TOR's Gay Planet

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Originally Posted by gundato

Yeah, I actually referenced Chris Rock on purpose in the hopes that someone would bring that up. But I think, even that isn't so much that the material was unacceptable (given the context), just that he didn't approve of how certain people were interpreting the material. "Most" people didn't really want to lynch him for those jokes, but there is an argument for if it was particularly responsible once he became a household name. Because his audience shifted.

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Made Dave Chappelle quit his show. But it wasn't the offensiveness of the material, but the offensiveness of the audience.

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Originally Posted by deano2099

Indeed, ME2 basically encouraged you to cheat on your ME1 love interest with an achievement.

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If all it takes for you to cheat on your girlfriend is an achievement, then the joke's really on you, isn't it?

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Originally Posted by Mohorovicic

That's why most RPGs these days are shit, especially Bioware ones.

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What deano is saying is that your reward - if we're keeping with the game format - is the character monologue when they tell you their life's story. For instance, your reward by pursuing Liara is talking about her mother in ME1, discovering her father in ME2, and re-uniting them in ME3. The stuff you get to listen to is the game's way of saying "congrats."

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Originally Posted by Nalano

Made Dave Chappelle quit his show. But it wasn't the offensiveness of the material, but the offensiveness of the audience.

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The way I heard it, it was the people on set who made him uncomfortable. But there is a LOT of hinky crap surrounding that one.

But yeah, even in that case, the material was "acceptable" by the target audience. It just also was "acceptable" by audiences he didn't approve of.

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Originally Posted by gundato

The way I heard it, it was the people on set who made him uncomfortable. But there is a LOT of hinky crap surrounding that one.

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The audience was shouting catchphrases from his Rick James skit at him, so he retorted, "You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid."

In both cases the message was clear: What were jokes in part about race relations, largely in an effort to decompress Black anger, were interpreted by white TV audiences as lampooning Black culture, and neither Chris Rock nor Dave Chappelle were looking to be Uncle Toms.

In effect, they put their hair down over racism in an effort to laugh at themselves and discovered that racism still exists, which is effectively a slap in the face of their careers and their hopes for society at large. This is a point that Paul Mooney has repeatedly observed, and for comedians looking for their niche, it's a harsh discovery that America still enjoys the comedy stylings of Jeff Dunham without any hint of irony.

To draw a parallel to here, it's hard to make the usual sexist internet jokes (get in the kitchen, shut up a man's talking) and expect to be understood that you're being facetious because there are obviously quite a lot of internet idiots and gamer cretins who legitimately hate and revile women, to the point where you feel bad even broaching the topic as you are only giving them fuel to feed their wrongness.

I cannot bring to words just how much I hate this subculture sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Nalano

The audience was shouting catchphrases from his Rick James skit at him, so he retorted, "You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid."

In both cases the message was clear: What were jokes in part about race relations, largely in an effort to decompress Black anger, were interpreted by white TV audiences as lampooning Black culture, and neither Chris Rock nor Dave Chappelle were looking to be Uncle Toms.

In effect, they put their hair down over racism in an effort to laugh at themselves and discovered that racism still exists, which is effectively a slap in the face of their careers and their hopes for society at large. This is a point that Paul Mooney has repeatedly observed, and for comedians looking for their niche, it's a harsh discovery that America still enjoys the comedy stylings of Jeff Dunham without any hint of irony.

To draw a parallel to here, it's hard to make the usual sexist internet jokes (get in the kitchen, shut up a man's talking) and expect to be understood that you're being facetious because there are obviously quite a lot of internet idiots and gamer cretins who legitimately hate and revile women, to the point where you feel bad even broaching the topic as you are only giving them fuel to feed their wrongness.

I cannot bring to words just how much I hate this subculture sometimes.

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Oh, it is definitely a very big issue, but my initial point was more just what you expect.

Obviously if Gearbox and the Dead Island devs got together, they could make even a humorous parody game so offensive that everyone would be in an uproar. But, generally, there is a lot more freedom in something that isn't supposed to be taken seriously, if only due to the context.

People should never make racist or sexist jokes to anyone who isn't someone they are very familiar with. Even then, 90% of the time it's still in bad taste. It's fun to joke about stereotypes but like you guys have observed, much of the time they are mistaken for truth.

I did tell my girlfriend to go back to the kitchen after she beat me at Starcraft though. She thought it was hilarious.

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Originally Posted by Caddybear

People should never make racist or sexist jokes to anyone who isn't someone they are very familiar with. Even then, 90% of the time it's still in bad taste. It's fun to joke about stereotypes but like you guys have observed, much of the time they are mistaken for truth.

I did tell my girlfriend to go back to the kitchen after she beat me at Starcraft though. She thought it was hilarious.

