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

well part of it is that if you just go over the top offensive towards EVERYONE, it's hard to feel like anyone is getting singled out

― God, Music and Romeo and Juliet (DJP), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 4:45 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except that this is exactly how horrible d-bags excuse their horribleness all. the fucking. time.

wait jjjusten you are degloving nerds with a giant purple dildo?

I'm watching gameplay footage of SR3 and it's just a lot of crotch punching

like basically the difference between the GTA series and the Saints Row series in how they come across to me in their presentations is that I feel like GTA is trying to Tell A Story that I really have no interest in and also find at its core somewhat offensive, whereas Saints Row is basically just an excuse to string incidences of mayhem together with little concern for logic, character identification or plausibility

having not played either game series, I don't know if those impressions actually make sense

except that this is exactly how horrible d-bags excuse their horribleness all. the fucking. time.

in most cases, those horrible d-bags aren't horrible to, say, their white bro friends, which massively undercuts their excuses

there is also a difference between humor in entertainment and behavior in polite society and how a comment may be true in one of those contexts and false in the other

So, Mario was voiced by Ahmed Best all along?

IGN: No, not mine. But it's OK for me to see other people's girlfriends... (Laughter.)

plz god remove IGN from this earth thx.

IGN: How about having the opportunity to have sex with the DOA characters?

Itagaki: Well, we felt that would disrespectful to the characters.

IGN: Haha, yeah. How about forced sex?

Itagaki: What is wrong with you?

IGN: Haha, nothing. Haha.

Haha, nothing. Haha

that ign stuff does bring up a good question, which is why very little mainstream/conventional game review attempts to deal with these sorts of issues, let alone even mention them? like it kind of makes sense for somebody to have at least mentioned some of the crazy stuff that pops up time to time in these games, but frankly the only time where i see this stuff mentioned is on uh ilg tbh.

b/c mainstream/conventional game reviews are all getting beaucoup payola from the publishers and again primarily written by the same poorly socialized rape culture audience

Here is a picture of the interviewer:

https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/841283041/DougPerrywdaughterVivi_1.jpg

call CPS imo

idk silby i dont think that mainstream game reviews are that tacitly dumb/unpleasant - again i wonder if it comes down to fear of the audience. like if you say that resident evil 5 might have a tiny smidge of racism the nerds are going to bum rush your forums looking for blood or something

Oh wait this thread is reminding me: have we mentioned the massive shitstorm that erupted when Film Crit Hulk put out that first post deconstructing the weird misogynist shit in Arkham City?

http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/goddammit-video-games-the-first-few-hours-of-arkham-city-is-lots-of-fun-but-super-duper-sexist/

oh man, that led to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb5ev2Dp4I0

there was definitely some over-sexualization of the female chars in arkham city -

the sexist dialogue gets back to what i thought about the deus ex character: can you have a racist/sexist character in a video game? certainly you can do that in a way in books and movies and people don't jump on the writer as being a racist.

meaning can you have a racist/sexist protagonist?

there are ways that an author frames/contextualizes the racism/sexism of the character that implies+creates distance between the author and the protagonist. the less of a distance between the authorial voice and the protagonist's, the more you have to wonder whether the protagonist is speaking for the author (or that their ideologies, at least in this regard, are aligned cf. joseph conrad). this requires an author who has a strong command of his own voice, and the voices of his character, or else even unintentionally they will collide, interfere with one another, other voices will show up (bakhtin says this is a feature of lit, not a bug). video game writers lack the sophistication + skill at writing to draw these differences carefully. that's the favorable interpretation. the unfavorable one is that their ideology is inseparable from their characters.

That ign video ***holy shit***

i think part of the bigger question for me is why movies/books have largely moved on from racist (sexist less so) portrayals of characters but thats kinda frequent in VG world

like why are video games still long duk donging it in the 2012 basically

I'm kinda glad that I got out of gaming by the time GTA3:SA rolled around

it definitely requires more skill if its the protagonist. but the thugs in arkham city are criminals that you beat to a pulp and you can do it with catwoman.

xpost to jjjusten - thats why I am less inclined to worry about my point. audience obv doesn't need any more exposure to racism/sexism.

bnw you should read part two which addresses both of those points

http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/hulk-vs-arkham-city-round-2-bitches-be-trippin/

still, if the punishment delivered to the thugs ever seemed like a response to their sexism, or the game in some other textual way discussed their sexism, ie if the sexism was used discursively in any way, it might've been different. instead, at best it's just a very shallow way to sketch out their character, and left undiscussed it becomes problematic itself. ie: using sexist language to indicate that these are bad guys submerges the sexism as just a heuristic instead of its own very real thing. moreover, i think the hulk's point (i haven't read his piece in awhile) was that the sexism in AC becomes this rote form of titillation - repetitive, constant, until its on equal footing with other banter that it should not be on equal footing with.

