Which is exactly why I find singling out Tomb Raider in the current video particularly odd, since they absolutely “showed where games could be better” in the last two games in the Tomb Raider series… by actually getting better. A whole lot better.
I’d hold the last two TR games up as near-textbook examples of how to present a strong female action character in a positive way. With pants, realistic clothing, and a shirt that covers the entire belly, even.
Sounds like the Weeping Angel from Doctor Who.
Yeah. It’s a relatively common trope in horror gaming. Either the “Don’t look at it or it’ll kill you” side of the deal or “don’t look away, because it only moves when nobody’s watching.”
It deals in human’s fundamental psychological insecurity about object-permanence. It works well because we’ve all at one point felt like things are getting moved around when we aren’t looking, and we all occasionally think we see something out of the corner of our eye. It’s not schizophrenic. It’s a product of us having meat for a brain. Whoever thought having meat-brains was a good idea?
Where have I seen that before? Hmmm…
Sure, but in a first-person perspective, in a confusing and very realistic environment it works a lot better at making the player feel insecure. Immersion makes a difference. And it really helps when you’re put into a situation where you already feel very vulnerable and uncertain of your abilities, and the adversary’s, and where you can’t see around the next corner. In some environments, it’ll be an object that most won’t notice is changing place until it’s too late. Then after a death and respawn at the hands (or feet, or pseudopod, or whatever they use to kill you) of this mystery teleporter, the player has extra work to do. They have one more thing to look out for, except it could be anything, anywhere.
I know. 
It’s one half teasing and the other half illustrating how important context is in survival-horror. The thing about games like Resident Evil wasn’t the zombies. I’ve played arcade shooting games that kept the zombies coming and you didn’t get the same sense of anxiety. Games like RE are more about the spaces in between the zombies. Hell, a lot of DOOM 3 wasn’t about combat but lurking in the demon infested dark with either a flashlight or a gun, but not both.
No its not. Because the kind of “empowerment” you are talking is being granted by you and your penis. It’s false. It’s short lived. And it’s dependent on you to grant that power.
Empowerment is saying fuck that noise. Empowerment is people you would never find attractive wearing whatever they want to because their sense of themselves has nothing to do with an external source of validation.
What you’re taking about is the patriarchy.
There’s plenty of room in my stomach, since I didn’t have the pleasure of eating his last account. Regardless, he can speak to me from my belly.
Whom, specifically?
Great craic
I don’t think she’d disagree at all. Others have written “Tropes vs. Women” pieces about all kinds of things, and I don’t even think she made up that phrase. She’s basically just leveling the exact same criticism that you would hear of books, movies, halloween costumes, etc., at games.[quote=“codinghorror, post:303, topic:72494”]
Which is exactly why I find singling out Tomb Raider in the current video particularly odd, since they absolutely “showed where games could be better” in the last two games in the Tomb Raider series… by actually getting better. A whole lot better.
[/quote]
Not my observation, but when Yoda tells Luke he has a sister, he might have known it was Leia not because of the force but because he didn’t know any other women. I haven’t watched The Force Awakens, but I hear it does a better job on this (would be hard not to). Does that mean we ought not point out that the problem existed in the original?
It’s because people pointed out the problem that it was fixed.
This. All she’s doing is critique with a feminist slant. This happens in all other “art” genres already, particularly literature. Its not a new thing, she didn’t make it up. She’s just applying it to gameing. The howls of outrage she elicits to me means some people need to do some reading!
And don’t forget Brianna Wu, who made her own game notable for having female protagonists that weren’t sex objects, and was also heavily harassed by Gamergaters. Indeed those three women are the “Literally Whos”, the people they referred to by codenames to prove they weren’t obsessed with harassing those three women.
It’s a little horrifying that all it takes to “present a strong female action character in a positive way” is to dress her in pants and a shirt that “covers the entire belly”.
You’ll notice that her extreme hourglass figure hasn’t changed. Just a few more non-flesh-toned pixels in specific places, but the same body.
I never understood this idea that [behavior] is ipso facto empowering. Any behavior, if coerced, coaxed, manipulated, or otherwise extracted in an obtrusive fashion is not “empowered.” Behaviors that are undertaken willingly without regard to coaxing, cajoling, coercion, or manipulation may be benign/neutral, but provide the minimum baseline for anything resembling “empowerment.”
Video game characters, who are clinically (and legitimately) described by developers using terms such as “models,” “skins,” “ragdoll,” etc. are not inherently “empowered” by sexualization because they are not people with free will. Then there are questions of the camera’s “personality.” Everyone has an ass, pretty much. Not everyone crawls on their hands and knees at waist height as a point of view.
The weird thing is that I’m actually fairly tolerant of sexualization, because sexualization is an inevitability in the lives of (arguably) most people who are sexual. Ever see someone across the room and suddenly be filled with capital-T Thoughts? That’s what I mean by inevitable sexualization. But that means that sexualization is a perspective, as in it’s independent of the person being sexualized. Games are nothing if not about perspective. I’m okay in principle with a game being about sex, or having a strong sexual theme, or even catering to a particular set of sexual desires. Not everything in life is for children, and not all games must embody the dubious virtue of chastity. The problem is, as always, with the overarching trend rather than the individual instances that create the trend. The problem is the normalization of the sexual perspective and how highly directional it is in terms of both particular sexuality (straight) and gender selection (male gaze).
Bingo.
Its always funny to me that the knee-jerk response to pointing out anything as even remotely problematic in games is met with a cry of “omg you want to ruin games” - uh, no, I just want some variety. Have your scantily clad ladies, fine, can we also get some scantily clad men? How about more characters that aren’t white, more body types period, we don’t want to “ruin” games, we want to expand them, thats all, literally thats it. I don’t see how adding more options is “ruining” anything… /shakes-head
You realise that women are objectified in real life as well as in computer games?
