interesting kickstarter ("tropes vs. women in video games")

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games

About this Project:

I love playing video games but I?m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented.  This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.  The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders.  I?m going to need your help to make it happen!

As a gamer, a pop culture critic and a fan, I?m always working to balance my enjoyment of media while simultaneously being critical of problematic gender representations. With my video web series Feminist Frequency,  I look at the way women are portrayed in mass media and the impact they have on our culture and society.

interesting especially for me, with two daughters who are well on their way to becoming young adults and heading off on their own life paths, obviously affected by how media presents what a woman is "supposed to be" (and yes it's official even mainstream folks seem to be acknowledging the power of videogames as being more than just entertaining distractions, they are just like other media in that they can impact and even direct cultural norms etc. etc.)



found via a "response" (certainly not a mockery) here: http://www.indiegogo.com/misandryinvideogames




sorta-related: did you know the recent Niagara Falls wire walk by Nik Wallenda was funded on indiegogo?

[Thorin]

As a dad with two girls as well, my experience thus far (and advice from other older dads with older girls) has been that a good counter for girls thinking they always need to _look_ good is to get them into activities where they _do_ good.  Sports are a great example, but only the ones with concrete measurable goals, not ones where people arbitrarily judge you.

For instance, soccer, ringette, hockey, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, swimming, running, fastball - these all have a measurable objective (put the object in the net or hit it or be the first to the end of the lane or to the base).  Synchro swimming, figure skating, dance - these all have judges that assign a score (the scoring systems are getting better, but there's still an indefinable mark given for what the judge thought of the performance).

Am I okay with my daughters taking up dancing, cheerleading, figure skating, modeling?  Sure!  But I subtly arrange for them to engage in activities (not just sports, academic activities as well) where there is a measurable objective - this way they get used to the idea that not everything in life comes to you just because your makeup was perfect.

At the same time, I work hard at helping my boys know they're worth more than just their achievements (girls tend to focus on looks, boys tend to focus on achievements).  We talk about how beautiful things can be, how hard it is to make art and yet how there is no real measurable success when the art is complete.  Hopefully from this comes the lesson that beauty in life is important as well.

Now, for the original subject, that of all / most video game women falling into a certain few buckets - if all video game producers switch away from these tired female character tropes, won't they all just switch towards a new set of female character tropes?  Isn't the problem not that the same ideas are recycled for most female characters, but rather that most _videogame experiences_ are recycled?  Think about it, if I say "tower defense game" or "real time strategy" or "fps rpg", I just described hundreds of games.  They're churning them out by the boatloads, and they're sticking to the tried-n-true formulas because lots of people buy them and so that's what makes money.  You want someone to make a video game that doesn't fit the ten or so popular moulds?  That's a huge risk!  So if all the games are following similar moulds, aren't all the game characters gonna end up similar as well?

[Mr. Analog]

Weird, I just noticed this thread... anyway

Pretty much what Thorin said, even though I don't have kids I think it's probably far better as a parent to actively guide their children through to adulthood by giving them the chance to disassociate gender with ability and achievement through activity rather than fictional situations.

[Lazybones]

found via a "response" (certainly not a mockery) here: http://www.indiegogo.com/misandryinvideogames

Now I suspect this was tossed up to ride the headline trian however stop and think about video games, they are bad for both sex and probably even races.

I am having a hard time thing of any plain well rounded characters... Everyone is an exaggeration!

Men are almost always big solders killing stuff and women are almost always curvy half naked sex object killing stuff.

Other wise men are vial faceless monster enemies and women are helpless and need saving...

The list goes on and on so past these comments I am just going to call out video games for racism and bad gender roles.

[Mr. Analog]

Pretty much, though no different then films or books or any other form of escapist entertainment.

I applaud anyone who wants to get out there and make something unique and cool (especially video games) but I am wary of people who leverage virtue as a means of funding.

Why not just make a great game that happens to feature great role models?

All I can think of are the "anti-drug" video games from the 90s, the premise wasn't to make a great game, it was to push an agenda, and subsequently a pile of @%&#ty games got made.

