Yeah, I didn't find that until I decided to run back and explore one last time for anything I missed after fighting the boss. As I said before, I have a tendency to make these games needlessly difficult for myself...(And I'm still blaming my own ineptitude, not the game, hehe.)

Oh man yeah when I saw those pics Morrigan posted. AHAHAHA. WTF? That's bad enough to be embarassing to have in your collection. *still owns Bayonetta and Lollipop Chainsaw* Oops I guess I have some silly crap with gameplay I like too.

That video of Jimquisition makes two good points.

1. It takes far more skill to portray a woman as sexy without showing skin. That'd be like just piling a bunch of bacon on a plate to make you wanna eat or to actually be creative with unique bacon ideas to make you hungry.

Not that a bunch of bacon on a plate is a bad thing. That'd be awesome once in a blue moon. But also bacon cheeseburgers, BLTs, bacon weaves, bacon omelets, bacon bits on a salad, and filet mignon wrapped in bacon is also nice and that variety is most appreciated.

To me, consistent and blatant fanservice is like constantly dumping a pile of bacon on a plate. Maybe trying to make all of us eat from a trough. I'm not one to go "OMG sexism" but it certainly lacks sophistication, creativity, and class.

2. How having actual discussions works better than trying to get the upper hand. And it was funny how he mentioned we have a long way to go if people are still arguing over which console they bought. AHAHH



God of War is the one I will unanimously agree on its sexism and just horrible depiction of gender. That's my number 1 pick for mainstream sexist games.


But the single most worst portrayal of females has to be Lymle from Star Ocean The Last Hope International. Not for any sexist reason. She is the most annoying character ever.

Lymle and some bad action combat that seems to have random invincibility frames for certain movements for no apparent reason; that might be enough to make me give up on this game.

Best way to get Morrigan on your side: compare women to various quantities of bacon.

You mean like a tight overall, Catwoman style? Because I don't see how that would require more skill.

I think he means making a female character attractive not through appearance or overt sluttiness, but rather her actual character. Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 would be a good example I think; she doesn't dress "sexy" in the least, nor does she overtly come on to the player, but she's appealing anyway due to a combination of realistic mannerisms, good writing, being capable, etc. She's presented in such a way that it's easy to suspend disbelief and see her as an actual person, rather than a fictional construct created for the sole purpose of providing boners.

Yeah, it was certainly an odd choice of work but I get that he was comparing fanservice to bacon, not women per se. Still, Starmere got me chuckling.

And you're correct about Sterling's point, though even if you (impersonal you here) want to go with "sexy character" purely through physical appearance, you still don't have to resort to huge tits or skimpy outfits. These women are sexy/cool-looking without being pandering or sexualized with boob plate or needlessly exposed skin.

Same things with male characters. Kratos has fewer clothes on than Snake, but I'll take this any day over the bald tattooed angsty douchebag.

If games pandered to the sexual preferences of young females as much as they do to those of male teenagers I don't think we'd have as many bodybuilder types either - both muscle packed behemoths and scantily clad boob monsters are male fantasies after all.

Absolutely.

I don't have a sensible comeback for that.

I wouldn't pin that on "male fantasies" so hastily. These things tend to be pre-dictated somehow; it's important to note that if you look at older works of art, you'd see that the concept of male and female beauty was dramatically different from now, sometimes bordering on the opposite (nude Renaissance art comes immediately to mind).

I also think that there's a lot of common ground between most males in females as far as these fantasies (and their boundaries) go.

Alyx from HL2 was definitely a great female character, props to Valve on that one. The industry could use more like her.

Well, Renaissance males obviously weren't into huge boobs, but how does that change anything? Men always (it seems) had a monopoly on art and the way people were depicted in it.

Depictions of muscular/powerful men are a male power phantasy. Depictions of near-naked women of whatever body shape is considered attractive at the time are a male sex phantasy.

That does not mean that the Venus de Milo is a worthless piece of soft-porn, but being a phantasy of the artist/his clients is one aspect of it that cannot be denied.

Nilin from Remember Me is a good example of a female character who is strong, self-sufficient, not dressed like she's intending to star at a strip club, and yet would be considered attractive by our 21st century conventions of physical womanhood. Interesting story about that, the publishers of Remember Me initially refused to let the game out the door unless it had a male protagonist: http://www.gamespot.com/news/publishers ... ev-6405550

I know that such wasn't your point at all, but I'm fairly sure that Kratos isn't supposed to be attractive. He's a monster and, well..... Yes, a douchebag, but then again, so was almost everyone else in Greek mythology.

Dayum, Snake has some beautifully-feathered hair. And omagosh those cold blue eyes heat my heart!

I had a long post written out, but I deleted it just to say that I had bacon wrapped asparagus the other night and it was amazing!

The point is that public consensus is not a ductile thing, and it doesn't do full 180s on a whim. That's why I say it was pre-dictated, just like it is now, and you can't really trace the source of the brainwashing so it is pointless to pin it on "male fantasies" when, as I've shown, the content of the fantasies isn't inherent. That's why Venus de Milo was the sculptor's sex fantasy can easily be denied, since it is more likely to be a reflection of the trend of how a beautiful woman was perceived at the time.

Have you even tried to comprehend what I was saying? What's considered an ideal woman at the time by men = a male fantasy. The fact that these are shaped by external factors such as how undernurished the "unattractive" common population is does not change that fact that it is a fantasy (something one fantasizes about). Not inherently a bad thing, and having something that "real"izes fantasies is part of the reason we make and consume art, isn't it? But if most art is the manifestation of specifically male fantasies (like any depiction of women whose main trait is looking fuckable) it is just kind of unfair and lame, especially if they reduce said women to said fuckability.

