I said there were a few things than concerned me in your letter and I tried to articulate them as best I could. Sorry if I didn’t put it across the right way.

      I think part of the problem with the internet is it’s all too easy to read into things – robbed of personal context we save time by seeing certain trigger phrases in rhetoric and inferring broader opinions from them. It’s frustrated me many times on this very site where I angrily respond to someone’s perceivedly outrageous opinion, then they do the same to mine and we spend the next few hours explaining ourselves and dismantling the web of hostility.

      So I think we headed that off at the pass this time, and that’s refreshing.

      -Grape

  74. 25/07/2011 at 22:38 AbyssUK says:

    John, perhaps if they introduce the Yorkshire Brass band as also being part of the new QA team it would equal it all out and so be more like the games ethos… it would also be piss funny marketing and give an excuse to have a yorkshire brass band soundtrack of the game released.

    Also I want a brass band to wash my car damn it…

    • 26/07/2011 at 00:05 Baf says:

      If the car washing is accomplished in part by a scrub brush affixed to the end of a trombone, it’ll all have been worth it.

    • 26/07/2011 at 01:20 Pinkables says:

      This sounds like the best marketing campaign ever, as long as it features both the brass band and the scantily clad women equally. In fact i think it could inadvertently bring brass band music into the mainstream, which i sincerely believe would be a progressive move for society.

  75. 26/07/2011 at 03:05 CloakRaider says:

    Wait. “…in purple bikinis required to perform the service of washing your car for you… well, it rather stuck in my craw.”
    I get what you’re going at here if they were just Volition employees forced into doing this crap, but I’m going to assume here that being models, they were probably paid damned well for their work, and were almost certainly told exactly what they were doing. So yes, they were “required” to wash your car insofar as they took the job they were offered.

    To be honest, the only weakness the women washing your car are suggesting are ones that already exist in your own mind. They’re washing your car, amazing. This doesn’t imply they’re somehow inferior, subservient or weak, it implies they can wash a car and look sexy while doing it, so they’re already doing better than I.

    They’re not trying to suggest this is a portrayal of the game in any way, it’s just a medium. It’s not a suggestion of the values, it’s so you remember it. And judging by the article, it’s succeeded. Not only this, but you’ve probably just given them even more publicity.

  76. 26/07/2011 at 04:47 Sif says:

    Thanks John – it’s nice to see more and more articles like this actually talking about cultural issues in gaming like it’s a legitimate medium. You know, the way most gamers keep clamoring for everyone to accept games as art.

    I’m playing SR2 as a lady and pleasantly surprised at how solid and strong a character they let you play across both genders. SR3′s pornstar bonanza is more embarrassing than anything else.

  77. 26/07/2011 at 05:59 Bob says:

    Holy crap guys. Some of the comments are just as, if not more than, sexist than the subject of the topic. Fortunately there are some intelligent comments agreeing and disagreeing. The thing that gets my goat is what opinions these marketing “geniuses” have of your average gamer. I’ve been guilty of copping a peak at cleavage now and then. What can I say I’m a guy? That doesn’t mean that I won’t buy the game unless some clantily robed lovely suggests I do.

  78. 26/07/2011 at 07:16 pipman3000 says:

    What is the name for that thing where gamers turn into far-right conservatives the moment someone points out something fucked up about their hobby?

  79. 26/07/2011 at 09:35 JackShandy says:

    I tried to say something, but it’s not showing up. Maybe I shouldn’t say “Penis”?

    So, instead, I’ll just say that I wish articles on sexism could be posted without these horrible arguments. I don’t think there’s a single gaming site that could have expressed a negative opinion on Saint’s Row’s marketing without responses at or above the level of bile this one has gotten.

    I hear about it all the time; some girl makes a forum post asking for a female starcraft group and the thread gets swamped, a negative review of Metroid: Other M ignites a comments thread flame war. I’d say that RPS has the best comments section around, and even it gets caught up in it. When are we going to be able to talk about this stuff without igniting this shit?

  80. 26/07/2011 at 09:38 JackShandy says:

    I tried to say something, but it’s not showing up. Maybe I shouldn’t say “——-s”?

    So, instead, I’ll just say that I wish articles on sexism could be posted without these horrible arguments. I don’t think there’s a single gaming site that could have expressed a negative opinion on Saint’s Row’s marketing without responses at or above the level of bile this one has gotten.

