Asking videogame makers to change is a fruitless exercise. If you got a major developer to make a different style of game or use different heroes, they'd sell fewer games, come closer to going out of business and their competitors who didn't change would make more money. If you want to change this, address the real problem - that the ideal citizen held up by our culture is a big, tough, extremely violent, extremely aggressive white hetero cis male.
In every culture since the establishment of civilization, the ideal male was big, tough, and aggressive. Violence is not a part of it.
Ergo, the entire premise in the OP's post is wrong. Like you said, it is those ideals that promote these kinds of games, not that these kinds of games promote these ideals.
Is it wrong to have these kinds of ideals? I don't know, but to say that you would need to say that our entire society up to this point is wrong, wouldn't you?
I like my heroes to be big tough and fearless.
The idea that a narrow jawed, thin, sexy looking woman can save me from a disaster, a zombie outbreak, the undead, aliens, a complex horror house, or whatever is almost insulting.
From Underworld to the latest Resident Evil games/movies, I'm not sorry, and I say this in the most chauvinistic way - I could knock that girl out with one punch there is no way I'm putting my life in their hands. There is just too much suspension of disbelief necessary for me to believe some skinny make-up clad bimbo is going to pull me out of shtf.
Never was a fan of Tomb Raider for these reasons.
Thankfully, video games can and should discriminate where the government can't.
The idea that a narrow jawed, thin, sexy looking woman can save me from a disaster, a zombie outbreak, the undead, aliens, a complex horror house, or whatever is almost insulting.
Ok I do think there's an issue with how gender roles are portrayed in video games, though I wouldn't express in the terms the OP does. I can't say exactly what is the root "problem", per se, but video games do tend to generate all sorts of unfortunate implications. For example -
'Why bother letting the player pick woman-dominated professions like a nurse or homemaker, these professions would be boring and no one would pick them anyway.'
This would imply that "women's work" is inherently less interesting/valuable. It also tends to indicate that our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff that we DO deem interesting enough for video games.
'Of course main characters are unrealistically muscular and handsome, it's a form of wish fulfillment!'
Implying that everyone has the same type of "wishes" that need fulfilling. This is obviously not true; the cultural variance is what makes JRPG protagonists follow a different mold, as another poster mentioned. But what if I'm of a minority, or I'm female? Guess I don't get to act out the "ideal" version of myself like the rest of you guys do.
There are probably more examples, those were just a couple. Now, I'm not saying we need to take a 180 and have incompetent weaklings as main characters. But we should acknowledge that right now, video games are by and large made by white men for other white men, and not freak out when someone (rightfully) points out that this model is a bit exclusionary.
I didn't bother reading the entire OP, but I can get the gist.
I will respond with -
Have you ever read The Iliad?
If not, read it.
Then come back and tell me whether this is a new phenomenon or not.
The same goes for stories regarding the Knights of the Round Table, The Song of Roland, and probably tens of millions of other stories written in every culture and society that ever existed.
This is not a problem.
Have you ever read the Iliad? Perhaps if you had, you'd remember scenes like this, from the opening of Book XXIV (using Pope's translation here):
Now from the finish’d games the Grecian band
Seek their black ships, and clear the crowded strand,
All stretch’d at ease the genial banquet share,
And pleasing slumbers quiet all their care.
Not so Achilles: he, to grief resign’d,
His friend’s dear image present to his mind,
Takes his sad couch, more unobserved to weep;
Nor tastes the gifts of all-composing sleep.
or this passage, from Book XVIII:
Thus while he thinks, Antilochus appears,
And tells the melancholy tale with tears.
“Sad tidings, son of Peleus! thou must hear;
And wretched I, the unwilling messenger!
Dead is Patroclus! For his corse they fight;
His naked corse: his arms are Hector’s right.”
or this, from Book VI:
“Andromache! my soul’s far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth;
And such the hard condition of our birth:
No force can then resist, no flight can save,
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more — but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle, and direct the loom:
Me glory summons to the martial scene,
The field of combat is the sphere for men.
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger as the first in fame.”
Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes
His towery helmet, black with shading plumes.
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye
That stream’d at every look; then, moving slow,
Sought her own palace, and indulged her woe.
There, while her tears deplored the godlike man,
Through all her train the soft infection ran;
The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed,
And mourn the living Hector, as the dead.
In truth, you can find Achaean and Trojan heroes crying, expressing doubt, showing fear, and generally being like realistic people in every book of the Iliad.
Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
The idea that a narrow jawed, thin, sexy looking woman can save me from a disaster, a zombie outbreak, the undead, aliens, a complex horror house, or whatever is almost insulting.
Why is it insulting?
..to my intelligence.
Take Tomb Raider. Especially when they turn video games into movies.
In this case, I can point to Angelina Jolie here. Tomb Raider movies, and the movie SALT.
Sorry but I just cannot buy that a woman built like her can do what they are showing her do.
It isn't just her though, Underworld with Kate Beckinsale. Resident Evil games/movies.
Heck, even ScarJo in the Avengers as Black Widow. She's way too soft, any man weighing over 200lbs connects, she's KTFO.
I just never get the sense of "Yeah, THIS person can save the world" when that person is a pretty, thin, boobified, woman. I just don't buy it.
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“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Ok I do think there's an issue with how gender roles are portrayed in video games, though I wouldn't express in the terms the OP does. I can't say exactly what is the root "problem", per se, but video games do tend to generate all sorts of unfortunate implications. For example -
'Why bother letting the player pick woman-dominated professions like a nurse or homemaker, these professions would be boring and no one would pick them anyway.'
This would imply that "women's work" is inherently less interesting/valuable. It also tends to indicate that our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff that we DO deem interesting enough for video games.
Let's say I develop a AAA game based on nursing, cooking, mothering and cleaning (the two examples you use - nurse and homemaker), with a female protagonist. What's the reaction going to be?
First, it's not going to sell. It's not going to sell to men, it's not going to sell to women.
Second, I'm going to get reamed by the press. I'm going to be called all sorts of things, of which "sexist pig" is probably the most mild.
The problem isn't that they don't make games about "women's work", the problem is that we have this kind of conception of women's work at all. Combat roles are for tough people. Nursing is for intelligent, hardworking, empathetic people. Gender differences might bias the genders towards one or the other in general - you might end up with 85% of your combat roles filled by men - but you're making a mistake if you start out with the concept, "This is for men".
'Of course main characters are unrealistically muscular and handsome, it's a form of wish fulfillment!'
Implying that everyone has the same type of "wishes" that need fulfilling. This is obviously not true; the cultural variance is what makes JRPG protagonists follow a different mold, as another poster mentioned. But what if I'm of a minority, or I'm female? Guess I don't get to act out the "ideal" version of myself like the rest of you guys do.
Correct. There's a reason it's Japanese RPGs that portray a different kind of protagonist and not just a subset of American game developers - that's what sells in Japan. They're just following market forces. You have to remember that these video games are being made as a product to be sold into a culture. They're going to be targeted to the demographics that are going to buy them. Nobody's sitting down and saying, "I will design the characters in this game to reinforce my social prejudices," They're sitting down and saying, "I will design the characters in this game that will best help me sell a lot of copies of the game, so that I will still have a job in six months."
