Planetside 2 and the bulletproof bikinis of freedom

[innociv]

The thing with McDonalds was only to put the point across that we shouldn't tell other cultures what is culturally acceptable.

Now when it comes to stoning rape victims, or executing homosexuals, those are things you should intervine in.

In things like this, I think it's up to the Chinese customers to rise above sexism on their own and raise these issues themselves instead of a partner western company forcing their hand.

but the thing is, I find it mostly annoying that they are apparently trying to appeal to an audience that is not me.

I don't like these advertisements either, but they're not for me. Well, actually, I do like the pictures, http://game4v.com/threads/214629-Bo-...netside-2.html but I don't like that it's a publisher themselves that's done it as an advertisement.

[MiniMatt]

http://youtu.be/Gr6Wwb6Std0

FYI

Oh feckin' hell Where am I going to go for heart attack inducing horse burgers now?

[apricotsoup]

I think I'm more annoyed at how bad a photoshop job has been done to them, the faces in particular are starting to look like distorted mirror images and various areas are weirdly blurred or out of focus and it ends up looking even more creepy to me.
They could have at least hired someone decent to do it :E

[QuantaCat]

I think I'm more annoyed at how bad a photoshop job has been done to them, the faces in particular are starting to look like distorted mirror images and various areas are weirdly blurred or out of focus and it ends up looking even more creepy to me.
They could have at least hired someone decent to do it :E

If photoshoppers cost 1 buck an hour in czech republic, they must cost only cents in korea.

Which reminds me of that story that you can send film material to China for rotoscoping at 1c per frame. They have a farm of pensionists working old Shake macs.

[MiniMatt]

For very little reason other than a fascination over the sound of my own keyboard I knocked together some scribbling on this little flurry of lunacy:

http://weaselsandjam.wordpress.com/2...is-of-freedom/

I did drop a line to the SoE to see if they had an official stance but they didn't get back to me (which is actually entirely understandable).

Only really rehashes what we've already exhausted in this thread so nothing new. Though I did kind of skirt round jaguar skills note about The Sun and the Daily Mail and how any tits outrage really has to be tempered by the existence of Page 3; largely because I'm struggling to find a riposte to that point beyond rather weak arguments If you can't argue a point, pretend it doesn't exist. I learnt that off the internet

[jaguar skills]

Well, I don't completely agree with the order of things that you're getting angry about, but I still agree they're things that aren't on. It's tricky because I'm half in your camp and half in inno's, the west has a long and storied tradition of imposing its values and thinking it knows what's best for the world so I'm wary of following those errors.

At the same time, I'm not so sure history will judge a desire for equality with quite the same distaste as it did slavery or child labour. I still maintain that maybe the way to get there is to give women the opportunity to leer in the same way that the men do, rather than trying to stop the mouthbreathers that have already made their minds up.

Ah well, cie la vie. Let's get back to shooting each other in the face with laser artillery like normal, balanced human beings.

[Mohorovicic]

Wait wait wait - so having skimpy dressed chicks advertising games is "outrageous" in the west? But you'll "let it go" because China?

What in the actual flying fuck?

Okay first of all, that's a very cool case of double standards and hypocrisy you have there.

Second of all, skimpy dressed chicks are used to advertise games in the west too(Booth Babes are the primary example of this, with more extreme examples being stuff like Triss from Witcher appearing in russian Playboy), as well as everything fucking else.

[MiniMatt]

Likely last post as I don't want to end up bumping this from here to eternity - as noted it's getting in the way of shooting purple space elves in the face.

I'm utterly outraged by the whole thing. But I figure if attempting to make an argument one must appeal to the common ground rather than preach to the choir. I could go on about it being massively offensive to women, won't somebody think of the (sexualised) children, etc and I'd get lots of nods and beard stroking from those already in my camp whilst those with more nuanced views understandably (and arguably correctly) just dismiss it all as dog whistling from my western ivory tower of white middle class privilege.

Instead of detailing the offence caused to those who aren't in the targeted demographic, point out the insult to those that are - is it not rather insulting to teenage boys (chinese or otherwise) that publishers think the only thing they're interested in, and the only thing that can get them interested in a computer game is tits? Sure tits are great and all - but they're trying to sell computer games to teenagers. This is not a hard sell. You don't need to pull every sleazy marketing trick in the book.

The other approach is that it just looks like bad business sense. Car manufacturers in the 70s thought the only way to sell a Ford Cortina was to drape some scantily clad model over the bonnet; eventually they realised that women bought and drove cars too and this approach was hurting their sales. That's not to say manufacturers don't use sex to sell cars, they regularly do - only with a lot more subtlety and they often drop the tactic entirely. It's strange that industrial revolution heavy manufacturing business seems more savvy than the worlds' newest international businesses.

Now sure there are examples of this sort of thing everywhere we look, although booth babes are on the wane - Eurogamer Expo went from heavily discouraging to outright banning, and with not an insignificant chunk of irony - booth babes are allegedly banned in China (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20957848). But plenty of examples (like CES) still exist and undeniably much larger problems like slavery, child labour, disenfranchisement of race etc - but that one's a fairly easy argument:
I count 59 acts of the UK parliament that were passed in 1940. Whilst some of these were directly or tangentially related to WW2*, plenty were completely unrelated tinkering with education, marriage and tax laws. Just because there were more important things to worry about didn't mean that other problems had to be shelved.

