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

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.

I thought cooking mama is a fun game; I like chopping daikon irl and on vid games.

ALSO I think it's wrong to say "JAPAN is sexist and that's the big factor," U.S. and Japan not in some kind of sexism contest, and if they were I don't honestly know who would win. U.S. is sexist too and to blame all this on Japan and not the ppl in the U.S. buying/supporting/etc this seems....not "casually racist," but...let me dial up Momus here, he would have some things to say about this.

i don't play many japanese games, doesn't seem that relevant to me.

the loci of video game sexism that i think of like penny arcade are US of A

Japan being sexist is a big factor on Japanese games being sexist. I am not commenting on games from other countries there.

I think that comic is more casually racist/sexist than Cooking Mama, is what I'm saying.

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.

― goole, Friday, April 6, 2012 12:27 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dont think its controversy avoidance so much as a conscious attempt to go against the grain! it certainly caused more controversy than if there hadn't been any gay characters in it at all. je sawyer wrote something cool on this topic:

http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2011/06/platonic-forms-of-marginalized.html

http://i.imgur.com/L5lir.png

holy lol

gamers are so smart

haha damn ppl are so ignorant

i guess what i'm trying to say is, the game would have felt more real to me, and braver, if there was NOT ONLY a great gay character like arcade gannon, but also some asshole who's like "what are you doing rolling around with this faggot?" i can't fully understand why there wasn't tho

iirc there were some sublimated hints here and there that people think the Legion is a bunch of angry gays, right?

(i'll have to read that sawyer piece)

veronica mentions her ex-girlfriend's Brotherhood of Steel family not looking kindly on their relationship

what i dig in fallout are the NCR recruitment posters that say "LADIES! EVERY ONE OF YOU THAT SERVES IS A SLAP ACROSS CAESAR'S FACE!"

"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."

i disagree that it is a gamemaker's responsibility to provide the hatefulness. that's the gamer's job.