Body confidence campaigners try to redesign video game women

[Mr.wizard]

Why not just make the characters customizable? It seems to me that part of the allure of video games is the escape from reality, your able to immerse your self in a world where you can look better, run faster, and jump higher, why would you want your fantasy character to be just as plain as you?

[pocaracas]

I'm afraid the objectification of women runs deeper than we might think...

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[Exian]

How about you start off as a flabby lazy 30 something, and the more you climb mountains and slay monsters, the more weight you lose. In ever game. Every game will be the same. No deviations. No active imaginations. No fantasy. No escapism.

Or I can just sit in front of a mirror and play with myself.

The problem I have with consumers criticizing game companies, is that they're making what we tend to buy. Which is true for the entire spectrum of genres. I know sex sells, but not all gaming company's are using sex to sell games, so criticizing the entire industry is like boycotting Harry Potter because porn uses the same medium.

[Pyrrho]

...
The problem I have with consumers criticizing game companies, is that they're making what we tend to buy. ...

Although there is some truth to what you are saying, one can only buy from among the options that are for sale.  And when one buys a product, it is whatever it is, not the best parts of each thing that is available for sale.

This applies to every product for sale, not just games.  When you buy a TV or a car, you can only select from those that are for sale (if you had practically limitless money, you could have someone design a TV for you for $100 million, but for most of us, we select from what is already for sale).

Many years ago, car manufacturers claimed that people did not want air bags, and so refused to offer them for sale.  But when they were available, people were willing to pay extra for them.  But for as long as they were not available, people could not buy them, no matter how much they wanted them.

[Silver]

I would rather play a hot, muscular male character than one who is chubby.

[robvalue]

I've never seen a problem with "objectification" either, personally. I mean, every character in a game is an object, of some description. It's not mean to be real. If people are trying to become computer game characters, or adjusting their attitude towards women because of females with big boobs who needs rescuing or whatever, they are pretty messed up in the head.

Sure, there are stereotype roles. But that goes for male characters too, and I don't think I ever hear anyone complain about that. Most of the time, the story doesn't matter very much. It's just a way to give some reason for what you're doing.

I think the idea that video games have a serious effect on people is a myth. You have to be either screwed up already, or being parented entirely by your games console and not being taught the difference between fantasy and reality. I've played games since I was 5, I've killed literally thousands of people, probably hundreds of thousands. I've rescued hundreds of princesses. I'm aware this is not reality, even when I was a little kid.

[Regina]

^Dead on

I also think that's what age ratings are there for. There is a reason why 18+ games are rated such. If you as a parent let your 6 year old kid play it and then find they're copying what they see, that's on you as a parent. It's not the job of the media to censor everything and not release anything that's unsuitable for kids, it's on the parents to use discretion in allowing their kids to see adult rated stuff and explain that it isn't reality.

[Dystopia]

^Dead on

I also think that's what age ratings are there for. There is a reason why 18+ games are rated such. If you as a parent let your 6 year old kid play it and then find they're copying what they see, that's on you as a parent. It's not the job of the media to censor everything and not release anything that's unsuitable for kids, it's on the parents to use discretion in allowing their kids to see adult rated stuff and explain that it isn't reality.

I don't think people really understand the critique - Videogames are undoubtedly fantasy, but fantasy frequently treats concepts that have some degree of realism in it - The fact something is fantasy doesn't mean it can't affect our perceptions of reality. Videogames don't incentive violence simply because very few games actually portray it as positive - You can put 1000x acts of violence and create an anti-violence game if the context makes those acts seem wrong, and you can have a single act of seemingly weak violence and be very pro-violence. What matters is not the violence itself but context, as it shapes our perceptions. A character being raped in (I'm using TV series as a better example) GOT is not the same as the female character raped in Dexter, as the latter seemed a far worse and even dystopian scenario while in the former it kinda becomes frequent so peopel stop caring much about it - This is an example of how the same act can have different effects on the audience.

