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Comments
I certainly don't think ME3 is sexist. Rather it's in an uncanny valley of 'not-sexist' that highlights sexist culture in gaming if that makes sense.
Make no mistake, in a world of games like Gears of War ME3 is a marvel of gender-relations, but that just proves gaming isn't where it really should be.
>Mass Effect 3 not sexist
>EDI's body
I like to play female characters in video games once in a while. They tend to have some interactions with NPCs a male protagonist won't have. I don't even mean the raunchier ones, some additional funny lines are enough to count.
Plus my time on the 'Net made me feel vaguely uneasy about the idea of playing as male when I'm male, as if it was sexist or whatever. I guess there's some smart word for that. Institutionalised something, I guess.
I identify with female characters a lot of the time and hence I find it disappointing that a lot of media is so male-dominated (and constantly complain about video game covers pulling a bait and switch on character gender). I mean Miyazaki can use female leads, so why is it such an alien concept for most producers?
You should understand that Miyazaki also has complete creator over his work and is not set back by precarious preconceptions.
Going back to a previous topic that came up, I don't get the hate that's heaped on Call of Duty/Modern Warfare. They're certainly imperfect on multiple grounds, but the way some people seem to consider them, you'd think they were the Twilight or Eragon of gaming. While I certainly worry that Call of Duty and Modern Warfare might contain accidental propaganda, and as much as I see the plot for Modern Warfare is a conservative extremist's wet dream, they're essentially good games with horrible communities. Their popularity has also empowered the gaming industry quite a bit, and they're the games responsible for dragging FPS games out of the mire of huge HP values and other silly things. Altogether, they've been a positive force. One that obviously needs to be tempered, now, but positive nonetheless.
In terms of female leads, there's certainly a lack of games that enforce that the way they enforce male leads. Metroid springs to mind, but then I remember the horrible revisionism that was Other M and usdshasgh-;;jklh
Right now, I think gaming lacks creative leaders like Miyazaki that can write diverse female characters and ensure they're relevant to everyone. No lack of, say, romantic comedies have female leads in cinema, but romantic comedies are seen as chick flicks and designed to appeal to a female demographic in general. I'd say they don't "count" since they rely on gender segregation.
While the end of Aliens was kinda silly with Ripley taping guns together and going into the hive alone, she has a nice character arc over the first three Alien movies. She seldom (perhaps once or twice) fights the Alien directly, but she's still an example of a wilful female character that nonetheless has weaknesses and makes mistakes. One interesting factor about Ripley from a meta perspective is that she was initially written as a male character, but they decided to cast the character as a female after writing was completed. I think this is a pretty neat thing to do, going both ways. If you can change a character's gender and/or sex and it comes across as natural, your character is either ridiculously simple or well-developed enough that they come across as a complete human being.
I think it's interesting that, despite Japan's social issues, games like Persona are the ones tackling issues like sexuality and displaying feminine qualities in men as a good thing. Not that there's a lack of sexism in some or many Japanese games -- am disappoint, Soul Calibur -- but at their best, Japanese games have been touching a level of social progression and general diversity that Western games don't. Just kinda interesting.
Saying all this, I would like to see more fun games, possibly with a higher emphasis on swords. I guess some sheathes can be in there for the peripheral demographic.
I have a fair few criticisms of the MW series myself, but they're essentially fine games. My criticisms mostly stem from them glorifying military action to the Nth degree without the emotional weight or general justification associated with WW2.
Kinda funny. Now that they're gone, I kind of miss the WW2 shooters. Most of them were terrible, but then again, most of my memories of that genre during that era were of the early Call of Duty games. They had some brilliant sequences.
^^ To be fair, that's hardly a trait unique to Call of Duty. It's not a good thing, sure, but sequels that don't change much have been a part of video gaming since the beginning.
Amongst other things, too.
For instance, slapping RPG mechanics lazily onto action games has been with us since the NES era.
I have a fair few criticisms of the MW series myself, but they're essentially fine games.
Modern Warfare 3 is not. I can accept re-releasing a game, but not re-releasing it with so few changes that the most significant of the changes ruins what is the most important aspect of the series.
Although I don't believe there is such a thing as a gamer girl (there are only gamers. In an ideal world, anyway), I'll have to say that I agree that the "don't hit on me silly boys <3" stereotype exists. I know about 3 IRL cases, so this is strictly a YMMV thing.
Considering how many popculture stereotypes you run into Schitzo, I'm going to start calling you Scott Pilgrim.
"I think it's interesting that, despite Japan's social issues, games like Persona are the ones tackling issues like sexuality and displaying feminine qualities in men as a good thing. Not that there's a lack of sexism in some or many Japanese games -- am disappoint, Soul Calibur -- but at their best, Japanese games have been touching a level of social progression and general diversity that Western games don't. Just kinda interesting. "
Well, at least Soul Calibur has some of the women in important roles (a woman going out to fight while her husband stays at home, imagine that) even if they have to do it in degrading outfits. Though it is quite telling that Xianghua is the first to wield Soul Calibur and spends the rest of the series reduced to pining over Kilik.
"Saying all this, I would like to see more fun games, possibly with a higher emphasis on swords. I guess some sheathes can be in there for the peripheral demographic."