i think what i'm saying is that you could write a video game with a sexist character, and have that character be distinct from the author(s), but a) sexism would have to play a more major, central role to the story than in Arkham City (you can't just have a sexist character and not have it mean anything larger for the themes of the game), and b) it would have to demonstrate the more serious consequences of sexism (the structural consequences, the violent consequences, the consequences for relationships and real women), instead of just leaving it with a bunch of thugs saying the word 'bitch' every 5 minutes.

this thread is starting to make me hate ppl

might have something to do w/ the fact that making a compelling game is arguably harder than making a compelling record or film or painting or whatever else -- not "harder" in that "there's less to them" but in that there is a greater barrier of entry to making a game -- meaning that the people who can make games are the ones who have to go through the traditional systems of education, where that kind of sexism and racism are institutionalized. we also have a generation starting to make games now who are going to kind of be the worst -- the early millenials who have "been into games" since they were young at least in NA are largely white, and largely male, and largely priveleged, because they are the ones whose parents would be most likely to be able to afford/be willing to buy game systems for their tykes. The elitism that comes out of that, where it's like Bob is more "legit" because he had a nintendo and Sally is less "legit" b/c she only started w/ games when she got a PS2 as an adult w/ her own money is a part of that previously-mentioned institution.

That said as more kids are able to get computers in USA these days and it's less of "a thing" maybe the next generation of developers will be cooler about this stuff (even if only a small minority of them vs NONE AT ALL of them) and we can get some compelling equalist works.

sorry if this idea got posted above, i just kind of plopped it out right now b4 going out of the house.

gamers are the worst, and gaming culture is the worst. games tho are awesome bc they drip endorphins into your brain drip drip drip until your nervous centers explode with pleasure.

i dunno, if you want "gritty" batman video game experience, i think you're going to have to accept that it's probably going to come out as more trash than moral uplift. lego batman is pretty sexism/racism free i think.

hulk makes the point that over two batman movies christopher nolan was able to make sufficiently gritty batman experiences without the word 'bitch.'

now, u know, nolan may just be our generation's greatest writer and thinker. or maybe not being a loud obnoxious sexist asshole is a very low bar that most gamers and game designers still can't clear

pretty sure nolan will drop a few b-bombs when princess catwoman appears

btw I was on the metro a week ago around the time that school were being let out and when I was going up the escalator there was this group of kids behind me complaining about how all the good gamertags are always taken

that has nothing to do w/ this thread but this is the only game thread I have posted in in a while

"it's like dude you spend a month thinking of a good tag and then it's gone man"

agree with part 2 some places, disagree others. don't think you can ever pin down intent and I don't fully buy his equation for tone/context. but game maker is still responsible for how their work is interpreted. that's where I would concede it shouldn't be in there.

xposts i like the nolan movies but that has zero bearing on anything, imo.

why? what's your opinion? if the argument is that you need that word in your game to make it an appropriately gritty batman game, isn't another gritty batman game (especially a widely popular one) in a different genre a good way to evaluate that claim?

disagree because they are not going for the same tone

don't think you can ever pin down intent &
but game maker is still responsible for how their work is interpreted.

these two are kinda sides of the same coin

bnw, what kind of tone do you think that liberal use of the word 'bitch' achieves?

lego batman's sort of gritty to be honest. i don't think the nolan movies are a bad comparison in that it equally comes off as trash in places where it tries to be gritty (c.f. bale's VOICE)

bnw, can you elaborate about the differences you see in tone? i suspect that any differences you'll point out will not invalidate the point that the word isn't necessary in creating the tone of Arkham City

you gotta chill on that tact, dayo. i know its funny on the borad but it kills discussion dead.

i think there is more then 1 way to make a gritty batman story. arkham city is clearly not nolan's batman, takes about 5 seconds to grasp that. the judgment of whether it is "necessary" is where I get hung up. its not one I am comfortable with.

not excusing its use here per se but i have some suspicion that game makers that are shooting for a teen rating but want to make things gritty etc might have taken it into account that "bitch" is one of the few swears that are going to be allowed within those boundaries.

lol bnw sorry dude, you are hoisting yourself on your own petard most times

stuff like this tends to be a little more useful discussionwise when peeps dont try to get personal imo

but yknow ilx and all

mordy - i think you could probably define those differences in tone, but when you get to trying to measure or quantify any of that in such a way that you could add or subtract elements and still have the same outcome - that's where I lose confidence in the judgment.

i would like to see bnw mount a defense of the use of the word 'bitch' in the game arkham city, particularly as how it pertains to the game successfully transmitting its tone and voice to the gamer (assuming that the tone + voice is not 'sexist'). also, i'd like the defense to go beyond, 'i'm not defending the game's use, but i can see how if they lazily wanted to make it seem edgier, this was a pretty thoughtless way to do it.' or at least an acknowledgement that deferring to artistic choice, or to being non-judgemental (as though ppl never criticize all kinds of art for all kinds of things) is a copout.