The problem with objectification of women is that everyone who contributes to it is fueling an already existing and troubling problem - For males the threat of sexual objectification exists but it is not as frequent, and all it takes is to collect pictures from male and female people in magazines for a few months to see how different portrayals are - It is easy for me to say it's not a problem because I'm not female and it's not like I have to be careful about what games I buy because I don't want to end up playing something that uses my gender for shock value and captivating audiences with no other purpose.

Of course, videogame characters are literally dolls to play with, so the word objectification kinda becomes oxymoronic - But that's just a semantics talk. The fact something is fantasy doesn't mean it doesn't affect how we view the world. Are you telling me that all the moral lessons I can learn from LOTR are invalid because it's fantasy? What about Harry Potter? Are you telling me it's wrong to think Harry Potter teaches kids to be moral and good to others?

I think people confuse attractiveness and sexuality with objectification - The latter is troubling, but the former is desirable and good. You can have lots of hot people without objectifying (excessively) any of them.

[Tiberius]

One thing that really gets me about Gamergate is how they act like killing a woman in a game is the only fucked up thing that happens in video games...

When there are like 100 men being killed to every 1 woman you kill.

This and the fact that some critics (*cough* Anita Sarkeesian *cough*) flat out lied and misrepresented how women are treated in video games. Case in point, there is a mission in one of the Hitman games where you are in a strip club, and Anita shows how the character can kill and drag around the scantily clad strippers. She complained that the ability to do this encourages people to treat women as objects in real life. The only problem is that in the actual game, if you even so much as punch one of the girls, you would lose a ridiculous amount of points and have to restart the mission. If there's anything that mission teaches people, it's that strip clubs exist, and touching the girls will get you attacked by the security guys...

you can also conceal all your guns inside your jacket and you'll always be released from fail even if you've committed the worst civilian massacre ever. #JustVideoGamesRealism

For equality, they should put gay prostitutes in there too.

To be honest, a completely realistic GTA game would be annoying.

Why not just make the characters customizable? It seems to me that part of the allure of video games is the escape from reality, your able to immerse your self in a world where you can look better, run faster, and jump higher, why would you want your fantasy character to be just as plain as you?

Most role playing games do this, but this doesn't work for most games, and gamers are notoriously bad at designing good characters, compared to actual character designers.

What about Harry Potter? Are you telling me it's wrong to think Harry Potter teaches kids to be moral and good to others?

I think Harry Potter teaches children that if you skip your entire last year of school to run around in the countryside, you'll still get a cushy government job at the end.

[robvalue]

Can someone give examples of this "objectification of women" in games that they see as a problem?

If killing millions of people with a shotgun in games has no significant effect on someone and in no way translates to actually killing people in real life, why should the way female characters behave in games be expected to translate either?

Most games are so utterly ridiculous in nature that to try and learn real life lessons from them would make you pretty nuts. It's a good point about age restrictions. Parents should take responsibility. They should talk to their kids, and show them what is real and what is not, and not to copy stuff that isn't real. This is what I was talking about regarding education. If parents do fuck all with their kids and just leave them to play games and go on the net, then sure, they're going to pick up warped ideas because they're not being given a grounding with which to approach these things. Someone who isn't being educated is just as likely to copy violence out of films and so on.

Like I said, these games are not meant to be educational or particularly realistic. They're not meant to teach you how to be a good person or how to treat people. Anyone approaching them that way is already messed up, and if this is a significant factor in their views then they are obviously doing nothing but playing games and not being parented and/or have serious mental conditions.

For example, I see a character in a game, man or woman. I know it's not real. I get my character to beat them up or shoot them in the head for no reason. Ahah! Am I now a real world psychopath? No. I'm playing in a virtual world that I'm fully aware is not reality. People not capable of making such a distinction are a danger to themselves and others, and it's not a problem specifically for games.