Well the issue isn’t that an individual piece of art objectifies women physically, or thinks they looks nice, or appreciates the physicality of human form, or addresses sexuality in a particular ( even particularly male) way or however you’d like to think about it. The problem is when that particular approach, and often the most limited aspect of that approach, become the default or only available depiction of that particular group. Or when that particular approach or depiction is the sum total of a character or plot. When all or most female characters in the vast bulk of media are looking exactly the same kind of nice, and that’s all they bring to the table? All they’ve got going on? There’s a bit of a problem there.And maybe more convincing to a lot of people is that its boring. I mean how many totally vapid but face punchingly bad ass chicks with the tits do I have to see? And why does their back story always involve rape? I’m just kind of bored to death with half of this shit. 90% of the time its not even trying to say anything, its just lazy crappy crap crap. At this point I just want to see Devine come back from the dead to play Conan The Barbarian in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Just to see something different.
Hey, the @ sign looks different when you’re playing a Valkyrie, really! (I did tend to play that one some what often, just because of the different stats you got. Also was fun being a Tourist.)
I remember reading (years ago) an article about gamers who play another gender, but for the life of me I cannot find it anymore (help!).
I believe there was a study about the reasons man plays as female, and there were interesting explanations, such as “guys just want to help female characters, and give me stuff”.
But the most interesting point in that article was that men don’t know how to roleplay as women, that they mostly play them as “ice queen with no feelings” or “incredibly promiscuous ‘slut’”.
The author also mentioned a game at a rpg convention, where participants would be given premade character sheets: the promoters were worried that players would have a hard time playing women personas, even though some of the male characters included some sort of monk that could shape-shift into a bear.
I think you’re right. The claim that it’s “the butts” has often seemed defensive to me. There are several reasons why I’ve often preferred playing female characters, and one of them is that often the artists seem to put significantly more effort into character design and outfits for female characters, so they’re more aesthetically interesting and varied than the male characters.
I agree, but I think that uniformity is characterized wrong. People say, “That’s what men want.” Well it isn’t, it is what we all agree that all men want because we accept only one very narrow idea of what men are like and what men want.
I don’t think that women characters are vapid to serve men. I think men would be more interested in more diverse female characters (in body types, personalities and back stories). I think they are vapid because big money kills creativity. Instead of having creative people work on new stories and new characters they have executives expecting them to “make money” and their idea of how to make money is to duplicate whatever other thing made money because they got to where they are by parroting back ideas of other executives, not by actually knowing how to do anything right.
Buying into the idea that men really want that, and that things really are that way to serve men, is basically saying to the executives of game and movie companies - yes, the market is there, just keep churning it out. (Not that they’re listening anyway, I guess)
I guess that’s part of the point I was trying to make. The relentless pursuit of very specific demographics (white males between 16 and 24 specifically) using the bear minimum to attract/please them makes for a shittier product over all. But it also doesn’t help that the vast bulk of content creators in any given field are again white men of a certain age block, with remarkably similar backgrounds. If you put 10 people with nearly identical outlooks and backgrounds in a room to, say, make a TV show. That show is gonna be pretty heavily tied to their preconceptions and tastes. Regardless of its quality, how “indy” or tied to corporate money it is.
So you’ve got those two things going on. Profit driven demographic based crap. And a real lack of diversity in creative fields, some more so than others.
Not 100% sure what point you are trying to make actually, but there are definitely machine guns in WoW. The only ones I can think of are built onto gnomish mechs, but they sure are there.
And look at that Elf’s chest compared to his waist. Holy lord.
Good lore knowledge and observation, but this guy still isn’t “an obscenely muscular male avatar in a tank top holding a machine gun”. Granted, I’m not a girl, so I’m not sure if he’s attractive in this sense…
Of course, other races have those hulking males, that’s true. But there are also other MMOs, and in those of Korean origin the guys are often of “bishonen” type, which is traditionally thought more attractive to women.