*did consider describing WW2 as a massively multiplayer deathmatch, in keeping with the Planetside 2 topic, but figure it could be rather questionable. Too soon.


EDIT rather than BUMP:Update to SoE ticket received (no response yet from SoE press office or Smed - tho again, don't exactly expect them to respond to every grumpy blogger, even if they do have SIX twitter followers). Measured and fair enough response I guess, using arguments already discussed here - ultimately it's rather beyond a support operatives remit and more a strategic business level concern:

Hello,

Those shots are for the Chinese version of the game, published by
the9, which just entered Beta. That's the type of advertising that sells games
in China. Obviously the9 wants their version to do well so they are going with
what works well there. Have you had a chance to play any of the Chinese F2P
games? All of them have extremely stylized and scantily clad females. I agree,
it is ridiculous when we are looking at it, but that's what works there.


As for the forums posts. If you see any of them that are bad please
report them so the mods can take a look at it. Us Operatives here deal with the
in-game side of things only and have no say in forum moderation. Ive wanted a
red name for years, just because.

Lead Operative ******
Sony Online
Entertainement

[Rizlar]

Well, since the thread is wrapping up, thanks Matt for going to the effort of contacting SOE over this. As people have already pointed out, it's very easy to say 'well what can I do?' over this sort of thing, or to just preach to the converted, so kudos for actually doing something about it.

[Rocktart]

Which one is supposed to be Total Biscuit?

[Cooper]

Well, I don't completely agree with the order of things that you're getting angry about, but I still agree they're things that aren't on. It's tricky because I'm half in your camp and half in inno's, the west has a long and storied tradition of imposing its values and thinking it knows what's best for the world so I'm wary of following those errors.

This is an issue third wave feminism still goes over and over.

From the point of view of a bunch of poeple discussing this on English speaking forums, it does very much feel like it's a bunch of western people (men, mostly) passing judgement upon non-western cultures. That should make us feel awkward. The only sure way to avoid that is an alliance of feminist voices across cultures.

That's not gonna happen on the RPS forums. In the meantime, feminism is hardly de facto in the west, and stating how crap this all is (compare: The PS2 official forums. Advertsing in the west in general, as Moho pointed out.) trumps historical collonialist guilt.

Once we live in a society where we no longer use the same tools as the Chinese adverts (alebit somewhat less blatantly) and generally find that absurd as it is, then we can start worry about whether we are imposing western culture. But anti-objectification of women for commercial gain is not exactly a keystone of western culture... It's not like the fight has been won here yet; not by a long stretch.

[Mohorovicic]

From the point of view of a bunch of poeple discussing this on English speaking forums, it does very much feel like it's a bunch of western people (men, mostly) passing judgement upon non-western cultures. That should make us feel awkward.

But don't forget to tear off your clothes next time some orthodox arab burns his wife's face off with acid.

Then we can judge "other cultures" just fine!

[Cooper]

But don't forget to tear off your clothes next time some orthodox arab burns his wife's face off with acid.

Then we can judge "other cultures" just fine!

My point was clearly about the context of the judgement, not the judgement itself. or the "where to draw line" issue (i.e: face burning vs advert objectification).

A bunch of guys who have no real knowledge / of experience the cultural context of certain actions grouping up to pass judgement is pretty awkward. Even if it's "face melting is bad"; blatant ignorance over the cultural context of an action should make any judements we pass feel awkward. I was also, clearly, not saying that such awkwardness should stop us passing judgement. A proper awareness of the position from which your judgement comes makes it a better one.

Do you deliberately like picking particular parts of an argument out of context in order just to be combative?

[QuantaCat]

My point was clearly about the context of the judgement, not the judgement itself. or the "where to draw line" issue (i.e: face burning vs advert objectification).

A bunch of guys who have no real knowledge / of experience the cultural context of certain actions grouping up to pass judgement is pretty awkward. Even if it's "face melting is bad"; blatant ignorance over the cultural context of an action should make any judements we pass feel awkward. I was also, clearly, not saying that such awkwardness should stop us passing judgement. A proper awareness of the position from which your judgement comes makes it a better one.

Do you deliberately like picking particular parts of an argument out of context in order just to be combative?

Yes he does, and if you remember from the PS2 section, hes always negative as well. there is a button for that called "report", its just for such situations.

[Mohorovicic]

My point was clearly about the context of the judgement, not the judgement itself. (...) I was also, clearly, not saying that such awkwardness should stop us passing judgement.

Clearly you give your clarity of thought too much credit, because I'm hard pressed to find either of these "clear" messages in your post.

[QuantaCat]

Clearly you give your clarity of thought too much credit, because I'm hard pressed to find either of these "clear" messages in your post.

I honestly understand your annoyance and hatred for certain topics and ideas/concepts, but for the love of fuck, can you please stop posting one liners that are so filled with hate directed at forummembers, and start either not posting whatever you were gonna say, or dont direct it at a person, but a concept?

After all, every forum member has something of value to say, you, cooper, matt, the photoshopper that made those posters, all of them.

luv, quanta.