I don't see what's wrong with the GTA advert, aside from the woman on the left (Who is enjoying getting hand-cuffed WAY too much), the one on the right is what you'd see if you go to a beach, is it wrong to show that? As for Franklin, he's shown in this one as a tough guy, with Chop being leashed by his chain. I'd argue that woman/men would see him as either being hot or a real tough guy (which would make the male gamer feel more powerful when they play as him).
As for the Mobile Advert...
*vomit*
"Let's put on one breastplate and I'm so ready for war!"
I don't see what's wrong with the GTA advert, aside from the woman on the left (Who is enjoying getting hand-cuffed WAY too much), the one on the right is what you'd see if you go to a beach, is it wrong to show that? As for Franklin, he's shown in this one as a tough guy, with Chop being leashed by his chain. I'd argue that woman/men would see him as either being hot or a real tough guy (which would make the male gamer feel more powerful when they play as him).
As for the Mobile Advert...
*vomit*
"Let's put on one breastplate and I'm so ready for war!"
The GTA one specifically is not VILE per se, but it does reinforce stereotypes.
Franklin's shown as a tough guy who's ready to kick shit down which links to the portrayal of men as powerful, violent, etc. etc. you name it
Whereas in the same picture the women are shown as nothing but sexy. It would make sense if the men AND women were shown in attractive positions, but they're not, and it sort of implies "Know your place. Men are shit kicking badasses and women are there to please and look hot."
It's not this picture alone that's the source of the problem. It's the fact that it reinforces preexisting sexist themes of this sort. If we were in an ideally feminist world with no history of sexism then the picture wouldn't be offensive at all, but being aware of the systematic forces that come into play in the world at large but also in the gaming industry specifically, it is a bit of a problem. The onus is on devs to pay attention and make their games and all promotional images, etc. not contribute to these harmful stereotypes.
Some would call it "feminist propaganda", but 'propaganda' implies that what's being promoted is not worth the appraisal. Feminism definitely is. (Or ""egalitarianism"" as many people who fall under the demographic of 16-30 year old cis straight males, AKA 99% of the users on this site, would call it.)
Anyway I think discussions like these are pretty useless on a site that is predominantly male. Ladies need to have their opinions heard in matters that revolve around them surely.
The GTA one specifically is not VILE per se, but it does reinforce stereotypes.
Whereas in the same picture the women are shown as nothing but sexy. It would make sense if the men AND women were shown in attractive positions, but they're not, and it sort of implies "Know your place. Men are shit kicking badasses and women are there to please and look hot."
You are correct in that they aren't shown in attractive positions (although I'd argue that some people would find a badass looking man who's ready to beat shit up to be attractive), and after checking all of the adverts (images) it practically shows all the males to be violent and edgy.
It's sorta the thing with GTA to exaggerate these stereotypes, hence why it's in this advert. I mean imagine a GTA where it's exact opposite of what's seen in the advert.
Also, the advert that Total had posted isn't complete. The woman being handcuffed (the one on the left) is in fact being handcuffed by a policewoman (Though I haven't really seen any policewoman in the game).
I really don't know how to put my feeling about this topic into words...But...I voted that companies are missing out on potential customers here, and for good reason. A lot of games just don't account for female players (though we are seeing a turnaround for such things in respects to character creation). I just feel that there's a lack of gender neutral/equal marketing. That's the easiest way I can phrase it.
He strikes me as a guy that wants people to get off his lawn. And besides that, you don't think such things are negative stereotypes in regards to males? In any other words you could say he looks unapproachable and dangerous.
Whereas in the same picture the women are shown as nothing but sexy. It would make sense if the men AND women were shown in attractive positions, but they're not, and it sort of implies "Know your place. Men are shit kicking badasses and women are there to please and look hot."
Hey, you're the one who sees them as sexy and HIGHLY undervaluing them as characters, for example; I see lefty as psychopath that's about to swear a shitstorm before getting free and scratching people's eyes out. And a braindead self absorbed vain twit on the right. And Franklin's pose IS attractive >_>; they're not sexy in the SAME way, see, men and women have different ways of being attractive. It's why if you targeted women with males posing as females generally are in a magazine, it wouldn't sell well, and vice verse. You could speak of stereotypes or of ideals but it is a fact of human nature.