There are probably more examples, those were just a couple. Now, I'm not saying we need to take a 180 and have incompetent weaklings as main characters. But we should acknowledge that right now, video games are by and large made by white men for other white men, and not freak out when someone (rightfully) points out that this model is a bit exclusionary.
You're right that we shouldn't freak out, but until someone's willing to put up money without expectation of making a profit in order to break the exclusionary nature of the industry, it won't really change. It isn't unreasonable to point out that it's exclusionary, but it is unreasonable to expect them to change just because they're not being egalitarian. Being egalitarian is simply not their goal.
One nit-pick: I've worked plenty of AAA game development. These games are not made "by white men" - the studios I've worked at have been quite diverse (well, "men" is probably reasonably accurate - it's not 99% male/1% female like it's sometimes portrayed as, but it's not 50/50 either). Being non-white or being female doesn't magically change the fact that if you target your game to a white male audience you will still have a job in 6 months and if you don't, you won't.
Indie titles are, of course, the big exception. Without the economic pressure of selling several million copies to break even, they often explore different roles, jobs, and hero types (when they have heroes at all).
The idea that a narrow jawed, thin, sexy looking woman can save me from a disaster, a zombie outbreak, the undead, aliens, a complex horror house, or whatever is almost insulting.
From Underworld to the latest Resident Evil games/movies, I'm not sorry, and I say this in the most chauvinistic way - I could knock that girl out with one punch there is no way I'm putting my life in their hands. There is just too much suspension of disbelief necessary for me to believe some skinny make-up clad bimbo is going to pull me out of shtf.
Why is your natural comparison a big tough guy and a "skinny make-up clad bimbo"? What about a tough woman? Though, you're seriously underselling a strong, slight woman - Ronda Rousey is 5'6" and 135 lbs and I'm pretty sure she could completely destroy the vast majority of even quite tough 200 lb men in a fight.
But basically, you realize that those "skinny, make-up clad bimbo" action characters are still male wish fulfillment, right? They're just a way to sell sex and action to dudes at the same time.
Now you are committing the straw-man fallacy. At no point did I ever bring up feminism and feminism does not even make sense in this context.
Of course it makes sense in this context. You're talking about stereotypical female roles. Why can't people enjoy being warriors regardless of gender? Has it ever occurred to you how many female gamers enjoy being badasses or commanding armies? Maybe the appeal's in commanding armies and/or being badasses, and not fulfilling society's gender restrictions. Maybe the point is to create a world apart from society's restrictions, whether they be rooted in gender stereotypes or otherwise.
And for ****'s sake, has the idea of escapism never dawned on you?
Males in role play games should be allowed the opportunity to role play non-stereotypical gender roles, such as a homemaker (if it would make sense within the game's universe)
I mean, there might be certain MMOs where that might be a possibility, but who the crap would want to play a homemaker as opposed to a warrior in Azeroth, or as opposed to any number of things in EVE Online? People have to take care of their homes in real life. The point of WoW or EVE is that it isn't real life.
And again, did it ever occur to you that women rallied in the early days of feminism specifically so they could be things OTHER than homemakers?
Professions that are stereotypically female such as a fashion designer, educator, nurse, or homemaker should be presented as viable profession options for male and female player characters.
What game specifically are you referring to?
There is nothing wrong with having a player character in a male dominated profession, such as being an infantryman. There IS something wrong with female dominated professions not being presented in an equally viable, positive light.
They are. We concentrate on the Infantry/Special Forces positions usually in games because most such games are FPSes and FPSes usually involve a single man with a gun (common alternatives being vehicular combat, such as World of Tanks, and any flight simulator).
The game should show display service men and women in a variety of crucial roles that don't reinforce gender stereotypes.
Which game? Halo does this. Mass Effect does this. Which game are you specifically referring to?
If a game glorifies the infantry man, it should also glorify the flight surgeon who stitches up the infantry for his next battle.
Team Fortress.
In games such as Call of Duty, vital military roles typically deemed as "feminine" such as being a nurse, flight surgeon, or secretary, should be presented in a positive light, as much as the infantry role. No, playing as a nurse in Call of Duty probably would not make for the most engaging gameplay experience. I'm not suggesting Call of Duty become a surgery simulator. But the profession such as the surgeon should at least be shown to be a positive, essential role in the military.
Where is it shown in a negative light?
The player character in Call of Duty should at the very least fight along side female combatants. The US military plans to have females in combat roles by 2016, but there's no reason why Infinity Ward cannot start with the next Call of Duty.
Depends on the situation. Such a thing would be anachronistic in World War II, and would be wrong if the units are Special Forces units, as there are no females allowed in Special Forces units.
Games like Call of Duty unfortunately tell our youth that the only way to answer one's personal call of duty to serve one's country is to be a stereotypically male infantry man.
Again, you're trying to argue that just because a game portrays the protagonist as having any characteristic, then it MUST speak negatively of those who do not have it.
Hell, if that's your argument, then you should be praising modern video games. Imagine how traumatizing my childhood was knowing that I was neither Italian, from Brooklyn, a plumber, nor someone who could jump three times his body height.
And I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd been a SEGA player. I would probably be catatonic out of all of the shame of neither being blue nor a hedgehog.
There is nothing to suggest that Master Chief doesn't cry, but there is nothing to suggest that he does either. If that is impractical (since he does wear a mask), then perhaps Bungie could present player characters such as the Master Chief demonstrating characteristics that stereotypically only females display. I would love to see the Master Chief act nurturing, compassionate, empathetic, or remorseful, just to name a few emotions not represented in male characters.
Blinking said this better than I can.
Let's use Batman for sake of argument. When reading a Batman comic book or viewing a Batman movie, the audience never has to make a choice for Batman and then face the consequence for it.
In a Batman video game, the player must make choices for Batman as if he were Batman. The player is asked to role play Batman for the duration of the game. (Not that Batman is an RPG, but the character plays the role of Batman)
In a movie, a viewer might project Batman's character onto himself, but he is not ever obligated to role play Batman, as in a Batman video game.
Yes, movies are not interactive, video games are. So what?
I already defined the "stereotypically, idealized male manner" in the OP. "Unreasonably brave in the face of peril..." and the like.
Which is offensive and you should be ashamed of yourself, for two reasons:
1. Claiming that being brave in the face of peril is a masculine trait, which women somehow don't have.
2. Claiming that being brave in the face of peril is an unrealistic trait. So were the soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the beaches of Normandy, to name a few, unrealistic? Heck, you can make the argument that the men who fought at Normandy were braver than Master Chief, because they didn't have power armor or a Halo pistol.
In none of the Halo games does the Master Chief display any society-deemed "feminine" characteristics, presumably because that would imply weakness to the male audience.
I am baffled as to what you're trying to accomplish here.
Seriously. It sounds like you're saying, "Women are cowards. But men always have to be brave all the time according to society. Why can't men be allowed to be cowards like women are?" Are you aware of how clueless that makes you sound?
I don't know the percentages of which humans are cis-hetero, but I know the percentage is not so high that is would be unreasonable to include transgender or homosexual or bisexual characters in the narrative. And some games like Bioware do promote this, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
I think it's somewhere between 3-8% of people are homosexual.
