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Roderick

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I feel like my problem isn't with nerd culture per se, but rather with nerd identity. We're all subject to nerd culture, but the people who are defined by their nerdiness are truly repellent to me. It's the people who see nerd culture being co-opted by popular culture and now feel they have the authority to decide what aspects of culture are right and wrong.

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Yup Jon, that sounds about right. The whole "you're not a true nerd if..." Is shitty, (and often the if is followed by "you're a woman") and just reeks of hypocrisy.

I just read Danielle's piece on polygon about the years worst depictions of women in games. Holy shit that trailer for Ninja Gaiden Z was just embarrassing. Even if you ignore the sexism oozing from that trailer it's just kinda pathetic.

I didn't really agree with her stance on GTA though. It's quite a tough subject, since the whole of the game is based around doing anything possible. So yes, there's the ability to kill someone after having sex with them. If that wasn't in there, it'd be a little jarring (sex workers get god mode after sex). It's not like it's incentivised nor is it mandatory.

Obviously they could just remove prostitutes from the GTA games entirely, they don't really serve any purpose except for a shock factor from GTA3 that is now a tradition. Then again, in the world that they created they wanted sex workers, why shouldn't they be allowed to put them in?

It's kind of a tough question, and while I said I disagree with her, it's more like I'm on the fence.

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Yup Jon, that sounds about right. The whole "you're not a true nerd if..." Is shitty, (and often the if is followed by "you're a woman") and just reeks of hypocrisy.

I just read Danielle's piece on polygon about the years worst depictions of women in games. Holy shit that trailer for Ninja Gaiden Z was just embarrassing. Even if you ignore the sexism oozing from that trailer it's just kinda pathetic.

I didn't really agree with her stance on GTA though. It's quite a tough subject, since the whole of the game is based around doing anything possible. So yes, there's the ability to kill someone after having sex with them. If that wasn't in there, it'd be a little jarring (sex workers get god mode after sex). It's not like it's incentivised nor is it mandatory.

Obviously they could just remove prostitutes from the GTA games entirely, they don't really serve any purpose except for a shock factor from GTA3 that is now a tradition. Then again, in the world that they created they wanted sex workers, why shouldn't they be allowed to put them in?

It's kind of a tough question, and while I said I disagree with her, it's more like I'm on the fence.

 

The issue with it though is that the interactions with them are so narrow then that informs the players mental model of who these people are and what you do to them. When sex workers are always just people to be acted upon with no agency of their own they're not going to be humanised. Even if it has no incentive like getting your money back, if there's so little you can do with or to them, then the game implicitly honours those choices and says they're viable.

 

Plus this is a prevailing depiction in other mediums too. It's not just that GTA is shitty, but it's a prime example of how this manifests in games. And even if you don't personally find it gross, you should pay attention to the underrepresented people who do, like the sex workers that made the petition in Australia.

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As the fidelity and complexity of GTA's worlds have developed I find its tone only becomes more ill-fitting. Its on-the-nose approach to satire gelled with the ridiculous top-down incarnations and even the PS2-era representations were crude enough that there was an argument to be made for caricature, but with IV and V it feels increasingly mismatched; the game worlds are incredibly impressive in their realisation and reactivity, but the populace of those worlds inspire misanthropy rather than a wry smile.

 

Further to that, the representations of stripping and prostitution feel even more incongruous as they're played fairly straight. By rights the games' pervasive lazy satire should stretch to your interactions with those NPCs, but to me their inclusion seems designed to titillate. And we aren't talking about GTAIII's inclusion of sex workers that might have been one programmer's 'Easter Egg' that happened to have an unfortunate systemic side effect, these are NPC interactions with voice acting and bespoke animations; time and money was spent on their inclusion.

 

I don't really think there's any chance of GTA leaving its adolescence — or should that be adolescents? — behind, but at the very least they could give us a female protagonist and the opportunity to molest meticulously mo-capped male strippers. Not exactly an admirable goal, I grant you, but it would still be a step up. Which says it all, really.