To be honest, swords get a lot of representation already, though I too would like to see actual swordplay like Skyward Sword.
^^ No prob
What really got me was the news that the next Soul Calibur game is taking place over a decade later than the last one. Apparently, they're planning to retire most of the female cast while keeping most of the male cast. I mean, keeping some male characters strikes me as a good idea -- Siegfried and Misturugi make that series for me -- but you can see where this is going.
To me, MW3's changes are much less relevant than the story coming across as limp in a lot of places, which has been a problem since MW2. I could honestly handle all three MW games having identical mechanics -- they represent the same essential premise, after all -- but what made them grating was that I lost more and more investment in the plot and characters. The end of MW3 is a perfect example; I was disappointed that it never took the time out to reflect on warfare, the remaining characters or the state of the world.
I mean, there are a lot of unanswered questions. How is the world changed and altered? Where are the fruits of this whole thing? Did I fight all this way to change the world for the better? Does it make up for the hundreds of lives I ended in a hail of lead and brass? The series ultimately failed to provide narrative feedback. I get that Price lighting a cigar after brutally hanging his arch nemesis from the frame of a building is all badass and stuff, but I'd hate to think that the developers didn't think beyond that.
I was on the fence about going back to the series until I saw that. Now? Never happening.
Yep, that's what they did. Apparently if a woman is older than 25, they can't appeal to gamers because their appearance is the only thing worthwhile.
Incidentally, I think Siegfried actually looks better older.
^I've mentioned it before, but someone wasn't paying attention to how much everyone hated those damn Evony ads.
Siegfried rocks a beard pretty well, but for reasons similar to INUH, I shan't be purchasing the game. Shame.
> While I certainly worry that Call of Duty and Modern Warfare might contain accidental propaganda,
Sorry, there's no way it's 'accidental'. The games contained deliberate glorification of the military and demonization of its enemies that talk about how much they hate freedom (often, perplexingly the Russians are used for some reason in these games)
The shift in the FPS paradigm shift owes more to Halo than it does to any of the military shooters, also.
And the problem with the games is that they're... well... dull. They drag you along set pieces and rubble to hide behind with nary a variation. Black Ops was a perfect opportunity to subvert this with dark assassinations and plugging leaks but no just more macho dick-waving explosions.
I liked Black Ops.
Halo is more in the vein of old-school shooters, with lots of abstraction, exaggerated physics, large amounts of health and very much a "run and gun" emphasis. Most modern shooters, including Call of Duty and its sequels, aim to find a medium between that and more unforgiving tactical shooters. I hesitate to use the term "arcadey", and I certainly wouldn't use it as a negative phrase as some do, but that sort of experience is the one Halo expresses.
Where Call of Duty worked on the foundation laid by the likes of CounterStrike and Day of Defeat, Halo bears a much stronger resemblance to games like Doom and Half-Life, even ignoring the shared narrative genre. If I had to put it down to one thing, I'd name the difference in emphasis between skill and tactics. A game with high health ratios like Halo or Half-Life places more emphasis on doing well consistently throughout and engagement -- maintaining skill -- whereas the likes of Call of Duty and CounterStrike have high damage ratios, placing importance on tactics before all else.
In a game like Halo, you're not necessarily penalised for having an inferior position or rewarded for having a better one. The person who can maintain fire more effectively while strafing, jumping and otherwise avoiding return fire will win, with weapons as modifiers. In a game like Call of Duty, positional advantage is almost everything; unless you have a weapon that's good at spraying like a SMG or shotgun, it's better to hold a strong, secure position with just about any weapon. In this kind of game, the difference between one kind of assault rifle and another is almost immaterial, because the differences aren't going to make much difference if you hold initiative.
Each kind of shooter aims to create a different kind of experience, and it's the experience established by Call of Duty that's become the template.
I'm not trying to defend Call of Duty in particular here, just calling things as I see them. As far as I'm concerned, the series ran its course many years ago and, if MW3 is any indication, went out with a whimper rather than a bang. I'd rather see a new genre (or even no genre) take the spotlight now.
Unfortunately, it increasingly appears as if the next spotlight darling will be generic fantasy RPGs with that horrid compromise between real-time and turn-based combat. Who started that? Wasn't it BioWare? In any case, it looks like we're in for more of the same.
Squaresoft did it 5 years before BioWare with Secret of Mana.
Yeah, but that game was awesome so
Huh? Aside from stuff like Dragon Age and WoW, I can't really think of any examples of that sort of thing. Well I guess Skyrim (which I'm more mad at for lowering people's expectations in regards to how well glitchiness is acceptable) and Kingdoms of Alumar I guess, but not sure about their combat systems.
Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur are both totally real-time.
They both sure are generic fantasy though.
Pretty much anything BioWare, save Mass Effect, uses that system.
Most MMOs use it too, which is understandable on the grounds of technical limitations, all that data being transferred and all, but if MMOs become the template for fantasy games (and they well might), I think you can see what could happen.
Discounting shooters and app games, fantasy RPGs appear to be the most popular genre of vidya right now.
On the other hand, the success of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls might have them become something of a template. That would essentially mean that the Monster Hunter combat system would become standard, which I would be totally okay with.