10 ms·

1) Its not the physically smaller or weaker part that is the problem - how often really do women need men to come rescue them? Is it any more than men needing w

1) Its not the physically smaller or weaker part that is the problem - how often really do women need men to come rescue them? Is it any more than men needing women to rescue them? Why then are most of the video games, even the puzzle based ones where brains not brawn are the deciding factor, all about saving the women? It seems to me that there is certainly a curious imbalance there. 2) Strawman - parent is not demeaning the "weak and passive" so much as pointing out that a lot of video games present a wide variety of male types, but only the weak and passive female type. This is strange. The women I know seem to fall on a scale ranging from weak and passive to "alpha as fuck", just like the men. 3) Goalpost moving, true scotsman, and strawman rolled up into one: There is no argument here about orienting the games toward a gender, only the portrayal of genders within the games. If you think they are the same, then there is perhaps something else going on as well... basically there is some sort of assumption that games oriented towards boys should only portray men strongly. Which is weird, because how the hell would it appeal less to boys if some of the characters were strong women? 4) Actually a good point. Unfortunately mixed up in some sort of strawman - you are angry that people would like to see strong female characters in action games, so you are accusing the parent of only wanting action gams for kids - which is not evident in that post - and therefore hurting the chance for girls (who apparently can't like action games) to get good games for them. (I'm guessing that your conservative basis in reality suggests that means they need games about vacuuming, cooking and ponies).

belorn 14y ago
(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points) 1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the bank if you are a producer. I would not know how we even could began fixing this. 2) video games do not present a wide variety of male types. Since when did you see a undecisive, meek, emotional erratic male protagonist? How often is he a gear of wars massive hulk made of 99% muscles, with so low base sounding voice that he likely has a serious sickness in the throat? How often doesnt he act like an emotionalless robot, creating a flood of corpses and steals anything that's not nailed down? 3) while I am not a game developer, I doubt that having strong women would lower the numbers of sales to boys. I don't see anyone arguing this. I do however think that the industry is lazy, and is not going to change their products if they don't have to. Movie producers and game producers are in this aspect very similar, and focus on what ever sold the most yesterday. In media, only books tend to have reached a level of diversity that we as a society is happy with. 4) I don't think the commenter is angry. That would imply intent in a very few written lines. I also think you are missing the point. Stories are complicated, and good stories require more than simple resprite work or pronounce changes. This goes same for making games that present role models for boys as well as girls.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. They are? On what do you base that?
  - belorn 14y ago
    Anecdotal evidence on movies and games :). Mostly based on reviews. StarCraft II was one of the most silliest examples of this. The characters are one-dimensional to the point of being laughable. This is a game which had almost unlimited budget, and they just fail horrible at having an original story. I dare people to watch the cinematics say that the male roles are typical of the human male population. But the more telling part, is that I would have to dig into the indy scene if I even wanted a bit originality in the story. I can't find a single AAA game that have original and well fleshed out characters, and a interesting story. At best, one would have to look at the walking dead which copies that from the TV-show. Movies... pre-2000, we had a bunch of james bond copies. After that, we got the expendable? The new die hard? Any of the teenage vampire movies? The one with good story and good character looks to be mostly remakes of older movies or comic/book made-movie, or animations. Wreck-It Ralph is a clear example of good characters.
    - aviraldg 14y ago
      Assassin's Creed.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      It's not that most current AAA games or movies are good, it's just that I think we tend to see past ones with rose colored glasses, and to compare best of "the past" (decades) with "the present" (a few years), which is clearly unbalanced. I was never a big fan of playing games for their stories or characters; I value gameplay over almost everything, preferring mindless fun (e.g. Metal Slug) or multiplayer games, but Portal 1 & 2 are certainly better than most of the big budget games I remember playing. As for movies since the 2000, sure you have crap like those, but you also have decent movies like (from the top of my head) the Coen brothers', the Eternal Sunshine, Mulholland Drive, Children of Men or Crash. Were the previous decades much better? I don't think so.

belorn 14y ago

(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points) 1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the bank if you are a producer. I would not know how we even could began fixing this. 2) video games do not present a wide variety of male types. Since when did you see a undecisive, meek, emotional erratic male protagonist? How often is he a gear of wars massive hulk made of 99% muscles, with so low base sounding voice that he likely has a serious sickness in the throat? How often doesnt he act like an emotionalless robot, creating a flood of corpses and steals anything that's not nailed down? 3) while I am not a game developer, I doubt that having strong women would lower the numbers of sales to boys. I don't see anyone arguing this. I do however think that the industry is lazy, and is not going to change their products if they don't have to. Movie producers and game producers are in this aspect very similar, and focus on what ever sold the most yesterday. In media, only books tend to have reached a level of diversity that we as a society is happy with. 4) I don't think the commenter is angry. That would imply intent in a very few written lines. I also think you are missing the point. Stories are complicated, and good stories require more than simple resprite work or pronounce changes. This goes same for making games that present role models for boys as well as girls.

icebraining 14y ago
Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. They are? On what do you base that?
- belorn 14y ago
  Anecdotal evidence on movies and games :). Mostly based on reviews. StarCraft II was one of the most silliest examples of this. The characters are one-dimensional to the point of being laughable. This is a game which had almost unlimited budget, and they just fail horrible at having an original story. I dare people to watch the cinematics say that the male roles are typical of the human male population. But the more telling part, is that I would have to dig into the indy scene if I even wanted a bit originality in the story. I can't find a single AAA game that have original and well fleshed out characters, and a interesting story. At best, one would have to look at the walking dead which copies that from the TV-show. Movies... pre-2000, we had a bunch of james bond copies. After that, we got the expendable? The new die hard? Any of the teenage vampire movies? The one with good story and good character looks to be mostly remakes of older movies or comic/book made-movie, or animations. Wreck-It Ralph is a clear example of good characters.
  - aviraldg 14y ago
    Assassin's Creed.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    It's not that most current AAA games or movies are good, it's just that I think we tend to see past ones with rose colored glasses, and to compare best of "the past" (decades) with "the present" (a few years), which is clearly unbalanced. I was never a big fan of playing games for their stories or characters; I value gameplay over almost everything, preferring mindless fun (e.g. Metal Slug) or multiplayer games, but Portal 1 & 2 are certainly better than most of the big budget games I remember playing. As for movies since the 2000, sure you have crap like those, but you also have decent movies like (from the top of my head) the Coen brothers', the Eternal Sunshine, Mulholland Drive, Children of Men or Crash. Were the previous decades much better? I don't think so.