 

 

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As the fidelity and complexity of GTA's worlds have developed I find its tone only becomes more ill-fitting. Its on-the-nose approach to satire gelled with the ridiculous top-down incarnations and even the PS2-era representations were crude enough that there was an argument to be made for caricature, but with IV and V it feels increasingly mismatched; the game worlds are incredibly impressive in their realisation and reactivity, but the populace of those worlds inspire misanthropy rather than a wry smile.

I don't really think there's any chance of GTA leaving its adolescence — or should that be adolescents? — behind, but at the very least they could give us a female protagonist and the opportunity to molest meticulously mo-capped male strippers. Not exactly an admirable goal, I grant you, but it would still be a step up. Which says it all, really.

 

Would it be a crappy argument to suggest that if GTA lost it's childishness it'd lose a pretty significant part of itself?

I do wish that npc's were a bit more than unwitting victims to player whims. i think what could curb it would be a reputations system. I mean if you became a well known criminal with a penchant for violently beating strangers or singling out specific groups of people then maybe other npc's would decide you weren't good business, or maybe you attract even more unstable violent types into your business relationships. People praise the gta series for how big and how many things you can do inside it but it feels pretty hollow to me. I think if the system acknowledged even just a little what you do it'd be a step in the right direction.

Heck maybe people in the romance options could learn to stay away from the guy that beats and kills prostitutes?

 

I mean GTA seems to have chased various gangster movies around in its iterations, I think it should take a leaf from The Wolf of Wall Street (the only real 'classical' modern gangster movie I can think of right now). The movie took more turns revelling in the excess than condemning it but there were some parts where a character's behaviour was reined in for fear of the negative press.

I think a world response to public acts of violence more meaningful than the police star system would be welcome.

 

Also I would be all for mo-capped male strippers even though I think the forced romance or strip bar moments are pretty silly.

 

Edit: I get the uncomfortable feeling that there's grounds for people to think I've conflated childishness in GTA to mean we should allow sex workers in the game to be raped or murdered. What I mean or hope to mean by childishness is that if someone really wants to waste their own time they can go to a digital strip club, or have polygon sex, or a pixelated hot coffee. Also belonging under childishness is the weird commitment to humour that only young teenagers would get the most of while still being a game designed for an 18+ rating.

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A caveat, I have never played a GTA game.  I have no interest in them, but have a fairly good working knowledge of them.  If I'm wrong in specifics here, please correct me. 

 

GTA has reached a point of being completely inexcusable in many of its design decisions, and being able to rape, assault then murder sex workers is one of them.  And it is rape, not consensual, when the player is already planning on assaulting and murdering the woman to get his money back after the fact.  Consent in sex work is predicated on the sex worker keeping the money.  If that doesn't happen, then its rape.  So what GTA both allows, and encourages to some extent with getting money back, is the rape and murder of sex workers. 

 

We live in an era in the US where we have to regularly talk about concealed carry and stand your ground laws.  There's almost one gun per person in the US.  Almost every person in the US is walking around with a pocket surveillance system.  There's absolutely no reason that the prostitutes shouldn't be fighting back, and winning, against the player character.  That if a player rapes and murders a sex worker, that his picture shouldn't end up on billboards calling him what he is, a fucking murdering rapist.  That the next time he approaches a prostitute, that she doesn't recognize him and open fire on him first, or get a mob of people to chase him down.  There are literally a bunch of different and interesting ways that a dev could approach this situation.  But Rockstar doesn't do that.  Rockstar doesn't do any of those thing though, because they don't want to interrupt the power fantasy of their players who engage in this behavior.  They literally want this to be an option for their players. 