[Thorin]

I would say Club Penguin does a good job of not stereotyping Puffles (penguin avatars), and Farmville does a good job of not stereotyping farmers.

..

Oh wait, everyone's talking about "mainstream" video games.  Even though Club Penguin and Farmville probably have more players _online_ than many of these "mainstream" video games have _total_.

Also - Skylanders.  Great game for developing young minds without too many negative tropes from what I've seen.  Unless you count every dragon breathing fire a negative trope.

However, games like Black Ops, Modern Warfare, and Battlefield have terrible, terrible things being said in live chat and too many parents don't listen in to what their kids hear on the headsets - the parents are just happy the kids are leaving them alone.

And then there's the parents buying their nine year olds games with the big M rating on the front.  You know, you can warn 'em all you want, but if the parent doesn't use the rating system that says "17+" on the FRONT OF THE BOX, there's really nothing you can do for that child.

By the way, what trope would Peach fall into?  The princess that needs rescuing?  You know she can beat the crap out of most other characters in Smash Brothers Melee and Smash Brothers Brawl?  And she's an integral part of the team in Super Paper Mario?

[Lazybones]

By the way, what trope would Peach fall into?  The princess that needs rescuing?  You know she can beat the crap out of most other characters in Smash Brothers Melee and Smash Brothers Brawl?  And she's an integral part of the team in Super Paper Mario?

- Princes
- Pink dress
- tiny figure
- kicks ass accept when she lets someone take her captive.

[Thorin]

Princess - yeah, so, girls should stop dreaming about being princesses?  I mean, not all do, but it's a pretty common activity.
Pink dress - I know girls that wear all pink all the time, and I know girls that wear only a little pink some of the time.  Same goes for dresses - some all the time, some only some of the time.  There aren't too many girls that don't ever wear either pink or dresses or both.
Tiny figure - Mario & Sonic At The Olympics 2008 shows Peach (and Daisy) as fit athletes.  Also, you don't know what kinda figure is under that dress.
Lets others take her captive - well what would _you_ do when a fire-breathing spiked dragon turtle tells you you're coming with them or else?  Especially a dim-witted one that you know you'll be able to outsmart later so that you don't have to get smashed and burned now?  If real-life soldiers are allowed to surrender and still be hailed as heroes, I think a videogame princess can surrender to a scary beast and still be considered a positive influence.

[Mr. Analog]

By the way, what trope would Peach fall into?  The princess that needs rescuing?  You know she can beat the crap out of most other characters in Smash Brothers Melee and Smash Brothers Brawl?  And she's an integral part of the team in Super Paper Mario?

- Princes
- Pink dress
- tiny figure
- kicks ass accept when she lets someone take her captive.

Yep, she's a classic arcade macguffin / damsel in distress, the one game that featured her rescuing Mario had her main super powers based on strong emotions which rubbed some people the wrong way. (It's a really fun game to play though! Recommend!)

I think a lot of the criticism gets lumped in on games that don't really have character development, you have elements that are actors and people associate or project a personality on them (HL1 Gordon Freeman, Samus Aran), when video game developers have a tightrope to walk when they move their actors to more developed characters, in Gordon's case it was handled quite well as Valve understood that gamers projected themselves onto the actor and sort of created a "character" for him (which is why the dialogue in Half-Life 2 was brilliant because it was impersonal, likewise handled with Portal/Portal 2) conversely a lot of people were upset when Samus started getting a personality fleshed out a bit as I feel more than a few gamers projected a Ripley-like persona on her (and what Nintendo came up with was... different).

Anyway!

I'm all for game devs that want to bring new characters and situations to the medium, more power to 'em as well, I'm not going to rag on developers who make artistic choices I don't like, well, I will but it's personal, I'd never go so far as to tell someone else what they should and shouldn't play

I'm gonna sidestep the sexism conversation altogether as it is a much larger societal issue than video games. "Video games" often become the straw man for violence/sexism/racism/etc... (I'm looking at you "Z" block from Tetris!)

