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Game Developers Try to Depict Non-Sexist Art

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: 4, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:34AM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Sunday March 16 2014, @12:34AM (#17020) Journal

    Is my avatar sexist because it's taller and thinner, with more muscles and hair? Do most people psychologically prefer to see themselves as better than they may currently look?

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 1) by NezSez on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:20PM

    by NezSez (961) on Sunday March 16 2014, @09:20PM (#17282) Journal

    Your question is very good, and I'm sure some phd students or faculty members have actually studied this, but i'm TLTLU (Too Lazy To LookUp).

      FTR, myself, on Second Life, since you can have multiple skins and change to them reasonably quickly, created my normal one to look as close to myself as possible and then created a second one that was exactly the same except for the dimensions for the derriere which were set to the max value possible (tallest, widest, etc). Then, smack dab in da middle of chatting with a group of ppl, I'd switch to the second avatar and then say "Does this avatar make my ass look big?"

    Some of us are just in it for the LULZ!

    --
    No Sig to see here, move along, move along...