How to Change an Industry

[zhai]

It seems that the feminism issue rears its head on the speculative fiction blogosphere about once every six months, maybe more frequently if you follow specific blogs in question. I'd been meaning, with certain trepidation, to throw my hat in, and now seems an opportune time as I have found myself unwittingly participating in one editor's salvo in

Comments

[lumi21]

I like when you link Escapist articles, because aside from ZP, I don't really catch anything from that site, and I really should

[brennye]

Besides, night elves are so whiny =P

:) Every time I get some idiot yelling about me being a guy playing my main 'toon (female NE hunter), I tell him that I'm none of the above, at least until the next surgery. That usually shuts them up.

And I agree 100% about an HH game. IMHO, there aren't any space battle games that I want to play, but that would be the one. IF they handle the spacial relations as well as Weber did. But that wouldn't make for a great game, huh?

[zhai]

Yeah. You would not be the first person to tell me they wanted me to link more often when an Escapist article goes up. I will try to get better about it. I do know after "Cyberpunked" went up a few people went back and read my Inside Job posts, which was cool. "Holding Out for a Heroine" is one of my pet favorites, though -- I recently changed my LJ user info to link to a few articles, and that one is there. :)

I agree re Ivy, even though Xianghua was always my favorite because I am a sucker for t'ai chi sword. anguirel had an obsession with being able to reliably pull off Summon Suffering back in the days of SC2. Some of the argument for SC did surface in the comments -- in that Voldo, for instance, is probably equally as physically impossible (as is the Soul Blade, for that matter) as Taki's SC3 boobs, but I think the point remains... in male characters the exaggeration is on attributes that emphasize their strength; in females the exaggeration is on sexualized elements that would impair their physical performance, and that is indicative

[lumi21]

Re horde druid -- why a female tauren, though?

Roleplaying, I suppose. I had a character in mind that I wanted to play, and I felt it was more conducive to the personality to make her female. My first rogue was a human female, too.

My second druid was guy, but there wasn't much roleplaying involved there. I just wanted to be huge =)

Which brings me to another potential line of reasoning. The male tauren is the largest model in the game, and that bothers some people. On the other hand, some people get a kick out of being able to hide a gnome completely inside your model when riding a kodo.

Some of the argument for SC did surface in the comments -- in that Voldo, for instance, is probably equally as physically impossible (as is the Soul Blade, for that matter) as Taki's SC3 boobs, but I think the point remains... in male characters the exaggeration is on attributes that emphasize their strength; in females the exaggeration is on sexualized elements that would impair their physical performance, and that is indicative of a

[zhai]

Okay, see, when you bring roleplaying into the picture at high levels (people who are far enough into roleplaying to want to play an opposite gender -- it's a threshold) you pretty much bork all statistics. :) And I am still highly skeptical about any kind of roleplaying going on in WoW outside of the player's head (I certainly understand about internal character-related stories -- I make them up for mine, too

[lumi21]

And I am still highly skeptical about any kind of roleplaying going on in WoW outside of the player's head

Oh, absolutely! But remember, I come from Gemstone. When I heard "RP server", I figured it would be "GS with graphics, in the world of the Warcraft games". I didn't know anything about the game, really, and the ways in which the mechanics and static nature of the game world make roleplaying more or less impossible. And that's not even getting into the player base (this was my first MMO, so I was simply naive as to the sort of attitudes toward roleplaying, griefing, etc. that I would find there). So yes, I've pretty much given up on roleplaying in WoW entirely, even if I come up with a little backstory for my own characters.

But then, I suspect that franchise has already peaked, and their desperation is showing. It's a shame, I liked the earlier games.

SC or DoA?

[elenuial]

Gemstone... Is that the MMO that didn't have any combat mechanics? Whatever it is, I wish I'd heard of that game before it died.

I think the idea of an MMO that throws out the usual kill-loot-level reward system and replaces it with more social incentives is really interesting.

