Is the women in games debate good or bad for women in games?

I assume everyone here knows about the shitstorm going on about empowering women on games. Recently a girl I know since highschool told me she was leaving online gaming for good after getting the worst wave of misogynistic hate on her life from male players online.

There were no incidents before that one, she told she has never treated differently on a game for being a woman, until that point.

I'm starting to think that all this hoopla from some girls angry at being called "fake geek girls" is not empowering women at all, but doing the opposite and making some men even more aggressive. The flood of actual fake geek girls posting bullshit online has brought the wrath of the mens rights movement which also has its own share of trolls.

I think this bullshit has been a complete waste of time. The way I see it things will only get worse for girl gamers who are now being targeted by angry assholes no different from the hardcore feminists who blame games for everything and male gamers for not buying more feminist games.

Anyway, rant over.

 

"Feminist games"? Fake geeks spawned the wrash of the men's rights movement? LOLOL wuuuut?

...anyway, I know a few girls who play games online, but that is mostly DOTA, StarCraft and so on where you mostly communicate by chatting. They never complained about such problems, but I know it can be an issue. Just look at what happens when a female member joins our forums: One introduction post and she'll have at least 5 followers from all over the world making her creepy compliments about everything she posts LOL

Also I notice that you mention feminism in about 2 out of 3 posts you make.

 

I have a bunch of girl gamer friends on steam, and about a 3rd of them are fake this I can attest too. What makes a fake girl is the emphasizing on the fact that the are women( in short the make sure every one know they are female to rally the attention of lonely hormone driven teenage gamers).

 

Go to reddit and see for yourself

 

Well better treatment could lead to a more diverse industry.
Of course in typical random matchups, this is personal information there's little point for anyone to disclose intentionally to the player base at large.

 

It's a game , who cares if it's a guy or a girl or their profile. Whoop that ass and move on.

 

Thanks for mentioning that because I forgot to clarify that this is about the portrayal of women in games, not about women working in the gaming industry to which I have no objection and its about time more women tried to get into game development.

I agree, but the others don't.

TBH I feel that most of the criticism comes from people who never (or almost never) played a game.

 

Sure, women are quite objectified in video games and often quite stereotypical - but so are men, just nobody cares about, let alone is offended by a male stereotype.
Look at Gears of War: It's got horrible male role models. Strength, no feelings,... retarded, but fun. As soon as there are girls reduced to boobs it's offensive... it's just cliches, supposed to appeal to the market. Guys like strong dudes to shoot people and boobs to look at, and let's face it: For core-gaming, the target market is still almost entirely male. It changes with casual gaming, which is trying to appeal to women by massively focusing on cute/colorful stuff like Candy Crush Saga (what a piece of shit), Angry Birds et cetera, but we're still at the introductory stage.

 

Ave, that's possibly the best point I've read about this issue in a long time. I understand we are talking about women being in online games, but even women characters in games people lose their shit. A lot of male characters are stereotypical too, let's all bunch together with torches and pitchforks, chant, chant away lol. Many male characters are huge, built guys, not many men are like that. Same goes for female characters, most of them are blonde, usually breasts are oversized or if they are not the character is wearing a tight suit, even Nintendo is guilty of the same thing...

I've spoken to women who are in online games before, usually yes there are that select few who get shit from other players for being a girl. I became friends with a few of them for defending them when it happened, but don't we all get shit from other players at some stage? So what if they call a woman a bitch, they call me a dick what's the difference here? It's just trash talk, no need to take these comments to heart after all it's just a game right?

 

I have no real problem with sexualised female characters in games. Video games, just like any other popular medium, are a business, and making a game intended to to the widest possible audience (i.e the average male) by having female characters dress like hookers is like selling bananas to monkeys: it's both very profitable and very easy.

However, I do have a problem when the aforementioned are 95% of the female characters we see in gaming. It would be like if every film was directed by Michael Bay, sure the film industry would still be successful, but it would be stagnant and culturally bankrupt. Thankfully for the film industry, there's directors who are creating more complex, thoughtful works than Bay's resume, which balances out that industry.

