Idle Thumbs 71: Nothing's as Good as Ya Eat 'Em

[Salacious Snake]

I liked the discussion of the Diablo 3 kerfuffle. It's super weird how it's treated as such "bad form" for people in the industry to be at all critical of games. It made me wonder about a few possible reasons for this sorry state of affairs.

1. People at all levels of game development have the misfortune of being pulled into the PR side of things at one time or another. I've been given demos by people who should have been tinkering away in a code dungeon, not dealing with the media. As an outsider, it looks to me like far too many people in the industry have been exposed to some kind of training, either through experience or actual training, with regard to selling games, rather than concentrating on making them.

As someone with a little experience in the media, I also think it's "our" fault for creating an environment in which people expect nothing but softball questions and a platform for promotion. It's not actually that hard to get interesting and less rosy responses from people if you ask decent questions. The interviewee tends to find it refreshing after regurgitating the PR spiel all the time.

2. When it comes to talking shit about the competition, there is a fear of burning bridges. Job security in the games industry is not great, and even if you're a pretty big deal at your current studio, you may be looking for anyone who will take you as soon as your current project is complete and everyone is cut loose.

3. This may be a bit of stretch, but the industry is periodically assailed from without, which promotes a degree of solidarity within. When Jack Thompson said games were the Devil, the people making games said, "No, all games are always awesome." It was very rare to see someone (at least publicly) say, "You know, maybe we should cool it with the procedural brain matter generation."

4. People in our age group (I'm lumping myself in with the Thumbs crew) and younger have a hard time dealing with criticism and failure and general negativity, because we're a bunch of big, dumb fucking babies. I think this is the real answer.

[Laxan]

Borderlands, (and its sequel) offer a litany of crass, sexist, superficial representations of women within the very text of the game so maybe we could talk about that within the context of the actual argument.

Anthony Burch, lead writer of Borderlands 2, speaks out on gender equality and female portrayal in media all the time. Hoping he puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to his actual game. (For anecdote's sake, in the latest trailer, the voice over comments on the female character's fighting proficiency instead of her looks/boobs/etc. Haven't seen anything else of the game so this could be a once-off grace.)

Also I am intrigued by the mention of secret documents concerning the DayZ stream. Was this to do with Evan dying just as the stream ended?

[Awful Falafel]

I think a lot of people already responded to you with really thoughtful ideas, and I'm not trying to pile on, but, what do you mean here? How Video games are sexist? What exactly sexism is?

Well to be fair he's gotten those responses regarding the girlfriend mode fiasco but nothing about whether the actual Borderlands game is sexist which is a different topic entirely, no? I can't speak for him but I think the part you quoted was pretty straightforward.

Anthony Burch, lead writer of Borderlands 2, speaks out on gender equality and female portrayal in media all the time. Hoping he puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to his actual game. (For anecdote's sake, in the latest trailer, the voice over comments on the female character's fighting proficiency instead of her looks/boobs/etc. Haven't seen anything else of the game so this could be a once-off grace.)

Yeah, I'm interested to hear his thoughts on this whole situation on the next HAWPcast, hopefully he's at liberty to speak about it. Also man, two BMO avatars in one thread? I don't know if that's awesome or it just means we should be more original, heh.

[Cleinhun]

I'd like to see the same kind of analysis as to how, exactly, Borderlands is misogynist, particularly in comparison to, you know... video games in general.

I feel like that isn't a comparison worth making, I doubt anyone would get an award for being only as mysogynist as the average video game. That said, I never actually played Borderlands, so I would like to see an answer to that question.

I have further thoughts on the topic, but a) several people have already articulated similar thoughts better than I could, and I'm pretty tired anyway. Maybe I'll come back later and say something more intersting, but maybe I won't (feel free to make bets).

(Apparently I need to see that movie)

Yes.

[Merus]

This is an argument entirely predicated on presupposing the developer as sexist.