    I hear about it all the time; some girl makes a forum post asking for a female starcraft group and the thread gets swamped, a negative review of Metroid: Other M ignites a comments thread flame war. I’d say that RPS has the best comments section around, and even it gets caught up in it. When are we going to be able to talk about this stuff without igniting this shit?

    • 26/07/2011 at 10:04 Skeletor68 says:

      Is it just the internet effect, cognitive dissonance? I like to think that if people were actually sitting together in the real world these arguments would be an awful lot more civil.

    • 26/07/2011 at 10:16 JackShandy says:

      Doesn’t that suggest that people would be secretly thinking this stuff anyway, though, and internet discussions are only worse because people aren’t afraid to express their real opinions?

    • 26/07/2011 at 10:42 Skeletor68 says:

      @Jack
      I don’t think the opinions would change automatically, I just think that people wouldn’t be as confrontational, perhaps allowing a more reasonable discussion. Either that or it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

    • 26/07/2011 at 12:35 mejoff says:

      @Skeletor
      Nah, i’ve had face to face conversations with misogynists and they tend to be utterly foul in real life too.

  81. 26/07/2011 at 09:56 Tony M says:

    I like to think that my choice of RPS as my gaming site is a reflection of my intelligence, taste, and sense of humor. Then I read a comments thread and realize, no, idiots read this site too.

  82. 26/07/2011 at 10:27 Sicram says:

    Another comment, another drop in the ocean.

    At any rate, while I don’t mind lightly clad women at all it is a bit insulting to be precieved as if it’s what is a make or break detail. Also, seeing as how the campaign presumably has been going (I haven’t seen anything of it myself) one might think that they don’t expect any women (maybe except lesbians? If I may throw in some prejudace) to play this game, or homosexual men because I guess they’d rather look at hunky guys… I guess. Maybe they should’ve had some men in swimwear do some car washing as well, to even things out.

    Also, looks like a pretty neat game and to contrary belief; just because I’m a white male in my 20′s (I’m 20) I do not want to watch busty ladies 24/7 and whack people with giant dildos (seriously, what’s up with that feature? But I guess it’s ok as long as I never MUST use it.

  83. 26/07/2011 at 15:00 newprince says:

    John is perfectly right to complain about something he sees as an injustice in the industry, but I think the suggestions go a bridge too far. As someone rightly pointed out earlier, misogyny is not merely a video game culture issue; it’s an issue for our culture, and every culture on Earth. Is it possible SR3 is mirroring the misogyny inherent in our culture, while also exaggerating it 10x? Would that be much different than the way they also exaggerate America’s gun/gangster culture to the extreme? To me, it seems rather apropos to the game.

    I would be offended if the same “HEY WE GOT PORNO GIRLS AS QA TESTERS” promotion gag were in, say, the latest Transformers game. But this is the third in such an over-the-top, raucous game series that never really took itself seriously in the first place. As an aside, I did QA testing for THQ (Company of Heroes, SupComm, STALKER) and I can assure you they would never hire porn actresses for game testing. If they even showed up in the QA building they’d be swarmed/harrassed all day by obsessive gamer nerds.

    As for being offended by booth babes, that just seems rather prudish to me. Maybe the moniker is a tad demeaning, but are we not supposed to admire the female form? Is any showing of skin inherently raunchy and immature? Is it possible to find a scantily-clad woman in public sexy without it being objectification? Have we ever really deconstructed what “objectification” even is? Objectification just seems like a placeholder for an argument. It’s unassailable because it is never explained. It’s “just wrong,” and is a conversation-ender. I think context is important here.

    I just don’t understand the politically correct attitude of acting like misogyny only exists in media, while it goes on in reality every day (see statistics on infidelity, prostitution and sex trafficking, etc.). Should we just pretend the actual injustices don’t exist by getting rid of the imaginary injustices? That seems rather pointless.

  84. 26/07/2011 at 23:06 Harridan says:

    Registered just to tip my hat to Mr. Walker. Well said, and as someone working in the game industry, I wince and grind my teeth every time I see this kind of pathetic marketing trickery. This game, as was elegantly put, is about scads of delicious mayhem and insanity, not pure leering and lechery. We have Duke Nukem Forever for that. (unfortunately)

  85. 27/07/2011 at 05:06 Killbane says:

    Sense of humor, meet John Walker. John, sense of humor. You two should really get acquainted.

  86. 27/07/2011 at 07:14 Kamos says:

    I think I agree with John on this one. On the other hand, every booth there must have had scantily clad women. It’s not like this will be the first game to use this kind of marketing.

