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

I should expand on that a bit, if this stuff is going to change at any point, given that it is pretty much a 100% business/profit driven venture, all the female non-white designers in the world aren't going to make a difference as long as the publishers keep looking at the bottom line and seeing it as sexstarved basement dwelling mysoginist violent high fiving dudes

most of msntrm games guardedly transgressive misogyny seems less overtly harmful than the deep-seated misogyny of p much all major hollywood films, reality tv &c &c like the degree to which 'women in videogames' are divorced for actual real life women is so great as to render the whole thing sorta disgustingly ludicrous but ultimately less 'problematic' than the fucked up messaging in like 'friends with kids' or w/e

i mean idk i guess i think my problem is with the way the thread qn is posed cuz i dont think casual racism/sexism is so much less accepted w/in video games than that it manifest in different ways and even the baseline assumption that women as exist as things to project yr fantasies onto or w/e is sorta '...'

like i guess if im drunk on the internet throwing together an argument like: 'characters' (enh) in games exist to serve as fantasy objects/projections of desire in more personal/direct manner than characters in other media & so theres less purpose in portraying nuanced/humanized characters, most characters are either conduits or roadblocks to pleasure &c &c

"...hence, it exploits...people!"

all the female non-white designers in the world aren't going to make a difference as long as the publishers keep looking at the bottom line and seeing it as sexstarved basement dwelling mysoginist violent high fiving dudes

absolutely could not disagree more. the kind of decisions you are talking about are not made at the $$$ level -- there's no cigar-munching guy who doesn't give a shit about games going "WHERE'S THE TITTIES" or something. those hands-off money people want to see 1.) sequels to successful franchises 2) whatever's hot (multiplayer modes, microtransactions, etc.) 3) shit they can write on the back of the box. it's depressing to say but i don't think the sex/racism is cynical. i think i'd be happier if it were. but the bottom line is the people who are making those decisions are at the """creative""" level. writers, artists, designers, producers.

on the comic book point btw isn't it a little unfair to say that that whole industry is a shitpile? i mean maybe i don't know wtf i am talking about because my roommate buys a LOT of comics but they're all like Habibi and Hark a Vagrant and Chris Ware & non Marvel/DC stuff. It seems that there's a lot of that kind of non-creepy-superboobs-type stuff out there?

that's a side note though. TLDR i've worked with & for a few of the bigger companies (EA, Atari) & a couple of smaller ones in the industry & i can tell you that the people who make the shitty unfeminist creative decisions are usually writers, or maaaaaybe producers (who are fyi the second-lowest paid people in the industry on average behind QA!) or maybe artists. Not shareholders and suits.

i played an hour each of deus ex and arkham city at a friend's, having already heard the complaints about racism and sexism, and what i was struck by was that the writing was actually offensively stupid on every other level too

Haha, and to think, the two biggest sexist targets now are Arkham City and DC Comics.

By the way, it seems to me that blog isn't really getting any milage out of the hulk thing. Outside of the caps and occasional reference to self in the third person, there's like no "hulk" to the style.

and what i was struck by was that the writing was actually offensively stupid on every other level too

tbf this is a problem with videogames in general

FCH has said that it's a deliberate affectation that's gotten him far more attention than when he wrote straight. I like his stuff. Yeah, he varies the amount of Hulkness by the post tho

on the comic book point btw isn't it a little unfair to say that that whole industry is a shitpile? i mean maybe i don't know wtf i am talking about because my roommate buys a LOT of comics but they're all like Habibi and Hark a Vagrant and Chris Ware & non Marvel/DC stuff. It seems that there's a lot of that kind of non-creepy-superboobs-type stuff out there?

For the record, the earlier conversation point from Will has been deleted and the thread is indexed again.
Though I think we'd all be interested in seeing that other thread will.

rip my post

a lot of this handwringing is over a certain subset of things on any platform that seem to be mainstream exemplars, because that's what the specialty shops showcase, but they are actually a minority of the market. probably stuff like archie, disney comics outsell big-boobed grimace warrior stuff (hark a vagrant is definitely outselling frank miller's latest castatrophe), and the most popular videogames are more like angry birds, and that's only racist against pigs. movies and tv are still bigger offenders, relatively speaking.

Do they outsell in general, or just in places like Berkeley?

Angry Birds, just the first version, just on iOS, has done 12 million units, all versions and platforms 700 million downloads. Arkham City across all platforms ~5 million.

Smaller margins, but way bigger audience.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,838 in Books

Holy Terror by Frank Miller
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,622 in Books

Ha ha, suck it, frank miller. pwned

i can say with some certainty that i will never need to buy a new frank miller book ever again

http://i.imgur.com/bXNsGl.jpg

and yet they went with a butt shot

Plus all the male characters are still muscly male power fantasies and not you know

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6173/6171158228_5b3c3e0991.jpg

lol or sigh?
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/04/potential-porn-site-sponsorship-causes-split-over-fighting-game-communitys-self-image.ars

I think the fighting game community is the same one that had a bunch of dudes earnestly defending trash-talking each other by shouting "get raped" and the like.

