BioShock Infinite

[castorp]

Thanks to all the people here taking issue with her cleavage and the role women play in games in general and thanks especially for having the willingness to argue for why it’s important to take issue.

There's no shortage of eye candy for women. Just look how buff and unnecessarily naked that Kratos dude is!

If I have to put up with my girlfriend visibly creaming herself when characters like Bane get their muscles out and any number of other chiseled blokes in films (and games, actually), it seems fair game for some boobage to follow.

Those guys are male power fantasies and though they show a lot of skin it's absolutely not the same as pretty much all half naked women in media. Especially your examples are very powerful, potent men, they rule, kill, fuck as they like. The half naked women are often weak, there to be saved, and even if they are powerful they tend to still be below some man in the food chain (Catwoman < Batman) and their nakedness isn't primarily there to show off their muscles (=power) but to look sexy (=please the male gaze).

And as many pointed out, the whole Bioshock-cleavage-situation is not the crassest example, not by a long shot, just, this kind of sexualization is everywhere, and Bioshock is kind of the tripple-A posterchild of sophisticated video games and it's disheartening to see it contributing to the fucked up status quo instead of battling it.

Here's a comic on Shortpacked! talking about 'false equivalence' and illustrating the problem in this line of argument. (Stumbled upon while reading about the fantastic Hawkeye Initiative.)

[BigJKO]

Haha, that's a great comic. "Th-that makes me feel uncomfortable."

[ThunderPeel2001]

On the one hand I agree, because I don't think fans tend to have very good taste. #1 for example is a pretty dull looking cover and that's winning. On the other hand, it's purely fan service anyway as they're only giving you the option to decide what goes on the back of the cover.

Uh, what? #4 is winning.

[Chris]

This here is why discussions like this are so complicated. Yes, real life women will sometimes dress in an attractive way, for a number of different reasons. It's ok to want to feel attractive! A problem comes up, however, when women see how they're portrayed in most mainstream media, and feel the need to mimic that appearance or attitude because it's what society is telling them the 'norm' is.

Of course, I'm not trying to sit here and argue that all women should dress like nuns as a way to fight the patriarchy, which is why conversations like this are extremely difficult to have. I don't want to tell other women how to dress or act, but I think it's important that they seriously asks themselves 'why do I feel compelled to dress or act this way? Am I doing it for myself or for others?'

Speaking out against the character design of someone in a low-cut dress doesn't mean that I think all characters in games should be modestly dressed. Looking sexy is fine! It just starts becoming a problem when it's literally the only depiction of women that is available.

Just going to quote this because it seems like Argobot's replies here aren't getting as much attention as the rest, and they are the most reasonable and well-stated opinions on this topic in the thread. Bolding the particularly crucial conclusion.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It's just frustrating that Irrational feels obligated to do something like this poll in the first place. Even though I think the original box art design they came up with for the game is really lame, I don't think it warrants caving to fan pressure; it just sets a bad precedent.

It's only a reversible sleeve. They're not changing the art of the game. I think it's a good idea myself -- everyone is happy.

[Argobot]

It's only a reversible sleeve. They're not changing the art of the game. I think it's a good idea myself -- everyone is happy.

Everyone is happy for now, until something else happens that makes the fans upset. Like I said, this sets up a dangerous precedent where creative decisions are constantly being influenced by a small but very vocal minority.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Everyone is happy for now, until something else happens that makes the fans upset. Like I said, this sets up a dangerous precedent where creative decisions are constantly being influenced by a small but very vocal minority.

Ah yes, that poisonous minority known as "the people who give a shit one way or another." We wouldn't want them to have their way. Much better to let the people Ken Levine describes as "frat boys" dictate creative decisions.

People didn't like the cover, so Irrational said "OK, we'll make a reversible cover for you so that we can have our cake and eat it too." That seems like the best outcome: everyone's happy, right?

[Argobot]

I guess my objections is that I don't really believe that everyone is happy. I imagine the people who voted for the losing reversible covers will not be happy, for example.

Irrational designed a generic cover for a very innocuous reason -- to sell the game to people who are not immediately familiar with Bioshock. I get the sense that they were not prepared or even expecting such a massive backlash from their fans and I think Levine really put his foot in his mouth with the 'frat boys' comment. But at the end of the day, I don't think that you should be allowing fans to dictate designs. After this all blows over, what will we have accomplished? A reversible cover that not everyone voted for, that most people will probably either forget about or even more likely, not even see, because they bought the game on Steam.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Why is it better to let frat boys dictate the design than fans? If you're not going to just have an artsy cover that caters to the whims of the design nerd on your staff, how should you decide what cover to have?

[Argobot]

I mean I agree that they shouldn't have let creative concerns be superseded by marketing/economic ones, but that's the decision that Irrational made and I think they should stick by it. Having a fan poll for a reversible cover is just putting a band aid on a much larger problem of how games are marketed.