[zhai]

He's talking about this Gemstone, the Simutronics text-based older sister to DragonRealms, which I worked on. I'm unfamiliar with Gem's combat, but DR, which was based on its engine (all Simu games use a proprietary scripting language called 'Gemstone Scripting Language') did have a pretty unique learning system whereby you could learn virtually any skill, not just those owned or maintained by your character class. So anyone could become a master skinner, though Rangers always had a boost to it and could do special things with the skins. It created a very dynamic environment that to this day offers interesting things to the MMO field. In addition to learning any skill, "Teaching" itself was a skill, as was "Scholarship" (learning by listening or reading), so you could transfer skills between individuals socially, which is a pretty phenomenal roleplaying enhancing design tool. There was also one entirely social non-combat class, Empaths, who literally could not fight, would go into empathic shock if they harmed another living thing, so

[zhai]

Oh, I do understand. I was just pointing out that you are very likely the exception and not the rule in having any roleplaying sensibility and applying it to WoW. ;) I know there are roleplaying groups that engage in pretty spirited roleplay on the servers, but it's nothing compared to what you'd see in your average MUSH, as you know.

SC. I liked some of DoA's gameplay but the boobulage was just way too much for me.

[lumi21]

I know there are roleplaying groups that engage in pretty spirited roleplay on the servers, but it's nothing compared to what you'd see in your average MUSH, as you know.

Yeah, the person who got me to finally play WoW sold me on it by saying she was in a roleplaying guild, and that they did it all the time. She failed to explain that their concept of "roleplaying in WoW" was using the text chat to conduct their RP while playing the game, as two completely separate activities divorced from each other.

If I wanted that, I could have stayed on AOL and hung out in the Red Dragon Inn...

SC. I liked some of DoA's gameplay but the boobulage was just way too much for me.

Yeah, DoA was pretty ridiculous from the get-go insofar as female proportions on their characters (though they scored major, major points in my book by including Ryu Hayabusa as a character, and I did really like the team attacks ^_^).

I will keep my fingers crossed for SC, as it's one of my favorite fighting franchises.

[zhai]

I just went and looked at the SC4 website. Holy crap. Did you see that they've added Darth Vader as a bonus character?

I remain slightly skeptical as I thought SC3 was disappointing, but between this and what I've seen of GTA4, I may have to buy a PS3 this summer...

[anguirel]

DoA's boobulage (which may be my new favorite word), at least, was so incredibly intentional that they had a jiggle-slider in the options. When the game is flat out telling you why it's there, I feel that's at least a service in the form of honesty ("she kicks high"). I'm less happy with titles which try to act like it's somehow not intending to use sex to sell the game.

[zhai]

I would agree with that. I thought poorly of SC for chasing DoA, but DoA itself I just thought was funny. I'm fine having no inclination to play a game and letting it go, particularly when it's one instance and is very up front about what it's trying to say and do -- I think that's an important delineation, and also applies to things like the violence in GTA, which might have been better received if the game's social message were a little better expressed in the media. I don't believe in censorship, generally, and all of this is probably a good addition to the conversation on feminism, because there are certainly a good many angry types who would prefer to have the ability to ban or otherwise destroy DoA just for being what it is. I don't consider it an affront to any kind of basic sensibility or ethic, though I do reserve the right to make fun of people who ogle the pixel boobs.

[lumi21]

I agree completely, well said. And yeah, "boobulage" is a fantastic word =)

[elenuial]

Yes, sex sells. So do other things. There's no way to instantly remove idiotic hypersexualized images from mainstream media, but (as zhai says in the OP) you can put out alternatives, and with enough people putting out enough alternatives that sell well enough, the state of the industry will change.

Also (this isn't something you said, but I figure I'll mention it here anyways), making appeals to "realism" is a crap way to justify stupidity. Realism is not a toggle switch. Do you want to play my game based off of Kandinsky paintings? That's what happens when you throw realism out the window

[lumi21]

There's no way to instantly remove idiotic hypersexualized images from mainstream media, but (as zhai says in the OP) you can put out alternatives, and with enough people putting out enough alternatives that sell well enough, the state of the industry will change.

From my admittedly uninformed standpoint, these efforts are not cumulative over time. There's a point of critical mass that must be achieved in a relatively short time to prevent such alternatives from being more than just a flash in the pan. I don't know what that critical mass is, and maybe I'm dead wrong, but that's the impression I get.

Also (this isn't something you said, but I figure I'll mention it here anyways), making appeals to "realism" is a crap way to justify stupidity. Realism is not a toggle switch. Do you want to play my game based off of Kandinsky paintings? That's what happens when you throw realism out the window.Eh, I'm not sure how much I agree with this. There IS such a thing as too much realism; racing games found this out a long time ago. I