Hey, I’m a retired grandma and I love me some games, can I be a gamer too?? I got my first computer in 1982 so I could play Adventure, well also write that MS thesis. Played almost all the infocom games and became truly addicted when my son introduced me to the Orange Box. I’m a little late to the game on BL because it looked so silly, but got BL2 GOTY and love it, level 56 UVHM Gaige anarchy build.
So riddle me this: should I upgrade to the white Destiny PS4?
Anecdotally, the game I’ve played with the highest female saturation was L4D1-2. At its peak my friends and I would pub and get a girl or two on our team every couple hours. Diablo 2 and 3 drew them in too. All violent and not played for their story. A decent amount in the survival horror genre and Portal 2.
IRL, the girl gamers I’ve seen trend casual Nintendo flagship titles – Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart. They like the portable systems.
The games with the least female presence IME: Counter-Strike 1.6 and StarCraft 1. Competitive, requires a lot of time to be any good, mechanical precision. In six years of hardcore playing my CS clan played against maybe 2-3 all girl clans, a handful of teams that had a female member.
My grandmother played the shit out of Ms. Pacman, and nothing else.
Team Fortress 2 has many female players. They make good admins IMO
Nintendo doesn’t make casual (Angry Birds, Words With Friends, FarmVille) games.
Wii Fit? Mario doesn’t fit in that, but I think Wii Fit is so utilitarian as to basically be a “casual game”. (I say this as someone who uses Wii Fit).
<continuing sidetrack>I find Gaige fine as a sniper - while she just doesn’t have the sniping bonuses Zer0 does (I’m new to the game and still under lvl30 on both Zer0 (sniping build) and Gaige (LBT), so if stuff starts getting crazy in the last levels, I’ve not found out about it yet.), her second tree favors just about any elemental damage (esp shock) dealing gun. Shock Storm is fantastic, (the only close range ability I see in the second tree is ‘Strength of Five Gorillas’, are there others that are not obviously close range?) plus More Pep and Wires Don’t Talk means that with a good shock sniper rifle she can do a lot of damage with a critical hit. I’d love to try Gaige’s anarchy build and a melee Zer0 but close combat/melee makes me extremely motion sick so sniping is the way to go for me.<continuing sidetrack>
I suppose Zelda is hardcore next to these and other recent super casual games, but historically the games I listed are considered casual. They’re the types of games people who don’t normally play games might play. They’re simple, easy, and appeal to a mass market.
One could say L4D is pretty dang casual for an FPS too.
Historically, that’s wildly inaccurate. Historically, games like Mario and Zelda have always been cutting edge as far as technology and graphical style go. They are only “casual” in the sense that they aren’t rated Mature. “Casual games” as a category were birthed by smartphones/Facebook and they (more or less) only exist in that space.
This is so broad as to be somewhat inaccurate, but I’d generally split games into 3 tiers:
Casual, Normal, eSports
Casual games are games that are frequently split up into bite-sized chunks, and available on non-gaming devices (mostly broswer-based or on the phone). Also contains the likes of idle games such as Cookie Clicker, but arguably not a dark room.
Normal games are mostly everything else. Zelda, Mario, Baldur’s Gate, etc.
ESports is a category that’s a bit funny, because I think most games that fit “eSports” also fit into normal depending on level of interest. For instance, while Starcraft is undeniably an eSport, it’s also a normal game if you play it for the campaign. It’s pretty much any multiplayer game with a championship that pays real, non-trivial amounts of prize money.
So Zelda and Mario certainly don’t fit into the eSports category, for obvious reasons, while games like COD can. But they’re also almost certainly not in the Casual category except for maybe weird side-games like Mario Teaches Typing.
Shock & AAAARGH. Which is the bright star of the tree IMO :).
:smack: Totally forgot about that one. Even after it’s taught me about standing too close to those barrels.
In Second Life Gor Evolved, the version of Second Life Gor I play, in which combat and raiding play an important role, the ratio of female to male players is about 60 percent female to 40 percent male. In the By the Book version of Second Life, which does not involve combat all that much, the ratio is about 67% to 75% female by most accounts (I don’t play Second Life BtB so I don’t know.
In Second Life there is a lot of complaining that male players won’t sexually roleplay with the female characters enough. I do my humble best, but … I’m just one man. ((Looks nobly into the sunset, hair streaming behind him as if blown by a fan, weapons gleaming in the light, with two naked slavegirls kneeling on either side of him, adoring him.))