It's difficult to get a read on how many people are transsexual but I've yet to see an estimate higher than 0.1%.
Maybe not religion, but I never mentioned religion, and so once again you are using a straw-man argument. Attacking points I never made does not win you the argument.
You don't know what the word straw man means.
I'm saying that there are many prevalent demographics that aren't represented in video games. Why necessitate that a character be gay or trans? Granted, I would love to see more diversity in games, but it calls into question why it would even matter whether or not a character is gay or straight, or what religion the character is, most of the time.
Rarely does a narrative driven game not contain a romantic love interest for the player character. Our games shout, "This character is unquestionably a manly man's man and here is his unquestionably female romantic love interest!"
This could be the result of discrimination against homosexuality.
This could also be attempting to appeal to the predominantly straight, male fanbase.
This could also be attempting to find a way to insert a female character into the game, since the main character is male.
This could be attempting to say something through a video game about relationships or gender, a message which might necessitate the characters being the genders they are.
I don't know, because I don't know what game we're talking about. Or rather, we're not even talking about a game. You're making a giant generality about games with no game in particular.
Do you think people would rather play a character who is handsome, brave, large, and violent, or a character who is unsightly, cowardly, small, and ineffective?
A false dichotomy, once again you resort to logical fallacies in your arguments.
It's not a false dichotomy at all. You're complaining that the male protagonists of games are handsome and brave. Do you think people want to play characters who are ugly or cowardly? Again, do you not understand the concepts of wish-fulfillment and escapism? Do you not understand what a game is?
Games allow us to be heroes. They allow us to play characters who do things we can't do, who are things we can't be, and whose lives are extraordinary. This concept seems totally lost on you, but it's WHY WE PLAY ANY GAME WITH CONFLICT IN IT.
There is not a binary as you present - handsome vs. unsightly, brave vs. cowardly, large vs. small, etc.
Answer the question: Do you think people would want to play such a character? Why or why not?
Well, in all fairness, in the Underworld example, SHE'S A VAMPIRE. This translates into having uber physical strength and a supermodel body automatically for both men and women, in virtually every single vampire mythos. In the original Comics, Black Widow was a Soviet Science experiment, ergo she also isn't going to have a body type that matches her acrobatics. That being said, what WOULD you consider to be a realistic look for a woman who's saving the world? Because I'm starting to wonder if the real answer is "don't be a woman, because women can't be world-savers."
@Drawmeomg: all your points are exactly correct - video games aren't themselves a problem, they're a symptom. However, I definitely would argue that only targeting the white male audience isn't entirely necessary. Bioware did just that by including alternate love interests in Dragon Age. But what the real problem was, is the white male reaction to that - detailed here. The issue isn't that other audiences won't pay, the issue is that the white male gamer audience apparently expects to be catered to at all times, 100%.
Answer the question: Do you think people would want to play such a character? Why or why not?
I don't necessarily agree with the larger premise of this thread, but I think there's something very powerful about playing as a character who is not a perfect embodiment of traditional masculine ideals. Works like the Iliad and Hamlet, say, are such important and moving works of literature precisely because of the ways that they complicate the narrative of masculine invulnerability.
I think there might well be something to be said about the inherent cultural assumptions that video game developers make about what people want and will accept, and how that shapes our understanding of the world after we play those games.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
It isn't just her though, Underworld with Kate Beckinsale.
Isn't her character a vampire and therefore not subject to the rules of our universe? I mean she drops hundreds of feet onto pavement without breaking her legs.
On topic, characterization in video games is starting to mature. Look at Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us; both are more fully realized than many characters in previous generations. Both of them have flaws and are presented for the most part realistically. You see Joel cry and you can read anguish in his face; he's not just a grunt with a gun. In addition, Tess is portrayed as strong, ruthless, and resilient.
Not every game is going to have such deep characterizations, and for multiple reasons. Budgets might not allow great voice acting. Platform limitations might come into it. Sometimes players don't want anymore than a cardboard character. The intended audience might dictate character design.
I don't necessarily agree with the larger premise of this thread, but I think there's something very powerful about playing as a character who is not a perfect embodiment of traditional masculine ideals.
And I think there's something very obvious about not wanting to play someone who is the exact opposite of all traditional masculine ideals.
Especially since many of those traditional masculine ideals include things like "competence" and "not being a pushover." ANY character without these traits would be irritating.
Works like the Iliad and Hamlet, say, are such important and moving works of literature precisely because of the ways that they complicate the narrative of masculine invulnerability.
Well, first of all, Senori, his point about the Iliad still stands. I had brought up oral storytelling as well. Ancient epic poetry is all about larger-than-life heroes. So the idea that people being heroic or larger-than-life is traumatizing, and will lead to a rise in suicides because of video games portraying such characters, is absolutely absurd.
Further, try to recognize the difference in intent between something like Hamlet and something like Halo, and why the reader seeks to read either. I have no problem playing a flawed male character like James Sunderland, but I'm not playing him for the same reasons that I would play a character like Master Chief or even Leon S. Kennedy. It's an entirely different form of engagement. It's completely understandable in a heroic FPS for a character to not be like Hamlet or James Sunderland, just like it would be entirely out of place for Hamlet to behave like Master Chief.
In truth, you can find Achaean and Trojan heroes crying, expressing doubt, showing fear, and generally being like realistic people in every book of the Iliad.
And you don't see that in modern video games.
And you see Marcus crying over Dom's death; Dom's complete and utter despair over his wife and his dead children; Marcus abandoning his post and going AWOL to rescue his father; and a general theme of hopelessness and uncertainty over whether their multiple suicide missions throughout the GoW trilogy will even succeed.
As for John-117- He is a professional, career soldier who literally was genetically and physically changed to be the perfect soldier. Emotion is not supposed to be a part of a soldier, and obviously that would ring even more true for a ****ing Spartan of all things. And, even then, he has the chance to show emotion with Cortana and people like Johnson.
I brought up The Iliad to point out people like Ajax, who literally acts like the manliest man alive. The bodycount he puts up is quite staggering. If people are cowed into thinking that they have to be manly men because of video games, couldn't you make the same argument for Ajax and the target audience during the period The Iliad was widely spoken?
You can find emotion in every video game that actually has proper characterization for the characters.
Take Tomb Raider. Especially when they turn video games into movies.
In this case, I can point to Angelina Jolie here. Tomb Raider movies, and the movie SALT.
Sorry but I just cannot buy that a woman built like her can do what they are showing her do.
It isn't just her though, Underworld with Kate Beckinsale. Resident Evil games/movies.
Heck, even ScarJo in the Avengers as Black Widow. She's way too soft, any man weighing over 200lbs connects, she's KTFO.
I just never get the sense of "Yeah, THIS person can save the world" when that person is a pretty, thin, boobified, woman. I just don't buy it.
I don't either.
But that isn't the point of Tomb Raider. The point of Tomb Raider, or more accurately Lara Croft, was, and always will be, to be a highly sexualized fantasy for adolescent and young men. Apparently men find beautiful women with guns hot. Lara Croft is that.
