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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: 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.
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