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from the the-impossible-takes-a-little-longer dept.
lhsi writes:
"The Atlantic looked at a recent update from the developers of the game Desktop Dungeons to discuss problems with gender bias in gaming, asking 'can a work be racist or sexist if its creator doesn't mean for it to be?'
The developers of the game had recently been adding female character art to their game with the intention that they would be "adventurers first and runway models second." While actively trying to avoid doing everything the 'simple' way, they came into some problems due to subconscious shorthands creeping in.
"This adjustment turned out to be startlingly non-trivial - you'd think that a bunch of supposedly conscious, mindful individuals would instantly be able to nail a 'good female look' (bonus points for having a woman on our crew, right?), but huge swathes of our artistic language tended to be informed by sexist and one-dimensional portrayals. We regularly surprised ourselves with how much we took for granted.'"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by wjwlsn on Saturday March 15 2014, @06:30PM
The problem is stated plainly in the second linked article (emphasis added):
So, if they're saying they had trouble creating female characters that weren't burdened with sexist stereotypes, maybe they should have picked a different starting point?
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wjwlsn on Saturday March 15 2014, @06:41PM
Arg... and if I had read the summary thoroughly instead of skimming, I would have seen that this very point was pretty much captured already. So now, I am in the unenviable position of seeing that my own post is redundant, and realizing that I probably would have been better off just saying "First p0st!" or "In Soviet Russia, sexist stereotype draws you!"
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 0) by crutchy on Saturday March 15 2014, @11:43PM
i rarely read tfa or tfs... usually only the title.
first thing that came to mind after reading tft... "non-sexist art in games = boooooooooring!"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:05PM
Right and they're going to make orcs look not so stereotypically orcish either? That's racist after all right? ;)
FWIW I'm a sexist male who tends to play female characters in MMOs cause they look better to me - if I'm gonna have a some character on my screen for hours it might as well be a pretty girl ;). Plus their clothing/costume options are either at least the same or better (usually better)
Are these Dungeon bunch really targeting girls or are they targeting something else? Check out what they said:
If women are really like what they think why do tons of them keep buying women magazines that are full of pictures of smooth skinned, young pretty women with make up? Where are the massive boycotts from the masses of offended women? FWIW guys buy magazines that are full of pictures of cars/bikes/guns/etc often with pictures of young pretty women ;).
I think plenty of girls were rather happy to play The Sims: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/women-click- sims-article-1.283191 [nydailynews.com]
Plenty of smooth skin and make up there... And accessories, and more accessories...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:29PM
You make the error of assuming that no one who is ever oppressed accepts the culture of their own oppression, when in fact it is nearly always the case that they do. As if muslim women who think that wearing the hijab and never driving or leaving their home without the company of a male relative are not oppressed. Or when those women in those tribes in africa force their own daughters to be circumcised, that means its perfectly fine.
BTW, the difference between fashion magazines and magazines about cars/bikes/guns/etc is that cars/bikes/guns/etc are objects, women are not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:34AM
Citation please for your first and second assumptions?
If they were trying to make lots of money from women (whether oppressed or not) they really should take a look at The Sims and try to understand why it sells.
If they were trying to fix the sexist oppression problem, they wouldn't be making games with characters that look like "runway models" (even as second priority).
They don't seem to know what they are doing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @05:06PM
Places like Saudi Arabia (and various "Talibanistans") oppress women. The western world, not really. You really call stuff like women's magazines oppression?
You know what's the real reason why more men are top CEOs, leaders, dictators, serial killers? It's because while men may complain about stuff too, far more do something about it and don't dwell too much on what others think about it (as long as they get what they want). Most of them faced obstacles along the way.
Margaret Thatcher would never have got where she did if she kept focusing on the obstacles.
Look at what the Whatsapp guy said and did after he got turned down by Facebook:
Or Twitter:
He didn't whine about oppression or other shit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wjwlsn on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:38PM
Don't get me wrong, I had no agenda in my post other than to point out that if they were trying to create non-sexist character art, they probably shouldn't have targeted "runway model" appearance at all, even as second or lower priority.
This all brings up an interesting point though... what percentage of gamers (male, female, or other) would actually choose a seriously ugly female character? I bet that percentage would be very small, no matter how you sliced up the demographics, and that even grotesquely ugly male characters would be chosen more often.
Look at Hollywood, for instance (just as an example). Show me one actress comparable to Steve Buscemi in both level of physical beauty and level of success? I can't think of any. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that in general, people (of any gender) are much more accepting of "ugliness" in men than in women.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 4, Funny) by chromas on Saturday March 15 2014, @08:35PM
Sarah Jessica Parker? Oh wait; you said success.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 15 2014, @08:57PM
Sarah Jessica Parker would actually be a perfect character-model for addressing the concerns outlined in TFA: She would very convincingly be a witch or goblin in a video game, even with digital makeup applied.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:30AM
Or she could play a horse. [sarahjessi...ahorse.com]
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Taibhsear on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:25PM
Funny that you should say that... [imdb.com]
AMOK AMOK AMOK AMOK
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Yow on Saturday March 15 2014, @08:53PM
I think a key point is there are seriously "attractive" women in between the binary you spoke of: runway models or ugly. I'd choose a warrior woman or "plain" crypt keeper - and, the benefit of female characters are the costumes/accessories that go along - FWIW the male characters don't seem to spectacular nor ugly - but what do I know
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @02:02AM
> Show me one actress comparable to Steve Buscemi in both level of physical beauty and level of success?
Kathy Bates
Melissa McCarthy
Toni Collette
Mary Lynn Rajskub
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16 2014, @06:44PM
Melissa McCarthy isn't ugly, she's fat.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday March 17 2014, @08:44AM
To be fair I think the "runway model" comment could just have been poor choice of words. What they probably meant was that they didn't want them to be runway models. At least that's the impression I got from the rest of the article.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by iNaya on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:31PM
What different starting point would you suggest?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wjwlsn on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:59PM
Oh, I don't actually care what they choose as their starting point. I was merely saying they might have chosen the wrong one if they were trying to be non-sexist. However, if I had been part of that team, and if that had been my goal, I would have said "female adventurers and explorers" and sent them to this URL as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_advent urers [wikipedia.org].
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by ZombieBait on Monday March 17 2014, @10:25PM
Interestingly, the majority of the women on that list are, at least, not unattractive. I also suspect that probably comes with the job. To be an "adventurer" you most likely need to be fit, healthy, confident and relatively wealthy (at least enough so that you could afford basic hygiene and corrective medical procedures (dentistry, optometry, etc.)). It's certainly possible for someone unattractive to have success in the field, but there seems to be at least some overlap in traits between the groups of "adventurers" and "attractive people".
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:45AM
I quickly read through the article, but couldn't determine -- incidentally, what is the gender distribution for Desktop Dungeon's developers/artists/decision makers?
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:01AM
For the group that was trying to create the art, they said they had "a woman", so I think that is just one. I don't know how big the group is though.