Hell, from my perspective I could say that Franklin is the one that's sexy and the others are ick.
It's not this picture alone that's the source of the problem. It's the fact that it reinforces preexisting sexist themes of this sort. If we were in an ideally feminist world with no history of sexism then the picture wouldn't be offensive at all, but being aware of the systematic forces that come into play in the world at large but also in the gaming industry specifically, it is a bit of a problem. The onus is on devs to pay attention and make their games and all promotional images, etc. not contribute to these harmful stereotypes.
Sexist themes that males will find any women attractive regardless of situation if she has the characteristics he finds biologically appealing? I mean I guess :/
Actually, is "sexism" anything more than "males are attracted to us but are awkward" at this point? >_>; and as for "systematic forces" do you mean ones in TV or in real life, because the "systematic forces" available in real life may surprise you. You're not in control by virtue of being male, you're simply given the illusion.
And that last part, aren't you just saying that you don't want creative freedom unless it specifically fits how you want it to be? Genuine question here.
Some would call it "feminist propaganda", but 'propaganda' implies that what's being promoted is not worth the appraisal. Feminism definitely is. (Or ""egalitarianism"" as many people who fall under the demographic of 16-30 year old cis straight males, AKA 99% of the users on this site, would call it.)
Well the girl on the left IS wearing a fedora (trilby?) so I see why it would appeal to that demographic.
*ahem*
No, propaganda does NOT imply that. It's ASSOCIATED with that, small difference I admit, but a significant one.
Because propaganda is one sided.
IT DOES NOT TAKE INTEREST IN ACCURATELY PORTRAYING THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF ARGUMENTS.
With me so far? The only appraisal that >MIGHT< >POSSIBLY< >IMPLY< is that it's not worth it because it cannot hold it's own against the opposing sides of arguments.
Hopefully that didn't come across too forcefully. =_=
In regards to feminism, even if you believe the past waves were worthwhile, this third wave spews nothing but gobbledygook.
Wage gap? Yeah, massively misinterpreted statistics based in comparing apples and oranges, and never seems to notice that it's "EARN" less than get payed for same work, yet STRANGELY, for some fudged up reason, women have a disproportionally higher spending percentage and it's been AGAINST THE LAW to discriminate pay since the 60s ffs.
Rape? Yeah, your 1 in 4 are based on self selected studies that took basic things like unwanted attention, or even if you were given alcohol (not under any circumstances) and basically anything the SLIGHTEST of interpreted as sexual assault and then it was extrapolated into those absurd statistics. Like frikken jeez, men can use the gas station of love's self service pump, why would they go through all that trouble and risk losing EVERYTHING for the same outcome?.
Domestic violence? It's actually about equal, it shouldn't be that hard to figure that women can be violent and abusive. The lady who started the first shelter for domestic abuse victims met HIGH opposition by feminists when she claimed that they were and was met with high feminist opposition for trying to make one for men, hell, those still barely exist :/ to say nothing of things as primary aggressor policies.
Cat calling? Yeah, like, oh my god, I'm like, SO ATTRACTIVE, like, you like, have no IDEA how many cat calls I get, ugh, like, it's such like, a problem being the attractive me. Stop being so self centered, yeah, people who think they are out of your league do that. So frikken what?
And EVEN with first wave of feminism it was frikken arrogant as hell.
A bunch of rich women who felt they deserved more, despite being able to get anything she wanted without any responsibility (that fell on her husband) (and it's not like single males could even GET jobs, there's a reason why "Bachelors not wanted" kept coming up on job ads)
And votes? Women didn't want it.
Wanna know why? Because to get the vote (which men had only gotten AT MOST a century prior. Before; voting was limited to property owners) one HAD TO be eligible for war time conscription. In places like Canada female nurses got the vote before all women got the vote if they happened to go to war in fact. As well as that it came with a series of other responsibilities and women of the age didn't want that.