 

Add on to this that there are no male prostitutes in GTA.  For all its "gritty realism", which players often use to justify murdering prostitutes (like, what, whores are supposed to get god mode after you done fucked them?  Its not like there are characters who are hard or impossible to kill in the game.  Oh wait, yes there are.  How fucking jarring.), Rockstar is only interested in realism when it serves a traditional male power fantasy.  Male prostitutes have become far, far, far more visible than every before in the last 10 years.  But Rockstar isn't going to let you fuck and murder a dude.  Fuck no, that's a privilege reserved for women. 

 

So fuck Rockstar.  And fuck GTA.

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, that was a bit of a rant, I usually don't comment on GTA stuff on these boards as I know there are people here who like them.  But fuck GTA.  It's completely inexcusable at this point.

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It's on the nose though.

 

Sex workers, who are often women, suffer many abuses in real life in and video games because they are considered a far lower class of women than any other types of NPCs, and this is often true in real life, especially if you get into sex work out of neccessity versus choice, though all sex workers have a high risk for these things.

 

I had a similar experience to Maddy where a male friend of mine showed me the game specifically to giggle about how you can beat up a sex worker and take your money back. It was a really upsetting thing, the more I think back to it, especially since shortly thereafter, a very high profile case came up in my local area where a man was found guilty of having 6 dead sex workers stuffed into the walls of his house, with potentially another half dozen he kidnapped and abused and then killed. And guess what, no one caught on to this guy for a really long time because they were all women that "no one would miss" and it only came to light because of "the smell."

 

I am of the mindset that if GTA loses some of its personality because you get to kill sex workers with no logical in-universe retaliation or even just removing it altogether, then maybe that's not the kind of personality we should be espousing anyways. I am absolutely not someone who cares enough about video games to know we need to preserve that kind of shit these days. 

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It's probably because I live in Australia and the Classification Board has never found this aspect of GTA particularly appropriate, but I've never pulled over a prostitute in a GTA game.

 

I do wish that npc's were a bit more than unwitting victims to player whims.

 

I wish that NPCs would dive out of the way of your car like they used to before GTA3 came out.

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Play Driver San Fransisco? That game is awesome, and I'm pretty sure that civilians dodged like crazy.

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The issue with it though is that the interactions with them are so narrow then that informs the players mental model of who these people are and what you do to them. When sex workers are always just people to be acted upon with no agency of their own they're not going to be humanised.

I don't agree with this. Sex workers In the game have more interactions that most NPCs. They do everything a random NPC does, but also you can pay them for sex. They require you to take them to a secluded place before anything happens, and if I remember rightly, they'll fight back if you do attack them. Most NPCs I'm GTA games have one interaction: you attack them, they run away screaming...or die.

If you wanted to, you could run around killing only black NPCs. They'd have less interaction than the sex workers. No one kills black NPCs only because there's no shock value nor an adolescent kick from seeing pretend sex on your video game.

*snip*

I understand what you're saying, but if you refer to what apple cider said, rockstar are trying to make a realistic power fantasy. The idea of mobs forming to attack you because you are labelled a rapist for raping a sex worker is incredibly fantastical. Most people don't give a shit about sex workers in real life.

Its not like there are characters who are hard or impossible to kill in the game. Oh wait, yes there are. How fucking jarring.)Rockstar is only interested in realism when it serves a traditional male power f.

That's not really true, there aren't bullet sponges in GTA games as far as I can remember. There are people who fight back, and that's about it. What is true is that yes: they are only interested in making a male power fantasy game.

However I remember being punched to death in GTA III by a sex worker after I tried to gun her down (saying that makes me feel awkward). They're not defenceless in these games, and giving them guns would actually be a pretty good idea.

It's on the nose though.

Pretty much. But that doesn't mean they need to include it. I forgot they had strip clubs in those games. For what reason?! I'm not really a fan of GTA because it isn't the game it sells itself as - I want Goodfellas: The Game, not The Whacky Rockstar Adventures. I loved III because I was a teenager at the time and it stroked my ego, humour and fantasies. But now, they're not aimed at kids (or at least that's what they say, because they're far too immature for adults), so what exactly do polygon boobs or first person blow jobs do? If you have to be an adult to buy the game, why do you need to live those things out in a game? Internet porn doesn't cost £60.