Part of it is because the developer is 'a guy at Gearbox' rather than someone people widely know, but honestly there's been an undercurrent of sexism at Gearbox for a while. Certainly they proudly stamped their name on Duke Nukem Forever, but there's also how their Aliens game wouldn't allow female marines in multiplayer because it apparently didn't occur to anyone at Gearbox that female marines in an Aliens game is an expected feature, or how Borderlands has basically only one female character whose stereotype isn't gendered (by which I mean, yep they're all pretty broad stereotypes and that's fine for what it is, but there's only one female character who is a gender-neutral stereotype).

Oh wait I see Borderlands has come up: okay, so as far as I'm aware we have the seductress, the maneater, the bitch-who-is-broken, the guardian angel and the hardnosed administrator. Let's also remember the problem with sexism (and most -isms) is not strictly that unequal treatment exists, but that for all but one particular group it's predictably common in ways that members of that group don't generally grasp. The female characters in Borderlands are, with one exception, gendered stereotypes - the stereotypes that make up their character are stereotypically female. The stereotypes that make up the male characters are not usually gendered, and so default to male.

[CaptainFish]

I feel like thumbs posts here have discussed the sexist nature of his comments well enough, but after reading the original Eurogamer article, the whole premise of the design seems misguided. TF2, one of the greatest multiplayer shooters, excels a lot because it presents a wide variety of play styles between each class, with each one playing off the strengths of the player. Are you extremely good at fast twitch headshots? Play sniper. Can you easily determine intersecting trajectories of slow projectiles and opponents? Play soldier or demoman. Have a good sense of spatial awareness in setting up defense and traps? Play engineer. It set up these different play aspects without ever overtly presenting the idea of being good or bad at first person shooters. It's all about providing gameplay mechanics that appeal to certain skillsets. Once upon a time (before all the crazy items) I'm sure people cut their teeth on medic because it allowed you to focus on learning positioning without dealing with having to aim, all while not being insulted, neat!

This Borderlands 2 article comes across as crass and dumb. Can't get a headshot? Well you must suck! This seems like a boring misguided way to look at shooter design. It's even more insulting when you consider that Borderlands 1 is a game in which enemies appear, run directly at you while you point your gun in one direction until they die. It's not a nuanced high skill ceiling shooter at all.

On the other hand, trying to entice people into the medium and saying that they suck, rather than they are unfamiliar with the controls and baggage the medium has makes it sound like you don't actually care about enticing people into the medium. This stood out to me particularly, because in learning Dota 2 and teaching a few friends, I always teach them lich first. When they ask I always say it's because lich has very strong tools to help your team win, and to keep him alive while you're still learning other things about the game. Things like passively taking away xp from the enemy, a nuke that has good damage and a slow, and a ult that does great damage that gets better as you learn to read situations better and great movement speed. I don't tell them they're a baby and can't handle skillshots like us seasoned pros so why don't you take this cute* easy baby character. Because that would make me sound like a doucher.

*Cute is more a reference to Borderlands 2 guy's statements than anything you could say about lich

On another subject, a "Silver Dinner-Revealer" as described by Jake is actually called a Cloche.

I feel like you've taken something away from us as an audience.

[toblix]

The thing about the jokes reminded me of this.

[dium]

I'm gonna offer up a morsel of support for Problem Machine's opinion that the "girlfriend mode" statement wasn't overtly sexist in that the statement probably wasn't made with females and women as opposed to males and men in mind, really. And I share Sean's previous, perhaps too charitable sympathy for the guy who said it.

But the fact that someone could make such a statement, not thinking about the implications, is just as concerning as if he did. Nobody who is aware of and cares about the obvious misogyny in games and video game culture would choose to call an easy mode "girlfriend mode", it should just seem wrong. So I feel sorry for this developer for some reason, but I don't think for a second that he doesn't deserve to hear the backlash he's getting.

I don't know how big the culture of blatant sexism amongst video gamers is; it certainly seems big because it is loud and detestible, but an optimistic side of my brain likes to think it's mainly noisy adolescents and not as big a part of the pie as it seems. In any case, it's still a problem. The much bigger problem, though, is a seemingly omnipresent culture of quiet (or covert) sexism. One that refuses to believe individual examples of overt sexism stem from any systemic problem, that's ready to defend questionable statements as "jokes", that consumes piece after piece of women-objectifying media almost exclusively and doesn't see this as strange. One that sees video games as something you do with your bros when your girlfriend is off doing feminine things with her friends, and is comfortable with these gender lines where they are.

