Damsel in Distress - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

o1s1n

Japanese game developers had the right idea when they were signing off on credits in games under aliases.

fergalr

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's one step forward.

Here's a massive running jump backwards:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-16-fan-harassed-writer-jennifer-hepler-leaves-bioware

Assholes.

I'd hope anita brings this up.

I don't think this solely a 'women in video games' issue; abuse of game creators seems to affect all sexes.

This is a pretty interesting article on the topic, when mentions her quitting as one incident in the general issue: http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/4622252/plague-of-game-dev-harassment-erodes-industry-spurs-support-groups

Although possibly (probably?) abuse from certain quarters is much more severe if the target is a woman.


Its also worth noting that she didn't quit because of the abuse:

When asked if the harassment led to her depature, Hepler told Polygon "No, leaving Bioware was for family reasons. I am going to be working on a text book on narrative design among other game-related freelance projects."

Assuming that's true, it dispels the narrative that 'the trolls won'.
Thats a good thing; its better if abusive people don't feel they get power by being abusive.


That whole thing is very sad. There was some good writing in dragon age 1&2. Its awful if someone who was part of that was made to feel anything other than welcome and valued in the industry. They should feel like a champion - not a hate figure - for helping video games to 'grow up' a bit.

The only thing I didn't like in that article is the coverage of the ME3 ending. There should be no abuse of the creators, but its absolutely fair to criticise the end product, if the creators misstep. Without making it personal.

But if people are playing a game that they feel personally engaged in - which is partially the point - its easy to see how things spill over. Still, thats not an excuse for anyone abusing anyone. The gaming community needs much better norms on this issue.

Maybe other parts of society had to learn the norms for criticising media, too. Once upon a time people rioted outside plays in dublin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Playboy_of_the_Western_World#The_.22Playboy_Riots.22


Still, at the moment, online gaming norms seem pretty broken across the board.

I remember once playing a game of Counterstrike on a public server, and a female player started talking on her mic; several guys started giving her abuse just because she was a female. I was trying to explain "this isn't on"; but I cant say I was really surprised - it is sort of the norm in that community, which is terrible. Probably what needs to happen in a situation like that is some sort of action by the community - by all the other players - to show that being a dick isnt cool - ideally being kicked from the server. But people don't take that kind of action.


In other communities, e.g. RTS games, you meet people who start into awful abuse of their teammates - typically in order to compensate for their own inadequacies, in my experience. What do you do with people like that? Try explain to them that they are misdirecting their anger? Occasionally that works, but generally not. A large part of the problem, in my experience, is that they are young, and, frankly, still stupid. But such people take their cues from the community norms around them, which need to be better.


A discussion of online abuse of game creators, e.g. on twitter, seems to dovetail with the wider discussion about abuse on social media in general. Personally, I wouldn't like to see censorship, nor would I like there to be no ability to comment (pseduo-)anonymously online.

Hard to know what to do absent just waiting for everyone to grow up. Maybe media such as twitter are flawed currently, allowing anyone to get into the discussion on a hashtag; maybe there needs to be better ways of particular communities collaboratively deciding what content gets surfaced and buried, to stop extreme opinions hijacking the discourse.

CiDeRmAn

Regarding the empowerment of trolls, I saw it with the release of Tintin in the states, they lashed into it, before even seeing it, and when it failed to make the intended impact on the us market they were given full credit, and it only made the scum ready to do it all again.
As far as I am concerned the same thing happened to Cloud Atlas, despite it being really good.

Retr0gamer

I found Dragon Age 1 and 2 to have some really poor and immature writing. Even still it doesn't warrant any abuse.

I think the problem with online communication is the anonymity of it all. People have an avatar to hide behind and would never act that way in real life. For some people it's real fantasy fulfillment without the social repercussions, they can say what they've always wanted to say and can get away with it because nobody knows who they really are so it any backlash will not spill over into their real life. It's those social repercussions that stop us all behaving like the bellends we see online.

The whole Mass Effect 3 ending thing was really sad. It wasn't exactly well written, it was a typical fantasy tale but with a futuristic coat of paint rather than being sci-fi. And yet when it had a crap ending people went utterly bonkers over it. It was insane. It's not like games, TV series or films haven't had weak endings before just look at Halo 2, Lost etc. Mass Effect 3 just came along at the wrong time during a perfect storm of internet anonymity and idiotic fanboy entitlement that realised it had a voice on the internet that it really shouldn't have.