Did this get circulated around here or did I come across it somewhere else? I totally forget

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/sexual-harassment-as-ethical-imperative-the-ugly-side-of-fighting-games

i saw that situation as a horrible example; that stuff does happen unfortunately, but the nature of most hardcore fighting games involving face-to-face situations leads to people being more respectful that you would guess, especially compared to online

good thread.

boring answer but i think this is mostly due to a) writing being secondary to gameplay (if this is even a consideration - v. often it is not) and b) videogame writing being completely terrible and embarrassing 100% of the time.

lots of folks have already said this stuff but i am serriously struggling to think of one well-written game and i have played roughly a billion of them. i don't think it's a coincidence that we're still in the dark ages when dealing with nuanced topics... we're in the dark ages PERIOD. so we get bad guys shouting 'bitch' at girls bc its easy shorthand for 'edgy'. lazy writing bc these people are lazy/horrible writers.

Earthbound & Mother 3 both well-written, you can count on me to parrot that anywhere.

the last express is better than agatha christie (but this is a once-in-a-decade game, for the most part yeah even/especially the games lauded for their writing do not have very good writing)

agreed on mother/earthbound, very sweet yet haunting games

last express was pretty damn cool, especially because of the way the action happens regardless of what you're doing, and how the game itself was designed around this real-time story with the rewindable clock and such

planescape: torment is legendary, though it could be the nostalgia talking... i haven't played it in about ten years. but i loved the plot/characters, and there was a beastly amount of sheer high-quality text in it

shadow of destiny has all the hallmarks of crappy video game writing - crap dialogue, shallow characters, environments, etc., and as a game it's not very good. but the plot structure is pretty unique and magnificent. basically the concept behind the game is that you keep getting murdered, and given the chance to rewind/alter your destiny, but of course things keep going wrong. then there's time travel involved and a whole bunch of different people and timelines start getting messed with, and a crap load of endings before you get the "true" one that ties everything together. but i'm a sucker for Groundhog Day-type plots

also, not as serious, but i think the comedy writing in the 90s Lucasarts games is very high quality, not just the dialogue but the creativity and general wackiness involved in the puzzles

i see the point there that the writing should be secondary to the gameplay, in general, though it shouldn't mean it should be sacrificed altogether...

Like with Grim Fandango and Tim Schafer, Planescape cemented Chris Avellone's legacy forever. I got at least one other Ilxor in this thread to play the game just by mentioned that Sheena Easton voiced the hot chick love interest in the game.

yeah i was about to point to Mother 3 as being incredibly well written, even before seeing abbott's post

Planescape: Torment's real genius doesn't even start until you pump tons of points into the Nameless One's intelligence and his dialogue choices become ridiculous

Shigesato Itoi who wrote the Mother games is actual proper writer though, isn't he? (also the dad in Totoro!)
The best written games do tend to be the "show don't tell" ones though like Portal, exposition through cutscenes needs to die

Arkham City was written by Paul Dini, the creator of Harley Quinn, which makes the treatment of her by the story an extra layer of creepy to me

also before this thread, I didn't notice the sexism of AC as being overt and off-putting, mostly because I spent most of my time leaping off of buildings and shouting "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" at the television

I think you mean "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I'M RACIST"

I will admit that Batman shouting "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I'M RACIST" when he leaps off of buildings in AC would make this my favorite game of all time

let's get ZS on the phone and make this happen

The best written games do tend to be the "show don't tell" ones though like Portal, exposition through cutscenes needs to die

yes, yes, YES.

some good good examples of well-written games that I hadn't thought of. a definite 'yes' to earthbound (esp. bc a lot of the good stuff here happens while bumbling around and talking to incidental characters - it's videogamey and not just blindly aping the style of books/films), haven't played mother 3, and was considering grim fandango. it impressed me heavily at the time but it's been so long that I honestly can't say anymore.

I do think it's telling that we've only come up with only a handful of games but I think everyone is in agreement that these games are the exception (and a minor one at that) and not the rule anyway.

also, wow @ itoi being the dad in totoro!

Mother 3 much better written than Mother 2/Earthbound IMO.
Wld argue all the Phoenix Wright games were well-written, funny and sometimes suspenseful. Good female characters in those, too! Though not without some vid game yuckiness eg Trucy's magic panties.

oh videogamepanties

hahaha

feel that Bungie's games, esp. Marathon, are usually well-written although obv a tremendous dearth of female characters

a big factor that hasn't been directly mentioned yet is JAPAN. Japan is a sexist society and most of their art also includes that. and their video games make up a big part of the market.

http://i.imgur.com/V593t.jpg

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

― sfdgafhtehw (jjjusten), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 4:25 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i have the feeling that the fallout games would be better if there was more racism and sexism in them! mostly because i have the cynical feeling that if a 50's dreamworld collapsed into nuclear terror things would get racialist and bigman-dominated really quickly. you get a few 'bad pimp' characters here and there, and some evil psycho rapist villains, and there's the lingering presence of bigotry against ghouls which kind of stands in for other kids of prejudice.

but really there are moments when i felt like the game's unspoken racial equality and gay-positivity felt like, idk, controversy avoidance more than anything? maybe i'm too deep in the liberal bubble.

the fallout world is free of the the kind of hatefulness we see irl. people want to kill each other but not for the reasons people want to kill each other now, if that makes sense.

that's where things get dicey. when to be culturally tolerant means tolerating bigotry/sexism/etc. xpost

That cooking mama comic would be a lot funnier if they didn't have her getting beat the fuck up in it, what the hell.

Plus it activates the ILX/grad school-induced part of my brain that wants to sneer at its unsophisticated understanding of 'power structures.'
But anyway lol, the punchline is: submission by violence.

Plus there is the reactionary 'modern Bust magazine is half about crafting feminist' part of my brain that says wtf is wrong w/being a cooking, crafting mama anyway. That after I libeled those Imagine Girlz Makeup games.