Sexism is the number one reason why I get embarassed about playing a video game. In college, when most of my friends didn't play or didn't play very many games, I would get self conscious about what I was playing all the time and generally played games when there was a low probability of being observed. I remember playing Mass Effect, which is hardly a problem game comparatively speaking, and having to admit to my roommate that yes, there is an alien race in this game made up entirely of attractive bisexual women, and yes, I'm aware how stupid that is.

Maaaaaby I didn't actually add anything to the conversation with this but I wanted to say something anyway.

[feelthedarkness]

I only heard the first 20 minutes or so before I got to work, but as I'm sure people have said, you should really check out some ultimas. 7 and 7 part 2 are probably my favorite games of all time, and it might be hard to put it in place, but the experience of every person in the game's world having a unique identity, and schedule, where you could move every item in the world light enough for a human to move blew my 16 year old mind to pieces. People had different tolerances for your nonsense too, like you could put somebody's chair on their bed, and they'd not care, or get really mad. The game's story also does a great job as both a criticism of their publisher, and western religion. There was an evil wizard villain, but his main influence was corrupting the values the people lived by with a false religion.

That was one of the cooler parts of Ultima in general. U7 was sort of a callback to 4, who's plot was "the people of this land are safe, but spiritually sick, provide them an ethos." Maybe it's the bigotry of low expectations, but for a game that is amazing. This also makes the casual facebook free to play mmo such a conceptual dud. Because If there is one thing that says "homage to a game about developing humility and charity", it's social networking.

[Chris]

I only heard the first 20 minutes or so before I got to work, but as I'm sure people have said, you should really check out some ultimas. 7 and 7 part 2 are probably my favorite games of all time, and it might be hard to put it in place, but the experience of every person in the game's world having a unique identity, and schedule, where you could move every item in the world light enough for a human to move blew my 16 year old mind to pieces. People had different tolerances for your nonsense too, like you could put somebody's chair on their bed, and they'd not care, or get really mad. The game's story also does a great job as both a criticism of their publisher, and western religion. There was an evil wizard villain, but his main influence was corrupting the values the people lived by with a false religion.

That was one of the cooler parts of Ultima in general. U7 was sort of a callback to 4, who's plot was "the people of this land are safe, but spiritually sick, provide them an ethos." Maybe it's the bigotry of low expectations, but for a game that is amazing. This also makes the casual facebook free to play mmo such a conceptual dud. Because If there is one thing that says "homage to a game about developing humility and charity", it's social networking.

Yeah, I've been meaning to do this for a while. You think 7 is a good one to jump into?

[CaptainFish]

Sexism is the number one reason why I get embarassed about playing a video game. In college, when most of my friends didn't play or didn't play very many games, I would get self conscious about what I was playing all the time and generally played games when there was a low probability of being observed. I remember playing Mass Effect, which is hardly a problem game comparatively speaking, and having to admit to my roommate that yes, there is an alien race in this game made up entirely of attractive bisexual women, and yes, I'm aware how stupid that is.

You could use this to describe the alien race of humans in pretty much every game ever.

[dium]

You could use this to describe the alien race of humans in pretty much every game ever.

And television series and Hollywood movie and advertising campaign and...

...uh oh, derailment.

[feelthedarkness]

Yeah, I've been meaning to do this for a while. You think 7 is a good one to jump into?

Yeah! Maybe the only one, (along with part 2 which is the same thing, but more). It's the easiest to digest. 1-5 are really artifacts of their time. If you can get into Wasteland or something, you could get into 4&5, but it takes a patient person. 8 & 9 are serious duds.

There is a Mod called EXULT that will be mandatory to get it running on modern machines.

[brannagan]

Yeah, I've been meaning to do this for a while. You think 7 is a good one to jump into?

All the Ultima games are on sale on GoG at the minute. From what I hear, 7 is the best, along with the Underworld games.