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Agreed.

But comedians and the media are a different beast, since those are meant for mass consumption. So such a rule doesn't make any sense in the context of the media (which is kind of what we are discussing here).

The idea of making such jokes in comedy is to show people how ridiculous and stupid those stereotypes are. But when people laugh because they think they're actually true.. well, you get a​ Dave Chapelle situation.

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Originally Posted by gundato

It isn't "bad" versus "good". It is what the intent is. A game like Borderlands doesn't really care about being insanely detailed and performing a rich character study. A game like Planescape does. I am not going to complain that Roland was shallow compared to Nameless.

Take The Rock. I absolutely love that movie and all good people do too. But most of the characters are pretty one-dimensional and Sean Connery is about as sexist as he is in real life. But I don't see any (rational) person going out of their way to say it was hurtful to women or black people or whatever.

Your comments are reminding me a lot of the people who think the Beichdel (sp?) test is a true measure of the quality of a work. It really realy isn't. A pro-feminist work can EASILY fail it (Whedon is pretty feminist, but the vast majority of his work past Buffy probably fails), and something insanely sexist/porn can pass it (technically the two lesbians who were using a double-ended dildo weren't talking about men...).

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Ok I largely agree with this but though i should raise one concern, sorry if it's a bit off topic.

I think the problem here is that sometimes you have to take a step back and look at things broadly. While yes no hollywood action film/military man shooter game / something else with under represented women, are individually sexist necessarily because the stories they're telling just aren't about relevant I think the collection can have issues.

Something is probably a bit wrong more broadly (socially) if such and such a genre, while not having anything to do with gender per se, never has strong female characters. Now I'm not suggesting knee jerk shoe horning stuff in or going around censoring people as that is impinging on individuals artistic vision (or whatever), but it does make me uneasy as a trend.

I think it's what the Bechdel shows, not that any individual thing is sexist but that the general trend doesn't seem to be great.

Another analogy, as a programmer in video games I interview for various positions but we don't really get any women applicants and as such women are really under represented in my office. Now it's not because we're being sexist individually, but there is something odd their deeper in society.

Anyway I just blame the parents, then get fed up that no intervention will ever stop people being shit parents, then I drink.

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Originally Posted by Zephro

Ok I largely agree with this but though i should raise one concern, sorry if it's a bit off topic.

I think the problem here is that sometimes you have to take a step back and look at things broadly. While yes no hollywood action film/military man shooter game / something else with under represented women, are individually sexist necessarily because the stories they're telling just aren't about relevant I think the collection can have issues.

Something is probably a bit wrong more broadly (socially) if such and such a genre, while not having anything to do with gender per se, never has strong female characters. Now I'm not suggesting knee jerk shoe horning stuff in or going around censoring people as that is impinging on individuals artistic vision (or whatever), but it does make me uneasy as a trend.

I think it's what the Bechdel shows, not that any individual thing is sexist but that the general trend doesn't seem to be great.

Another analogy, as a programmer in video games I interview for various positions but we don't really get any women applicants and as such women are really under represented in my office. Now it's not because we're being sexist individually, but there is something odd their deeper in society.

Anyway I just blame the parents, then get fed up that no intervention will ever stop people being shit parents, then I drink.

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There definitely is the big picture to consider, I agree there.

I think one issue for action movies is that a LOT of them go with "former (US) special forces", which makes the female lead kind of difficult for obvious reasons. Being former special forces pretty much makes all "How can they know how to do this?" problems go bye bye, and the US helps the target audience to relate.

But yeah, there definitely is an overall lack of strong female protagonists. But, at the same time, I don't think it is particularly fair to judge an individual work on those grounds. Going back to the original topic: People praise Bioware for making random NPCs gay, and then bash them for not including gay people in Star Wars. None of those really influenced the plot in any particular way (although, as mentioned, Cortez was well written). So why should a game be bashed or criticized for not checking the box if it didn't detract from the experience? I don't think anyone can say that the world of Star Wars was less for not having an (openly) homosexual character?

Criticize the overall medium/genre/whatever, but attacking the individual works just seems to encourage the "We have this list of races, sexualities, religions, and philisophical outlooks that we need to cover. Get to it"

And I know what you mean about the programming thing. I am an Electrical and Computer Engineer, and I like to joke around that in my class for undergrad, there were one and a half women (I think the "half" might already be starting her gender reassignment therapy? I dunno, I lost touch after graduation). It is definitely a big issue that people are trying to find solutions to.

And I still think the Bechdel test is garbage. Seriously, quite a bit of Joss Whedon stuff fails it horribly. Even a lot of episodes of Buffy failed horribly. And it isn't because Joss ias a secret mysoginist. It is just that he generally tried to include the whole cast. So Buffy might be insanely badass and empowering, but because there wasn't a specific scene of just her and Willow talking about the apocalypse, a given episode will fail.

