Jake

Idle Thumbs 176: The Classic Alien Form

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I'm really glad you had Anita on the podcasts.  I've admired her work and her fortitude in the face of all these ugly and ridiculous attacks, but after hearing her chat with you folks, I found out I also just like her.  I hope she has more opportunities like this to talk more informally about games, because she's cool and interesting and fun to listen to.  Thanks for having her on.

 

I think there's a couple important points you folks missed when talking about the difference between violence in video games and sexism in video games:

 

Lots of people play violent video games, but almost none of those people ever pick up a gun and shoot someone.   It's silly to argue video games cause violence when the vast majority of gamers never do anything violent.  On the other hand, a pretty sizable number of people who play sexist video games also say and do sexist things, including various kinds of sexual harassment (or worse).  So it seems a lot less silly to suggest that sexist content in games might be a factor in encouraging or normalizing sexist behavior.

 

And there's also the distinction that violence in video games is fake.  No one is actually hurt or killed.  But sexism in games is often real sexism.   Occasionally, sexist content will be "fictional" in the sense that it is the expression of a fictional character who has sexist attitudes.  But if, for instance, the characters in a game are all designed exclusively to appeal to male players, then that's actual sexism that is, for real, ignoring and excluding female players.

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Audibly swore in the car when I heard Anita introduce herself, really, really, great podcast. It was good to hear Anita talk casually outside her critiques. I am so impressed with her ability to keep her composure after all of the garbage. I am interested in that Pride & Prejudice card game, it seems to do a good job of making a mockery of high society and courtship of the period. Although I got the feeling that Anita didn't particularly take to that theme, I'm not sure if it was because the concept is gross or it just didn't do it very well. And I'll just concur with everything previously about sexism in contrast to violence on the forum. Since I am still a forum newbie, I am stunned that the Thumbs team was not lying with how awesome everyone is here. Great everything this week all!

 

Oh and Jake was cheeky as hell at the end, "3 dudes". :D

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Lots of people play violent video games, but almost none of those people ever pick up a gun and shoot someone.   It's silly to argue video games cause violence when the vast majority of gamers never do anything violent.  On the other hand, a pretty sizable number of people who play sexist video games also say and do sexist things, including various kinds of sexual harassment (or worse).  So it seems a lot less silly to suggest that sexist content in games might be a factor in encouraging or normalizing sexist behavior.

 

And there's also the distinction that violence in video games is fake.  No one is actually hurt or killed.  But sexism in games is often real sexism.   Occasionally, sexist content will be "fictional" in the sense that it is the expression of a fictional character who has sexist attitudes.  But if, for instance, the characters in a game are all designed exclusively to appeal to male players, then that's actual sexism that is, for real, ignoring and excluding female players.

 

I dunno, I feel like there's a bit more nuance to the discussion than simply claiming it's a fallacy to compare the violence vs sexism debate in games. It seems like the argument is (and I may have misunderstood this part) that violence is depicted through actions, which are easy to consciously separate from reality, as opposed to sexism which is depicted through attitudes, and which is more likely to seep into our subconscious and covertly shape our own attitudes.

 

But I'm not sure if I agree that, if we accept that video games and other forms of media do have the power to shape and normalise certain attitudes, that violence should somehow get a pass where sexism does not. Does violence really not carry with it an implicit set of subtle attitudes? What if it affects us in ways that are difficult to measure?

 

I don't have any answers or anything, I just feel like it's an oversimplification to say that, 'Sexism is bad because X, but violence is okay because Y'. I don't necessarily think that's what Anita (or anyone else) was actually saying, but I dunno, I still feel like there's something not quite right when people will passionately argue that video games don't influence violent attitudes or behaviours, but then also claim that video games can influence sexist attitudes or behaviours.

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One of my all-time favourite subtle jokes in film is a single shot in Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Lucas Lee is in Toronto filming a movie set in New York when Scott fights him, and at one point he throws Scott through a fake backdrop of the Empire State Building to reveal the real CN Tower framed perfectly in the hole.

 

ZttKWqC.jpg

 

The whole meta-joke of that scene is great too: they're at Casa Loma, which is notorious for being a movie shoot location, filming a movie set elsewhere, but in the actual movie (Scott Pilgim, that is) Casa Loma is just Casa Loma. It's cool too, because I used to live near there, so I've walked up and down the stairs that Lee grinds down a hundred times.

