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

xp does this hold true for all sorts of art? should i not give my opinion about a movie that includes a scene i think detracted from it? or a book from the 19th century with antiquated views on race (or a book from 2012 with the same)? i can see with some great works of art you might be loathe to start removing stuff (i love gogol and hate his anti-semitism, but i can't imagine excising it from his books), but c'mon, arkham city is not a great work of art, and the use of the word 'bitch' in it does not make it a greater than it would be without it.

btw who is the good guy that uses bitch in arkham city, because if thats supposed to be jack ryder or whatever (the reporter dude) i would say he only codes as a good guy because he is not a literal criminal? pretty sure he is never a sympathetic character or meant to be one

also the fact that arkham city is at best a minor offender when compared to like most other games that arent pokemon level content prob says a lot about this question even given the idea that it is problematic in a sexist sense.

i think you can argue it improves it or makes it worse. when you talk about removing it entirely, my radar goes up that you aren't giving credit to those ramifications. and then by saying - well nolan didn't need it - my radar really goes up that you are discarding a billion fucking factors that make my experience playing this game far far far far away from sitting and watching the dark knight.

For me, the problems in tone of AC are both in the sexualization of every single female character(incl. changing Harley Quinn's costume _again_) against either the history of the character or even their continually rebooted current selves, and the vibe/dialogue.

One can only shudder at what would have happened had they included Paul Dini's lifelong fetish, Zatanna.

I have more to say on this later, but there is a very definite difference between AC and Saints Row III(I haven't played SR2 past 10 minutes). SR3 is a deliberate and complete joke/cartoon/farce/parody/pisstake and a shitloada absurdist fun, whereas AC is a mash-up of takes on Batman that don't always work together and with a far darker and un-fun tone. There are bits in AC that read like what would happen if Frank Miller had done TDKR _now_, as opposed to how only slightly crazy he was 25 years ago.

I think it's really sweet (but also, yeah, a little creepy) that Paul Dini has spent his entire career writing about a thinly veiled fictional comic book version of his wife!

I think you got that the other way round; Paul Dini has been writing Zatanna for like 20 years now. He married Misty Lee sometime in the last 7-8 years.

here's her back in '06:

http://www.hyperborea.org/photos/comic-con-2006/img038.jpeg

God only knows how much Zatanna pr0n he asked Bruce Timm to draw for him.

oooh. 100% weird.

Correction: I have no idea what year they got married. I do know he got this own version of Zatanna published at Top Cow some years back, called Madame Mirage:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=10406

Based on his wife, natch. What can ya say, dude has deliberately retro tastes.

kinda weird, but kinda makes sense, no?

Pretty much. Dude's livin' the dream.

His dream, as it were.

yup yup

but on the topic: i generally blame the same unfortunate demographic loop that happened with mainstream comic books, that for the most part, it's the young, straight male audience that is catered to with this kind of stuff, who then become the people making the games and so on. i say this as a collaborator, as I was and/or am still very much into modern games "for gamers by gamers" (thanks Interplay), if not necessarily the unfortunately attached sexism and racism that's already become a legacy

(once in a while, my mind gets blown though, like upon realizing that some of the people who composed my favorite soundtracks in the 8- and 16-bit eras were actually, gasp, women! at Capcom and Konami)

(side note: during the end credits of Saints Row 3 there are a load of production photos of the Volition crew - not surprised that there were a few women, but that any women at all were involved in that game lol)

racially it's generally the same kind of thing, add white to male (or Japanese, I guess, but it's not quite the same)

there needs to be more diversity in creators, a larger breadth of content and experiences drawing from more sources, and so on, which is slowly, slowly happening, i just hope it happens faster than it took for the movie and comics industries

but wait a sec - were we talking about the sexism/racism in the gaming "community" (unfortunately overshadowed by 12-year-old online FPS racist brats that don't represent me) or the systematic racism/sexism in-game content, stories, characters etc.? i was assuming the latter

i intended to talk about the latter, simply because there isnt any answer other than like electroshock in the controllers that can really fix the former unfortunately

also, Saints Row 3 vs. Batman is an interesting comparison i think, if only for the fact that they were both big AAA titles that came out at the same time, but tonally are completely different

Batman right off the bat, I felt a little uncomfortable at EVERY single woman in the game being referred to as a bitch, a rape target, or whatever (seriously). something about the misogyny being such omnipresent window dressing, that was never really addressed in the game at all except to say "that chick is hot" or "how hasn't she been raped yet?" or "she's a crazy bitch!" was odd. the Film Crit Hulk posts were pretty on point, I think.

saints row 3 though - the context is a lot lighter and it didn't bother me at all, though the sexism in it is probably much, much worse. one mission requires you to gun down a small army of strippers and prostitutes dressed as hot cops and bikini cowgirls. they have been "inivited" to a celebratory party for the Saints gang taking over a neighborhood. in the middle of one giving a lap dance to one of your gang members, she pulls out a pistol, to which your dude yells "THESE BITCHES ARE PACKING HEAT!" The name of this chapter? Trojan Whores. so, probably worse, but so silly and stupid as to get a pass?

at the same time i feel like i should feel some more outrage as i honestly do hate when people use that excuse "we're offending EVERYBODY!" as a pathetic excuse to use racist/sexist humor, ignoring their privilege

heh all too true jj

Who was it, even Talia al ghul has the exposed midriff deep hemline and skintight black leather

i really think stuff like this is way more damaging...
http://images.swap.com/images/vg/96/1139096.jpg

yes, all that shitty gender essentialist shovelware for girls

http://static2.cdn.ubi.com/ncsa/parentscorner/website/img/babyz-fashion.jpg

I'm not saying that's "worse" than anything that fedora guy in the odious IGN video would have devised, but it's definitely bullshit.

They both stem from the same problem of not really seeing grown women or young teenage girls as people/

Well more importantly re: the mechanics of this whole thing, as consumers I fear

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)