Could women not, in theory, make FPS/RPG/whatever games that women would want to play? How do we stop men preventing women from applying for game development and college courses that pertain to development?

Hah!



Well hunger and sex are both urges. We don't just eat from a trough and have some style. We shouldn't just be spammed with half naked girls.

So yeah that was my comparison.

...Wha? The fact that the content of the art changes over time doesn't make it less a male fantasy. It's like saying Medieval religious art isn't really religious compared to the religious art of today because they followed their religion differently back then. Complete and utter nonsense.


Sure they could, and some do (such as Amy Hennig). What does this have to do with anything? I hope you aren't suggesting that men are so stupid they are incapable of making games that wouldn't alienate female gamers...


I can't tell if this is an acknowledgement that gender discrimination does occur in the workplace, or petty sarcasm...

The problem with that is that the existing industry is dominated by men, and the existing market is dominated by men. It's a feedback loop; men tend to buy games that pander to men, so the industry mostly makes games that pander to men, so gamers are mostly men, so the industry mostly makes games that pander to men, etc. etc. Obviously women can and do make games for women (and some men do too), but they face overwhelming competition from the existing system, which is very entrenched.

I don't know about that bolded part. Maybe it was true a few decades ago when gaming was seen as some niche thing, but nowadays it just doesn't seem to hold water.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf

According to a 2012 census, 47% of gamers are female. Which admittedly isn't a majority, but I wouldn't call 53% "domination" by any stretch. Unless you're talking specifically about prevailing trends in the mindset of the gaming community, rather than the hard demographic numbers themselves. I would absolutely believe the idea that the industry itself is dominated by men, though.

I'm not a fan of politics or arguments or arguments about politics or politics in video games or arguments about politics in video games... So I should probably not say anything, but I will say there are not only a lot of female gamers these days, but a lot more female company owners, lead designers, project managers, programmers and artists than you may think. Most of them probably agree with my first sentence and just play/make games for fun.

And you know how many of these female designers/etc.? Yet you allow yourself to speak on their behalf?

http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567

I'm probably even worse in publishing.

I know a number of them...

Of course I am. Domination isn't just a question of hard numbers, and even though the gender gap in gaming has been closing for a while now, an industry takes much, much longer to catch up to that. What do you think the percentage of non-porny female characters in big-budget games is? Fact is basically all female gamers have had to just accept that the depiction of women in video games is very often going to be ridiculous and often sexist, so while it probably bothers them on some level it doesn't really stop them from buying most games. Male gamers on the other hand are used to being pandered to, so there's a good chance that, all things being equal, a game that doesn't pander to them would see fewer sales than one that does.

Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with having sexy female video game characters, but I think we can all agree that having so many female characters be a hair's breadth away from softcore porn while essentially no male characters come anywhere close is a problem.

And because Publishers expect those games to fail they don't publish them, completing the circle.

Or ensure countless of hours of bitching. Remember Raiden from MGS2, guys? Now imagine if just about every male character was like that. Now you feel our pain!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAExBTWIp3M



What the fuck?

I'd love to see what that figure would look like if they left out phone and facebook games.

Doesn't look very ergonomic compared to the 3DS. Don't like how it takes up more space either.

Exactly. I looked at it just now and there are almost double the number of women over 30 playing video games than males under 17. 42% of all games played fell under puzzle, board games, game show, trivia, card games.

This is potentially problematic in a number of ways. For one, it can be used to back up arguments about video games not being exclusive to young people anymore because soccer moms are playing Candy Crush Saga on their iPhones. Second, it unfairly makes it sound like the gender gap in the video game market is nearly closed; if you looked at consumers of "real" video games I'd be willing to bet there's still a shitload of ground to make up. Thirdly, with so many people playing these shitty cell phone games all the time now, the overall health of the video game industry can be made to look a lot better than what it really is. And finally, with so many old people playing Farmville, you can see potential development dollars get sucked away from interesting games and thrown at these app-type games because all they really have to do is dig through the dollar bin for old shitty puzzle games, change the art around, and add some timer element and microtransactions to turn the things into hyperaddictive, vapid cash cows.

Good points all.

Farmville and its ilk are technically "PC games" to the effect that they are a game and they are played on a computer or phone, but it's not a direction that I would want developers getting the impression that gaming culture should move towards.

lol, these "casual" games are not in competition with AAA or even indie gaming, it's two different markets basically.

I've taken about a week sabbatical from Dark Souls, owing to frustration at doing the same shit over and over again. I think I'm ready now to jump back into it, at least for another ten minutes until I get fed up again.

Oh yeah, two different markets for sure. I've just read all kinds of reports the past couple years that made the health of the video game industry out to be much better than it really is in a lot of key ways (market size, market demographics) because they're lumping casual "games" in with real video game statistics. And in some ways, despite being completely different markets, I think there *is* potential for the phenomenon to sap industry resources from developers of real video games. As an example, Tom Hall and John Romero both essentially left the real video game industry behind after the failure of Daikatana to make cell phone games. As far as I know Tom Hall now works for the company that made Diner Dash, and Romero recently worked on a Facebook game that's basically a RenFaire version of Farmville.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/greenlightsale

What do you people think one should get from this?

Buy Shelter and then at least ten copies of Kentucky Route Zero. Also Papers, Please.