 

I absolutely love it when things are set in Toronto. My biggest annoyance with Orphan Black is with how coy it is about where it's set.

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I am interested in that Pride & Prejudice card game, it seems to do a good job of making a mockery of high society and courtship of the period. Although I got the feeling that Anita didn't particularly take to that theme, I'm not sure if it was because the concept is gross or it just didn't do it very well.

 

With games like that, it's hard to be sure that they land the right way with the group. I've got a similarly "problematic" game that my group loves, Ladies & Gentlemen, where players divide into husband-and-wife teams of Victorian aristocrats. The "male" players earn the money that the "female" players spend on clothes, with the best outfit winning the game, but they can't communicate to each other about the amount of money or the value of the clothes, so it encourages the sort of tongue-in-cheek roleplaying where the husband calls the wife a frivolous girl who's out to waste his money and the wife tells the husband that he doesn't love her if he doesn't buy her this handbag. It's a huge laugh all around, especially if you have everyone play the opposite gender, but it just takes one person who's not feeling it, which is totally valid, for the game to fall flat.

 

Unrelatedly, it also just takes one real-life couple who decide the game is proof of the strength of their relationship, which is less valid, for the game to fall flat.

 

I dunno, I feel like there's a bit more nuance to the discussion than simply claiming it's a fallacy to compare the violence vs sexism debate in games. It seems like the argument is (and I may have misunderstood this part) that violence is depicted through actions, which are easy to consciously separate from reality, as opposed to sexism which is depicted through attitudes, and which is more likely to seep into our subconscious and covertly shape our own attitudes.

 

But I'm not sure if I agree that, if we accept that video games and other forms of media do have the power to shape and normalise certain attitudes, that violence should somehow get a pass where sexism does not. Does violence really not carry with it an implicit set of subtle attitudes? What if it affects us in ways that are difficult to measure?

 

I don't have any answers or anything, I just feel like it's an oversimplification to say that, 'Sexism is bad because X, but violence is okay because Y'. I don't necessarily think that's what Anita (or anyone else) was actually saying, but I dunno, I still feel like there's something not quite right when people will passionately argue that video games don't influence violent attitudes or behaviours, but then also claim that video games can influence sexist attitudes or behaviours.

 

I think that games influencing violent attitudes and behaviors in the people who play them is also a problem, but I think there are at least two distinctions from sexism in games that stand out to me. The first is that there is such an obvious and egregious epidemic of misogyny among gamers, shown most recently by the shit surrounding #GamerGate, that it's hard not to see some kind of correlation with sexist themes and motifs in the games they play. We don't have quite the same thing with violence, not on such a wide scale, although the tendency of gamers' misogyny to manifest itself in death threats and abuse shows that they are related problems.

 

The second is one that I'm not entirely sure on, but would like discussed more. You can't argue that violence is most inessential to games. A substantial majority involve combat and the military. Even if you disagree with those being the dominant settings and themes of the games being made, violence still has a place in them. It's more a matter of what's fitting, which some developers do fail to consider properly. But what game is actually about sexism? There's almost never a fictional or mechanical justification for sexist attitudes and behaviors in gaming, but it's still as endemic to games as violence. I believe that sends a message and normalizes those behaviors in a way that a set of ideas and actions with an in-game justification would not.

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Most games aren't "about" sexism, but they are often about power fantasies where the only person that matters is the main character and everybody else is simply a tool or an obstacle, which is often where the sexism comes from when the main character is a man. Even when the main character isn't a man, that self-centered fantasy is still somewhat problematic, although certainly less sexist.

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I've been suspicious of the argument that games don't encourage violence pretty soon after it was raised, because I remember during my misspent youth playing 12 hours of GTA3, going for some fried chicken, seeing a parked cop car, and then starting to run towards it with the intent to jack it.

 

I don't think that means it needs to be taboo, exactly - there's a huge cultural force pushing against the idea that violence is an acceptable solution to problems - but I think it's a problem that violence is so typical.

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The fallacy isn't that sexism in games causes real world problems while violence doesn't; it's trying to ignore or downplay one because the other exists. It's like if I talk about campus rape and someone else tries to end that discussion by saying "What about gang rape as a war tactic, why aren't we talking about that?" Both are real problems and one doesn't cancel the other out. Same is true for violence and sexism.