As for Black Widow in the films... Of course, that's why she uses a variety of gadgets and a variety of submission techniques that do not rely on brute force. Plus, it's a ****ing movie. She's supposed to be one of the most skilled fighters on the planet.
And I think there's something very obvious about not wanting to play someone who is the exact opposite of all traditional masculine ideals.
Why? It may be "obvious" to you, but let's explain it for the kids at home.
Quote from Highroller »
Especially since many of those traditional masculine ideals include things like "competence" and "not being a pushover." ANY character without these traits would be irritating.
Perhaps, depending on the kind of game you're making.
But I think it also betrays a fundamental lack of creativity in game design if they believe that the only way a video game can be interesting is if its heroes are superhuman, emotionless automatons.
Quote from Highroller »
Well, first of all, Senori, his point about the Iliad still stands. I had brought up oral storytelling as well. Ancient epic poetry is all about larger-than-life heroes.
Sure, epic poetry is about larger-than-life people. But the fundamental point of engagement with the heroes of the epic tradition is always that they are, at a fundamental level, still people.
Sure, the Odyssey is about a super-strong guy fighting giant monsters... for about four out of the twenty-four books. But most of the epic is him relating how traumatized he is, how badly he misses home, his insecurities about his place in the world and his advancing age, the role of the son as a successor to the father, the anxiety of succession--exactly the sorts of things that the epic's readers (/listeners) would have been anxious about. The giant monsters and larger-than-life heroes are a hook, but they're nothing more than that.
It's the same in the Iliad or the Aeneid. If you give them more than a cursory look, you find that there are very few, if any characters who fall into the mold of the stock hero we see in modern video games or action movies. You don't read the Iliad to hear the thirty-thousandth formulaic depiction of a tongue being severed from its base by a flying spear; I mean, that's cool and all, and it's fun to read, but if the Iliad were just that you'd throw it over your shoulder in disgust after twenty pages. These stories are about the real complexity of the human experience, and that's what makes them universal.
So no, the point about ancient epic does not stand, because it requires a reading of epic which completely misses the point. Moreover--
Quote from Highroller »
So the idea that people being heroic or larger-than-life is traumatizing, and will lead to a rise in suicides because of video games portraying such characters, is absolutely absurd.
The anxiety of trying to live up to the record of those classical heroes drove many figures of antiquity to madness, or near-madness. Look at Alexander, or Commodus. I agree that video games aren't about to cause a national suicide epidemic--that's hyperbole for sure--but we shouldn't pretend that they don't contribute to the anxiety many people feel about their position within the traditional bounds of masculinity.
Quote from Highroller »
Further, try to recognize the difference in intent between something like Hamlet and something like Halo, and why the reader seeks to read either. I have no problem playing a flawed male character like James Sunderland, but I'm not playing him for the same reasons that I would play a character like Master Chief or even Leon S. Kennedy. It's an entirely different form of engagement.
Of course, there's a huge different between Halo and Hamlet, just as there's a huge difference between Hamlet and Titus Andronicus (though it is worth mentioning that all three were written to be forms of popular entertainment, and that what we ascribe as their literary value came only later, centuries later in the case of Shakespeare). But again, I think it betrays a fundamental lack of creativity when we throw up our hands and say that something as grossly simplified as Halo is all people will tolerate.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
'Why bother letting the player pick woman-dominated professions like a nurse or homemaker, these professions would be boring and no one would pick them anyway.'
This would imply that "women's work" is inherently less interesting/valuable. It also tends to indicate that our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff that we DO deem interesting enough for video games.
They did put these sorts of professions in Final Fantasy XIV, and it was boring.
But since in almost every game with characters of selectable sex, those of either sex are completely free to choose which profession they practice, it's a huge leap to say that "our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff". If only men could swing swords and only women could pick flowers, you might have a point. But the designers of a game like that would get pilloried in the press and find themselves very poor indeed, which is why they don't do it.
'Of course main characters are unrealistically muscular and handsome, it's a form of wish fulfillment!'
Implying that everyone has the same type of "wishes" that need fulfilling. This is obviously not true; the cultural variance is what makes JRPG protagonists follow a different mold, as another poster mentioned.
But what if I'm of a minority, or I'm female? Guess I don't get to act out the "ideal" version of myself like the rest of you guys do.
Unless you're playing Tomb Raider, Metroid, The Walking Dead, Ninja Gaiden, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Saints Row, or any of the thousands of other games in which you play someone of this description or are allowed to play someone of whatever description you please.
I am also concerned with the implication that audiences can only identify with protagonists who match up with themselves in genital configuration and melanin concentration.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
And you see Marcus crying over Dom's death; Dom's complete and utter despair over his wife and his dead children; Marcus abandoning his post and going AWOL to rescue his father; and a general theme of hopelessness and uncertainty over whether their multiple suicide missions throughout the GoW trilogy will even succeed.
Oh, of course. I'm not saying that there are no attempts at characterization in video games at all, merely that they're usually pretty facile.
Quote from magickware99 »
As for John-117- He is a professional, career soldier who literally was genetically and physically changed to be the perfect soldier. Emotion is not supposed to be a part of a soldier, and obviously that would ring even more true for a ****ing Spartan of all things. And, even then, he has the chance to show emotion with Cortana and people like Johnson.
But to make him into "the perfect soldier genetically engineered to have no emotions" is a conscious choice which is very convenient for them, because it abrogates any responsibility to give him complex motivations. That's not an excuse, though, because there's nothing inherent to the Halo premise which requires that.
Quote from magickware99 »
I brought up The Iliad to point out people like Ajax, who literally acts like the manliest man alive. The bodycount he puts up is quite staggering. If people are cowed into thinking that they have to be manly men because of video games, couldn't you make the same argument for Ajax and the target audience during the period The Iliad was widely spoken?
That's sort of a misreading of Ajax, though. Ajax isn't just the Perfect Manly Man; he's a representation of everything terrible that happens to a man because he tries to be the perfect mindless manly man. Anyone hearing the Iliad performed would know the tale of what happens afterward, where he goes mad with rage after Odysseus receives Achilles' armor instead of him, and murders dozens of sheep (which he thinks are his comrades) and then himself. They would have intuitively understood him to be much more complex than the Iliad seems to imply to us who lack the context.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
But I think it also betrays a fundamental lack of creativity in game design if they believe that the only way a video game can be interesting is if its heroes are superhuman, emotionless automatons.
But again, I think it betrays a fundamental lack of creativity when we throw up our hands and say that something as grossly simplified as Halo is all people will tolerate.
Why are you acting like that's what I said?
So no, the point about ancient epic does not stand, because it requires a reading of epic which completely misses the point.
No, it still stands. Epics contain larger-than-life heroes, thereby establishing that larger-than-life heroes have been around forever, and therefore this grand alarm that somehow larger-than-life heroes are something particular to video games is entirely misplaced.
Also, you're completely ignoring the wish-fulfillment aspect of the Greek mythological hero. Yes, they had human qualities to them. Doesn't change the fact that greatness of a Greek hero was rooted in how much ass he kicked.
Heroic tales do, when they're good, contain human drama, but that doesn't change the fact that their primary appeal is being a larger-than-life hero on a grand quest. On the flipside, James Sunderland engages in one of the most dramatic stories in video game history, but I sure as hell am not playing Silent Hill 2 out of a desire for wish-fulfillment.