[Mr. Analog]

Princess - yeah, so, girls should stop dreaming about being princesses?  I mean, not all do, but it's a pretty common activity.
Pink dress - I know girls that wear all pink all the time, and I know girls that wear only a little pink some of the time.  Same goes for dresses - some all the time, some only some of the time.  There aren't too many girls that don't ever wear either pink or dresses or both.
Tiny figure - Mario & Sonic At The Olympics 2008 shows Peach (and Daisy) as fit athletes.  Also, you don't know what kinda figure is under that dress.
Lets others take her captive - well what would _you_ do when a fire-breathing spiked dragon turtle tells you you're coming with them or else?  Especially a dim-witted one that you know you'll be able to outsmart later so that you don't have to get smashed and burned now?  If real-life soldiers are allowed to surrender and still be hailed as heroes, I think a videogame princess can surrender to a scary beast and still be considered a positive influence.

Actually you hit on something I see on social media all the time; so-called "slut shaming"

IF someone wishes to portray their sexuality in an outward manner that is their business, the tricky bit with games is that many designers have their own fantasies they wish to depict and some people attribute that as an ideal to strive for given the typical story told (epic adventure). Historically epic adventure stories with heroes and villains were filled with object lessons, even down the most basic attributes of the virtuous being attractive and the villainous being deformed, that comes from the Greeks by the way, it's called virtue ethics and you can get into it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics

To me though I think a lot of negativity comes from people who don't play games, I actually didn't get into Tomb Raider at all until a friend of mine gifted me a copy a couple years ago, I really like Lara because she kicks butt not because her butt kicks

I am somewhat concerned about the upcoming Tomb Raider game however, they've created a much less cartoony looking model for Lara but the situations they put her in are fairly disturbing (at least to me). The E3 trailer I saw seemed to indicate that her wild adventures were now going to be fear fuelled escape with allusions to rape as a consequence of failure (I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it).

That trailer actually raised my anxiety level and made me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. As a gamer I just like exploring stuff and trying to figure out puzzles, I don't want to be afraid my character is going to become an emotional cripple if I don't make a jump!

Anyway, brain rambling now, must calm down...

[Lazybones]

They screwed up Samus as well

Lets take her our of her awesome armor and put her in a skin tight jump suit.
(note the standard twisted breast ass pose, you have to show both these days)
http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Zero_Suit_Samus_%28SSBB%29

Also looking back not that far for Lego, it isn't just video games

Part I: The Brick Era (1932-1977) and The Golden Era (1978-1988)
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/08/part-i-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/
Part II: Gender Ahoy! (1989-2003)
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/15/part-ii-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/
Part III: Lean LEGO Fighting Machine (2004-2011 )
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/22/part-iii-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/
Part IV: Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/29/part-iv-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/

Pink was not always for girls
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_pink_considered_for_girls_and_blue_for_boys

[Mr. Analog]

To be fair in Metroid (NES) when you wrapped the game you had the option to play wearing her leotard she wore under the suit so, it shouldn't have been a big shock I guess, but again coming back to gamers projecting on characters, nothing was stated about how she should have been. Unfortunately for Nintendo they didn't do any research when coming up with the persona for her and suffered for it (I think).

[Darren Dirt]

By the way, what trope would Peach fall into?  The princess that needs rescuing?  You know she can beat the crap out of most other characters in Smash Brothers Melee and Smash Brothers Brawl?  And she's an integral part of the team in Super Paper Mario?

take your pick:

Damsel in Distress - Video #1
The Fighting F#@k Toy - Video #2
The Sexy Sidekick - Video #3
The Sexy Villainess - Video #4
Background Decoration - Video #5
Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress - Video #6
Women as Reward - Video #7
Mrs. Male Character - Video #8
Unattractive Equals Evil - Video #9
Man with Boobs - Video #10
Positive Female Characters! - Video #11

All I can think of are the "anti-drug" video games from the 90s, the premise wasn't to make a great game, it was to push an agenda, and subsequently a pile of @%&#ty games got made.

"Aw, no, the narc man! Aw, no, no no no, no, the narc man!"
Loudest. Propaganda game. Ever!