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I think that games influencing violent attitudes and behaviors in the people who play them is also a problem, but I think there are at least two distinctions from sexism in games that stand out to me. The first is that there is such an obvious and egregious epidemic of misogyny among gamers, shown most recently by the shit surrounding #GamerGate, that it's hard not to see some kind of correlation with sexist themes and motifs in the games they play. We don't have quite the same thing with violence, not on such a wide scale, although the tendency of gamers' misogyny to manifest itself in death threats and abuse shows that they are related problems.

 

The second is one that I'm not entirely sure on, but would like discussed more. You can't argue that violence is most inessential to games. A substantial majority involve combat and the military. Even if you disagree with those being the dominant settings and themes of the games being made, violence still has a place in them. It's more a matter of what's fitting, which some developers do fail to consider properly. But what game is actually about sexism? There's almost never a fictional or mechanical justification for sexist attitudes and behaviors in gaming, but it's still as endemic to games as violence. I believe that sends a message and normalizes those behaviors in a way that a set of ideas and actions with an in-game justification would not.

 

I think your second point is interesting and I more or less agree with it, but I have some issues with your first point. I think that if you assume the misogynistic backlash in the wake of the Gamergate thing can in any way be attributed to the sexist content in video games, you then have to accept the possibility that, for example, perhaps some of the mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. and elsewhere may also be attributed to the violent content in video games. I also think that the abuse and death threats suffered by Anita and others could probably be just as easily attributed to a culture of violence as they can to a culture of sexism.

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I think the only way a behavior is influenced from a piece of work is if it's a point blank lesson intended to be conveyed. The lowest rung on the ladder for that is children's shows teaching kids that sharing is cool as fuck. Going up the ladder for influencing behavior, see propaganda sites or peoples (I dunno, let's go with Sarah Palin) who directly or cryptically influence behavior / actions. Y'know, politics.

 

The way I hear Anita's arguments about sexism in game is that it isn't influence of behavior; it's depiction of behavior or other things that makes it "normal," whether it's "normal" in the game's setting (where you'll get more extreme things like women outright being butchered brutally) or "normal" in real life (women being decoration). It's a huge huge huge difference from saying it changes people or makes them act a particular way. It's a subtle touch, which has an impact over the long run when combined with other sources showing the same thing (or near enough to it). If a guy grows up seeing his mother beaten and treated like trash by the father, while still loved by both, the kid may likely grow up to think that's "just the way it is." Especially if he never sees the alternative frequently enough or at all.

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A piece can still teach something and influence behavior without it being intended as such. The only difference here is that it's teaching something that the author believes implicitly, rather than something they think needs to be taught. For example, people are taught gender roles through media without anyone ever setting out to teach them. And, that lesson definitely has a direct impact on behavior.

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Does anyone know of actual science supporting these arguments? I like to believe that art has the impact of influencing perception, so I'm apt to believe the presented logic, but is there any hard data to backup it up?

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Oh, that sounds fantastic.  A stealth game where, instead of hiding from enemies, you have to accomplish your objectives without being seen by the dude you're helping who thinks he's the hero.

What about a Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy (or Zelda) game where the shop keepers are all just one guy who has to follow the hero(s) around and show up at the shop before they arrive and then pretend to be a different but identical looking shopkeeper.

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I suppose I don't agree that sexism in games normalizes sexism for many. I think it's a problem because it's too prominent, but you have to think of all of the men who grew up with games employing these tropes and aren't sexist.

 

I would make the case that these men were sexist before video games said so just as men were violence before video games said so. Just because a game asserts their worldview in either case doesn't mean it influences others to be that way.

 

It's also pretty much impossible to test that a work of art or whatever changed someone to become a person who is toxic to society. I hate to do this, but since it's the most recent example I can think of, if you go back to Elliott Rodger, all of these claims were made that this guy became a killer because of his participation in online message boards and MRA articles, when his manifesto would suggest he was messed up way before any of that. Considering he's an exception pretty much confirms the same with video game violence on how some mass shooters love GTA but they are still exceptions to the point of a fraction of a percent.