Do you think people would rather play a character who is handsome, brave, large, and violent, or a character who is unsightly, cowardly, small, and ineffective?
--seemed to imply that you thought that games were made this particular way because that's the only sort of game people really wanted to play. But I admit that is not the only way to read that, so, sorry for the confusion.
(I do think there are many other people in this thread saying that, though.)
Quote from Highroller »
No, it still stands. Epics contain larger-than-life heroes, thereby establishing that larger-than-life heroes have been around forever, and therefore this grand alarm that somehow larger-than-life heroes are something particular to video games is entirely misplaced.
But what I'm saying is that the mere presence of larger-than-life heroes isn't the problem. Of course epic has larger-than-life heroes, and shares this trait with modern video games and action movies. But that's needlessly reductionist, because the larger-than-life hero of epic is a fundamentally different beast than the larger-than-life hero of modern culture.
Quote from Highroller »
Also, you're completely ignoring the wish-fulfillment aspect of the Greek mythological hero. Yes, they had human qualities to them. Doesn't change the fact that greatness of a Greek hero was intrinsically rooted in how much ass he kicked.
His ass-kicking was one of many qualities which made a Greek hero a hero. Ajax, the hero who kicked the most ass, was also by far the least popular Greek hero, because he lacked the other traits that made a Greek hero important.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
This is sort of a fuzzy thing. Achilles is the central focus of the Iliad, and the best all-around hero, because he is an excellent offensive warrior, but he is also smart and sensitive and merciful. Ajax is arguably better than Achilles as a warrior, but he is dumb and brutish.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
That's sort of a misreading of Ajax, though. Ajax isn't just the Perfect Manly Man; he's a representation of everything terrible that happens to a man because he tries to be the perfect mindless manly man. Anyone hearing the Iliad performed would know the tale of what happens afterward, where he goes mad with rage after Odysseus receives Achilles' armor instead of him, and murders dozens of sheep (which he thinks are his comrades) and then himself. They would have intuitively understood him to be much more complex than the Iliad seems to imply to us who lack the context.
I'll be honest- It's been quite a while since I read The Iliad, and the only thing I remember is the dozens of pages where Ajax beats demi-gods and powerful people. Clearly my remembrance of it is quite skewed.
Anyways, you're right- The Greek epics, and most epics in general, have flawed characters that have larger-than-life, superhuman qualities while still fundamentally being human.
In comparison, video game characters tend to be a bit more one-note because, well, it's supposed to be entertainment. Like Highroller said, wish-fulfillment.
It is only recently where you start to see more proper character development in video game, as the genre matures and there are simply more processing power that allows people to be more imaginative with characters and the genre in general. Who knows where this may lead. I will say that the theme and plot in Bioshock Infinite is probably better than the vast majority of fiction I've encountered, in any form.
In hindsight, my comparison was off. I should have been comparing video games and manly men in there more to manly men in those trash fictions in the early 20th century. The method of entertainment may change, but the fundamental fact that manly men are the mainstay doesn't.
If I change my comparison though, my point still stands, doesn't it? This is not a new phenomenon, and to claim that our entertainment is influencing our children is a little short-sighted. Of course it is, but then it becomes the "chicken or the egg" dilemma.
But what I'm saying is that the mere presence of larger-than-life heroes isn't the problem. Of course epic has larger-than-life heroes, and shares this trait with modern video games and action movies. But that's needlessly reductionist, because the larger-than-life hero of epic is a fundamentally different beast than the larger-than-life hero of modern culture.
And case in point: In Hellenic Greece, the Iliad was preferred to the Odyssey. Why? Because Achilles kicked more ass than Odysseus did.
These days we prefer the Odyssey. Why? Because it's a better written story, and we are moved on an emotional level by the human struggle of Odysseus.
And this is entirely applicable to our modern superhero movies. Yes, there's drama in them. But we're not watching Iron Man for the same reason we watch Hamlet. We're watching Iron Man to watch Tony Stark kick ass and take names.
Which is my point. The qualities the OP is objecting to male video game protagonists having are there because this is a game based around wish-fulfillment.
This is sort of a fuzzy thing. Achilles is the central focus of the Iliad, and the best all-around hero, because he is an excellent offensive warrior, but he is also smart and sensitive and merciful. Ajax is arguably better than Achilles as a warrior, but he is dumb and brutish.
No, it's not a fuzzy thing at all. Achilles was undeniably the greatest hero at Ilium.
And Telemonian Ajax was not dumb. His problems were that he lacked eloquence and divine favor. He wasn't stupid or brutish. Indeed, it was his sense of honor and pride that lead him to commit suicide.
Look, do you want me to cite the academic literature on ancient epic? Because I read it for a living, and it agrees with me here.
Quote from Highroller »
And case in point: In Hellenic Greece, the Iliad was preferred to the Odyssey. Why? Because Achilles kicked more ass than Odysseus did.
These days we prefer the Odyssey. Why? Because it's a better written story, and we relate more on a human level of Odysseus than Achilles.
You're half-right. It is true that the Iliad was dramatically more popular than the Odyssey in the classical period. But that in fact remains the case today: the literary reputation of the Iliad is far higher among most literary critics, and indeed still sells better. This is for good reason; it is more subtly written, and has much better poetry.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Look, do you want me to cite the academic literature on ancient epic? Because I read it for a living, and it agrees with me here.
Yes, Senori, I would like you to back up the statements you make with evidence as opposed to expecting me to just go along with them even though I disagree with them.
You're half-right. It is true that the Iliad was dramatically more popular than the Odyssey in the classical period. But that in fact remains the case today: the literary reputation of the Iliad is far higher among most literary critics, and indeed still sells better. This is for good reason; it is more subtly written, and has much better poetry.
I would like to hear the backing for this. The Odyssey is widely considered the superior poem. Notice just how much of English literature has been influenced by it.
(And because I know you're going to respond with, "So you don't think the Iliad influenced English literature?", I will reply: no, I recognize it did, but there's no denying in my mind that the Odyssey is the more influential and popular work. Indeed, I'm not sure how often the Iliad is taught outside of Classics departments.)
And all of this, again, is tangential to the actual point I was making: (which I'm still not sure you're clear on or even care about)
People would rather play a character who is handsome, brave, large, and violent, as opposed to a character who is unsightly, cowardly, small, and ineffective. They would rather have the aforementioned traits in a character as opposed to the alternatives because most games are rooted around wish-fulfillment and fantasy, which lend themselves to characters having such traits.
Games that are based around drama and character study, such as Silent Hill 2 and 3, invite more flawed characters, but notice how these games will also include many of the traits mentioned in the former because many of the traits mentioned in the latter would make for an annoying character and not a very fun play experience.
In every culture since the establishment of civilization, the ideal male was big, tough, and aggressive. Violence is not a part of it.
Ergo, the entire premise in the OP's post is wrong. Like you said, it is those ideals that promote these kinds of games, not that these kinds of games promote these ideals.
Is it wrong to have these kinds of ideals? I don't know, but to say that you would need to say that our entire society up to this point is wrong, wouldn't you?