[vimes]

Yeah, I agree the Diablo 3 reaction makes no sense to me. This is the interview, and this what Brevik is basically saying:

• Blizzard North would have steered the game in another direction
  
• It's sad that the Diablo 3 team couldn't learn from Blizzard North expertise on core systems and made the painful mistakes on their own.
  
• He's a little happy - not in a celebratory way though - that this proves the people are important in a game creation and even more so in a franchise.
  

How is this inflammatory? It's one of the most politely expressed and honest opinion I've heard in the game media. What the hell, if game creators cannot have the level of maturity to take in that sort of criticism, how can they possible hope to learn from their past projects?

The FTL(I'm definitelyy going to buy that one) and DayZ ivestreams were grea;; are we going to get the amazing revelations about the DayZ one in the next podcast ?

[dium]

Day Z looks amazing but it also looks like the sort of game where if I'm going to get into it at all it'll be the only game I'll have time to play for months.

[youmeyou]

Part of it is because the developer is 'a guy at Gearbox' rather than someone people widely know, but honestly there's been an undercurrent of sexism at Gearbox for a while. Certainly they proudly stamped their name on Duke Nukem Forever, but there's also how their Aliens game wouldn't allow female marines in multiplayer because it apparently didn't occur to anyone at Gearbox that female marines in an Aliens game is an expected feature, or how Borderlands has basically only one female character whose stereotype isn't gendered (by which I mean, yep they're all pretty broad stereotypes and that's fine for what it is, but there's only one female character who is a gender-neutral stereotype).

Oh wait I see Borderlands has come up: okay, so as far as I'm aware we have the seductress, the maneater, the bitch-who-is-broken, the guardian angel and the hardnosed administrator. Let's also remember the problem with sexism (and most -isms) is not strictly that unequal treatment exists, but that for all but one particular group it's predictably common in ways that members of that group don't generally grasp. The female characters in Borderlands are, with one exception, gendered stereotypes - the stereotypes that make up their character are stereotypically female. The stereotypes that make up the male characters are not usually gendered, and so default to male.

I think if you're going to set out to deconstruct a piece of western media you can pick apart the white male patriarchy in 99% of what is currently available for consumption. However, Borderlands did not stand out as a misogynistic game to me when I played it. Of course, part of this stems from my being male and having a privilege blinded perspective. But (and I know I'm going to get raked over the coals for using anecdote here) I played with my girflriend and we both loved the experience and she never pointed out anything that seemed super sexist to her. Well apart from the Moxxi expansion which was really crass and awful in all the predictable ways. I won't stand up for the writing, they clearly rely on stereotypes for every character in that game. But you can play as a woman and even that, sad as this may be, puts it miles ahead of most current video games (including the Aliens example you cited). And she isn't constantly moaning and acting sexy. She's kicking ass and is by most accounts one of the best characters in the game, after all. Should it have had more playable female characters? Yes. But I have complaints along these lines for nearly everything I consume. We need more women, more people of color less white men in media. Is it shitty that the only black character in Diablo is a witch doctor? Yeah. But it's also good that the barbarian woman is not an idealized fantasy babe and has a natural body shape. Patriarchy and racism runs through everything but I think as long as we point out the negatives without flushing the baby with the bathwater we slowly improve as a society.

So while I think the writing is lazy and not critically thinking in the slightest, I don't think Borderlands deserves the description of misogynist. In fact, having a female character who isn't just a set of boobs, sets it apart from most other gaming experiences. To pull from anecdote again, this is the main reason my girlfriend picked it up to begin with.

I'm not defending girlfriend mode, I think that's been covered. But I'm interested to know why Sean thinks the original Borderlands can be described in such negative light.

[circadianwolf]

It's interesting that you guys made the comment about how, with regard to "girlfriend mode" and Akin, these smaller incidents are seized on as flashpoints to the point where the larger systemic issues can be obscured (unintentionally or not), because I had the same thought last week with regard to the general discussion of EA's partnership with weapon manufacturers, and the Thumbs' comments on it in particular--Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, etc. are of course totally complicit and contributary to the cultural glorification & normalization of imperialist/neo-colonialist warmongering in particular and violence as a legitimate problem-solving method in general; pretty much every modern military manshoot (and pretty much every game where you play a cop, ex-cop, or otherwise vigilante or authority figure who doesn't play by the rules but actually totally does) endorses, promotes, and normalizes militarist, imperialist, violent (and usually misongynist and racist) narratives that profit off of people's suffering.

