Damsel in Distress (mouhaha)

[foxblock]

Does anyone here know a game, that is made by some women too or even one in the team that does something other than drawing concept art?

The most prominent example would be Kim Swift, who worked on Portal and Quantum Conundrum recently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Swift

EDIT: There even is a Wikipedia article on the metter, probably a better effort than the video even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games

 

[Klumpen]

That happened at a place I uses to work at. Because there were few women in IT, the Vice President of IT set upon increasing the numbers of women by giving preferance to women who applied despite them being few in number. She did that openly , sexism in its worst form.  

Many companies here advertise this strongly and say openly, that women will get the job with same (in fact less) qualifications, we even have a girls day for many years now,

where they try to get girls into tech-jobs. Our army and the transit system in my area does this as well.

Sexism here has gone in the other direction by now, I haven't even got a small job to finance my basics for some years with nearly everytime the answer, that they are only searching for women.

That was, because most of the small jobs to earn some money fast were at selling points and either the boss was a sexistic woman or they thought, that boobs are selling more to everyone,

I experienced both cases a lot.

I know some women, that DO NOT WANT to get advantages, because this implies, that women need this, because of their minor effort and intellect,

but these are the minority, most of them just welcome any bonus.

 

[Neelix]

Does anyone here know a game, that is made by some women too or even one in the team that does something other than drawing concept art?

Roberta Williams from Sierra who designed the Kings Quest series of adventure games comes to mind.


- Neelix


Edit:  incidentally Williams was directly responsible for the plot of Kings Quest II - does that make her a sexist?

According to Roberta Williams;


King's Quest II reminded me a little of Wizard and the Princess. We saw how previous games (Mystery House and King's Quest I) were received by the public, and I was anxious to try my hand at a bigger story right away. Graham would be king by now. What quest should a lonely king go on? What should he see through the magic mirror? A maiden in distress! I started to forsee a family for Graham in the future. I couldn't fit some ideas into King's Quest I, so I was happy to get a chance to include King Neptune, Dracula, everyone from Little Red Riding Hood, and that infamous rickety old bridge you could only cross so many times.

 

[ekianjo]

Does anyone here know a game, that is made by some women too or even one in the team that does something other than drawing concept art?

Roberta Williams from Sierra who designed the Kings Quest series of adventure games comes to mind.

- Neelix

Yeah, and she was a nice person too, not screaming about women's rights every 2 seconds and blaming other games/games developers. You don't mind much women like her anymore.

I know some women, that DO NOT WANT to get advantages, because this implies, that women need this, because of their minor effort and intellect,
but these are the minority, most of them just welcome any bonus.

Precisely, it shows they can't get anywhere unless someone is "helping out". Very much the same thing as with "affirmative action" and racial quota (someone's probably going to say I'm racist next, just because I don't support this kind of policy)

Games are just games. Stop taking them so seriously.

You are right and if we keep thinking like that they will always stay that way, we will get more Call of Duties, less meaningful games, the medium will never grow up, and never be accepted alongside movies for example.

I could go more in-depth on how you are wrong with the rest of your post, games as a form of art, male power fantasies, sexism, whatever..., but it seems pretty clear that I would be wasting my time

Try me. I'm always logical even in front of bullshit arguments. And the video game landscape is far from being restricted, even today, by Cal of Duties and so on. There's lot of  choice out there, but there's not much good stuff. That's what I'm saying. And even a lot of the indie stuff is borderline crap. I've been playing games for 30 years and I've seen a lot, and I'm certainly NOT impressed by what the medium has become, and this has nothing to do with women in videogames or lack of financial means or something. Sure, there was a lot of crap before too, but there were extremely good games as well.

Now, the market is getting rounded, you get a lot of average, "meeeeh" games. Mainstream makes everything shit.

 

[Klumpen]

Girls (I refuse to call her a woman) like Anita Sarkeesian are the ones,

that are always the first ones crying for help instead of just kicking him in the balls,

if they actually get sexually harrassed by one of the male citizens she seems to be so afraid of.

Oh such sweet irony.

 

[_wb_]

I think she makes quite a lot of interesting points in that video, as well as in her other videos. I don't necessarily agree with all those points, but I do agree with her main conclusions and I think her YouTube videos are quite well-made and her arguments are quite compelling.

I'm also strongly opposed to any kind of quota system aimed at correcting imbalances using so-called "positive discrimination". It is very counterproductive.

 

[ekianjo]

I think she makes quite a lot of interesting points in that video, as well as in her other videos. I don't necessarily agree with all those points, but I do agree with her main conclusions and I think her YouTube videos are quite well-made and her arguments are quite compelling.

Well it's very one-sided, however. It's hard to call that a very fair view of reality.

