@ gundato
I'm not sure if you agree with my point, don't agree at all or just kinda. :-)
@ gundato
I'm not sure if you agree with my point, don't agree at all or just kinda. :-)
Oh, I do. But the media attention that got was not about the game's treatment of women. It was about OH GOD SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN.Originally Posted by Nalano
I think holding works with completely different intents to the same standards is stupid.
If every character is one-dimensional, who cares if the M2F Korean Transgendered character is a parody? EVERYONE is a parody
If the point of the story is to be comedic, who cares if things aren't taken seriously?
But the moment you aspire to "more", you are held to a higher standard. But to hold the "drivel" to the same standard as a Shakesperean Epic as Directed by Clint Eastwood is just moronic.
People don't have issues with Ashley or Liara or Aribeth being too one-dimensional. They take issue when the female party members exist solely to be either schtupped or shoved in a refrigerator.
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Half Bruce Willis, half William Shatner.
Well, yeah, tabletop has the benefit of having live people represent all the social aspects of roleplaying, while computer games excel at the rulesets of said games.
But even so, NPC soldiers act really, really stupid, because having to actually fight a trained or even semi-trained fighting force would be an extremely frustrating if not wholly degrading experience on the part of the player. Why people expect dating sims to be any more realistic is beyond me.
Neither Ashley, Liara nor Aribeth are one-dimensional, however. All of them grow as characters over the course of several games, independent of your relationship with them.
I agree to some extent - a game like Saint's Row 3 is a pastiche of epic proportions, so the way it treats its characters is constantly on or well over the line of extreme parody. But GTA IV? I think it tries to be pretty hard to be 'serious' and 'gritty' at times, or to tell the story of the American Dream of Niko Bellic. I would say its excuse is much weaker.
Besides, sexism is sexism, just as racism is racism. The purpose of the work shouldn't matter really - it's like saying it's ok for a chump down the bar to use the n-word (what do you expect!) but it's not ok if an academic does it (he should know better!). It's despicable either way.
It's not okay for either of them to say so, but the academic has more of an influence on society than the chump, and as such is, yes, held to a higher standard.
Perhaps so, but if you're gonna take this analogy further (into legal territory) you end up with things like class justice. You either make one standard, or don't make one at all, or things get fuzzy really quickly. :-(
No, not at all. In fact, that is a completely different scenario.
If you MUST racially charge this:
It is the difference between a comedian (like Chris Rock's early work) making jokes about a particular race's cultural "weaknesses" without discussing the "strengths", and a "deep documentary" doing the same. We don't expect the opposite/non-"bashing" viewpoint with the former because it isn't needed. The latter is a completely different situation because it aspires to more and is marketed as more.
But that is really just trying to mask the issue. A better case would be
"I feel that the characterization of the lawyer in the latest Michael Bay movie was one-dimensional and superfluous"
VS
"I feel that the character of the lawyer in the latest oscar-bait drama was one-dimensional and superfluous"
Also, GTA4 should probably get a pass by virtue of the entire game being so poorly written and every character so horribly shallow that having no strong females is countered by having no strong males. It wasn't "demeaning" to any group. It just was bad.
Which, again, has nothing to do with anything. THe legal system and Dan Abnett's latest novel are two very different things, even if both involve law enforcement agents with firearms
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That's where MMORPG genre failed I think. I hoped it would put the computerized rule system with people playing actual roles. Sigh.
And I suppose you are right. But the dating sim part can be done better. Hell, I've played dating sims that are now over 10 years old which had girls rejecting you based on how you played your character ( your stats,actions whatever ) instead of going the RPG way of "everyone is attracted to you all the time, you just need to choose".
I'll grant that Liara ( and Ashley a bit ) were very well done. Liara is one of my favorites when it comes to growth. Even Jack had some growth, which I liked.. because I despised her in Mass Effect 2.