I like my heroes to be big tough and fearless.
The idea that a narrow jawed, thin, sexy looking woman can save me from a disaster, a zombie outbreak, the undead, aliens, a complex horror house, or whatever is almost insulting.
From Underworld to the latest Resident Evil games/movies, I'm not sorry, and I say this in the most chauvinistic way - I could knock that girl out with one punch there is no way I'm putting my life in their hands. There is just too much suspension of disbelief necessary for me to believe some skinny make-up clad bimbo is going to pull me out of shtf.
Never was a fan of Tomb Raider for these reasons.
Thankfully, video games can and should discriminate where the government can't.
Infraction for trolling --Senori
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Why is it insulting?
'Why bother letting the player pick woman-dominated professions like a nurse or homemaker, these professions would be boring and no one would pick them anyway.'
This would imply that "women's work" is inherently less interesting/valuable. It also tends to indicate that our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff that we DO deem interesting enough for video games.
'Of course main characters are unrealistically muscular and handsome, it's a form of wish fulfillment!'
Implying that everyone has the same type of "wishes" that need fulfilling. This is obviously not true; the cultural variance is what makes JRPG protagonists follow a different mold, as another poster mentioned. But what if I'm of a minority, or I'm female? Guess I don't get to act out the "ideal" version of myself like the rest of you guys do.
There are probably more examples, those were just a couple. Now, I'm not saying we need to take a 180 and have incompetent weaklings as main characters. But we should acknowledge that right now, video games are by and large made by white men for other white men, and not freak out when someone (rightfully) points out that this model is a bit exclusionary.
Have you ever read the Iliad? Perhaps if you had, you'd remember scenes like this, from the opening of Book XXIV (using Pope's translation here):
or this passage, from Book XVIII:
or this, from Book VI:
In truth, you can find Achaean and Trojan heroes crying, expressing doubt, showing fear, and generally being like realistic people in every book of the Iliad.
And you don't see that in modern video games.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
..to my intelligence.
Take Tomb Raider. Especially when they turn video games into movies.
In this case, I can point to Angelina Jolie here. Tomb Raider movies, and the movie SALT.
Sorry but I just cannot buy that a woman built like her can do what they are showing her do.
It isn't just her though, Underworld with Kate Beckinsale. Resident Evil games/movies.
Heck, even ScarJo in the Avengers as Black Widow. She's way too soft, any man weighing over 200lbs connects, she's KTFO.
I just never get the sense of "Yeah, THIS person can save the world" when that person is a pretty, thin, boobified, woman. I just don't buy it.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Let's say I develop a AAA game based on nursing, cooking, mothering and cleaning (the two examples you use - nurse and homemaker), with a female protagonist. What's the reaction going to be?
First, it's not going to sell. It's not going to sell to men, it's not going to sell to women.
Second, I'm going to get reamed by the press. I'm going to be called all sorts of things, of which "sexist pig" is probably the most mild.
The problem isn't that they don't make games about "women's work", the problem is that we have this kind of conception of women's work at all. Combat roles are for tough people. Nursing is for intelligent, hardworking, empathetic people. Gender differences might bias the genders towards one or the other in general - you might end up with 85% of your combat roles filled by men - but you're making a mistake if you start out with the concept, "This is for men".
Correct. There's a reason it's Japanese RPGs that portray a different kind of protagonist and not just a subset of American game developers - that's what sells in Japan. They're just following market forces. You have to remember that these video games are being made as a product to be sold into a culture. They're going to be targeted to the demographics that are going to buy them. Nobody's sitting down and saying, "I will design the characters in this game to reinforce my social prejudices," They're sitting down and saying, "I will design the characters in this game that will best help me sell a lot of copies of the game, so that I will still have a job in six months."
You're right that we shouldn't freak out, but until someone's willing to put up money without expectation of making a profit in order to break the exclusionary nature of the industry, it won't really change. It isn't unreasonable to point out that it's exclusionary, but it is unreasonable to expect them to change just because they're not being egalitarian. Being egalitarian is simply not their goal.
One nit-pick: I've worked plenty of AAA game development. These games are not made "by white men" - the studios I've worked at have been quite diverse (well, "men" is probably reasonably accurate - it's not 99% male/1% female like it's sometimes portrayed as, but it's not 50/50 either). Being non-white or being female doesn't magically change the fact that if you target your game to a white male audience you will still have a job in 6 months and if you don't, you won't.
Indie titles are, of course, the big exception. Without the economic pressure of selling several million copies to break even, they often explore different roles, jobs, and hero types (when they have heroes at all).
Why is your natural comparison a big tough guy and a "skinny make-up clad bimbo"? What about a tough woman? Though, you're seriously underselling a strong, slight woman - Ronda Rousey is 5'6" and 135 lbs and I'm pretty sure she could completely destroy the vast majority of even quite tough 200 lb men in a fight.
But basically, you realize that those "skinny, make-up clad bimbo" action characters are still male wish fulfillment, right? They're just a way to sell sex and action to dudes at the same time.
Of course it makes sense in this context. You're talking about stereotypical female roles. Why can't people enjoy being warriors regardless of gender? Has it ever occurred to you how many female gamers enjoy being badasses or commanding armies? Maybe the appeal's in commanding armies and/or being badasses, and not fulfilling society's gender restrictions. Maybe the point is to create a world apart from society's restrictions, whether they be rooted in gender stereotypes or otherwise.
And for ****'s sake, has the idea of escapism never dawned on you?
I mean, there might be certain MMOs where that might be a possibility, but who the crap would want to play a homemaker as opposed to a warrior in Azeroth, or as opposed to any number of things in EVE Online? People have to take care of their homes in real life. The point of WoW or EVE is that it isn't real life.
And again, did it ever occur to you that women rallied in the early days of feminism specifically so they could be things OTHER than homemakers?
What game specifically are you referring to?
They are. We concentrate on the Infantry/Special Forces positions usually in games because most such games are FPSes and FPSes usually involve a single man with a gun (common alternatives being vehicular combat, such as World of Tanks, and any flight simulator).
Which game? Halo does this. Mass Effect does this. Which game are you specifically referring to?
Team Fortress.
Where is it shown in a negative light?
Depends on the situation. Such a thing would be anachronistic in World War II, and would be wrong if the units are Special Forces units, as there are no females allowed in Special Forces units.
Again, you're trying to argue that just because a game portrays the protagonist as having any characteristic, then it MUST speak negatively of those who do not have it.
Hell, if that's your argument, then you should be praising modern video games. Imagine how traumatizing my childhood was knowing that I was neither Italian, from Brooklyn, a plumber, nor someone who could jump three times his body height.
And I can't even imagine what would have happened if I'd been a SEGA player. I would probably be catatonic out of all of the shame of neither being blue nor a hedgehog.
Blinking said this better than I can.
Yes, movies are not interactive, video games are. So what?
Which is offensive and you should be ashamed of yourself, for two reasons:
1. Claiming that being brave in the face of peril is a masculine trait, which women somehow don't have.
2. Claiming that being brave in the face of peril is an unrealistic trait. So were the soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the beaches of Normandy, to name a few, unrealistic? Heck, you can make the argument that the men who fought at Normandy were braver than Master Chief, because they didn't have power armor or a Halo pistol.
