Sweden Considers Adding "Sexism" Ratings To Video Games

An anonymous reader writes A government-funded agency in Sweden is considering creating special labels for video games based on whether or not the games' portrayals of women are sexist. From the article: "Avoiding sexism and gender stereotypes in video games produced in Sweden will become a key goal for the association, which has been given a 272,000 kronor ($36,672) grant by Sweden's government-funded innovation agency, Vinnova. Inspired by the Bechdel test, which looks at whether fictional films or books feature at least two women talking about a topic other than men, Dataspelsbranchen will work with several game developers to analyze how Swedish video games portray female characters and gender issues.

Comments

More detailed ratings are a good thing

[Iamthecheese]

I personally won't care a whit about this one but more detailed ratings can only be a good thing. I envision an ecosystem of metadata ranging from "suitability for playing in a car on a laptop" to "power usage profile" It's not like the world is short on disk space.

Re:More detailed ratings are a good thing

[Penguinisto]

Wat. How will having a private entity help with non-biased labeling?

A private entity cannot enforce anything upon the populace, nor can they promulgate laws based on their ratings.

Government has a very limited range of things that they do as well or better than the public at large (war/defense, money, basic law enforcement, etc) - governmental action beyond that range invariably becomes incompetent, expensive, dangerous, or worse.

Never give government more power than the worst-case scenario you would be willing to live under.

Re:More detailed ratings are a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, the test should be gender-neutral.

There are many women-centred films that do not feature at least two men talking about a topic other than women.

They should also be considered sexist.

Re:More detailed ratings are a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that Sweden needs to close down public prisons due to lack of criminals,
and United States have overpopulated private prisons, I wonder which government leads to a more free society...

Re:More detailed ratings are a good thing

[AmiMoJo]

Europeans tend to believe the opposite. They would rather the government does stuff because it tends to be cheaper and better run than when private companies get involved. They see the state of US healthcare, or what happened to the UK's railways and energy supply after privatization.

Horribly sexist !

[Anonymous Coward]

>based on whether or not the games' portrayals of women are sexist.

Just for women ? That's really sexist !

Whoa whoa whoa

[Tyr07]

Sexist is just for fucking women now? Fuck you. Avoid gender stereotypes? Fine, I'm okay if you want to label it, but what's good for the gander is good for the goose.

Take out sexism and gender stereo types for men too. If there is anyone in beefy 8 packs, with blowing everything up, that's unrealistic for men, so put a rating on it. We need to protect women and men from unrealistic views.

Here is what you're really doing and where my problem lies, it's not that you're trying to protect women from the games, you are trying to label men.

Oh, you buy sexist video games, you must be sexist. Yeah, better stop anyone from liking things you don't desire with social manipulation, sounds about right.
Equality - Men are no better than women, and vice versa, you know how many of my female friends gush over fabio, the lean body with tone and beautiful hair? It's not realistic, most men do not look that way.

But that's fine. However if men do the same thing, whooboy, sexist.

Re:Whoa whoa whoa

[fey000]

It would be disingenuous to suggest that sexism does not primarily impact women negatively.

In war? Men get killed in combat, women stay at home.
In crime? Women get lower sentences, in some cases skipping prison time entirely.
In trouble? Heard about support groups for women? I sure have. A man's support from society when in trouble can be summarized as "walk it off and man up".
In court? Women win custody cases by default.

I'm not suggesting that being a woman is all peaches and cream, but get some perspective please. Life isn't black and white, and the gender debate isn't either.

Re:Whoa whoa whoa

[neoritter]

Telling you the game contains sexist attitudes is not telling you it's not appropriate.

Yes it is, in today's society sexism is inappropriate. Therefore, saying that game A is incredibly sexist is telling you that it is incredibly inappropriate.

It's about portraying women with degrading properties, when men are not.

You have not been paying attention to games or any other form of creative media. Every anti-hero in any game is a character given degrading properties. You have ignorant buffoon male characters in numerous games. Take the blinders off please. The only reason you don't recognize it when it comes up is because men can be given any quality and it not be considered some statement about men in real life (e.g. oh he's just a lazy alcoholic, not all men are alcoholics). But if it's a woman, then it somehow morphs into a statement about all women, instead of that one, individual character in the story. You can't have it both ways, if characters in games are a reflection of their labels in real life, then it applies to both sexes.

