Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

well sure, WoW isn't like Duke Nukem, but the point is more that the whole "moving comic book" medium that their art direction is based upon is super normalized in how the genders should be represented, to the point where even for races where it doesn't make sense for the males to be burly he-men and the women to be curvy sexpots, they still are

also, there's the female night elf dance (which is based on the famous Alizee clips that were zooming around the Internet in the early 00s):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taPuNAaMZ5w

copying this over from the other thread because i thinks it a very interesting and good point to think abt

i wonder if part of it is because games are often a solo experience (though not always of course) whereas movies, at some point in their release cycle at least, are experienced collectively? in other words, because the casual racism is easier for people to swallow by themselves as opposed to in a group?

― 1986 tallest hair contest (Z S), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:29 PM (25 minutes ago)

okay lol @ Mario being so mainstreamed that all of the "MAMA MIA" and "IT'SA ME, MARIO!" interjections don't even register as caricature anymore

i disagree w/ ZS's assertion esp bc i think the most racist/sexist behavior re video games happens in their most collective experience (multiplayer)

Yeah I think this is pretty easily chalked up to creators pandering to (and being born of) the overwhelmingly 15-35 male demographics of AAA game buyers. The women and men who like and play AAA games but don't like sexualized representations of women in these games (and also comic books) make their voices heard but the majority of the audience would be bummed if you took away their lizardwoman tits.

duh DJP you cant be racist against italians anymore, the godfather fixed that forever

it's well documented that gaming community demographics are a) incredibly skewed towards white males and b) fairly skewed towards people with poor social skills, which seems like a believable cause of misogyny and just general misanthropy all around

did Mario ever say those lines or are we forcing racism on the poor guy? are we blaming his video game char for his cartoon version? important issues in my work day

"it's a-me, Mario!" the sound of booting up Super Mario 64 iirc.

haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7jF8_badV4

lol gg then

fyi listening to that may drive you crazy

the Mario Kart one is also insane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zszjSeK_F5Q&feature=related

"So long, gay Bowser!"

Alot of this sounds like hes sleeping with someone. *barfs*
PeachyzeldagirlXD 3 weeks ago

Do u say "ravioli!" when u fuckin?

did they really get roberto benigni to do the voices?

Everybody knows that Mario's wet dreams involve pasta and Bowser.

it's well documented that gaming community demographics are a) incredibly skewed towards white males and b) fairly skewed towards people with poor social skills, which seems like a believable cause of misogyny and just general misanthropy all around

I worked at a gaming geek/comic book store for a couple years and this kind of stuff is everywhere. the idea that females without massive bobs existed at some point is lost on these people

haha awesome typo

"I like the writer but does the artist have to make every female character's hair so big?"

i'ma luigi. nambar wan.

oh man my old college roommate used to say "yeah, peach has got it" in a squeaky ass voice all the time. mad nostalgia.

http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/63/Bobs1.jpg

I never played the Horde side of WoW with any regularity so I didn't realize that the trolls were all Jamaican until way way late in the game when I started a troll character because I was bored. Reading the quest text for most of the starter area was PAINFUL.

there's a ton of gender normalization in movies too, yeah?

im def not saying that movies are immune but i dont think you can make the argument that movies even approach the overt O_O aspects of video games wrt either of these

(I also used to play WoW with the sound off and either Vent or iTunes going, so I missed a good chunk of the voice acting)

oh yeah for sure, and movies as a genre are much more mature. but it seems to me that anytime you throw a lot of money at a project (either a blockbuster movie or a blockbuster game) you're gonna end up w/ some pretty unreasonable gender representations

re: relative badness of video games to movies, for that to be true then the racism/sexism would have to be toned down in game-to-movie adaptations, and it seems like in most cases it just got worse.

also feel like games HAVE to make gamers empathize w/ the game in a way that movies do not - movies can take more risks that way

Todd Solondz presents: Happiness, the Video Game

I always thought Tomb Raider the movie was made just to quiet all the feminist groups that complained about the video game, saying things like "no REAL woman could possibly look like that", well, lo and behold

also in movies you actually have real actresses whereas if you're making a game you can just crank up the boob slider

re: relative badness of video games to movies, for that to be true then the racism/sexism would have to be toned down in game-to-movie adaptations, and it seems like in most cases it just got worse.