    Anyway, I smiled at his disapproval of “damp, servile women in bikinis”. Am I a bad person, RPS? :-|

  87. 27/07/2011 at 10:05 4026 says:

    And after the worst of the comment-storm, the inevitable post-mortem blogs. I’ve taken a crack at rounding up some of the arguments and fallout of John’s article here, so I figured this is as good a place to plug it as any. In it, I say things like:

    “The sheer, sudden ferocity of the opposition does make me wonder, though: what is it about discussing the over-sexualised portrayal of women in games that elicits so much knee-jerk bile? What, exactly, are these people so afraid of? That if games journalists are allowed to go around criticising puerile marketing schemes with impunity the world supply of boobs will dry up overnight? Or are they more threatened by the prospect of looking like perverts if they subsequently purchase the game?”

  88. 27/07/2011 at 10:07 bdaiber says:

    I think this letter definitely missed it mark. I see this letter being passed around THQ/Volition to high fives and snickers. Consider the series you are addressing with this letter.
    Saints Row is an insanity simulator. That is what makes it fun. You want to drive around town, spraying literal shit all over people, vehicles and places? You get rewarded. Guard a celebrity by throwing a overzealous fan into a jet engine, watching them pink mist out the other side? Gang respect. How about obliterating gangs based on sweeping cultural stereotypes held through all of pop culture? That’s the main point of the game. Escort missions taking prostitutes around with celebs to avoid exposure, recruiting hoe’s from pimps to build brothels, and the actual “ho-’ing” activity which rewards you with (what else) a pimp suit for your character? Volition/THQ pile the vices into these games, because that is what makes it so much fun.
    I understand why you would be uncomfortable with the whole “Jeez guys, should us well-to-do white people really be making fun of these other disenfranchised and downtrodden groups?” In this day and age, it is coming from all angles. Look at the success of Dave Chappelle and his racially charged comedy central spawn. Look at the last Saints! Asians on bikes with samurai swords? Black rasta drug cartels? Women doing things involving their looks and body for money? Saints’ guilty pleasure is derived from exactly that – embracing actions and stereotypes we know are wrong, but staying tongue in cheek about the entire thing.
    Saints contains violence – it advertises violence. Saints contains stereotypes – it advertises those stereotypes. Saints contains tits – it is advertising those tits. The fact that we have strong female characters and can play as a strong female lead character is kind of a moot point. Anyone excited enough about buying a game based on a strong female lead character is likely going to be put off the first time they find out what ho-ing is.
    Of all games to write a piece about morality…

  89. 27/07/2011 at 14:33 Frantics says:

    women’s liberation is complete! those not being horribly mutilated have nothing to complain about! hahaha high five buddy gj

    rps comment threads not about games can be pretty silly, to put it mildly. well the games ones can too but it’s less annoying. lot of wannabe clever people thinking they’ve outgrown their 4chan pasts and can argue with the big boys now by throwing out complicated words and trying to bring down john’s writing with hypocritical statements about his knowledge and the validity of his writing. then the typical annoyance of ‘HAHA I WAS TROLLING IM SO CLEVER’. we all know you weren’t, at least stand by your stupidity and you might be able to get into a constructive argument, and if all that is really just for attention then well done. fuck off and go wank to some hentai kids PSA just cos you’re in uni now doesn’t mean you know shit. then the other half is pricks like me complaining about the complainers. isn’t it fun. people could at least play it for laughs

    it’s not even about the tone of SR itself @dude above though you make a sensible point, and it doesn’t really matter how john writes it, he’s making a good point. we know there’s other wrongs in the world and the industry, we’re talking about this one. i didn’t see any issue with his writing anyway.

    also wtf is all this hobbyist nonsense being thrown around recently by twats who’ve read other twats say it somewhere and think they have an unassailable attack on games journalists. it means nothing and is just irritating, the people using it clearly aren’t exactly fortune 500 ceos (or probably ever had a job) themselves. i can literally imagine the sort who would say ‘hobbyist’ about games journalists in person and their tone of voice and smug smile and aaarrgh

    ohh and while im being a cunt, since i don’t think this thread can really be dragged down too much lower – got to say i’ve met a few pretty annoying feminists in my time. irrelevant and stupid i know but hell… getting offended by everything and being unable to laugh at yourself is no way to live. by no means the majority. some equal opportunity offending for ya! at least you can tell even the annoying ones secretly just want to bend over and let you give em a good… welp now im just taking the piss, im done. finally. should probably stay away from the internet. gettin ‘trolled’ :(

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