My main criticism of her videos is that she makes weak attempts to say “These things aren’t always wrong” but then proceeds to shotgun stuff out without making any mention of when it’s “okay” or “appropriate”. If rescuing a princess or wearing a sexy outfit or stopping a domestic assault as a plot point isn’t always bad, then name some games where it was okay. Explain why Mario rescuing a princess was bad in this game but how it was okay in another. But she doesn’t do that and her feeble disclaimers are just her wanting to provide some cover, “Oh, I’m not saying you can NEVER do it… but here’s a bunch of times I think it was terrible”. She wants to reshape the industry in her vision but is insincere about what her vision actually is. It’s incredibly easy (and lazy) to just say things are bad, but much harder to define the shades of grey and there she makes zero attempt, preferring to leave her audience lathered up whenever they see a woman character in distress or otherwise ‘mistreated’.
I think it’s the idea that games that have rescue the princess and make it totally conan-esque, meathead man rescuing the barely clothed damsel who gets slung over his shoulder – that’s OK, so long as EVERY game doesn’t fall into tropes like that. Just, try for a better ratio of “damsels in distress” vs “damsels kicking ass” stories and it’s fine to have some games that exploit women.
Nobody rational wants to get rid of every exploitative game out there. Sometimes it’s fun to play a game with some classic slave girls worshipping the big man savior, because it’s fantasy and fantasy is fun. But when there’s too many games saying “yeah, being a trophy is all you’re good for” in various ways it’ll chafe to be presented with yet another one.
Disclaimer: I haven’t watched a thing she’s said. But the idea is most games and tropes will become ok and appropriate when it’s obvious that “women as pretty trophy” is no longer the majority status quo. What is not OK now because it’s yet another one on the pile might be a great game idea in 20 years when we’ve got all the issues hammered out. Variety is nice.
Right, sure. However, games are made as individual things. I’m sure the developers who made Agent 47 rescuing a girl in Hitman: Absolution weren’t trying to answer for every other game that’s ever used a “rescue a female” plot point but rather thought it fit into the story and gave the player a compelling enough motivation to keep playing. Yet Sarkeesian highlighted it as an example of how terrible it is that we have games using this trope while, in the same video, she half-heartedly claims that it’s not always bad. So why was Hitman: Absolution’s usage of it bad enough to deserve special mention and what other games did it differently enough that it’s not always bad. Or, if the complaint is that it’s overused, why should the developers of Hitman: Absolution be punished for what the developers of all those other games were doing? Would it have been fine and acceptable if Hitman had been made during some five year drought of rescued princesses? She claims she wants to moderate its usage but her actions lean more towards eliminating it.
I should mention that I’m speaking specifically about her videos. I personally don’t really care if game developers have me rescuing princesses or not. I don’t think that she’s going to “ruin gaming” or whatever. I do think that her videos are disingenuous besides being largely dull and uncompelling.
In the first video, I was familiar with some of the games she was talking about. I felt she was dishonest in presenting scenes like in Fallout New Vegas in which it was show you could go nuts and start murdering women, or you could pick up and drag a woman’s corpse. I.e., the stuff you can do to anybody in the game you can do to women as well. Presumably she would say the difference she was dealing with was that some women in the game are sex objects, and the possibility is available to combine that with violence. But to conflate that with games in which you are actively encouraged to abuse women is dishonest and unfair to the game in question.
Further, it makes me distrust the discussions of the games I don’t know so well. When we see the character skulking around a stripper’s dressing room with a knife, did they stage this to give the impression that this is what the game was about, as they did with Fallout New Vegas?
No they fucking well are not. Where did you get that nonsense from?
Not if you wanted to be taken seriously on the subject.
I haven’t seen the video, mind you, but yeah, I do smell sensationalist bullshit.
Some context :
The *Hitman *games revolve around a protagonist, Agent 47 (that’s his whole name - he’s a vat-grown clone, no parents and an Evil Scientist as sole mentor. Understandably his moral compass is a bit… off kilter as a result), who works as a contract killer for a shadowy, tentacular, anonymous Agency. Called The Agency, because they’re a bunch of originals.
Every level is a contract. 47 contracts mostly target bad people for the most part - mob bosses, drug kingpins, gang leaders, Yakuza elders, pedophile rings, corrupt cops, you get the idea. That’s not to say he’s a vigilante - he goes after these guys for *bad *reasons (mostly because some other bad guy paid him to off the competition), but there you go. It’s not Manhunt.