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Now I want a game where civilians drop everything they're doing to charge at your car like madmen and do crazy stunts. Successful every time, of course.

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I was agreeing with Bjorn's rant. If for some reason we absolutely can't take sex workers as they stand in GTA (which, I think they should, but wacky me hates this garbage in video games to begin with) then maybe having a sex worker demolish the PC for being shitty to her would be logically consistent - the problem as it stands is that it ISN'T right now, and we need to look at WHY that is. Game systems are just as much of a political message as narrative, etc.

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It's probably because I live in Australia and the Classification Board has never found this aspect of GTA particularly appropriate, but I've never pulled over a prostitute in a GTA game.

 

 

 

I wish that NPCs would dive out of the way of your car like they used to before GTA3 came out.

I remember they did that in Midtown Madness on the PC years and years ago (people used to play the hell out of that in my dorm and had all sorts of mod cars in there like the batmobile and the Simpson's family car and shit).

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However I remember being punched to death in GTA III by a sex worker after I tried to gun her down (saying that makes me feel awkward). They're not defenceless in these games, and giving them guns would actually be a pretty good idea.

 

That's really funny.  But unfortunately, I'm not sure that feature actually made it into IV or V.  I didn't know that, but searching aroudn I could only find references to prostitutes fighting back in 3, SA and VC, and even found a thread of someone commenting that women seemed to stop fighting back at some point in the series. 

 

I know that there are at least a few invulnerable characters in GTA games, as I've seen posts about needing to glitch the game in order to kill them (because it really does bug people when they can't kill someone in a GTA game).  Obviously that's always for story reasons, but the point is they already break the *rule* that everyone can be killed. 

 

The  mob and billboard ideas were really just extreme examples of something a dev could do.  The point is, there's no reason for a dev to include the ability rape and murder sex workers.  Seriously, no reason, not thematically, not mechanically, not the story.  It serves no other purpose than to let people rape and murder sex workers.  And that's fucked.  That *feature* doesn't have to be supported, there are a bunch of different solutions that would work to not allow that player behavior (some ridiculous, some that would work in the context of GTA's world).  Rockstar's had five games to figure one out.  They haven't.  They want players to be able to do this. And its one of the biggest franchises that exists in games.  I honestly try not to give GTA any thought anymore, as it just bums me out about video games in general. 

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That's really funny.  But unfortunately, I'm not sure that feature actually made it into IV or V.  I didn't know that, but searching aroudn I could only find references to prostitutes fighting back in 3, SA and VC, and even found a thread of someone commenting that women seemed to stop fighting back at some point in the series. 

 

I know that there are at least a few invulnerable characters in GTA games, as I've seen posts about needing to glitch the game in order to kill them (because it really does bug people when they can't kill someone in a GTA game).  Obviously that's always for story reasons, but the point is they already break the *rule* that everyone can be killed. 

 

The  mob and billboard ideas were really just extreme examples of something a dev could do.  The point is, there's no reason for a dev to include the ability rape and murder sex workers.  Seriously, no reason, not thematically, not mechanically, not the story.  It serves no other purpose than to let people rape and murder sex workers.  And that's fucked.  That *feature* doesn't have to be supported, there are a bunch of different solutions that would work to not allow that player behavior (some ridiculous, some that would work in the context of GTA's world).  Rockstar's had five games to figure one out.  They haven't.  They want players to be able to do this. And its one of the biggest franchises that exists in games.  I honestly try not to give GTA any thought anymore, as it just bums me out about video games in general. 