Could you guys talk using more universal stuff? Most of us dont know obscure USA comedians :-(

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Originally Posted by deano2099

I'm about to blow your mind, but most games composers are in it for the love of music, not games. And a lot of games artists (especially the ones that do actual interesting stuff) are in it for the love of visual art, not games. Likewise writers. Because in all those fields, gaming is just another medium that pays competitive rates in very tough sectors to get in to.

The only people generally in it for the love of the games (other than the lead designers) are the coders, because they have skills they could make far more money with elsewhere, but choose games instead of accounting software because it's more fun.

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Except writing for a video game is a lot different than writing for a movie. Composing music and doing art aren't going to affect the gameplay. Music is still used to convey emotions - mostly in cutscenes - and when it's ambient music, you can do that without affecting the game. If you're going to WRITE for a game, especially an RPG that has BRANCHING PATHS, you need to actually have an interest in gaming. Movies and books are a linear narrative that will never change and you can control how the characters will react and have them as a single person with all of your goals and control in mind.

In a game like Mass Effect, you can't know what the player is going to choose and end up writing something vital that wouldn't change based on decisions that would be completely idiotic in a given situation based on the past decisions of the player. I'm not using her particularly as an example, but just pointing out how people who write for video games need to actually know their shit and want to play games.

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Originally Posted by gundato

And I still think the Bechdel test is garbage. Seriously, quite a bit of Joss Whedon stuff fails it horribly. Even a lot of episodes of Buffy failed horribly. And it isn't because Joss ias a secret mysoginist. It is just that he generally tried to include the whole cast. So Buffy might be insanely badass and empowering, but because there wasn't a specific scene of just her and Willow talking about the apocalypse, a given episode will fail.

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How on earth do you apply the Bechdel test to judge a whole series, even? If at least 50% of its episodes pass it's okay? Or all of them? What is the 'fair' assessment here?

(For the record I agree it's a garbage test, with massively corruptible results by non-gender-related factors.)

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Originally Posted by gundato

Criticize the overall medium/genre/whatever, but attacking the individual works just seems to encourage the "We have this list of races, sexualities, religions, and philisophical outlooks that we need to cover. Get to it"

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Yeah I wouldn't directly criticise them for it, but I feel it's something to have in mind when considering these things.

I still think the Bechdel Test has a use, not as an actual test of merit in an empirical sense as that is clearly sodding nuts. However it is interesting if you do it over a large number of samples to see the wider trend.

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Originally Posted by venn177

Music is still used to convey emotions - mostly in cutscenes - and when it's ambient music, you can do that without affecting the game. If you're going to WRITE for a game, especially an RPG that has BRANCHING PATHS, you need to actually have an interest in gaming. Movies and books are a linear narrative that will never change and you can control how the characters will react and have them as a single person with all of your goals and control in mind.

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Maybe depend on the studio.

Studio A:
- Gameplay dude design level.
- Gameplay dude and script guys write a early version of the level.
- Writter create a reason why the character is there and is doing what we need him to do. Maybe write the boss speech, and some notes.

Studio B:
- Writter describe the hero running away, after the princess has ben killed.
- Gameplay dude has to create a running away level or ask the cutscene guys to create a "hero is fleeing" cutscene.

I think most studios works more like A, or thats more like what people seems to describe it. And often don't even have a writer, so any writting piece comes very late in development. Maybe theres a "Studio C" where the writter and the gameplay and script dudes cooperate, and everybody do his part.
My own impression is that I have still to see a game where the history compromise the gameplay. The only exception are RPG games where the story describe a "ticking bomb", while the game is best played slowly exploring all places and doing meaningless quests (this is perhaps the case with ME3?). But this is a very minor thing, us vets RPG gamers can ignore these ticking bombs things.

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Originally Posted by venn177

Except writing for a video game is a lot different than writing for a movie. Composing music and doing art aren't going to affect the gameplay. Music is still used to convey emotions - mostly in cutscenes - and when it's ambient music, you can do that without affecting the game. If you're going to WRITE for a game, especially an RPG that has BRANCHING PATHS, you need to actually have an interest in gaming.

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Yes, you need to have an interest in gaming, and understand interactive narratives. That doesn't mean you need to enjoy playing every game you write for, or even want to play them. And it's not like Helper was saying "I don't play the games, I just write for them", she was saying the opposite, that she does in fact play the games, because she needs to for her job. She just doesn't enjoy them that much. And in games like Bioware ones, where the narrative and action sections are so distinct, suggesting that you be able to skip one or the other hardly seems crazy.