Can you give an example of this? I think in many cases, it's more the medium of being presented something as a movie rather than a game making it easier to notice the source material's dodgier aspects.

i know i am probably missing some counterexamples here but it seems like the new fallout stuff has actually done a pretty good job of avoiding these pitfalls considering what a massive game francise its been

oh man I remember reading an interview with the creators of the first Tomb Raider game where the art director almost verbatim said "you're spending 20 hours staring at this character's bum so it might as well be a nice one"

also in movies you actually have real actresses whereas if you're making a game you can just crank up the boob slider

there are a few real actresses I'd like to introduce you to

casual sexism is pretty accepted in rap music, along with casual homophobia and racism in the form of anti-semitism

I remember an interview with the creators of Tomb Raider, a few months before it came out, where they were like "if you're gonna spend the whole game looking at a butt it may as well be a really nice ass, high five broooooooseph *jumping chestbump*"

WTF??? Xpost

hahahaha

ha there is probably something to the idea that the minute graphics got past the 8-bit stage the next logical progression was for game designers to think "oh shit now we can model T&A far more accurately"

has anybody ever seen Z S and DJP in a room at the same time before

boob slider:

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

also in movies you actually have real actresses whereas if you're making a game you can just crank up the boob slider

... why does my lizard lady have tits.

This thread is comedy username gold

wd play all the games with massive shadebobs

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=shadebobs&tbm=isch

Seriously didn't see that since I'm Zinging it and I'm slow. that interview was apparently very influential for us!

The Dead or Alive series spent an inordinate amount of time working on a super accurate physics engine just so they could claim to be the fighting game with the most realistic breast bounces

lol this was xposted by dayo

there's something to the argument that the fleshing-out of things is responsible, and that more sophisticated graphics/sound enables greater racism/sexism, but the dodgier aspects of movies are made dodgier by the movie. it's not as if it somehow revealed ugliness lurking beneath, e.g. casting leguizamo as luigi in super mario movie.

They didn't really say broseph - it was a more innocent time.

Every Dragon Age game has a diverse cast and the possibility of queer romance, why would anyone expect this one not to?

Tbc I know there's a cottage industry of whining about this stuff regardless.

Half of them were probably 8 when the first one came out I guess

Also funny that it's like a single player, microtransaction-free, seemingly high quality PC port that you can buy direct from Steam for a reasonable price and the Serious Gaming Justice guys are like...your character can optionally have top scars so this is everything wrong with gaming and the world

there was no traction on that stuff with BG3, i guess because the overall response was so positive?

You'd think, but an acquaintance watched me play a bit of bg3 and asked "is that the game the bigots on the internet are angry about?".

I guess that alongside the bigot outrage cottage industry there's also a "point and laugh at the bigots" industry. Not drawing any moral equivalence, though I do worry about letting these ppl take up your attention, even if it is just to mock them.

But yeah bg3 was so insanely huge that you'd think the chuds would've given up on fantasy RPGs where you can kiss someone as a battle setting.

Have not been following the Dragon Age furor closely, but did come across a clip today of a cutscene from the game that was essentially a lecture on pronouns, misgendering, and how to appropriately apologize for misgendering.

Worthy topics, but it was executed in an admittedly clunky, embarrassing way that maybe is not doing the cause any favors. Kinda asked to be dunked on.

Have no idea if that's indicative of the game as a whole or just one scene the CHUDS seized on.

Microsoft’s elevation to a primary target of the boycott follows new reporting published this year about the company's involvement in the siege on Gaza, which has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians (including 15,613 children under the age of 18). The Guardian reports Microsoft has “deepened its relationship” with occupation forces, with documents showing that “Microsoft’s products and services, chiefly its Azure cloud computing platform, were used by units across Israel’s air, ground and naval forces, as well as its intelligence directorate” during what Human Rights Watch and UN experts have called acts of genocide.

The Associated Press reports Azure is being used by the Israeli military to compile and search through information gathered from mass surveillance. The Guardian's report also indicates there are uses of the tech on air-gapped computers. This has all been profitable for the company: internal company data and documents reviewed by AP journalists shows Microsoft entered a three-year, $133 million contract with the Israeli Ministry of Defense in 2021, and The Guardian reports Microsoft has generated $10 million in deals from "engineering support and consultancy services" since 2023.

This week, Microsoft fired an employee for protesting during the company's anniversary event, while others previously began the No Azure for Apartheid campaign from within, whose petition BDS urges consumers to sign. In 2024, Google similarly fired employees who protested the company’s contracts with the Israeli government.

https://aftermath.site/microsoft-bds-games-journalism

Seeing that posters here still went ahead and played the new Doom, is it because they didn't know about the boycott?

idk, not everyone participates in boycotts though

Maybe they should?