[melmer]

Elizabeth better feature on the disk art or so help me god!

[ThunderPeel2001]

I mean I agree that they shouldn't have let creative concerns be superseded by marketing/economic ones, but that's the decision that Irrational made and I think they should stick by it. Having a fan poll for a reversible cover is just putting a band aid on a much larger problem of how games are marketed.

I guess I think this entire issue is completely overblown. I don't think the chosen cover is "lame" (and Tycho, it's wasn't just for frat boys -- I bet Ken Levine really regrets using them as an example). The fact the vocal minority then get to have a say in the reversible sleeve works perfectly for me: Because they can no longer complain that the game cover wasn't marketed to them -- they decided on it! Not some guy in a suit.

I don't think this cover particularly highlights any serious issues regarding advertising, either. I've already gone into great detail on this issue a few pages back. If anyone disagrees with what I posted there, I'd appreciate it if you responded to my points rather than pretending they don't exist.

If BioShock Infinite doesn't sell (just like System Shock 2 didn't sell before it), then it could unfairly spell the end for this series -- and possibly take down the dev studio, too. They need a hit game, and to do that need to create an awesome game, and market it to as many potentially suitable customers as possible. It's not changing your entire game based on market research, it's just trying to make as many people want to give it a try as possible. It's straightforward, transparent business. If those who don't like this cover have issues with it because they feel it puts the game's success at risk, then I totally understand, but if it's just a selfish desire to have a sleeve that appeals to them -- when they're already going to buy the game anyway -- I think it's unbelievably short-sighted.

Regardless: At least the Elizabeth debate seems to have reached a resolution!

[Thrik]

Elizabeth better feature on the disk art or so help me god!

Yeah I'd like to see Elizabeth featured in the art, but don't you think the way she's depicted is a little overly sexualised and objectifies women?

[Thrik]

Just kidding guys for Christ's sake!!!!!

[melmer]

Yeah I'd like to see Elizabeth featured in the art, but don't you think the way she's depicted is a little overly sexualised and objectifies women?

I actually laughed out loud

[mikemariano]

Hey, this Rock Paper Shotgun preview makes this game seem less of a mess than the flop-besweated Ken Levine quotes imply.

Actual NPCs! Enemies that don't attack on first sight! And, er, an opening photocopied from the opening of Bioshock!

[toblix]

The racism thing sounds fantastic. If they manage to do something interesting with it, it'll be awesome to see that theme be tackled head-on in a video game, rather than through the more common alien/robot devices.

Also, if the game will let me explore Columbia at least for a bit without having to fight, that'll be swell. I really hated the combat in the Bioshock games – both how it felt, and that there was so much of it – and I don't have any illusions about this being anything other than a first person shooter, but I'm hoping that they've made it at least feel better this time, and that it'll be paced more interestingly.

The fact that they have GUI margins, FOV and framerate settings in already makes me think this will be a pretty good PC game right out of the gate.

[I_smell]

I actually laughed out loud

I felt bad and thought "oh for god sake I have had it with these guys"

then scrolled down and said PPPHHHHHEW!!!

[vimes]

I'm late to the party, but the discussion about Elizabeth's design reminds me of two things.

First, a discussion on the Reappropriation Blog about Depp's portrayal of Tonto in the upcoming Lone Ranger movie.

Yeah, Tonto is a fictional character, and there are plenty of white actors and actresses who play fictional characters, and we don't automatically assume that white people are fictional, so it shouldn't matter, right? We saw Natalie Portman as an evil-crazy-swan-human in the Black Swan, and we don't assume that Natalie Portman's character is representative of her, or all white people, in real life. But that, my friend, is white privilege at work. Everyday we see millions of representations of white people in varied and diverse roles. We see white actors as "real" people, as "fantasy" characters, and everything in between.

But for Native people, the only images that the vast, vast majority of Americans see are stereotypical in nature.

Chris evoked a similar sentiment in another thread and I think the difference of portrayal between women and men in Video games suffers from a similar problem.

The second thing is a paraphrase of a quote, either from Steve about Cooper during Minerva's Den Livestream or from Sean about Lee during a conversation on The Walking Dead: 'the only responsibility I feel is toward the character I'm writing; not toward whatever social strata or group he's part of'.

I think that's a completely defensible point of view if the writers have, like these two, a great deal of empathy toward characters that are very foreign to them. But that philosophy, in the hand of a less 'mindful' writer can be disastrous and in that case it is very tempting to call for social responsibility instead. And I'm not sure if that's entirely right: what's the difference between bad writing and irresponsible writing?

Anyway, like ArgoBot said, it's a difficult discussion because the saturation makes it hard to differentiate between educated, deliberate choices and default behaviors heavily influenced by societal factors.

In any case, the visual design of Elizabeth disappoints me because it feels out of synch with both the topics the game seems to explore and the maturity with which it seems to do so.