Sean's comments on that issue in particular were very interesting to me because the word he repeatedly used--and my apologies if this sounds like picking on you, Sean, because you're awesome--was "taste", as in, EA co-branding actual military weapons is in poor taste. It seems to me that "taste" is entirely the wrong word to use in these situations: it is not in "bad taste" to endorse mass murder, which is effectively what any endorsement of military weapons by a game about glorifying American wars & the American military is. But of course that's exactly why we use a word like "taste", because it shifts the conversation from a moral or ethical argument, which can have profound consequences on people's lives, to a simple matter of artistic temperament, which may be meaningful but generally isn't going to get people killed. Again, I don't want to pick on Sean in particular, because especially in an extemporaneous setting we obviously err on the side of not saying explosive things, and because I actually think Sean's right in a perverse way due to what I said above: EA affiliating itself with actual weapon manufacturers is simply a matter of bad taste, because it isn't a shift in what EA has already been doing, just a particularly crass extension of its already extent and very real endorsements of imperialism & the mass death and destruction that are its deliberate consequence.

(Of course, I am a crazy anarchist who would say that both partriarchy/misogyny and militarism/imperialism are systemic results of the larger issue of capital relations, so my opinions may not be particularly credible.)

-----

Also, DayZ is sweet, and I'm really curious what "documents" Chris is referring to; I assume at least some it has to do with (spoilers, I guess, for people who weren't watching the stream live and reading the chat)

the guy in the chat at the end who claimed--apparently thinking this was more badass than jackass, despite his actions belonging solely to the latter--that he tracked Chris & Evan down after Evan mentioned his player name in the stream (which meant the guy trolled through gods know how many servers looking for a player with Evan's name in it) and tried to kill Evan, failed and ended up killing Chris instead, but then successfully killed Evan just as the stream was ending

.

----

I think if you're going to set out to deconstruct a piece of western media you can pick apart the white male patriarchy in 99% of what is currently available for consumption. [...] In fact, having a female character who isn't just a set of boobs, sets it apart from most other gaming experiences.

No, fuck low standards. If everyone is at fault, it doesn't mean that no one is at fault. It means everyone is at fault.

[gregbrown]

As an aside, it's also important to note that when we're talking about "video games" being misogynist, we're referring to "video games played by self-identified 'gamers'". Throwing in casual and iOS and non-traditional games makes the picture considerably more positive, if only because those games are pulling in a much more diverse audience.

Do you guys think that self-identifying as "gamers" is more a tool of inclusion or exclusion today? It used to be inclusion, but these days I'm not so sure.

[dium]

I'm not sure what you mean by "a tool of inclusion or exclusion".

[youmeyou]

No, fuck low standards. If everyone is at fault, it doesn't mean that no one is at fault. It means everyone is at fault.

I'm not saying no one is at fault. I'm saying: point out the good with the bad. And having a female playable character is something more games should be striving to accomplish. So if you just shut down Borderlands as a sexist game, people aren't going to experiences the places where it gets things right.

[Argobot]

I think it’s definitely an exclusion; that’s why we name things, to separate ourselves from others. It starts becoming negative when you’re expected to prove your credibility to self-label. Personally, I would never self-identify as a gamer, because I know that a lot of people would challenge me on that identification. My perspective is maybe slanted in this regard, but I think that the Video game community can be pretty confrontational with women who call themselves gamers. It feels like you have to work twice as hard to get people to deem you worthy enough to be included in the community.

That’s one of the reasons why ‘girlfriend’ mode was so insulting to me. For one, it’s implying that the only women who play Video games are the ones who are dating male gamers, which is just plain wrong. Additionally, it intimates that if you’re a girlfriend of male gamer (which I am) and you play Video games because your boyfriend suggests them to you (which I often do), then you’re somehow not a real ‘gamer.’ Why is my status considered lower because my boyfriend recommended something to me?