I boycott Microsoft by default because their products are hot garbage and always have been? But this is privilege

I only play video games that are available on my ipad anyway

Maybe people here should reconsider supporting a company tied to the IDF?

I mean I’ve cancelled my gamepass subscription, but that’s going to have literally zero impact on anything at all.

Sorry for the very belated response, but in the effectiveness of boycotting MS, it worked before in 2020:

In response to BDS pressure, in 2020 Microsoft divested 74 million USD from AnyVision, a facial recognition tech company that powers Israel’s illegal system of apartheid check points, mass surveillance and human rights violations. #DropAnyVision #BDSVictory

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/as-rockstar-accuse-fired-staff-of-leaking-secrets-unions-launch-street-protests-against-publisher-take-two

Last week, GTA 6 developers Rockstar Games suddenly fired around 30 UK-based workers on a charge of "gross misconduct". According to the UK's IWGB Game Workers Union, the firings are in fact retaliation against staff for attempting to unionise, as is their right under UK law. They called it "the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry."

This week, Rockstar pushed back against these claims in a new statement to Bloomberg, accusing the fired employees of sharing "confidential information on a public forum". The IWGB insist, however, that the "public forum" alluded to was just a private Discord channel for IWGB members and Rockstar developers to discuss working conditions and unionisation efforts, and that no confidential information was shared. The IWGB have also organised gatherings across the UK to show solidarity for the affected Rockstar staff. This morning, I attended one such gathering - a protest outside Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive's offices in London.

The gathering was small but lively, consisting of both unionised game developers and representatives from affiliated IWGB unions of cleaners, university staff and charity workers. Protesters chanted, let off coloured smoke, blew airhorns, played drums, gave speeches in Spanish and English, and offered fliers to passers-by. There were official IWGB banners and more targeted, improvisational placards, such as "All you had to do was follow the damn law, Rockstar!" - a reference to an infamously annoying pursuit mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas...

...

"There's a real sense in the industry of the need to organise from these workers, who are passionate about the work they do, but also have seen the conditions they often have to work under - whether that's you know, seven-day weeks, or whether that's toxic behaviour in the workplace," Marshall told me. "They've seen a need to build unions. So there's this real positive movement across the industry around the world to be building unions. And that same community has really showed up for these workers during this difficult time."

I mean I’ve cancelled my gamepass subscription, but that’s going to have literally zero impact on anything at all.

― JimD, Sunday, June 15, 2025 8:10 AM (six months ago)

I'm ashamed of this post. Happily, it turns out I was completely fucking wrong. Good update here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybj10537yi4

I'm heartened that you changed your mind, hopefully others might take your lead too.

Also, re: that MS presentation on Azure's role in the IDF: "it's a platform that's a weapon." JFC, the amorality is appalling.

xbox was already on a pretty downward trajectory so any additional pressure against them has more leverage than you might think

https://nogamesforgenocide.com/

Don't really know anything about Arc Raiders, but I did see something in passing that the online community (maybe it's coop?) initially made a valiant effort to fight toxicity. But apparently that lasted ... a month.

Bad takes here from dev:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/edmund-mcmillen-on-assembling-mewgenics-meow-cameo-list-the-inclusion-of-people-with-clashing-ideologies-felt-appropriate

having these people provide voices doesn't bother me as much as the game being named Mewgenics lol

"Someone who has different beliefs than you" oh fuck off, this ultra-moderate patronising shit is always the worst. People who want to curtail the rights of others to exist and to be seen are not having a difference of opinion that can be debated to a resolution you smug piece of shit

mcmillen is weird because he really does seem to be only an edgy dumbass and nothing more. he's the sort of guy who you might have expected to go fully off the right-wing deep end by now but hasn't and has just stuck to this sort of detached trolling, which feels almost quaint? some of these choices are in incredibly poor taste even for him though

feels very 00s internet style naive, which tracks because hes an old newgrounds guy who makes games about poop and pee and probably isn't very online

Yay Steam. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/this-is-personal-for-me-creators-of-game-about-suing-murderous-billionaires-cancel-microsoft-deal-and-join-no-games-for-genocide-boycott

https://mastodon.social/@jplebreton/116355757033992032

for those tracking John Carmack's descent into right wing total moral disorientation, he's now at "Palmer Luckey should buy Wired and do to it what Elon Musk did to Twitter".
he's full fash at this point. totally gonna deliver AGI by 2030 though.

that's not totally surprising, but very disappointing nonetheless