I am baffled as to what you're trying to accomplish here.
Seriously. It sounds like you're saying, "Women are cowards. But men always have to be brave all the time according to society. Why can't men be allowed to be cowards like women are?" Are you aware of how clueless that makes you sound?
I think it's somewhere between 3-8% of people are homosexual.
It's difficult to get a read on how many people are transsexual but I've yet to see an estimate higher than 0.1%.
You don't know what the word straw man means.
I'm saying that there are many prevalent demographics that aren't represented in video games. Why necessitate that a character be gay or trans? Granted, I would love to see more diversity in games, but it calls into question why it would even matter whether or not a character is gay or straight, or what religion the character is, most of the time.
This could be the result of discrimination against homosexuality.
This could also be attempting to appeal to the predominantly straight, male fanbase.
This could also be attempting to find a way to insert a female character into the game, since the main character is male.
This could be attempting to say something through a video game about relationships or gender, a message which might necessitate the characters being the genders they are.
I don't know, because I don't know what game we're talking about. Or rather, we're not even talking about a game. You're making a giant generality about games with no game in particular.
It's not a false dichotomy at all. You're complaining that the male protagonists of games are handsome and brave. Do you think people want to play characters who are ugly or cowardly? Again, do you not understand the concepts of wish-fulfillment and escapism? Do you not understand what a game is?
Games allow us to be heroes. They allow us to play characters who do things we can't do, who are things we can't be, and whose lives are extraordinary. This concept seems totally lost on you, but it's WHY WE PLAY ANY GAME WITH CONFLICT IN IT.
Answer the question: Do you think people would want to play such a character? Why or why not?
@Drawmeomg: all your points are exactly correct - video games aren't themselves a problem, they're a symptom. However, I definitely would argue that only targeting the white male audience isn't entirely necessary. Bioware did just that by including alternate love interests in Dragon Age. But what the real problem was, is the white male reaction to that - detailed here. The issue isn't that other audiences won't pay, the issue is that the white male gamer audience apparently expects to be catered to at all times, 100%.
I don't necessarily agree with the larger premise of this thread, but I think there's something very powerful about playing as a character who is not a perfect embodiment of traditional masculine ideals. Works like the Iliad and Hamlet, say, are such important and moving works of literature precisely because of the ways that they complicate the narrative of masculine invulnerability.
I think there might well be something to be said about the inherent cultural assumptions that video game developers make about what people want and will accept, and how that shapes our understanding of the world after we play those games.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Isn't her character a vampire and therefore not subject to the rules of our universe? I mean she drops hundreds of feet onto pavement without breaking her legs.
On topic, characterization in video games is starting to mature. Look at Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us; both are more fully realized than many characters in previous generations. Both of them have flaws and are presented for the most part realistically. You see Joel cry and you can read anguish in his face; he's not just a grunt with a gun. In addition, Tess is portrayed as strong, ruthless, and resilient.
Not every game is going to have such deep characterizations, and for multiple reasons. Budgets might not allow great voice acting. Platform limitations might come into it. Sometimes players don't want anymore than a cardboard character. The intended audience might dictate character design.
[card=Jace Beleren]Jace[/card] = Jace
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And I think there's something very obvious about not wanting to play someone who is the exact opposite of all traditional masculine ideals.
Especially since many of those traditional masculine ideals include things like "competence" and "not being a pushover." ANY character without these traits would be irritating.
Well, first of all, Senori, his point about the Iliad still stands. I had brought up oral storytelling as well. Ancient epic poetry is all about larger-than-life heroes. So the idea that people being heroic or larger-than-life is traumatizing, and will lead to a rise in suicides because of video games portraying such characters, is absolutely absurd.
Further, try to recognize the difference in intent between something like Hamlet and something like Halo, and why the reader seeks to read either. I have no problem playing a flawed male character like James Sunderland, but I'm not playing him for the same reasons that I would play a character like Master Chief or even Leon S. Kennedy. It's an entirely different form of engagement. It's completely understandable in a heroic FPS for a character to not be like Hamlet or James Sunderland, just like it would be entirely out of place for Hamlet to behave like Master Chief.
And you see Marcus crying over Dom's death; Dom's complete and utter despair over his wife and his dead children; Marcus abandoning his post and going AWOL to rescue his father; and a general theme of hopelessness and uncertainty over whether their multiple suicide missions throughout the GoW trilogy will even succeed.
As for John-117- He is a professional, career soldier who literally was genetically and physically changed to be the perfect soldier. Emotion is not supposed to be a part of a soldier, and obviously that would ring even more true for a ****ing Spartan of all things. And, even then, he has the chance to show emotion with Cortana and people like Johnson.
I brought up The Iliad to point out people like Ajax, who literally acts like the manliest man alive. The bodycount he puts up is quite staggering. If people are cowed into thinking that they have to be manly men because of video games, couldn't you make the same argument for Ajax and the target audience during the period The Iliad was widely spoken?
You can find emotion in every video game that actually has proper characterization for the characters.
I don't either.
But that isn't the point of Tomb Raider. The point of Tomb Raider, or more accurately Lara Croft, was, and always will be, to be a highly sexualized fantasy for adolescent and young men. Apparently men find beautiful women with guns hot. Lara Croft is that.
As for Black Widow in the films... Of course, that's why she uses a variety of gadgets and a variety of submission techniques that do not rely on brute force. Plus, it's a ****ing movie. She's supposed to be one of the most skilled fighters on the planet.
Why? It may be "obvious" to you, but let's explain it for the kids at home.
Perhaps, depending on the kind of game you're making.
But I think it also betrays a fundamental lack of creativity in game design if they believe that the only way a video game can be interesting is if its heroes are superhuman, emotionless automatons.
Sure, epic poetry is about larger-than-life people. But the fundamental point of engagement with the heroes of the epic tradition is always that they are, at a fundamental level, still people.
Sure, the Odyssey is about a super-strong guy fighting giant monsters... for about four out of the twenty-four books. But most of the epic is him relating how traumatized he is, how badly he misses home, his insecurities about his place in the world and his advancing age, the role of the son as a successor to the father, the anxiety of succession--exactly the sorts of things that the epic's readers (/listeners) would have been anxious about. The giant monsters and larger-than-life heroes are a hook, but they're nothing more than that.
It's the same in the Iliad or the Aeneid. If you give them more than a cursory look, you find that there are very few, if any characters who fall into the mold of the stock hero we see in modern video games or action movies. You don't read the Iliad to hear the thirty-thousandth formulaic depiction of a tongue being severed from its base by a flying spear; I mean, that's cool and all, and it's fun to read, but if the Iliad were just that you'd throw it over your shoulder in disgust after twenty pages. These stories are about the real complexity of the human experience, and that's what makes them universal.
So no, the point about ancient epic does not stand, because it requires a reading of epic which completely misses the point. Moreover--
The anxiety of trying to live up to the record of those classical heroes drove many figures of antiquity to madness, or near-madness. Look at Alexander, or Commodus. I agree that video games aren't about to cause a national suicide epidemic--that's hyperbole for sure--but we shouldn't pretend that they don't contribute to the anxiety many people feel about their position within the traditional bounds of masculinity.