Admittedly it is somewhat different when you use the gameplay to tell the narrative but that doesn't happen much outside of clever indie titles at the moment, where the writer is the designer.

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Originally Posted by Nalano

To draw a parallel to here, it's hard to make the usual sexist internet jokes (get in the kitchen, shut up a man's talking) and expect to be understood that you're being facetious because there are obviously quite a lot of internet idiots and gamer cretins who legitimately hate and revile women, to the point where you feel bad even broaching the topic as you are only giving them fuel to feed their wrongness.

I cannot bring to words just how much I hate this subculture sometimes.

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In a consequence free environment, people are gonna say or do what they're ordinarily precluded from saying or doing in real life. This includes friendly fire, racist remarks, sexist remarks, blasphemy - the works. Most people don't mean it. However, many people just take it incredibly personally, which is something i just don't understand and an annoying case of making a big issue out of nothing at all. As for the people who really do mean it, what are you going to do? Censoring them doesn't put a halt to their beliefs. This is why i find the whole anti blahblahblah-ist culture really annoying and when you go the extremes such as de facto censorship, you make things worse. It's gotten so bad that there are guys that can't physically bring themselves to say the word nigger in any context (omg "the n-word"). What the fuck are we, school children? The more you beat someone with it, the more you censor it, the scarcer something is, the nastier it becomes. Because you bring attention to it. In my opinion, decades of overcompensating has made things a lot worse. Without it, with sensible education/natural progression of society, the word nigger probably wouldn't mean a single thing. I suspect the same applies to concepts as well. Every time someone kicks up a hissy fit because they were told to head to the kitchen, it just adds to the problem. A simple retort i.e. a fuck you, would suffice. Invoking all these grand principles just makes the whole thing even more powerful.

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Originally Posted by hamster

people are gonna say or do what they're ordinarily precluded from saying or doing in real life.

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The problem is, they're doing it in real life.

Hell, we've discussed this several times before. (ex) (ex) (ex)

Also, your argument denies the harmful effect of words, and also makes the incorrect assumption that this sort of discrimination can be neutered with a mere "fuck you."

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Originally Posted by Nalano

The problem is, they're doing it in real life.

Hell, we've discussed this several times before. (ex) (ex) (ex)

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Of course, it exists in real life. But how many people on game lobby chatrooms are screaming racist/sexist assholes? Just about everyone. How many of these people actually behave that way in real life? I'd say hardly any of them, unless gamers tend to be racist/sexist dicks. Perhaps the wiser assumption to take is that some guys just say what they wanna say without any real venom behind those words.

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Also, your argument denies the harmful effect of words, and also makes the incorrect assumption that this sort of discrimination can be neutered with a mere "fuck you."

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But the assumption is that censorship can? I never understood that point. Education and awareness is supposed to rectify all this but perhaps appealing less to emotion and more to logic would be the better way forward. So rather than making a big fuss, shouting about the indignity of it all and encouraging censorship, rebuking the offending viewpoint through logical arguments.

But anyway, this Gay Planet thing is an example i think of going way too far. Obviously made the gay planet because too many complained there wasn't homosexual content, and now that they do it, they're accused of ...well, what exactly? Charging extra for it? And therefore acknowledging the divide between people who want such content and people who don't?

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Originally Posted by hamster

But anyway, this Gay Planet thing is an example i think of going way too far. Obviously made the gay planet because too many complained there wasn't homosexual content, and now that they do it, they're accused of ...well, what exactly? Charging extra for it? And therefore acknowledging the divide between people who want such content and people who don't?

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Even if you don't want it, you get the option if you buy the expansion. They are charging for the planet, the optional alternative romanceable characters are included with the planet, presumably on the surface. I think the main issue is "it should have been in from the start if they were going to include it, now it's really silly and makes nobody happy."

Of course it's never that simple and it obviously feels like you need to pay more if you want to be gay since the rest of the game is free. On the other hand, it is new content so it should be okay for them to charge for it maybe? Could they have added those characters to the free content planets to avoid such accusations? Since it's always such a controversy every time something like this happens, should they have not bothered with it after they missed having them on launch?

I don't know. All I know is I dislike everyone who thinks we shouldn't have homosexual relationships in video games because they are not comfortable with it.

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Originally Posted by Caddybear

Even if you don't want it, you get the option if you buy the expansion. They are charging for the planet, the optional alternative romanceable characters are included with the planet, presumably on the surface. I think the main issue is "it should have been in from the start if they were going to include it, now it's really silly and makes nobody happy."

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I was going to defend them by pointing out that if you bought the game at launch, and kept subscribing, you got the 'expansion' for free, and it's only F2P people and lapsed subscribers that have to pay.

But it's not, subscribers just get it half price, because they are indeed dicks.