 

[_wb_]

What do you mean with one-sided?

If you mean that it focuses on one specific aspect, sure. I don't see what's wrong with that.

If you mean that it presents things in a biased way, I'm not so sure. It certainly does not seem to be the case that, say, half of the games use the "damsel in distress" (to be rescued by a man) trope while the other half use the "man in distress" (to be rescued by a woman) trope, and she is ignoring that second half in order to misrepresent the actual situation. I don't think I have ever even seen any video game at all that has a plot element corresponding to a gender-reversed "damsel in distress".

 

[Klumpen]

I don't think I have ever even seen any video game at all that has a plot element corresponding to a gender-reversed "damsel in distress".

Super Princess Peach for NDS:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/eHcoOLMXono?feature=oembed

Not reversed Damsel in Distress, but "No One Lives Forever 1+2" were cool games and there you have another female protagonist.

"Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2" comes to mind too, if I remember correctly: The damsel in distress is rescued by her strong sister there, pretty cool game, but really oversexualized.

 

[WizardStan]

I know some women, that DO NOT WANT to get advantages, because this implies, that women need this,

They do need it.

because of their minor effort and intellect,

Because of unconscious bias. Studies done (which I'll link to tonight, no time to find now) took the exact same resume with the same qualifications and sent it out to many different companies. The only difference was the name. Those with "white male" names got far more callbacks than those with female, ethnic, and especially ethnic female names. Exact same qualifications, chosen more often because they were "John Smith" instead of "Jane Jones", or whatever. And that's why protection laws exist.

 

[Klumpen]

Because of unconscious bias. Studies done (which I'll link to tonight, no time to find now) took the exact same resume with the same qualifications and sent it out to many different companies. The only difference was the name. Those with "white male" names got far more callbacks than those with female, ethnic, and especially ethnic female names. Exact same qualifications, chosen more often because they were "John Smith" instead of "Jane Jones", or whatever. And that's why protection laws exist.

The reactions would be the exact opposite here.

greetings from the other end of the world,

as it seems

Sexism is wrong in all directions and you cannot balance it out with "positive discrimination" as _wb_ named it.

Discrimination is not helpful.

 

[Binky]

Sexism is wrong in all directions.

quote++

 

[Klumpen]

Looking through my collection, I find many games, where male and female characters are quite equally treatet and you even can play both of them,

the female characters do not even get a strength malus or menstruation problems - not any at all!

Women there are displayed stronger than they actually are, maybe just to calm down all the girls with inferiority complex.

Fallout 1,2,3,

The Fall,

Baldur's Gate 1+2,

Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines,

Icewind Dale 1+2,

Titan's Quest - Gold,

Sacred,

Neverwinter Nights 1+2,

Knights of the Old Republic 1+2,

Enclave,

Trine,

Diablo 1+2,

Edna and Harvey,

Torchlight

....

I could go on and on and on and I have real difficulty in finding discrimination there,

maybe in "Gothic", but that's just because most people have this image from medieval times,

which is not quite correct too, as I learned in reading some original books from this time.

In "Geheimakte Tunguska" (german game) you are a girl in rescue of her father and you switch between saving your stupid guy and the girl/maincharacter though him but most of the time the girl saves guys and the rest of the world on top of it.

"Braid" is not quite what it seems to be, you seem to be rescuing your girl, but everything turns out to be quite different.

Many or most of the modern feminists spread lies and do harm in both directions with it.

 

[WizardStan]

Sexism is wrong in all directions and you cannot balance it out with "positive discrimination" as _wb_ named it.

Discrimination is not helpful.

Ehhh, it's not a solution, absolutely agree with that, but that doesn't mean it isn't helpful. A bandaid doesn't heal the injury but it can prevent it from getting worse.I am also calling doubt on your claim that where you are the reactions would necessarily be opposite. Here in North America I've heard people claiming the exact same thing, that progressive actions are just reverse racism and it's taking jobs away from white males that may be more qualified, but the studies prove otherwise: white males have an automatic advantage over women and black folk. It is not a conscious decisions, I have full faith that the people making these decisions are not "racist" or "sexist" in the classical sense, but when faced with a choice of dozens of candidates, you go with the one that "feels" better, and it's a proven fact that you just feel better around people who are like yourself, and since most high level employees making these decisions are white male that's who they'll tend to pick. Completely unconsciously they made a decision that puts certain groups at a disadvantage; progressive action steps in to balance out that disadvantage.

Yes, this means that sometimes someone (female, or black, or whatever) will be hired when someone else (ie, white male) more qualified had to be turned away to fulfill the requirements, but there are also white males being hired where a woman or black or hispanic person was more qualified. It's not fair but it is balanced.