Of course, there's a huge different between Halo and Hamlet, just as there's a huge difference between Hamlet and Titus Andronicus (though it is worth mentioning that all three were written to be forms of popular entertainment, and that what we ascribe as their literary value came only later, centuries later in the case of Shakespeare). But again, I think it betrays a fundamental lack of creativity when we throw up our hands and say that something as grossly simplified as Halo is all people will tolerate.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
But since in almost every game with characters of selectable sex, those of either sex are completely free to choose which profession they practice, it's a huge leap to say that "our society doesn't want women doing the action-packed stuff". If only men could swing swords and only women could pick flowers, you might have a point. But the designers of a game like that would get pilloried in the press and find themselves very poor indeed, which is why they don't do it.
JRPG characters aren't unrealistically attractive?
Unless you're playing Tomb Raider, Metroid, The Walking Dead, Ninja Gaiden, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Saints Row, or any of the thousands of other games in which you play someone of this description or are allowed to play someone of whatever description you please.
I am also concerned with the implication that audiences can only identify with protagonists who match up with themselves in genital configuration and melanin concentration.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Oh, of course. I'm not saying that there are no attempts at characterization in video games at all, merely that they're usually pretty facile.
But to make him into "the perfect soldier genetically engineered to have no emotions" is a conscious choice which is very convenient for them, because it abrogates any responsibility to give him complex motivations. That's not an excuse, though, because there's nothing inherent to the Halo premise which requires that.
That's sort of a misreading of Ajax, though. Ajax isn't just the Perfect Manly Man; he's a representation of everything terrible that happens to a man because he tries to be the perfect mindless manly man. Anyone hearing the Iliad performed would know the tale of what happens afterward, where he goes mad with rage after Odysseus receives Achilles' armor instead of him, and murders dozens of sheep (which he thinks are his comrades) and then himself. They would have intuitively understood him to be much more complex than the Iliad seems to imply to us who lack the context.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Why are you acting like that's what I said?
No, it still stands. Epics contain larger-than-life heroes, thereby establishing that larger-than-life heroes have been around forever, and therefore this grand alarm that somehow larger-than-life heroes are something particular to video games is entirely misplaced.
Also, you're completely ignoring the wish-fulfillment aspect of the Greek mythological hero. Yes, they had human qualities to them. Doesn't change the fact that greatness of a Greek hero was rooted in how much ass he kicked.
Heroic tales do, when they're good, contain human drama, but that doesn't change the fact that their primary appeal is being a larger-than-life hero on a grand quest. On the flipside, James Sunderland engages in one of the most dramatic stories in video game history, but I sure as hell am not playing Silent Hill 2 out of a desire for wish-fulfillment.
Statements such as this--
--seemed to imply that you thought that games were made this particular way because that's the only sort of game people really wanted to play. But I admit that is not the only way to read that, so, sorry for the confusion.
(I do think there are many other people in this thread saying that, though.)
But what I'm saying is that the mere presence of larger-than-life heroes isn't the problem. Of course epic has larger-than-life heroes, and shares this trait with modern video games and action movies. But that's needlessly reductionist, because the larger-than-life hero of epic is a fundamentally different beast than the larger-than-life hero of modern culture.
His ass-kicking was one of many qualities which made a Greek hero a hero. Ajax, the hero who kicked the most ass, was also by far the least popular Greek hero, because he lacked the other traits that made a Greek hero important.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
This is sort of a fuzzy thing. Achilles is the central focus of the Iliad, and the best all-around hero, because he is an excellent offensive warrior, but he is also smart and sensitive and merciful. Ajax is arguably better than Achilles as a warrior, but he is dumb and brutish.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
I'll be honest- It's been quite a while since I read The Iliad, and the only thing I remember is the dozens of pages where Ajax beats demi-gods and powerful people. Clearly my remembrance of it is quite skewed.
Anyways, you're right- The Greek epics, and most epics in general, have flawed characters that have larger-than-life, superhuman qualities while still fundamentally being human.
In comparison, video game characters tend to be a bit more one-note because, well, it's supposed to be entertainment. Like Highroller said, wish-fulfillment.
It is only recently where you start to see more proper character development in video game, as the genre matures and there are simply more processing power that allows people to be more imaginative with characters and the genre in general. Who knows where this may lead. I will say that the theme and plot in Bioshock Infinite is probably better than the vast majority of fiction I've encountered, in any form.
In hindsight, my comparison was off. I should have been comparing video games and manly men in there more to manly men in those trash fictions in the early 20th century. The method of entertainment may change, but the fundamental fact that manly men are the mainstay doesn't.
If I change my comparison though, my point still stands, doesn't it? This is not a new phenomenon, and to claim that our entertainment is influencing our children is a little short-sighted. Of course it is, but then it becomes the "chicken or the egg" dilemma.
In what way?
Indeed he did.
And case in point: In Hellenic Greece, the Iliad was preferred to the Odyssey. Why? Because Achilles kicked more ass than Odysseus did.
These days we prefer the Odyssey. Why? Because it's a better written story, and we are moved on an emotional level by the human struggle of Odysseus.
And this is entirely applicable to our modern superhero movies. Yes, there's drama in them. But we're not watching Iron Man for the same reason we watch Hamlet. We're watching Iron Man to watch Tony Stark kick ass and take names.
Which is my point. The qualities the OP is objecting to male video game protagonists having are there because this is a game based around wish-fulfillment.
No, it's not a fuzzy thing at all. Achilles was undeniably the greatest hero at Ilium.
And Telemonian Ajax was not dumb. His problems were that he lacked eloquence and divine favor. He wasn't stupid or brutish. Indeed, it was his sense of honor and pride that lead him to commit suicide.
Look, do you want me to cite the academic literature on ancient epic? Because I read it for a living, and it agrees with me here.
You're half-right. It is true that the Iliad was dramatically more popular than the Odyssey in the classical period. But that in fact remains the case today: the literary reputation of the Iliad is far higher among most literary critics, and indeed still sells better. This is for good reason; it is more subtly written, and has much better poetry.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Yes, Senori, I would like you to back up the statements you make with evidence as opposed to expecting me to just go along with them even though I disagree with them.
I would like to hear the backing for this. The Odyssey is widely considered the superior poem. Notice just how much of English literature has been influenced by it.
(And because I know you're going to respond with, "So you don't think the Iliad influenced English literature?", I will reply: no, I recognize it did, but there's no denying in my mind that the Odyssey is the more influential and popular work. Indeed, I'm not sure how often the Iliad is taught outside of Classics departments.)
And all of this, again, is tangential to the actual point I was making: (which I'm still not sure you're clear on or even care about)
People would rather play a character who is handsome, brave, large, and violent, as opposed to a character who is unsightly, cowardly, small, and ineffective. They would rather have the aforementioned traits in a character as opposed to the alternatives because most games are rooted around wish-fulfillment and fantasy, which lend themselves to characters having such traits.
Games that are based around drama and character study, such as Silent Hill 2 and 3, invite more flawed characters, but notice how these games will also include many of the traits mentioned in the former because many of the traits mentioned in the latter would make for an annoying character and not a very fun play experience.