I'm always surprised when I hear that you can still do it in GTA, and I think its mostly because I never did it (I didn't even realize it was possible for a long time and when I did it never made sense to do and seemed like a stupid "shock value" thing in the game that I assumed probably had gone away in more recent iterations).  I played Vice City and San Andreas mostly as "crazy police chase" games where I would usually try to get my stars high and then have cars chasing me all over as I did stupid stuff like driving on the beach and using ramps on roofs to jump around.  I only played a little of GTA IV but I couldn't engage in the stupid stunt driving I did in the other games quite as well so I sort of lost interest in that game.  Stalker and FC2 ended up filling that "doing crazy stuff and having things go bad" void for me better.

 

The fact that mechanic is still in the game now seems bizarre and sounds like it would just be jarring and weird (not to mention fucked up).  It doesn't even work on a shock value level now because its expected, its not shocking, and its not even remotely interesting.  I don't really see the advantage of keeping it in (though having really nasty consequences for the player partaking in such activity does sound like an interesting way of handling it if they didn't remove it).

 

I think I always got health back by using the soft-drink vending machines (I think they gave a Sprite/7-up equivalent).  Now I want a drink of 7-up or Sprite or some other soda/pop/coke/whatever.

 

http://i.imgur.com/QmN7w0i.jpg

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I was agreeing with Bjorn's rant. If for some reason we absolutely can't take sex workers as they stand in GTA (which, I think they should, but wacky me hates this garbage in video games to begin with) then maybe having a sex worker demolish the PC for being shitty to her would be logically consistent - the problem as it stands is that it ISN'T right now, and we need to look at WHY that is. Game systems are just as much of a political message as narrative, etc.

Oh I know, but I was using your point to illustrate mine. There is no reason games can't be political narrative (unfortunately the game creators won't always agree with your particular rhetoric). I mean look at what Rockstar creates, there's two potential views 1) they are interested in making money. 2) they actually believe that it's ok to rape and kill sex workers because they are non-people.

I think it's far more likely to be 1) but I'm sure there's a little bit of 2) in there, at least subconsciously.

That's really funny.  But unfortunately, I'm not sure that feature actually made it into IV or V.  I didn't know that, but searching aroudn I could only find references to prostitutes fighting back in 3, SA and VC, and even found a thread of someone commenting that women seemed to stop fighting back at some point in the series. 

 

I know that there are at least a few invulnerable characters in GTA games, as I've seen posts about needing to glitch the game in order to kill them (because it really does bug people when they can't kill someone in a GTA game).  Obviously that's always for story reasons, but the point is they already break the *rule* that everyone can be killed. 

 

The  mob and billboard ideas were really just extreme examples of something a dev could do.  The point is, there's no reason for a dev to include the ability rape and murder sex workers.  Seriously, no reason, not thematically, not mechanically, not the story.  It serves no other purpose than to let people rape and murder sex workers.  And that's fucked.  That *feature* doesn't have to be supported, there are a bunch of different solutions that would work to not allow that player behavior (some ridiculous, some that would work in the context of GTA's world).  Rockstar's had five games to figure one out.  They haven't.  They want players to be able to do this. And its one of the biggest franchises that exists in games.  I honestly try not to give GTA any thought anymore, as it just bums me out about video games in general. 

I didn't know they took out their ability to fight back. That's really interesting, seems like an odd design choice thematically. Yes, there does appear to be a no rule, but as you said, people don't like it. It is jarring in those games when someone is oddly invisible. It's kinda irrelevant, the God mode thing I said was more a joke about how I wouldn't know how to fix it.

Thematically there is. As much as it sucks, it has moved from a weird Easter egg to become something people expect from the game. The problem to me is does rockstar really believe that it'll affect sales if they decided not to include it? I seriously doubt you'd get an outcry of people saying they're going to boycott GTA because they can't rape hookers.

I feel like I'm having a hard time describing how I feel about it. I don't support it, I think it's gross, although I fully admit I thought it was funny when I was 13. The reason I'm struggling with the issue is because it's tangentially related to the "violence in video games makes people violent in real life" argument. It's suggesting that because when I was young I mistreated sex workers, I'm going to feel like they are worthless when I'm older. That's just false, as is the notion that because I gunned down millions of polygon people in FPS games I'm going to enjoy and promote war.