So when women DID get the vote, they got it responsibilities free. (Speaking of, the suffragettes were HIGHLY against the idea of black people voting)
/rant
And also why do you think that demographic is as is?
Why is that demographic here, on a site, in those numbers?
Anyway I think discussions like these are pretty useless on a site that is predominantly male. Ladies need to have their opinions heard in matters that revolve around them surely.
Oh goodie, I am female and I disagree with you ;D sexism doesn't just affect women btw .-. I'm sick of this whole: OH MY GAWD MY OPINION ARE IS CORRECT CUZ I ARE SUPPRT FEML JUS ASK LADIES. It's nothing more than putting women as some perpetual monolithic victim class and implies males are nothing but a perpetual oppressor class. We do get our opinions heard, feminism would have never been a thing is women were NOT heard. Genitals mean little in lieu of ideas =_= and even if it is truly useless, at least ideas are being entertained.
I'd like to thank FrozenIndignatio because I don't have to write as much as I was going to do. I'm just adding one thing.
I'm male and I'm a gamer. Big shock, right? Even if I play a lot of offline games, I also play some online games. I also used to play MTG.
Do you know when people talk about gaming girls the most? When they have to bash ALL OF THE MALE PLAYERS because they found done trolls. If a girl finds one, it's newsworthy and all men are pigs. If a boy finds one, he just needs to "man up".
I keep reading about how "we" make things difficult for girls who want to play. Uhm, what? As far as I can remember, everyone I knew never had anything bad to say when a girl wanted to play, because we see them as what they are: just a new player. The more the better.
But no, apparently I had to read some fucktard on Reddit saying that we must be "nice to girls" during MTG Friday nights, as we've never been to them or something. I fucking hate how trolling, a problem that's been in gaming for more than a decade, is NOW being taken seriously because boohoo girls. And what's the cause? Omg it's men's fault!!!
I'm so sick of being discriminated online just because I'm male. It's like saying that all men are rapists...oh wait, that's exactly what feminists say when they push everyone into "teaching boys not to rape".
Just to throw in my two cents (and concur with Dragonconqer's comment), the depiction of women in video games is almost always very heavily unrealistic and not merely in the fashion that games over-represent stereotypes in specific video games that are meant to be caricatures in general (GTA) but also in just how many games present those caricatures in the first place. And to me, that's one major reason this thread has mostly gone off-track to the original question. When it asks "Do you believe video game marketing disproportionately favors males?", it misses the point that a lot of the sexist views of women are often targeted towards women and often enough made BY women. That doesn't in some fashion make it somehow "okay" in a moral/egalitarian sense but then again that's not even the question. It's how much this has a net effect of failing to realistic favor females in providing them enough games to play in comparison to males. And to that end, no matter how "paranoid" you want to call feminists, if a large percentage of the population IS feminist and games aren't being made for them, then "Yes; and game companies are missing a great opportunity to gain consumers".
I mean, seriously, if we turned this whole thread into a question of "Do condiment makers favor ketchup users?" and said "Horseradish users are paranoid", that'd just be silly. But then it'd be silly if we acknowledged that there was a large customer base for horseradish users and the games weren't being made for them. The argument that horseradish users just want to make a lot of noise and even if there were a lot of makers horseradish wouldn't be bought? I don't buy it. The free market isn't some infallible system where entrepreneurs see a wide open niche and always fill it. All sorts of things can interfere with it from an audience which lacks the money to actually by the product to the risk involved in actually trying to make a product and sell it (see traffic jams in cities and how public transport has to be government funded/ran because of said issues of money and logistics of trying to build out more roads/subways/whatever; see also things like jet packs and flying cars which invoke way too much cost and risk to be practical no matter how much demand there is for them as demand in the free market doesn't just mean want but also a means to actual front the resources to pay for something).
