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

youtube keeps "recommending for me" horrible anti-Sarkeesian videos with annoying names like "Feminism vs FACTS" and it's bumming me out to see them in my sidebar (also bummed out by whatever part of youtube's algorithm thinks I actually like these things) (Google does think I'm a guy apparently but I hope it's not showing these to everyone male because that would be even more depressing than being singled out for them)

so yeah, I probably shouldn't have clicked on that Spanks vid, it'll be another tick in the giant database of how much I love to watch creepy woman-hating gaming-related videos

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04/06/misogyny-sexism-and-why-rps-isnt-shutting-up/

good article, I think? maybe a bit self-congratulatory in places but I guess the urge to say that is just the same as all those asshats shouting "white knight" so eh

btw recent internet shitstorms have shown me that my tomboyish childhood and my subsequent life as a computer geek are not the result of heroically rejecting male privilege so much as buying fully into male privilege with me as honorary male (itself a privilege of having comfortably-off scientist parents), rejecting womanly things as degrading

was gonna say more but it's tl;dr and off-topic since I'm not a games programmer, just a dumb database monkey who first learnt a smattering of bad programming because I liked games, and now two decades later I'm still on the bottom rung of a career I was never any good at but I never noticed because boys didn't talk to me (I can't be bad at programming - nobody else I know even does this stuff!)

(There's another woman programmer in my office. Are we teaming up to further the cause of women in technology? Hell no. We are competing for who can be more manlike, who can wring more pats on the head from the real men who do the "real work" and get the real recognition; both just trying to pretend we aren't women, that gender rules don't have to apply to us, but not making the same exception for the other. We're not helping anyone and I'm tired. Sorry for off-topic.)

do you want to make a game? this looked cool (though it is for flash)
flixel.org

that does look cool! tbh the ideas are missing as much as the programming talent and/or patience, but I still like to think one day the stars might align enough to knock out some crappy puzzle game, at least...

i read that article thinking that these were the tiniest of baby steps to explaining privilege, but it sadly is pretty warranted given the audience. it's still pretty sad how many comments (even on RPS' forum, since he turned off the comments for that post) are still hopelessly blind, feminism is evil, etc. eukaryotes, indeed

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/13/apr/misog9.jpg

Kind of odd to start off an article like that with this image^. But yay let's fight sexism.

what's the gender makeup of RPS like?

the readership or the writer/editors?

founded by four dudes, one of the dudes was replaced and then he was replaced. occasional features by women (notably, recently, the interview with the tomb raider writer), also i think the indie games column is written by a trans* woman

oh if it's only four people i'm not sure there's a lot they could do staff-wise.

RPS seems aimed at an older audience though, my disappointment was that the responses were no better than you'd see on Kotaku, Reddit etc. crapping on John Walker for laboring the obvious. But not so much because it was obvious, but because they are in reality, unradical sewer mutants. Sad lol at "you're silencing the debate!"-type responses to him closing off the article comments, even with him addressing that very issue

I forget the name of the game with that ridiculous Amazon, but I think it comes out pretty soon so I guess it's somewhat relevant

site's audience != site's commenters tbf

They reckon about 1-2% comment. And as always it's not even a majority of the commenters that are terrible, just that the bad ones are like dragging a comb through your brain every time you read their megaparagraphs of MRA nonsense.

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3733057.htm

Nice article. A harsh assessment - anyone who's played through B:I want to chime in?

Errant Signal also has a good new video about this. It does seem pretty weak, though I don't really recall B:I being promoted as an intelligent piece of art any more than a cool steampunk game.

They've definitely talked it up as such, at least to the gaming press. The article does some justice to their attempt. However, the ubiquitous TV ads definitely go in the direction of steampunky manshoot.

I haven't gotten far in the game but far enough to see the "throw the ball" section he mentions in that article as well as the "history exhibit" section... a few people i have spoken to are all losing their minds over this game for being clever and arty of course (these are the people who thought the same thing of the first game though which is just o_O to me).

thing is i am not sure i would put these comments in the "casual racism" thread because it doesn't feel racist so much as it just feels profoundly fucking stupid (and maybe kind of irresponsible in its stupidity) -- imo mr. golding hits the nail on the head.

ehhh it's not great but i would rather have a video game that acknowledged ugly parts of american history, even in a glib facile way, than not. baby steps yall.

i wish yoshi's island acknowledged the ugly parts of american history

definitely some robber-baron critique going on with wario

wario is a hurtful stereotype, probably. i'm not italian so

an australian video game criticism article was more effective at making me interested in an american history thing/what that american history thing means than the game it's criticizing did. tbf i'm non-american... but still.

honestly though this is less about the acceptance of racism/sexism in games tho and more about BI not being very good at being a mature story or w/e

I think you're right about that, tho the whole rickety crashing end to the story really is fun. Except for all the press f to trigger next cutscene approach

wint
‏@dril
"Is Wario A Libertarian" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,

honestly though this is less about the acceptance of racism/sexism in games tho and more about BI not being very good at being a mature story or w/e

― I've Seen rRootage (Will M.), Tuesday, April 9, 2013 10:43 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

the casual use of the history of oppressed peoples to make your video game have ~moral heft~ is probably the exact kind of casual racism that fits within the ambit of this thread

nb i havent played BI

i meant that my comment was about above, not the conversation at large

http://theyreallsobeautiful.com/interview-with-evan-narcisse/

THE HENRY
I am a: hairy Asian muscle panda

that was new to me too

what do you have against it xp

just that it sounds like the kinda thing that would be racist if it was engendered outside the community? and it's not really clear that it was? like is a black bear a... well i dunno, a black bear?

this is outside my ambit but as far as im concerned a gay asian dude can call himself whatever hte fuck he wants

not arguing that fact, you asked what i had against it

what im asking is, what puts you in a position to judge?

hooboy, not going down that road with you dude. are you genuinely offended/surprised that i wrote "seriously?" on the internet at a first exposure to the idea of a gay asian subgroup called "pandas"?

the whole subgroup may just be THE HENRY for all i know o'course

seriously thought forks wrote endangered outside the community and thought he was taking this all way too literally

http://www.barefootcollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/wwf20logo.gif

hooboy, not going down that road with you dude. are you genuinely offended/surprised that i wrote "seriously?" on the internet at a first exposure to the idea of a gay asian subgroup called "pandas"?

― brb buying poppers w/my employee discount (forksclovetofu), Sunday, April 21, 2013 7:54 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm just wondering what made u decide to share ur opinion about this topic that u have a lot of experience with

^solitary posts, etc
i decided to share my opinion precisely BECAUSE i have no experience with it and was hoping one of ilx's many all-purpose mavens would step up and let me know "yes this is a thing, here's some background *let me google that for you*" or alternately "i am a large gay asian man and ime this dude is on some ish that's just his own thing".
of course, this being ilx, i am being capn-save-a-panda'd

i'll take it that u acted in good faith, but u couldn't have phrased it in a better way??

iirc i actually typed "are asian bears seriously called pandas?" and then realised that i was inviting a zing

what im asking is, what puts you in a position to judge?

― 乒乓, Sunday, April 21, 2013 7:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

uhh judging owns

stfu

Actual pandas are not even bears, which makes this more confusing

Red pandas, I mean. Which I think means they're communist

Or native American.

who judges the judges?