Gaming on the other hand is in danger becoming an industry of banana sellers, games cost more money than ever, so publishers don't want to risk unproven ideas. Why would they, when gamers have shown that we will step over our own mothers to buy the same heterosexual male-orientated games that we've seen a million times before. And they sure as hell know this audience doesn't care about complex female characters.

However, if gaming is to evolve, we need to start exploring more themes than just "square-jawed American solider shoots foreigners". And complex female characters have only been briefly touched upon, so why not start there? Not to mention such a theme would help move society's perception of gaming away from "toys for immature manchildren", which in another important step in helping the medium of gaming to evolve.

 

I'm glad we are all on the same page here, but when I bring the "male characters are also unrealistic" point to women I get a "it's not the same" as response, followed by a bucketload of "observations" about the chauvinism of my comment (seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this people?). I'm starting to think we gamers are getting a lot of misplaced hate.

I don't think its about directors but the fact that movies for women are huge, lifetime Tv is "Tv for women". Its big business, because women buy it, but (most) women don't buy consoles and games, don't have a gaming PC, and the great great majority of the "girl gamers" numbers that are tossed around so much these days are social gaming users which is not the same.

Every game with a girl protagonist that isn't a boobfest sells like shit because men don't like it and because female core gamers are a minority within a minority, you are never going to have a game version of lifetime Tv an entire big game company making games only for women gamers.

Unless there are more female core gamers

 

I think Bay gets picked on too much. Look at the most successful movie of last year, The Avengers: shallow as a kiddie pool and with an ending that's practically indistinguishable from a Michael Bay movie (in fact, it's very similar to the ending of Transformers 3), yet everyone seems to give that movie a pass. Basically, most movies are not that smart and Bay is only a small part of what's wrong with the movie industry.

Damn right, what I've been saying for a long time: games need to evolve from just being male power fantasies and supporting childish militarist stuff. If a movie with a plot as ridiculous as any of the recent Call of Duty games was made, it'd be bashed to hell and back (see: Red Dawn), but video games don't seem to get out of their rut of being shallow and stupid entertainment for the lowest common denominator, and most reviewers and gamers apparently don't even notice how dumb video games are. Titles like Spec Ops: The Line and Bioshock Infinite seem to be steps in the right direction, but there's a long way to go. Sexualized female characters are just a part of the perpetual immaturity of gamers, who foam at the mouth at people who even dare to suggest that female characters should actually have a personality instead of just boobs the size of volley balls.

 

I think that's because usually when someone brings up the counterpoint of "male characters are stereotypical too!", it's usually not a solid argument since these male characters are not stereotyped in a sexual manner like female characters are. i.e, they're not intended to be eye candy for their audience. The characters of the Cho Aniki games being the exception

On your point about "movies for women", what would probably be a good idea, at least until female gamers become enough of a recognized market that games intended to appeal 100% to women start getting made (though I'd be interested to play one of these games) would be to do like what was done with MLP: FiM, make something that's mostly intended for girls, but is still enjoyable for guys as well.

True, but Michael Bay is the infamous face of these movies, so he works perfectly for my example

It's a shame that Spec Ops wasn't marketed differently. I had made a note to never even bother giving it a look based on the trailer I saw. Now if it was promoting itself as the gaming equivalent of Apocalypse Now instead, I wouldn't have needed Extra Credits to make me decide to play it.

 

You're correct. The other reasons are that "two wrongs don't make a right" and the fact that it doesn't solve the issue that women do not have a history of being treated well in games.

This is the real issue. We can vote with our wallets. I very much enjoy games like Flower, Everyday Shooter & Eden, which are totally gender neutral, and Super Princess Peach which is intended for women.

All this being said, when I choose Makoto in Street Fighter, the woman always kicks butt and I get all kinds of derogatory remarks from other online gamers. It doesn't matter what your gender is, or if you are playing videogames, people WILL say nasty things to you online. People are jerks. That's not the games' fault.

Men hurt the discussion by saying "get over it" to women and continuing to buy games that show women in poor light (although you can't always tell which games these are base don the boxart!)

Things like this also hurt the discussion: http://youtu.be/X6p5AZp7r_Q & http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games because isn't an open dialog, it's someone speaking with false authority from a bully pulpit, cherry picking points to fit her narrative and extracting maximum funds from a zealous crowd (perhaps the same could be said of ALL religions).

Having open discussions helps, buying indie titles that line up with your values helps, creating games that line up with your values helps, as well as not buying games that don't match your values.

 

True about SpecOps: until it was released it seemed like yet another Cod wannabe when in reality it was a deconstruction of military action games.

 

That is the point: to get women away from the hobby, which is run like a boy's club of manchildren. It's about exclusion. If you like games, you play games and that's it, but some guys have appointed themselves judge and jury about who can or can not play a video game product created by a corporation. Isn't funny how their judgment is always about "fake gamer girls" but never about "fake geek boys"?

Objectification of women happens on almost every level in this hobby, from players, to developers and publishers and naturally eliminating this would make it a more welcoming environment.

EXACTLY!

In video games men tend to be a male power fantasy, and women are male sexual fantasy. It's all male oriented and frequently in really awful ways, not even trying yo disguise it.

 

What about "fake hipster geek"? those are dudes and they get no respect from "true geeks". Nerd fights are a staple of every forum, who knows more about comics, movies, characters, shit here in this forum there is always some discussion about obscure facts about gaming hardware from 20 or 30 years ago.

On the other hand you now have an entire industry of girls pretending to be gamers, something that started years ago but now has reached a point of saturation.

I'm not one sided about this, I do believe that the portrayal of women in most games is a joke but then I don't see women rushing to buy any of the few games that had positive and even empowering female characters as protagonists. I wouldn't be surprised if most gamers buying those games were dudes and not girls.

What I find hilarious is how some rush to defend the integrity of failed models and actresses with no integrity at all (since they pretend to be whatever pays) while forgetting about the real geek girls who just as men-geeks had to endure social ostracism and discrimination in their case by the popular girls, some of which are now pretending to be geeks at best because is trendy.

 

Sure, that happens.

Let's pretend what you are saying it's true. What do these "fake gamer girls" obtain from pretending to be a gamer? What is it that these women obtain from pretending to be part of a niche hobby? What is the grand end game of that? And why should we care the reason a person enjoys or buys video game products? What do we gain from judging a woman as "fake"? And who keeps count of how many women are "fake girls", anyway?

I agree on the portrayal, but not so much on the later. Women do buy video games. According to the ESA, at least 47% of gamers are women over the age of 18.

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

The compulsion to judge who is worthy of playing video games and saying so in public is always so inclined against women. Why?

 

I think online play is representative of the internet in general, people saying the worst things possible without any thinking that it would hurt someone. This can be found in any youtube comments section.

I think the game industry has taken huge leaps towards enticing girls to play with all the singstar and rock band type games. The game industry is a huge part of our culture now so the female number of gamers is growing. As for how they are treated it depends on the community it depends on the genre. League of Legends or strategy games is far more open then say the fighting game community. It depends on the maturity of the people who play those kinds of games.

I think the worst case of harassment came in that fighting game tournement a year ago where the girl was forced to quit because of harassment. Sickening.

 

Let's pretend you actually don't know that you can actually make a living from pretending to be a girl who likes games. Let's pretend you don't know fake geek girls isn't becoming an industry for glorified bottom rung strippers that wear some very skimpy versions of already skimpy clothed characters because they know it pays more to perpetuate sex appeal over talent which only a few have. Let's pretend we live in a parallel world where nerds as a group don't have a large component of lonely and socially frustrated males with considerable disposable income that will gift anything one of these fake geek girls posts in her wishlist, besides subscribing to her site and buying whatever shit she's being paid to promote. Let's pretend we are having an actual debate and not simply stating that one side can't be judged for its own shortcomings in this matter.

And please no chartjunk infographics that oversimplify things, I need hard data like how many of those girl gamers are actual gamers and not farmville drones in their 40s