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posted by janrinok on Saturday March 15 2014, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
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.'"

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:08PM

    by Angry Jesus (182) on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:08PM (#16952)

    But that brings you right back to the initial problem; the subconcious kicks in and you start tweaking the proportions based on sterotypes.

    You are mistaken. The problem is sexism, not stereotyping in general. Video games are inherently over-simplifications, the very word avatar is practically a synonym for stereotype.

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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:45PM

    by zocalo (302) on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:45PM (#16966)
    Umm. That's what I said. The very act of "tweaking the proportions base on stereotypes" would be an example of sexism, it's actually the first definition of the term at dictionary.com: "...behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles."
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    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Angry Jesus on Saturday March 15 2014, @10:25PM

      by Angry Jesus (182) on Saturday March 15 2014, @10:25PM (#16975)

      So your position is that it is impossible to not be sexist. Not useful.

      • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday March 15 2014, @10:50PM

        by zocalo (302) on Saturday March 15 2014, @10:50PM (#16983)
        Boy, are you ever misinterpreting what I'm saying - I just said I agreed with you and your response is that comment "isn't useful".

        My position is that if someone has problems with sexism, whether conciously or unconciously as implied by the article, then starting with a realistic baseline drawn from the real world might be a good means to avoid the issue. For instance, if they are trying to create a maquette for a given role (muscular male, athletic female, or whatever), then maybe they could use the dimensions of actual human who *is* a muscular male, athletic female, or whatever as their base. That doesn't prevent any subsequent tweaking, of course, but it does at least ensure they would have a plausible set of proportions to begin with.
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        • (Score: 0) by Angry Jesus on Saturday March 15 2014, @11:16PM

          by Angry Jesus (182) on Saturday March 15 2014, @11:16PM (#16990)

          I don't see why starting from realistic proportions and then amping them up is any less likely to reduce the subconscious expression of sexism than any other method. If the problem is the subconscious affecting the end result, then as long at there is a subconscious involved in making decisions, its going to come out in the end result.