Five Ways To Save Video Games

Games.net has an article up with the somewhat dramatic title of Five Ways to Save Video Games. The piece doesn't feel the need to pull any punches. From the article: "#1 Stop Treating Women Like Whores - Sexy is fine. Titillating can be fun. But when you show stupid jiggle-physics and scantily-clad girls cooing and moaning and wriggling, you show yourselves for what you really are: sex-crazed children. And don't think for a minute that the mainstream media doesn't pick up on this. If you can't stop demeaning women (with skimpy outfits and hyper-sexuality) and men (by glamorizing massive musculature and testosterone-dripping masculinity), then get the hell out of the industry."

Comments

Skimpy outfits?

[Jare]

It seems 90% of the world is a sex-crazed children, if advertisments are anything to go by. From cars to perfume to... yeah pretty much anything adheres to the "skimpy outfits + huge muscles" trend. Don't even get me started on movies.

Re:Skimpy outfits?

[Laxitive]

No shit.

I still remember when a friend bought home a case of Bud one day. Oh yes, I remember waking up the next day, feeling strangely bewildered and disoriented when I realized that despite the several cans of shitty beer I'd consumed the night before, I had not received even a single blowjob from hot, giggling college girls.

A rude awakening, that was.. (well, waking up to a vomit-stained bed smelling vaguely reminiscent of that shitty generic beer taste was probably the most rude part).

-Laxitive

"Saving" Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, how many articles like this have we seen recently? I don't mind slashdot covering the articles; after all, this is an undeniable trend in gaming journalism of late and deserves to be covered. I do wonder whether the authors of these articles realise just how redundant they're being, though.

What I've noticed is that, whatever language and specific examples are used to dress them up, most of these articles seem to be trying to point in the same direction. In short, they want to "save" the industry by getting it to drop the practices that have been successful at pushing gaming into the mainstream over the last decade.

Seriously, how often lately have we read that games should stop trying to be like movies, stop including fmv or, indeed, any cutscene longer than about five seconds. How many cheap (and inaccurate) shots at Final Fantasy X do we have to sit, on the supposed grounds that it was just a movie with a few interactive sequences? What precisely is the purpose of attacking games with "epic" plots? Should every game be about a cartoon plumber running around cleaning graffiti off an island?

I think this basically boils down to "disgruntled fanboy syndrome". The journalists writing these articles now are the same breed who, ten years ago (before the Playstation, when gaming could still reasonably be described as niche) were writing about what games needed to do to break into the mainstream. Now that gaming is firmly a mainstream practice, they want nothing more than to push it back into its niche? Why? Ego, mostly.

A lot of these sages figured that when games became a mainstream activity, the nature of the public would change to fit their past-time. They didn't figure on their past-time changing to fit the public. Look at all the Final Fantasy fans who whinge on (often at great length, in slashdot games comments section) about how Square haven't made a good game since Final Fantasy VI and are just interested in milking the franchise these days? Do their claims stand up to close investigation? Not by any objective standard. FFX had a more intricate and nuanced combat system than FFVI, had more "optional" content and a better range of tools available to convey emotional expression. FFX-2, by no means the most popular installment in the series, was a pretty risky venture, taking all kinds of liberties with established gameplay concepts that *could* have simply been milked further to provide a safe cash-flow. The vast majority of those who publically hark back to the so-called glory days of the series are simply trying to boost their own egos by showing all these pesky newcomers that "WE WERE HERE BEFORE YOU" and assuming that their opinions should carry more weight as a result of this.

Alternatively, turn the example around and look at Nintendo. Nintendo's course of action over the last few years (and its probable course over the next couple of years) has been pretty close to what most of these articles seem to be promoting. They've eschewed movie-style production values (look at the absence of voice-acting in Wind Waker, for example) and concentrated on "old school" gameplay concepts. If these articles (and the general thrust of opinion on slashdot games) were correct, Nintendo should be market leaders. In reality, they're faced with declining sales, plummeting market share and a near total absence of any press attention out of the strictly specialist media.

In short, most gaming media articles on "how to save gaming" are in fact nothing more than thinly disguised articles on "how to save the author's job and/or ego".

What I want to know is ...

[Metatron]

... is there anywhere I can do a Masters or PHD in jiggle-physics, this seems like a discipline that requires further study.

stop and think

[FidelCatsro]

I am a Man , I like seeing women in skimpy outfits .I do not view them as inferior or lessor beings because some women choose to wear something titillating . In fact I admire their courage and their bodies.
I like jiggling breasts .. It's natural for straight guys to like these types of things.
It is not Evil or wrong for Games to portray this .

They are not treating them as whores , they are treating them as beautiful examples of the female form.
I am not a sexist and believe women deserve equal rights in all things. The fact remains that men like to see scantily clad women and that is not going to change because a few prudes consider this demeaning .
We are not immature idiots , we know that most real women are not like this , but let us keep our fantasies please.(some women also enjoy scantily clad men , look at the success of male strippers )

The complaints about the story lines are silly , some games have better plots than others .. but the most important thing is the game-play . Sure a few stories are rather similar and have some plot holes .. but you would think that these people have never read works of literature .. I can tell you from experience that the same things happen even in the greatest of literary works .

After all these are just games and centre around the interactivity aspect of the story . Sure they do sometimes follow the Hero save damsel from villain plot but honestly it is a tried and true format that works well.

Special effects can be rather cool , So long as they are not over-used or inappropriately used (or lacking inappropriately ).

Cinematic experiences can be part of the games style , what is wrong with that . I don't have much to say on this part as it's really not worth commenting on

Re:stop and think

[realityfighter]

Let me see how delicately I can put this...

I am a woman. I disagree. Games like Rumble Roses and Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball make me feel pretty shitty. The kind of "appreciation" you're expressing makes me feel pretty shitty, because for most men that appreciation comes before all others. It's demeaning to those of us who actually work to do something of value and meaning with our lives, to have our accomplishments swept aside by that natural titty lust. And somehow you expect a woman to like it simply because you're complimenting her body. What you don't understand is that most of the time what we want is appreciation for what we have done, not for the incidental shape of our tits. (And for those guys who say, "Gee, I wish people treated me like a sex object, hur hur hur!" - No, you don't. Trust me.)

If your body, which is something you have simply by virtue of existing, is the sole reason that people pay attention to you, what worth are your mind, soul, personality, opinions - in essence, the things that make up your sense of self? There's not much value in being "appreciated" like this all the time. Now think about how you would feel if you were ignored for a CGI image of a better body than yours - and probably "better" because you chose to spend your days, say, coding or writing instead of primping and dieting?

Again, this may not reflect how you feel or act, and I don't mean to say that this kind of portrayal is Eeevil in the moral sense. All I'm saying is that you might want to know what goes through my head when I, an actual woman, see a game like this, and why it makes me feel degraded.

I can feel a wave of moronic, misogynistic replies coming because of this post. I'm sorry, guys. If you don't want to understand things like this, it's not our fault that women seem mysterious to you.