 

To me a lot of sexism in games is just because of laziness, that women are often hamfistedly used as a mechanic by a team of boys who aren't giving it much thought. This isn't to say that all of the tropes need to be employed less and more games that target both sexes or women only need to become more prominent, I just don't think it's as problematic as it has been made out to be in terms of how boys grow considering how Gamegate is a recent overwhelming thing probably in correlation with the increasing amount of women who play games, while you'd think decades of this stuff should lead to a nearly blanket spread of misogyny.

 

Personally I think the amount of time these Gate assholes have on their hands says a lot about who they are. Either men who have nothing in life except a computer and a lot of young boys still in the public school system who lack worldview and have a lot of hormones with no fucking clue what long term impact what they doing or saying is.

 

I think I pretty much agree with Baekgom. But I suppose it's similar take to all of that blabbing I was doing about racist cartoons earlier.

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I have been lucky to have had Doug Tabacco show me around Disneyland once, another true master of esoteric Disneyland lore. If there is any doubt: he has in his possession (and has once shared with me) the soundtrack to It's A Small World After All.

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Just an album of individual unmixed tracks, their seasonal variations, and various warning barks for boarding, disembarkation, etc.

 

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I suppose I don't agree that sexism in games normalizes sexism for many.

Even if it's true that violence & sexism in games don't encourage people to be more violent or sexist outside of games, you still have the question of what the game itself does.

A violent video game doesn't actually shoot anyone, but a sexist video game can actually exclude people, actually send the message, "Go away, this game wasn't designed for you, it was designed for boys with a fetish for large breasts."

That would be harmful even if those attitudes didn't carry over into any other part of society.

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Well those fetishistic games are going to exist forever and I would still argue that it caters to people who a predisposed to like that sort of thing. I personally don't think it's harmful for those type of games to exist, but I'm imagining certain anime games recently and anime itself where the fan service and sexism has gotten out of control it seems the last decade. So I have a similar problem with anime where it's just so dominant and bleeds into everything. Same with sexism in games for me. Same with violence in games.

 

Like an ultraviolent game is fine sometimes and I enjoy that sort of thing in the right mood, but I also tend to not play that stuff personally. I'm extremely adverse to games where I run around in first person view looking at a fucking gun the whole time. Not only is it an incredibly boring way to interact, it's just an obnoxious and infantile way to see the world to me. That said it's fine for those games to exist because there's always going to be a market for that sort of thing and it's not necessarily bad but I would rather not have it be dominant. Like said a few times on the podcast about Bioshock Infinite, maybe their story would have been more engaging and effective if your whole nexus of interaction wasn't a gun.

 

However, I wonder if people who played adventure games growing up tend to develop kleptomania... You never really know when you are going to need a fork or a police badge.

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Does anyone know of actual science supporting these arguments? I like to believe that art has the impact of influencing perception, so I'm apt to believe the presented logic, but is there any hard data to backup it up?

 

Googling just a little bit brings up a bunch of peer-reviewed psychology and sociology studies, including "SeX-Box: Exposure to Sexist Video Games Predicts Benevolent Sexism," "Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions," and "An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior." There are references in all of them to multiple other modern studies with similar conclusions, namely that there is a very strong correlation between sexist depictions in video games and sexist attitudes in people that play them. All studies acknowledge that it might simply be that just sexist people play games containing sexism, but also that a causal link is more likely than such a rigidly self-selecting group.

 

Syn, for what you're saying, I don't think video games can make someone sexist. That's not what anyone's concerned about. The issue is that sexism in video games encourages and reinforces sexist thoughts and actions in the people that play them because they present a holistic and engrossing world in which that sexism is commonplace, normal, and acceptable. If virtually all the games we played only depicted people of color as lazy, stupid, and lawless, it probably wouldn't change most people's core beliefs about real-life people of color, but it does acclimate them to a world in which that specific belief exists and is valid. It might not cause someone to heckle a person of color on the street, but it might cause them to ignore, accept, or balk at heckling or other such racism when it does occur. It might make them less hesitant to say the wrong thing or to hurt somebody. Video games regularly depict worlds that are extraordinarily idealized in terms of personal power and agency, but somehow we always have to bow to "reality" when it comes to depiction of women, queers, and people of color. I don't know, it's just gross.