His big gameplay shtick besides his ability to carry a fuckton of guns tucked away within the folds of his classy tailored suit is disguise : whenever he kills a man, he can take the corpse’s clothes and pretend to be his last victim the better to fool other guards or gain access to restricted areas or perform actions that would be otherwise suspicious (e.g. dressed in cook’s clothes you may have the option to poison your victim’s food unimpeded).
While the game’s levels are usually very open sorts of stealthy puzzles and there are many ways to reach your target, dispose of them and make your way to an exit ; the protagonist’s avowed philosophy (reinforced by gameplay mechanics) is very coldly albeit pridefully professional - you get the best marks and unlock the most stuff by killing your target and only your target, leaving every other mook and innocent in the level unharmed and if possible none the wiser. In the later games, it’s even better to make it all look like an accident and never fire a shot or pull out the piano wire. For the record, while I haven’t played much of Absolution, in the 4 previous titles I believe there is one female target, total. She happens to be a killer for hire too, and she’ll fuck you up but good if she sees you coming. Defenseless stripper she is not (but she **is **skimpily dressed regardless… :o).
So if the video makes it look like *Hitman *is a game where you prowl around innocent strippers to get your voyeuristic rocks off before gleefully disemboweling them for the sicko enjoyment of the player… well, that’s true. In the same sense that *Skyrim *is a game where you prowl around defenceless villagers to get your voyeuristic rocks off before gleefully decapitating them then taking off their clothes.
That is to say, yeah, you demonstrably can, after a fashion. But that’s not what the game is about, at all.
47 himself is pretty much asexual - his entire life is his job, he knows nothing else, has no female companion or attachment (although he may have the tiniest of soft spots for his handler, it could also be interpreted as a cast-iron sense of what he thinks is his duty/responsibility/debts owed) and the few times he gets positive female attention over the course of his missions he seems either puzzled or mildly annoyed by it. He does seem to have a protective streak towards women though - he certainly doesn’t seem overly keen on guys who beat women.
Now, that’s not to say the *Hitman *series is all white when it comes to its approach to women.
There are lots of levels that happen to take place in or around strip clubs, whore alleys and the like; and plenty of jiggle physics’d fanservice. There are also plenty of stereotypically bitchy women (one in particular hires 47 to kill her beau, along with his entire family, on their wedding day, for the inheritance. You get to meet her at the party), cheating spouses, ungrateful daughters etc… In fact, I can only think of two female characters portrayed in any kind of neutral-to-positive light : one is 47’s handler, the voice on the radio that gives him his mission and sometimes saves his life ; the other is a Chinese teenage-looking half-dressed unwilling prostitute 47 can rescue a few times over the course of his adventures. So… yeah.
Of course, few guys are portrayed in any kind of positive light either, least of which 47. The games can get kind of dark and depressive, although they are not devoid of a touch of gruesome whimsy. If you play your cards right, you can stab a clown with a huge pair of hedge trimmers at some point, for example. There’s no real reason to, and it probably will make the rest of the level more difficult, but it’s still hilarious.
And of course, there’s That *Absolution *Level, which was featured prominently in the trailers : 47 has a face off with an all-female assassin squad hired by his former employers. They come to his place of hiding dressed up as nuns. Then, once spotted, immediately undress to reveal skimpy rubber/leather gimp suits worn underneath, and big guns. T&A up to here, male gaze galore.
No, AFAIK there’s no in-game or background reasons given. They’re just ninja sex nuns because. I mean, why wouldn’t they, right ? Very practical murdering attire.
Incidentally, a great many erstwhile *Hitman *fans palmfaced, hard, at that trailer. Myself included.
So there you go. Hope that helps put what’s said and shown in the video in perspective.
PS : If she wanted to link *Fallout *to positively dismal attitudes towards women, she could simply have linked to the modding Nexus. Yeh gods, is that place ripe with vile.
I think this view lacks nuance. There are a LOT of things in this world that I am willing to say are BAD, but which I am unprepared to say are unilaterally bad, all the time, for everyone. Just because you don’t have an EXAMPLE of something being okay doesn’t mean you can’t be openminded enough to accept that there might BE an example.
Your complain sounds weird - it’s like you’d be happier if she just said “You know what? All this is complete bull**** and no one should do it, EVER!” instead of the more nuanced “Well, there might be some circumstances in which this is okay.” It’s not her damn problem to find those situations.