I think Liara was very well done. Ashley was trash though. Her character arc was "I don't like aliens" to "I may or may not still not like aliens, but I don't like cerberus more" to "Yay, I am a Spectre for some reason"
I would go so far as to say she probably had the worst character arc of all the multi-game party members (except maybe Kaiden, and even he at least had a background with some depth).
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I wasn't trying to charge anything with anything. :-( Just making an analogy between two kinds of hate, one being generally present and ok with a lot of people and the other much more touchy. I don't think the Chris Rock thing applies btw - the only reason why it's 'ok' it's because he is a comedian. It's a joke. Badly represented characters and images aren't a joke (unless they are a clear parody), they are just bad.
I still don't see how having one dimensional characters is any less worse in a 'bad' movie compared to a 'good' one. If anything, the reason why the bad movie is bad is because it's filled with badly written stuff. It just makes it bad, or worse than the good movie if you want. It doesn't give it a pass at all.
But anyway, I guess we have different opinions on the subject. Fair enough.
I think they didn't do much with Ash and Kaidan because you can only have one of them for "spoiler reasons" in 3 and you don't have them at all in 2.
Nowhere have I suggested differing punishments. However, each may warrant a different effort by the state to pursue legal recourse. A professor making public statements is indeed under different legal grounds than an idiot mouthing off in a bar.
Ashley calmed down. Went from Gung Ho Marine to somebody who's actually seen a bit of the galaxy. That's a decent arc.
Sandbox MMOs like Ultima Online or EVE (or private NWN servers) have roleplaying in that regard. Theme park MMOs give no incentive, because there are no roles to play except "dungeon spelunker."
Except that it isn't about "hate". Regardless of the crap Gearbox spouts, I don't think that Borderlands contains any real "hate" at all (aside from my hatred of Handsome Jack, that prick). But I also don't realy think there is a point to comparing the characterization to something like The Witcher or Planescape
The "Chris Rock thing" is "ok" because he is a comedian, and it is a joke.
Weak characters are "okay" in an action movie because we are mostly there to watch stuff blow up
You say "clear parody". Saints Row 3 is pretty god damned parody-y, and older GTAs were too. They are intentionally over the top in the name of humor. Yes, that only goes so far, but so far none of them have really had a blatant racial stereotype (that wasn't at least countered).
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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Funny enough, there are segments of Chris Rock's skits that he will not do because they attract the wrong audience. Black people/niggers, for instance.
Oh, I don't agree with the Bechdel test at all. :-) But I did love Fun Home!
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.
He could probably still get away with a lot of those jokes in stand-up (does he even do stand-up anymore?), but when he is giving an interview on a talk show (or even a news program), saying crap like that (in that manner) is a surefired way to get murdered and blacklisted. And saying that crap at all in the context of an interview about Osmosis Jones would just be stupid.
And I think that is the same thing here. Different genres/goals have different audiences and different standards they are held up to. If all you are making is "pulp", then people won't complain too much if some scenes fall flat. If you want to make a "best seler", then you better damned well have a good editor who can smack you in the face if you write a crappy scene.
Same with the social issue. If you are making something that is non-stop jokes/parody, then you have a lot of freedom (to the point that you can actually shove a dead woman in a fridge). The moment you start aspiring to make "the next great story", you better be damned careful how you write your characters. Because you have a different audience (even if it is mostly the same people) with different expectations.
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Indeed, ME2 basically encouraged you to cheat on your ME1 love interest with an achievement.
But 'see how it goes and what happens' is the primary point of most RPGs these days, especially Bioware ones. You're making choices and seeing what happens, that's where the appeal lies. Romance plots are just another part of that
Of course, a good romance plot should give you greater insights into the character involved and perhaps also influence the story somewhat. Hell, I'd go so far as to say Dragon Age 2 should have only had one romance plot: Anders. Because the story is so much better if you take that route, and how you eventually have to deal with what he does.
That's why most RPGs these days are shit, especially Bioware ones.
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