[Darren Dirt]

To me though I think a lot of negativity comes from people who don't play games, I actually didn't get into Tomb Raider at all until a friend of mine gifted me a copy a couple years ago, I really like Lara because she kicks butt not because her butt kicks

I am somewhat concerned about the upcoming Tomb Raider game however, they've created a much less cartoony looking model for Lara but the situations they put her in are fairly disturbing (at least to me). The E3 trailer I saw seemed to indicate that her wild adventures were now going to be fear fuelled escape with allusions to rape as a consequence of failure (I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it).

That trailer actually raised my anxiety level and made me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. As a gamer I just like exploring stuff and trying to figure out puzzles, I don't want to be afraid my character is going to become an emotional cripple if I don't make a jump!

Anyway, brain rambling now, must calm down...

Well, the new reboot game is not quite out yet, but somehow reviews are coming in -- and I guess the trailer was more troubling than the actual game in terms of controversy.

In the new Tomb Raider reboot, she's a young and impressionable apprentice archeologist without the confidence she's become known for over the years.

While the character has been something of a female Indiana Jones since her debut in 1996, she certainly didn't start out as a swashbuckling rogue -- if this origin story is to be believed, there was a time when she could barely climb, jump or shoot, let alone buckle swashes.

The game play is outstanding in every way. Tomb Raider has large areas for exploring and you can certainly lose yourself in the distraction of searching for collectibles, but its story is linear; there's only one path you can ultimately take.

If there's a complaint to be made, it could be about the actual tombs that Lara raids, most of which are optional. Most games in the series have been notable for their complex, head-scratching puzzles, yet they're a little too easy in this one. In several cases, all Lara has to do to access the big treasure chest at the end is weigh down a platform using some objects nearby. Alas, the action in this reboot clearly focuses on climbing on shooting, not so much on thinking.

The core mechanics of jumping, climbing and shooting also feel perfect, with smart artificial intelligence subtly incorporated into every aspect. If Lara loiters too long behind a particular piece of cover, for example, her enemies will either shoot it away or light up a Molotov and toss it over to flush her out.

In the event that this does happen and you don't dodge quickly enough, Lara takes damage, but the AI subtly nudges her away from danger after a brief second. It's such a nice, small touch that makes all the difference; lesser games would have your character illogically squatting in that flaming napalm until you consciously move your character out of it.

The player-assisting AI is also noticeably clever when taking cover. Most games have you press a button to do so, but here, the game is usually smart enough to just know when you want to be in cover. There's a bad guy walking towards you down a hallway and you're trying to hide around the corner? Bam, you're automatically in cover. Why thank you, Tomb Raider!

Whether it's bouncing around a rocky rapid river or being threshed while parachuting through pine trees, Lara is continually getting beaten up and injured. But, as unsympathetic coaches everywhere seem to always suggest, suffering builds character.

The game does offer some decent enticement to replay it, since there are sections of the island that can only be accessed after Lara has upgraded her gear. Given the great mechanics, it's a world I want to explore further, which makes this one of the few games I'm actually planning on replaying.

The online multiplayer mode -- designed by Eidos Montreal -- offers some fun too. The core climbing and shooting mechanics from the single-player campaign carry over into a number of game types, including standard team deathmatch, last man standing, capture the flag and domination. The wild card in all of these is the ability to set traps for other players. The crafty player can thereby sneak through the maps via tunnels and zip lines and set snares, electrical mines and crushing walls, then rack up points without firing a shot. It's an insidiously fun play option.

All told, Crystal Dynamics has succeeded in their goal with the Tomb Raider reboot. As with other recently rejigged heroes, Lara Croft emerges from this game a darker, more troubled protagonist. But that's okay -- just like James Bond and Batman, she's better off for it. Gamers are too, since this is certainly the best Tomb Raider game on this generation of consoles.

[Mr. Analog]

Man that summary kinda makes me sad because it really illustrates how the developers didn't seem to really get what Tomb Raider was about ready.  I'm somewhat new to the series but the ONE thing that really stood out was the puzzles and exploring.

Everything else was secondary and it worries me that the devs just didn't preserve that. This game could have been its own fresh IP however they chose to use Lara's "star power" *sigh*