As society progresses and more diversity enters the workplace I have no doubt that the problem will eventually be solved and the bandaid can come off, but until then something has to be done to prevent the problem from getting worse. People by themselves won't do anything about it, as a general rule we're afraid to even admit that anything is wrong, so the government needs to step in tell them so for the benefit of all. That's what governments are (supposed to be) good for, pushing through what "common sense" (which is frequently wrong) tells us and figuring out what is actually correct.

 

[Klumpen]

I can imagine, how big the difference is between Northamerica and Europe, especcially my area.

 

[vcoleiro1]

^^ Something can be done, its called pushing equality in the work force. This simply cannot happen if you try and "balance things"  by being sexist in the opposite way .  Two wrongs don't make a right.

Also, in at least some countries, it is illegal to hire someone over another person because of their sex. ie hiring a woman because of her sex over a man who is more qualified is not just sexist, in some countries its illegal and can get the company in massive hot water.

 

[Klumpen]

^^ Something can be done, its called pushing equality in the work force. This simply cannot happen if you try and "balance things"  by being sexist in the opposite way .  Two wrongs don't make a right.

Also, in at least some countries, it is illegal to hire someone over another person because of there sex. ie hiring a woman because of her sex over a man who is more qualified is not just sexist, in some countries its illegal and can get the company in massive hot water.

It is illegal here, to be specific:

Constitution of Berlin, Part II, Article 10 - (2)

Niemand darf wegen seines Geschlechts, seiner Abstammung,


seiner Rasse, seiner Sprache, seiner Heimat und Herkunft,


seines Glaubens, seiner religiösen oder politischen Anschauungen


oder seiner sexuellen Identität benachteiligt oder bevorzugt werden.

Translation:

No person shall be disadvantaged or favored

because of sex, parentage, his race, his language,

his homeland and origin, his faith, or his religious or political opinions or sexual identity.

This does not stop anyone.

Our government and its agencys, companies, etc... do and enforce illegal things in the open all the time,

because our constitution is not worth more than the paper it is printed on,

but this is worse regarding the activities of our police.

 

[_wb_]

The main problem with quota in my opinion is that it tends to reinforce gender or race based discrimination instead of eradicating it.

I'm more in favor of trying to eliminate bias in recruitment by removing name, gender and pictures from resumes where possible, and by using so called asynchronous CV's (i.e. you don't need to be exhaustive in describing your past work experience, so if e.g. you spent a few years taking care of your children, this does not need to have a negative impact on your CV).

More importantly, the lack of some public services like decent daycare centers combined with the fact that in a typical family the man has a higher wage than the woman, means that in practice, most tasks related to the household and child care are still mostly done by women. They are essentially doing unpaid labor, and this tends to have a negative impact on their career. This a vicious circle.

 

[Monkfish]

Samus or Lara Croft aren't really strong female leads, you guys are totally wrong - these characters are just guys with breasts - there's nothing much female about them. 

There's only one strong female character that comes to mind: Bayonetta - yet another character with guns, but they gave her a sense of humor that most guys characters don't have - they could have made a guy out of her but it wouldn't have worked the same. It's difficult to describe why, anyway.  

RE: Samus you're wrong about her being a "guy with breasts" as you put it because she has a maternal instinct towards a metroid that accidentally imprints on her, theres pretty much nothing more female than maternal instincts.

RE: Lara, yes she might have initially been designed as a male character, but had this been the case the tomb raider games would not have sold well at all as it would have just seemed like a rehash of the old Indiana Jones games - whereas as it stands not only is she a more interesting character but also makes the game more interesting to play - she is designed to be something unattainable from a male perspective: rich beautiful, upperclass - and something to aspire to from a female perspective: self reliant, adventurous.

RE: Bayonetta you couldn't be more wrong, she's a lazy re-hash of Dante from Devil-May-Cry, instead of having demon-blood shes a witch thats the only real difference, ffs her clothing is actually her hair in game how sexist is that! She's the guy with breasts your looking for.

 

[ekianjo]

RE: Bayonetta you couldn't be more wrong, she's a lazy re-hash of Dante from Devil-May-Cry, instead of having demon-blood shes a witch thats the only real difference, ffs her clothing is actually her hair in game how sexist is that! She's the guy with breasts your looking for.

I don't agree. There are many things that make her very distinct from usual female characters. SHe has way much more humor than Dante (who I find boring) and her look/voice is really different from what you usually get. She was not made to be extremely beautiful (there are other female characters in the game who are more attractive than her physically) yet she has powerful charisma. There's a lot of effort put into that character and she is really unique.

I see the parallel with Dante, but the comparison stops there.