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I seriously doubt you'd get an outcry of people saying they're going to boycott GTA because they can't rape hookers.

 

You would absolutely get an outcry of people saying they're going to boycott GTA because they can't rape hookers.

 

However, you would almost certainly not actually have an effective boycott.

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Also quick reminder that a video game will not make you violent but media in general presenting a narrow view of an underrepresented group of people will give you unfortunate biases towards them. And GTA contributes to that in the worst way.

It doesn't even matter if they are technically more capable than other NPCs. It's still a problem if their general representation is still that of a vending machine for sex that you could smack a little if you want a freebie.

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I think it was on Isometric podcast a few weeks ago someone brought up the possibility that the sex workers - seeing as they are hired by pimps - were affiliated with gangs, and if you killed a sex worker then other sex workers would refuse to serve you and you would get heat from gang members.

 

I'm not sure that it would make it wholly acceptable, but I think it's a more interesting and less arbitrary way to mitigate the problem mechanically rather than just getting rid of sex workers or making them invulnerable.

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It doesn't go far enough but there is a recurring npc who is a prostitute. I didn't play very much of GTA V but other than where you had to pick her up from the corner she worked on (at least one time) the context you engaged with her in didn't revolve around sex work. Which is a start at least. I mean they still umbrella'd her mission type under 'freaks and strangers' which still puts her into this mysterious 'other' category where you work for people of dubious moral character; her mission chain was being a tow truck operator but the one other character I encountered under the 'F&S' mission type was a creepy paparazzi who took nude photos of women to tear them down.

 

IDK I think humanising npc's is a step in the right direction but they don't really have the inclination to put real effort in.

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Edit: Changed my mind, the GTA conversation going on is much more important than anything I had to say, and it doesn't exactly fit this topic either.

I played GTA 3, and didn't ever really bother with the prostitute thing more than the first couple of times. When I played GTA 4, I tried to follow the Nico that the cutscenes showed, and did my best to obey most major laws (traffic laws aside) which is a miserable way to play that game. After that experience, I pretty much quit.

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Just a note here: I believe that both the terms hooker/prostitute are somewhat outdated/offensive terms, I use solely sex worker at this point. 

 

I am kinda amused that the campaign to prove that violent video games doesn't make you violent worked, but in a lot of ways, it conflated that point in a lot of ways that makes it hard to push for better representations of marginalized people, since that IS something that is impacted by portrayals in the media. It largely has to do with how enacting violence in an interactive way and how enacting or interacting with representations are two different things from a psychological and sociological standpoint. Enacting violence in real life is often based on a different set of parameters and has not as much relation to how it is enacted in the virtual world. However, all THAT being said, I find it really unnerving how the overlap between the military complex and video games is getting larger. Video games being used as training or inspiration for the military (along with TV shows, no less) or having ex-game devs go on to talk about how rad Call of Duty is being applied to military procedures is incredibly scary. 

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However, all THAT being said, I find it really unnerving how the overlap between the military complex and video games is getting larger. Video games being used as training or inspiration for the military (along with TV shows, no less) or having ex-game devs go on to talk about how rad Call of Duty is being applied to military procedures is incredibly scary. 

 

Is it the visuals/perspective that bothers you, the gung-ho attitude those games have or something else?  If you look at games historically, video games are kind of late to the party here.  Military academies have been using wargames as part of their curriculum since the 1700s maybe?  Most of today's pilots are trained in some kind of virtual environment, and this past year both the CSTO and NATO conducted massive war games over potential future conflics in the arctic.  I mean I get that the video gamey-ness of it is a bit unnerving, mainly in it's proximity to the consumer product, but really this is the same thing they have been doing for years in one way or another that some COD developers decided to take credit for.

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