And while we're on the subject of degrading properties, this is irrelevant to the above point but. Most gamers who had played the older Metroid games, were annoyed to pissed that Samus was neutered to be a dependent know nothing in some of the recent Metroid games.

Re:Sexism = Sexy these days

[halivar]

It's not feminism anymore; it's puritanism. Another case: we landed a probe on a comet and all we can talk about is a fucking shirt.

Re:Awesome :)

[DavidCBillen]

Can we work systemd into the discussion?

It's a stupid test

[DCFC]

Imagine that we believe that "two women talking about something other than men" was a good test, we'd therefore lose:

Colonel Samantha Carter, PhD Physicist, intergalactic heroine, smarter than God. Can program, fly fighter jets & alien spaceships, shoot and do things that they don't bother to explain because they are simply beyond us poor males to understand. So that's Stargate gone.

Lt Uhura: Dr Martin Luther King who *some people* see as quite into rights loudly praised her character, but I can't recall her talking to women much, except maybe some of the aliens might have been female, so that's Star Trek gone.

ST in it's various forms look remarkably feminist (usually) women commanded warships in ST long before the US Navy let them, they are engineers, scientists, doctors and of course inexplicable nexus of unknown forces.

Ripley from Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Return of the Alien, The Alien strikes back, Alien Resuscitation. Smart, hard, no bimbo, the Aliens are apparently female, she kills them, conversation with them is rare. The men are a) weak, b) stupid, c) dishonest, d) weak, stupid and dishonest

X-Files : Scully is smart and hardly ever talks to women.

Agents of SHIELD: Loads of women programming, analysing and occasionally shooting at people. The inter-female dialog is rare.

Babylon 5: Strong women, being heads of security, scientists, highly cultured aliens.

Torchwood : Strong female lead, again almost no inter-female dialog.

Under the Dome : The main character is a strong woman, all the weak bad people are men

Terminator 1,2,3, Sarah Connor : Oh look ! what a surprise a strong woman in a world of defective men

I've not yet seen Interstellar, but let me guess, the women in it are smart and honest and whoever is screwing things up is a man ?

I can't be the only person who's noticed that in many SciFi and action films a dumb American male is accompanied by a highly educated woman who actually understands what is going on, whilst he shoots at it.

Horribly sexist !

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to double standards. It's OK for women to be sexist. Nobody is going after entertainment women enjoy like fashion gossip magazines, and trashy novels where men physically and mentally abuse women.

Having seen what passes for sexism nowadays...

[russotto]

Since any portrayal whatsoever of women, or no portrayal at all, can be deemed "sexist", and that same portrayal or lack of portrayal can be deemed "not sexist", depending entirely on who made the game, it will be a very simple rating -- 100% sexist if made by a man or a woman who is not a third-wave feminist. 0% sexist if made by exclusively by third-wave feminists.

Re:Sexism = Sexy these days

[Penguinisto]

I actually went and asked a female physicist about it. Her response if she'd been at this lab when younger (older academics develop a very, very thick skin it seems) then yes she would have found it (a lab head with a shirt emblazoned with nearly naked women on it) very off putting probably to the point of not going there.

Anecdotes mean nothing, and here's why: My wife's favorite t-shirt has an almost-nude Bettie Page in full dominatrix gear, and she happily wore it to work when we first met (albeit she's not a physicist or in academia, but she does work in the tech realm.) The difference? She's completely secure in her self-image, and in her femininity - enough that she doesn't give a damn about what some guy wears.

...at making a group feel completely excluded.

What group - militant feministas who are so insecure in their self-image that they have to lash out at the planet? In all honesty, fuck them. I get the whole professional attire business, but I refuse to attenuate my life or attire out of fear that I might somehow offend the perpetually-offended.

If the group you refer to is simply 'women in general'? Sorry, but that group is way too damned diverse to be put into a container, and the dude's shirt wasn't pornographic, so what the hell?