I don’t know – sounds like a bit of a stretch to me. My fifteen year-old son almost always plays female characters in video games; he says they just tend to look better.
Now I know why.
Now, if I could just figure out why he’s binging Orange is the New Black…
There could be more than one reason…
But as for men choosing to play women in videogames, I find the idea that it’s about looking at butts to be too reductive. But I guess that might just be me shielding my emotions. I recall watching an earlier Sarkeesian video where she was talking about something (I can’t remember what it was now) being put in to titillate the player and thinking that the idea of someone actually being titillated by that thing was too embarrassing to contemplate. If you are playing Mass Effect for the butts… I don’t know what to say, maybe not everybody’s parents let them watch Orange is the New Black.
(I don’t mean to shame anyone who specifically finds 3D graphics sexually stimulating, but it seems so weird to me that videogame graphics - even at the caliber they are today - are real enough to trip those switches in people who are using them as substitutes rather than as a thing unto themselves)
It’s an option? Sometimes it is the only choice but still a great fun game. I played through Borderlands2 with all but one of the characters so far and I have to say the two women (though really more young adult) characters had the best powers in my estimation anyway. I would have to play through again but there was little butt action in the game that I remember but then I don’t get all horned up over video games so it may have gone in the /dev/null pocket of my brain right away.
After that last ‘covered your ass’ crack I’d been sitting on for ages fell on it’s ass (I’m bummed, it cracked me up, but I guess it stank), I’m just going to high tail it back out of this before someone tells me to butt out.
Don’t be so anal.
I’ve always felt that Sarkeesian cherry picks examples to make certain points, I’ve felt that way from the very first time she entered the public consciousness, long before the whole situation became this huge controversial thing.
You could make the very same videos not just about videogames but about movies, books, etc. There’s nothing particularly videogame-y about these criticisms, other than videogames are quite often aimed unapologetically at a young male demographic. But then putting lots of explosions and guns and violence in games does that plenty already before even getting to sexism…
It doesn’t make her points invalid, but I didn’t have any interest in viewing any more videos after that first one. Note that I also did not feel that I should suddenly become part of some crazy-ass internet jihad over it, either. Because that would be stupid.
I can understand, if not agree with, this sort of portrayal of women as sex objects in games nowadays when the video game depiction of a human body actually looks fairly close to a human body. What does it say about us as a society that this has been going on since a butt was three and a half polygons? I cant really imagine anyone being aroused by a 2002 video game butt which had less definition than a lego figure’s rear-end, but the female characters were presented in much the same way back then.
As a gay man, I would like to see MORE male butts in video games please.
To titillate and entertain.
To titillate and entertain. Mass effect has a slightly deeper plot than a Fast and Furious movie. It’s not high art by any stretch of the imagination.
It was judging base entertainment in the same way you would judge Breaking Bad. She might as well go to a strip club and complain that the performances lack depth.
Yeah? I’m not asking the question of myself, I have formed a view on that already. I’m asking what you think, and why you posted it. Posting it suggests you see some kind of equivalence there, and I’m interested to hear what you think it is.
To me each of those images represent very different characteristics of gendered toys.
It’s not high art but I certainly don’t think it’s dreck (like Fast and Furious), there is some room in between.
Yes blowing up shit and stabbing shit is a very large part of why I play games but the reason that I choose games like Mass Effect, Borderlands, Saints Row, Dragon Age, etc. over other death-kill-murder games is that they have characters that I actually like and come to care about. Although I did put a ridiculous number of hours into Skyrim despite not caring about anyone in that world.
And I would like to see increasingly better stories and characters not less nuance.
I know I’m not alone in this. And it’s not a dichotomy, people who want simpler games can have those too. There is room. But if you are going to have a story, try to make it good. If you want to make a strip club simulator, do that instead.
There are all sorts of good indie games out there.
Sorry boss, 'fraid I’m done with this thread. My butt joke swan song was above.
Can’t look away
They are always fine and wise posts, which should be paid attention to, so there’s that.
Nah, Beaujolais Nouveau, just for the lulz.
Nathan Drake’s butt is in shadow and not in any way what the art is emphasizing over all else, unlike the myriad examples of female butts which are the subject matter, presented more prominently than even the fucking storyline…
Fail.