When I finished Mass Effect 3 after this had all died down I was disappointed with the stupid ending but the game series was hardly worth getting invested in and I moved on to the next title. I really could not understand the rage over it considering up to that point it had provided a few hours of great entertainment.

Bioware should not have given into the fanboy rage on that one because now they think they hold all the power and it has given them an ego. It's also lead to the popularity of stuff like Angry Joe on youtube, or as I call it bottom of the barrel humanity.

fergalr

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I found Dragon Age 1 and 2 to have some really poor and immature writing. Even still it doesn't warrant any abuse.

The writing was patchy in places, but well above the standard of most games I've played.

They did some interesting things with branching story - depending on the players actions, there were plenty of different ways small parts of the story could go, but the narrative still felt cohesive to me. Also, I found the characters more interesting; plenty of grey.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I think the problem with online communication is the anonymity of it all. People have an avatar to hide behind and would never act that way in real life. For some people it's real fantasy fulfillment without the social repercussions, they can say what they've always wanted to say and can get away with it because nobody knows who they really are so it any backlash will not spill over into their real life. It's those social repercussions that stop us all behaving like the bellends we see online.

One framing:

There's three things that stop people yelling and raging at someone they don't like, in public, offline:
1) An enlightened view: Knowing that you'll hurt the other person, so choosing to contain your emotions; treat others like you want to be treated etc.
2) Less enlightened, but socially aware: You will quickly run out of friends if you yell at people on the street; lose social capital, be shunned socially.
3) For the malevolent sociopaths: You know that if you rage at someone on the street, the police will eventually come and take you away.


Online, we are pretty much relying on 1) at the moment.

In the wider debate, a lot of people want to introduce 3, sanction; but what we really need is more of an equivalent to 2 online.

E.g. on twitter, it should be harder to get a platform - unless you are getting upvotes etc. you probably shouldn't get heard so much.

Rather than moving to a system where the police are running around trying to censor every idiot on the internet, which seems to be what a lot of people are calling for.

We might need a bit of that enforcement, though, if people are making credible threats, or harassing (some of the stuff that goes on is over the line).

In general, though, I kind of believe that people have some sort of a right to express their feelings online, even if the feelings are negative.

But I think it should just be easy to ignore those feelings. And there should be good social norms about when criticism or disagreement goes over a line and becomes personal - whatever about twitter, that is certainly missing from gaming.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The whole Mass Effect 3 ending thing was really sad. It wasn't exactly well written, it was a typical fantasy tale but with a futuristic coat of paint rather than being sci-fi. And yet when it had a crap ending people went utterly bonkers over it. It was insane. It's not like games, TV series or films haven't had weak endings before just look at Halo 2, Lost etc. Mass Effect 3 just came along at the wrong time during a perfect storm of internet anonymity and idiotic fanboy entitlement that realised it had a voice on the internet that it really shouldn't have.

So, separate from a discussion about abuse which is bad: I understood the backlash about ME3 (if not how it manifested).
Parts of ME were exceptionally well written for video game - e.g. the krogan story with its different endings, told between the three games, was some good storytelling. That's pretty difficult to do, to have a narrative that branches different ways, but is consistent; I wouldn't like to be trying to write it.

A lot of the ME trilogy was very well told, and then they dropped the ball right at the very end, and that's why people were disappointed.

I actually think its a good thing that gamers now get disappointed when the writing drops the ball at the last minute.
And its good that there was a fuss about it online - this gives feedback to game creators.

Just as long as the feedback doesn't cross the line into abuse.

(You mention Halo2 and Lost - those were also very poor in parts, but that doesnt really change anything. Actually, I think halo2&3 were very overrated...)

Retr0gamer wrote: »

When I finished Mass Effect 3 after this had all died down I was disappointed with the stupid ending but the game series was hardly worth getting invested in and I moved on to the next title. I really could not understand the rage over it considering up to that point it had provided a few hours of great entertainment.

Bioware should not have given into the fanboy rage on that one because now they think they hold all the power and it has given them an ego. It's also lead to the popularity of stuff like Angry Joe on youtube, or as I call it bottom of the barrel humanity.

Giving in to rage is bad - but I think listening to your fans is good (when you've genuinely dropped the ball; there's an 'artistic integrity' argument that could apply if the fans were just being silly).

KeRbDoG

On related news, anyone see the "Game Girls" article in the Irish Independent today? Page 38/39