Anyway, on with the show.
Ok, so... sexism. I feel that in general women in the west have it pretty good. I won't say that men and women are equal, because we're not there yet and that I think complete equality is impossible as when you get right down to it men and women cannot be truely equal across the board.
Let's look at the physical, men tend to be bigger and physically stronger on average, women get to carry the babies.
Let's look at our brains; women tend to have better educational outcomes where equal opportunity exists. Women are more emotional whereas men are generally more aggressive.
You could easily come up with a lot of other differences, many of them minor some of them not, it makes achieving true equality like trying to get all of the air bubbles out from a sticker making it completely flat against your intended target surface...
You'll never quite do it.
That isn't an excuse to give up pursuing equality in society; it's a suggestion that at some point, the effort and conflict that will be necessary to press out yet another relatively small bubble from that sticker may well not be worth it... though that point is likely many years down the road.
In my mind, a lot of the issues still facing women and feminists are in the way some old ideas die hard... a good example is the idea of a "women's job" such as nursing or teaching. I hate this, because it means people doing important work requiring long educations, care and lots of time are treated poorly and ignores the idea of equal pay. Fuck that. Pay them a reasonable wage, and give them some resources for goodness sake. And just the idea of calling something "women's work" puts one in the mind of some old 1950's movie, you start seeing things in your mind's eye in sepia tones.
So in short, at some point feminism is going to need to be focused on maintaining relative equality rather than some new fight but it's not there yet. There is work to be done and minds to be changed.
And thus, now we come to gaming finally.
In the last 12 months we've had, in no particular order:
S&M leather clad murder nuns
Lara croft RAEP
A busty zombie munched bust
Likely some fighting game with excessive boobage
...what the fuck guys.
Of course, sex sells, we know this, and the scenes showing Lara croft fighting off that guy attempting to grope her in the new game could actually work, showing you why her desperation is increasing and steeling her resolve, but when you look at the trend it becomes another note in a disturbing song.
I'm not against the use of rape in a story, so long as it's reasonable and realistic. You can't have it happen and not affect the character, it can't be a crutch or the victim just some sort of motivation for the protagonist. It shouldn't feel out of place or crowbared in, it should make all players feel uncomfortable... Including such a violent aweful event in your story is a risk, and it should be treated respectfully.
But that other shit? Drop it. The statuette for the Dead Island expansion is just plain stupid. I mean, if they had a busty chick in a English flag bikini on the box there would have been grumbles of sexism, but it's hard for most to ignore the violent and sexist theme of that statue.
Because this is EXACTLY why I play games.
And this is the thing, it goes back to my concern of old ideas dying hard... "Gaming is a guy thing". This must still permeate the triple A dev houses... it's old thinking and it's wrong.
Stop it.
Now.
I want to play games with the ladies, I want to meet women that share my hobby, you make shit like this and you'll scare them off... and that's ignoring my own distaste of all this stuff. Call it enlightened self interest.
Oh, and those arseholes that accuse all women that complain that they're just trying to 'ruin' gaming? They can go eat a dick, because that's the only action they'd ever get if they said IRL what they type on message boards.
Fuck, I play games to play games, not to be exposed to all this puerile bullshit.
Now, having said all that, we shouldn't stop all references to sex in games, if games are to be an artform then we need to allow the artists to do what they want. I just want the stupid teenage pandering to stop. As an example, there has been some complaint about the cyberpunk 2077 trailer, I can see why some have complained about it. It looks a bit like the hitman absolution trailer, but I'd point out that unlike leather clad nuns with RPGs and machine guns in an otherwise normal looking modern setting, a sexy fembot/cyber prostitute actually kind of fits in that setting. It may be offensive, but at least it makes sense and isn't just pandering.
And that's where I draw the line, on the other hand if you want to complain about it, I won't accuse you of being a femanazi, I'll just disagree with you.
*sigh*
At least one good thing has come out of all this... the amount of outcry about this stuff managed to get some of it changed or stopped; let's hope this is as bad as it gets.
Keeper3; stop scaring away the ladies damnit!