PS - Having said all the above, whether you're a "gamer" or not and whether you play "AAA" titles or not, there still are a lot of mobile games, puzzle, hidden object, etc games that are actually rather popular with women. There's no reason to waste AAA level money and in the popular press/popular sentiment those people might not count, there might be some regard it's a niche market, etc. But then DOOM is actually a niche market too. The only reason people at large put any regard behind it isn't the technology, the fun, etc but that id developers were able to buy Ferraris with DOOM's success. By that standard, Candy Crush is a success and why people at large can and do consider it worth consideration. This is, after all, a discuss driven more than anything by money.
Anyway I think discussions like these are pretty useless on a site that is predominantly male. Ladies need to have their opinions heard in matters that revolve around them surely.
I'd like to thank FrozenIndignatio because I don't have to write as much as I was going to do. I'm just adding one thing.
I'm male and I'm a gamer. Big shock, right? Even if I play a lot of offline games, I also play some online games. I also used to play MTG.
Do you know when people talk about gaming girls the most? When they have to bash ALL OF THE MALE PLAYERS because they found done trolls. If a girl finds one, it's newsworthy and all men are pigs. If a boy finds one, he just needs to "man up".
I keep reading about how "we" make things difficult for girls who want to play. Uhm, what? As far as I can remember, everyone I knew never had anything bad to say when a girl wanted to play, because we see them as what they are: just a new player. The more the better.
But no, apparently I had to read some fucktard on Reddit saying that we must be "nice to girls" during MTG Friday nights, as we've never been to them or something. I fucking hate how trolling, a problem that's been in gaming for more than a decade, is NOW being taken seriously because boohoo girls. And what's the cause? Omg it's men's fault!!!
I'm so sick of being discriminated online just because I'm male. It's like saying that all men are rapists...oh wait, that's exactly what feminists say when they push everyone into "teaching boys not to rape".
You can't be serious. Are you complaining about being called a rapist or whatever?
Do you genuinely think that being called out on the actions of men as a collective (not every man) is worse than the shit women go through?
Listen buddy if I punched someone in the face I wouldn't complain that my fist hurts. Just no.
I read this comparison once. It was something along the lines of "Imagine a jar with 100 candies. Around 20 of them are poisoned. Not all of them, just 20 or so. Would you stick your hand in and have some?" Probably not, yeah? Concept applies with gender inequality. It's not that all men perpetuate sexism. Not even most men. But enough men. Enough for it to be a serious problem.
You can't be serious. Are you complaining about being called a rapist or whatever?
Do you genuinely think that being called out on the actions of men as a collective (not every man) is worse than the shit women go through?
Listen buddy if I punched someone in the face I wouldn't complain that my fist hurts. Just no.
I read this comparison once. It was something along the lines of "Imagine a jar with 100 candies. Around 20 of them are poisoned. Not all of them, just 20 or so. Would you stick your hand in and have some?" Probably not, yeah? Concept applies with gender inequality. It's not that all men perpetuate sexism. Not even most men. But enough men. Enough for it to be a serious problem.
Are you REALLY asking me why I don't like being called a rapist if a very small percentage of men rape? Do you know that women rape too but they get away with it because in some states a woman raping a man isn't even something "law-worthy"?
Do you know that a man is the victim of domestic abuse every 37.8 seconds in America? Should I call every woman a violent bitch?
Are you REALLY asking me why I don't like being called a rapist if a very small percentage of men rape? Do you know that women rape too but they get away with it because in some states a woman raping a man isn't even something "law-worthy"?
Do you know that a man is the victim of domestic abuse every 37.8 seconds in America? Should I call every woman a violent bitch?
Women aren't the only victims of sexism but the issue is largely not in their favour. It's absolutely true that women can (and do) rape too, and it's absolutely true that it's absolute bull*** that a lot of places don't prosecute women for doing it. I'm with you on that.
That statistic is useless though because it's not contextual: It's dependent on the size of the population of America (1 every 37.8 seconds out of a population of say, 4,000,000 for example, isn't aaaall that much.) Secondly it doesn't say that the perpetrator of domestic abuse is a woman (LGBTQ+ people exist)
EDIT: Seriously though I'm not trying to say that women > men end of. I'm a guy myself but I just think that when women have issues to talk about, it's cool to sit the heck down and listen. Feminism is just courtesy, not political radicalism.