Maybe Bioshock Infintie does talk about the schizophrenic tendencies of religious societies to cast women in a predefined mold and subsequently despising them for doing so, but what we've seen from the game doesn't hint at that at all.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Interesting topic! I think a good writer should be aware of what they're doing, really. I think a good recent example is THE SOCIAL NETWORK, or even SUCKER PUNCH. Both were accused of misogyny, and both writers insisted that if anything, it was the opposite of misogyny. SUCKER PUNCH is harder to take seriously, for all its problems, so I'll skip that. SOCIAL NETWORK was more problematic for me. I definitely did have issues with the fact that there wasn't a single female character who was shown as being an equal to the protagonists. Everyone woman in the film, even those in Harvard, were all portrayed as intellectually inferior, shallow, and with no real ambition. All it would have taken is to have one female character who saw them for what they truly were, or with an equal amount of ambition, but nope. There wasn't anyone.

I think TSN was astoundingly well-written. I think Sorkin is one of the best screenwriters working today. But I think he dropped the ball, and a little social conscience would have gone a long way.

I think every good writer knows that it's of paramount importance to stay true to your characters, but I don't think you can pretend that they exist in a vacuum -- they're going to be part of a culture with issues. I guess it's something you should do retroactively, rather than questioning yourself every step of the way. You let the story unfold, you let the characters be who they are, but then you take a look back, afterwards, and make sure you haven't just inadvertently written a pro-KKK movie or something.

[TychoCelchuuu]

And in Sorkin's case you take a look back at your entire career and hopefully come to a realization that it's maybe time to make some changes.

[ThunderPeel2001]

And in Sorkin's case you take a look back at your entire career and hopefully come to a realization that it's maybe time to make some changes.

In terms of his TV shows, I've only really watched SPORTS NIGHT, which was largely very favourable to its female characters (although there was one asshole guy, I remember). A friend of mine told me that NEWSROOM had some serious problems with its women, though.

[gregbrown]

Interesting topic! I think a good writer should be aware of what they're doing, really. I think a good recent example is THE SOCIAL NETWORK, or even SUCKER PUNCH. Both were accused of misogyny, and both writers insisted that if anything, it was the opposite of misogyny. SUCKER PUNCH is harder to take seriously, for all its problems, so I'll skip that. SOCIAL NETWORK was more problematic for me. I definitely did have issues with the fact that there wasn't a single female character who was shown as being an equal to the protagonists. Everyone woman in the film, even those in Harvard, were all portrayed as intellectually inferior, shallow, and with no real ambition. All it would have taken is to have one female character who saw them for what they truly were, or with an equal amount of ambition, but nope. There wasn't anyone.

? I remember the controversy, but Rooney Mara & Rashida Jones are two of the only characters who called their bullshit out. Both minor roles, sure, but there were only a handful of people in the film overall.

[Argobot]

The Social Network was particularly terrible since there actually were a lot of women involved in the creation of Facebook (like Zuckerburg's then girlfriend and now wife).

The Sucker Punch argument is one that comes up a lot. Someone tries to defend their product by saying they're empowering women by depicting them as sexy, competent action heros (common argument I hear in video games). It's very convienent that your female empowerment just happens to look a lot like a male heterosexual fantasy of women.

The issue of cultural appropriation is really important and I wish more people would consider it. As a woman, I feel underrepresented in a lot of media, but as a white person, I'm never lacking for examples of people that look like me. It's easy to let that privilege blind you, but I'm glad that more and more people are starting to notice an question it.

[vimes]

I think I've written about that before, but I feel like Sorkin did an interesting job on TSN because he portrayed the world through the eyes of male characters whose rise took place in environments that were - in real life - incredibly misogynistic; and thus the portrayal of women is committed to that vantage point.

What worked for me and apparently didn't for all spectators is that I definitely felt the director judgmental gaze on his main cast throughout the movie, an incredibly negative gaze which thus condemns the way they see and treat women.

The Newsroom, on the other hand, commits to the antithetical point of views of multiple characters and yet, the depiction of female characters - beside Jane Fonda's - felt incredibly archetypal across the board. Most of them are either cold hearted individuals or emotional wrecks who are managed, 'treated' or empowered by men. Because of the multiple PoV, it feels like Sorkin is convinced that this depiction of women is truthful and the series, despite some moments of brilliance between Jane Fonda and Sam Waterson, made me deeply uncomfortable.

This was a bad surprise considering how The West Wing - arguably Sorkin magnus opus - has an impressive range of interesting and detailed female characters. Sometimes, they are 'used' as vehicles for exploring feminity in governments and male oriented environment, but even when the series "schools" the audience it does so to convey viewpoints that do not reinforce archetypes.

is, I feel, a decent example of this given that the character of National Security Advisor Nancy McNally - the black woman - is portrayed in a very positive light in surrounding episodes: