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Men Incapable Of Portraying Videogame Women Fairly?
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing whether men can be trusted to portray women fairly in videogames. The author references Metroid ("I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line"), and Ico ("Yorda... [is] this supposedly sympathetic female character in a video game that can do absolutely nothing for herself and is constantly in danger of being kidnapped"), and ends by leveling the charge: "I think men are inherently incapable of doing an adequate job of properly presenting female characters in games."
Samus being a woman is not a joke, it's a realization that a woman CAN do powerful things and CAN be a hero. It's not an insult, it's something that makes you think.
Women are inherently incapable of driving cars
Men are inherently incapable of getting in touch with their feeling
Women are inherently incapable of logical thought
Yeah, let's polarize and call each other names.
As a kid I spent quite a while playing this game, had come to know and like this character, and when I found out the hero was female I thought, "Cool, that's unique. I don't see why the ass kicking protagonist /can't/ be a woman." Ever since then, any instance of female action heros has never struck me as being out of the ordinary. I think if anything, it in some way helped break down the gender wall. At least for some of us.
- Cigar chomping muscle-brains
- Weasley little pick-pocket wimps
- Corpse-obsessed psychopaths
- Spineless cannon-fodder clones
- Sex-obsessed jocks
- Coke-bottle glasses nerds that love computers
Etc, etc, etc. It isn't a sexism thing, it's a "the story writers are stupider than the game's AI" thing.When it comes to video games, I am not looking for female characters that I can take home to mom.
I want big titties on a tough as nails ass kicking chick like Lara Croft or B. Orchid, or big titties on a soft helpless babes like the babe in Final Fight or the hookers in GTA:3 and VC.
Video games are like porno, the target market is mostly male. As a result the contents are going to be geared towards male fantasies.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Warning: Some moderate (possibly heavy) Ico spoilers will ensue after the quote.
I never finished ICO. Not only did I get stuck at a certain point about halfway through, but more to the point, I grew sick and tired of the girl, Yorda, and her uselessness. This character was so pathetic, it almost made me angry. I admit that this is not the effect the game was intended to have on me or on anyone; however, here's this supposedly sympathetic female character in a video game that can do absolutely nothing for herself and is constantly in danger of being kidnapped. Who better than a man--or in this case, just a boy--to come to her rescue.
If Greg had played Ico all the way through, he would've realized that Yorda was only pathetic because she had been repeatedly injured and abused. The real Yorda was quite a bit more capable, just as the injured, abused Ico was just as pathetic (if not more so) than she was when she was injured.
This is what happens when someone starts their analysis of a game with the words, "I never finished..." That's like watching the first two minutes of the Spider-Man movie, turning your DVD player off, and then devoting two paragraphs to asking why someone would want to watch Peter Parker act like a geeky loser for two hours. If you're going to review or analyze something, you should at least have the maturity to take in the whole thing before gracing us with your ignorant opinion.
"The author references Metroid ("I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line")"
Yeah, that Metroid game, nothin' but a barrel of laughs...
If Samus' sex is a "punch line," what was the joke?
I admit that the character art at the end of the two GBA games makes me roll my eyes (a little too "cheesecake" for my tastes), but here he's arguing that the entire premise is flawed, that her sex is a gimmick no matter what she may look like. This makes me wonder just what he thinks about women in general. He seems to be awfully sensitive to Samus' lack of a Y-chromosone and I wonder if this means that he finds the idea of a woman doing all those things to be unbelievable. After all, he's the only one I've seen who thinks her sex is a "punch line" to begin with.
"each game in the series encourages them to reach the finish line as quickly as possible to catch a glimpse of the woman beneath the suit."
Personally, I try to get the endings so I can catch a glimpse of the person beneath the suit. One of the series' cornerstone is the tantalizingly little information on just who she is and why she does what she does. I'm more interested in situations and facial expressions than her body (and on that note I'm happier with what Retro did with her than what Nintendo has done in the last two GBA installments). I chalk the cheesecake up as a failing by Nintendo to understand just what makes the games popular outside of Japan to begin with, the inability of a group of Japanese programmers to quite relate to gaijin gamers, not a failing of men in general.
Being as sensitive as he is to the pictures at the end, why exactly does the author himself play through the games? How many other gamers here are actually encouraged by the drawings of a scantilly-dressed woman at the end of the game?
Ah, wait a second...
"That's also not what I've been taught by my parents. My mother is a neurologist. Her mother is a physician, as well. The women have always worn the pants in my family, so to speak. Perhaps this helps you understand my perspective."
Now this is interesting. Here he implies that women must "wear the pants" in order to be worth something.
"Alis wears a pink hair band, lipstick, and a skirt, but she's still OK in my book."
I'm as sick of seeing women in pink as much as the next guy, but I didn't realize that actually liking pink is such a black mark against a woman. They can have any favorite color in the spectrum so long as it's not pink?
I think his problem is that he's equating strong female characters with characters acting more male, that men are inherently better and women must act more like men to be better themselves.
Personally, the more I think of what I've seen Samus do so far, I'm not sure if she could have been a man.
It's even a male who wrote it.
And just because a man wrote it, that means it's instantly not polarizing, no matter what it says, and it's automatically considered rational, well thought out, enlightened criticism, regardless of actual merit.
Sure. Pull the other one. It's got bells on.
>Women are not offended by their own genders display of sexuality and power.
Well, ugly women feel threatened by sexy women. I don't think you'll find many attractive women opposed to this sort of thing. This only reminds ugly women of their shortcomings, however. Have you noticed any hard core feminists that are REALLY hot? Probably not.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.