I'm posting in non-hacking threads lately because I'm bored. But my only view is that video game creators can and should do whatever they want and people are free to enjoy whatever they want. Pixels don't have rights, feelings, etc.
I'm posting in non-hacking threads lately because I'm bored. But my only view is that video game creators can and should do whatever they want and people are free to enjoy whatever they want. Pixels don't have rights, feelings, etc.
Corporations have a lot of power and influence over society and "freedom of speech" or whatever is not a get-out-of-jail-for-free card for being offensive imho
It's actually really easy not to be sexist; shocking how many people fail at it
Corporations have a lot of power and influence over society and "freedom of speech" or whatever is not a get-out-of-jail-for-free card for being offensive imho
It's actually really easy not to be sexist; shocking how many people fail at it
I just don't believe that polygons can be offensive, as opposed to footage of actual people. I believe that video games and animation are the only mediums where people forfeit their right to call something offensive.
Sex appeal in marketing is not actually a new thing nor gaming exclusive. People have been using sex to market, pretty much since the invention of the market. Does it make it ok or acceptable? Eh, that's actually personal perspective. Some debate that using your body to market is actually exploiting the market because people are easily brought in with sex. Some could argue that it's exploiting the person's body because it's being used for marketing. Which those arguments are not gaming exclusive.
Now for the topic of, "Are games sexist?" Well like I just said, some do use sex appeal as a marketing ploy, but that really doesn't make the game itself sexist. Using both your examples, yes the Game of War advertisements use sexually attractive women to advertise their games, but the actual content of the game does not reflect the advertisement. The game is not about sexy women building up an army well wearing revealing armour, even the icon on the game itself is some male knight. Meaning that the game itself isn't the issue, it's how they are marketing the game that is debatable. Same with the GTV covers, playing through games, their covers really don't reflect the game very well. Only one of the characters on that cover actually show up in the game and I will give you a hint, it's the dude in the middle of the cover. Meaning this falls back under marketing again. The debate on marketing sexism almost warrants an entire thread onto that.
Honestly I think the bigger debate here is marketing. Regardless of which side of the spectrum people fall on, they still help the game sell. People who bring up the "evils" and "sexism" in games, more often than not help push the game sell more. Well people who are countering them, often end up buying the game to use as a counter argument. No matter what happens, it often just ends up making the game sell better. If a game has an interactive quick time sex scene with twins, people are going to buy it. If Feminist Frequency starts attacking a game, then people will go out of their way to counter her, thus promoting better sales for that game. It all comes down to the simple fact that there's no such thing as bad publicity, all publicity is good publicity and gaming is no exception.
Women aren't the only victims of sexism but the issue is largely not in their favour. It's absolutely true that women can (and do) rape too, and it's absolutely true that it's absolute bull*** that a lot of places don't prosecute women for doing it. I'm with you on that.
That statistic is useless though because it's not contextual: It's dependent on the size of the population of America (1 every 37.8 seconds out of a population of say, 4,000,000 for example, isn't aaaall that much.) Secondly it doesn't say that the perpetrator of domestic abuse is a woman (LGBTQ+ people exist)
EDIT: Seriously though I'm not trying to say that women > men end of. I'm a guy myself but I just think that when women have issues to talk about, it's cool to sit the heck down and listen. Feminism is just courtesy, not political radicalism.
Women do have issues, absolutely. There are many arabian countries where the woman is seen as an inferior creature, in places like rural India there is a rape culture, and so on.
But I can't take feminism seriously when they go the extra mile to talk about a non-existant wage gap, when they bitch about women not taking science courses or when someone smiled at them, therefore it's rape. All this thanks to "male oppression".
Do you want to talk about statistics of LGBT people? Sure. Did you know that lesbian couples are more likely to have violent partners? Crazy, right? Where is the male oppression there?
Or maybe how, when someone calls the police on a couple fighting, regardless of who called, for the woman is enough to say "he assaulted me" to put him in jail? Unless he has video evidence?
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