[gregbrown]

I'm not sure what you mean by "a tool of inclusion or exclusion".

Sorry, I should have explained it. (I wrote like three or four versions of that post before finally submitting it so totally my fault.)

"Gamer" used to be a way to give a group identity to people who were traditionally marginalized within larger groups. It came about at a time where few people played video games, and they were typically thought to be nerds, kids, etc. But now that more people play video games than don't, it seems that "gamer" is used as a way to disqualify people. Women may play more video games, but they don't play the "right kind of video games" to qualify. Casual and Facebook games—up until people started getting legitimately worried about Zynga's status as drug-dealer—used to be denigrated purely on that alone. The Wii is another system treated as not for real gamers.

Is that clearer, or am I seeing phenomena that aren't really there in the larger community? I come at it from the perspective of having spent time in the Shacknews forums, which is now an increasingly-aging group of people who grew up with PCs and have reluctantly made the transition to consoles.

[circadianwolf]

As an aside, it's also important to note that when we're talking about "video games" being misogynist, we're referring to "video games played by self-identified 'gamers'". Throwing in casual and iOS and non-traditional games makes the picture considerably more positive, if only because those games are pulling in a much more diverse audience.

Yeah, I considered bringing this up too, it's an important point. If you think games are 99% sexist manchild shit, you're mistaking your particular area of games for the larger landscape. There are a lot of games that are not, and a lot of very popular and very monetarily successful games that are not--they're just not commonly popularized and endorsed by geek/gamer culture (because geek/gamer culture is largely sexist manchild shit). It's like making generalizations about all of film based solely on summer action movies.

"Gamer" used to be a way to give a group identity to people who were traditionally marginalized within larger groups. It came about at a time where few people played video games, and they were typically thought to be nerds, kids, etc. But now that more people play video games than don't, it seems that "gamer" is used as a way to disqualify people. Women may play more video games, but they don't play the "right kind of video games" to qualify. Casual and Facebook games—up until people started getting legitimately worried about Zynga's status as drug-dealer—used to be denigrated purely on that alone. The Wii is another system treated as not for real gamers.

Yeah, exactly. The ludicrously bullshit "fake geek/gamer girl" thing is of course very illustrative of this. Gamers (and geeks in general) were at one point somewhat marginalized (though also, by staking themselves as almost exclusively straight white dudes who can afford video games & the equipment to play them, insanely privileged), and they have (in general, as a culture) responded to their bullying by becoming huge, vicious bullies themselves.

It's a common strategy of marginalized groups to try to flip their marginalization into a good thing--"Well, our group is better than you and doesn't want you anyway" in the childish schoolyard version, but it also applies to women and ethnic and LGBT minorities on a more serious level, of course. It's not always a helpful strategy, because it relies on an assumption that most people don't in fact want anything to do with you, and people who genuinely do can get hit in the crossfire, but it's really pernicious here because gamers & geeks aren't actually marginalized anymore. They're not even merely tolerated or accepted; by and large, gamers and geeks run the entertainment industries (and significant portions of other industries as well) (and this of course has a lot to do with their original privilege--they didn't have a whole lot of genuine marginalization to overcome). But they, again in general, haven't been able to or refuse to recognize that they're on top now, and trying to maintain their exclusive club is no longer an exercise in reclaiming their own marginalization but simply in bullying that hurts them and hurts the people who genuinely like games & (aspects of) geek culture.

Especially when it overlaps with "men's rights" anti-feminist bullshit, gaming culture is no longer (if it ever really was) about defending a marginalized group, it's about claiming victimization as an excuse for marginalizing others. (And honestly I'm a little surprised it hasn't also overlapped into "reverse racism" bullshit as well, but I suppose that's due to the general class biases of gamers--every man interacts with women regularly, but overt racism is generally the province of the lower-class because upper-class people often simply don't deal with non-whites on a regular basis.)

[dium]

No, that's clear, and by those definitions "gamer" is certainly exclusive.