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

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.

abbs otm

yeah agreed.

yeah, lets dial up momus so he can justify his yellow fever over submissive women to us.

why did momus stop posting here

he was banned iirc

Too busy jacking it onto his girlfriend's face.

It's true; dude used to post about that unreservedly.

xp or that too

btw there are crazy japanese rape games that are not sold in the US iirc. so good luck putting that on the American consumer.

Part of why the racist/sexist bits can get downplayed in the Fallout world is that you have a clear external enemy that everybody could project their animus against: super mutants and ghouls. With supermutants running around actively trying to ice normals, and rabid ghouls serving in the place of zombies, those should easily fill the slot of "shit to fear & hate" before all the humans get around to going at other humans.

I hope in the upcoming Wasteland 2 kickstarter project, they keep a satirical or just funny tone to everything, only basing it on 80s ideas instead of post-war/pre-cuban-missile-crisis ones

are japan rape games really chart toppers though? i really think japan's cultural influence on video games esp w/r/t nintendo is more infantilization (and therefore inherently less racist, less sexist) there's really no way around being disgusting if you want games that are more "mature". if they're handled poorly, they're going to be disgusting, and even if they're handled well, they're still going to be disgusting.

I guess the only solution is to start importing vid games from all the world's many sexually progressive, wholly egalitarian countries.

utopiastan's video games are totally awesome

tbh if I lived in that country I wouldn't need the numbing escape of vid games

lol abbs otm again

i really think japan's cultural influence on video games esp w/r/t nintendo is more infantilization (and therefore inherently less racist, less sexist)

are you fucking kidding me

do you not really remember, for example, Barrett in FFVII, or all of the grossly exaggerated Italianisms from the Mario games that I posted upthread, or this:

oh no! SPANKING VIDEO GAME! oh no!

xp the reason they're totally awesome is because you live them

mario only gets progressively racist the more gritty and "real" he gets. you'd need to have 'call of duty' level mario to really get offensive.

Can I say the world's progressive/sexually explicit video games also sound boring and creepy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Life_%28video_game%29

"Night Life was marketed as an aid for the sex life of couples. It included such features as a schedule to determine a woman's period, and a catalog of possible sexual positions, with artwork consisting of black-and-white outlines."

Maybe just that one does.

Different aims of a product. when games are designed without the actual gameplay or game-ness forefront, you can get drops in quality. Its one of the reasons educational or advocacy games aren't as good; their primary focus is on teaching or advocacy, not necessary on badass gamery. Implicit messaging in a game because explicit, and subtext becomes text, tending to make you a helluva lot less likely to accept or consume it.

thus the boringness.

it makes more sense to compare those Japanese sex games to Japanese pornography, which it's very much in line with

Abbottttt were you also offended by the chappelle wayne brady skit

I was offended by the horrible cgi

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

ha this was p much the source of my question about whether mass effect lets you roleplay a homophobe

ernest adams & the Straight Male Gamer http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/04/08/equality-in-the-gaming-industry-interview-with-ernest-adams/

innerestin'