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But if you use that same argument against violence in games or media, you could say it acclimates everyone to a world where violence and murder exists and is valid. If you take out the factor that violence in media can lead to violence and instead just acclimates them, I think you'd see in general no one in the United States is okay with general violence or murder whatsoever. Especially with the outcry of all of this police brutality lately yet media has been more violent and gruesome than ever in the past decade. I just don't personally see how effects of violence in games is not supposed to correlate with sexism or racism in games just because violence is an action. Just a weird point was glossed over there. Sexism and racism are not just ways of thought, but are also definitely actions that can be carried out via shunning, exclusion, use of abusive language, theft, and violence.

 

To me it seems like we are all talking about a cause and effect issue except we aren't talking about a cause and effect issue. I don't think I can personally compartmentalize that one deviant social behavior can be affected or reinforced by media but another cannnot.

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But if you use that same argument against violence in games or media, you could say it acclimates everyone to a world where violence and murder exists and is valid. If you take out the factor that violence in media can lead to violence and instead just acclimates them, I think you'd see in general no one in the United States is okay with general violence or murder whatsoever. Especially with the outcry of all of this police brutality lately yet media has been more violent and gruesome than ever in the past decade. I just don't personally see how effects of violence in games is not supposed to correlate with sexism or racism in games just because violence is an action. Just a weird point was glossed over there. Sexism and racism are not just ways of thought, but are also definitely actions that can be carried out via shunning, exclusion, use of abusive language, theft, and violence.

 

To me it seems like we are all talking about a cause and effect issue except we aren't talking about a cause and effect issue. I don't think I can personally compartmentalize that one deviant social behavior can be affected or reinforced by media but another cannnot.

 

I don't think that video games cause school shootings or anything, but I believe quite strongly that the ubiquity of violence in video games is central in building a world and a worldview where a protest about a cop shooting a black teenager is met with more cops pointing more guns in people's faces. They help to build a world in which the "correct" response to ISIS is a bombing campaign. People don't see other people on the news or on the streets doing stupid sexist, racist, or violent things and call a spade a spade in a large part because they've played tons of video games and watched tons of movies and read tons of news articles where attitudes of acceptance and quiescence towards such things are depicted as the normal and rational response.

 

I don't know how I can make the difference any more clear than saying that I believe violent video games help to create a world in which violence is more acceptable, but they do not directly cause violence thoughts or behaviors. I am saying the same thing with sexism.

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I'm with Gormongous here. In fact, I think the Thumbs had a similar conversation about violence in games once, in Episode 119: You, Fisher, talking about how using violence as the primary means of action in a game might not make people into killers, but it does make them more accepting of a world where violence is common.

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I wouldn't minimize the fact that violence is an action and sexism is not. Take this at face value because I don't have the source readily available, but I once saw a statistical analysis that showed a correlation between the release of major violent video games and the decrease in actual violent crime. Obviously correlation is not causation, but suppose that violent video games give the people who would potentially perform violent crime an outlet to get out those feelings and distract them. In this supposition, I'd venture to guess that this is because you're performing acts in the game that are more or less congruent to the real-life actions you might take.

 

You don't "do" sexism in games. In fact, many if not a majority of the examples cited by Anita in her tropes videos are actually totally passive to your experience whether that is through cutscenes or through set dressing. Taking everything I've said into account, I personally come to the conclusion that since you're not actively performing acts congruent to "being sexist" very often in games (notable counterexamples include that horrible Kratos scene and still many others) you're not actually "getting sexism out" and instead only normalizing it.

 

I don't know if this is a particularly convincing argument, but it's how I process sexism in games versus violence in games and how sexism in games actually seems more damaging to feminism than violence in games is to reducing violent crime.

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Googling just a little bit brings up a bunch of peer-reviewed psychology and sociology studies, including "SeX-Box: Exposure to Sexist Video Games Predicts Benevolent Sexism," "Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions," and "An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior." There are references in all of them to multiple other modern studies with similar conclusions, namely that there is a very strong correlation between sexist depictions in video games and sexist attitudes in people that play them. All studies acknowledge that it might simply be that just sexist people play games containing sexism, but also that a causal link is more likely than such a rigidly self-selecting group.

 

Thanks, I wasn't having much luck with my weak Google-fu.

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