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So, I was going to start a conversation about this in the comments of this image, but I think we all know about how serious people take the comments section.

I was under the impression that the reason people react negatively with stuff like is because they the are so infrequently used compared to their male counterparts. I while I do not agree with the mindset of "every single female character reflects all women everywhere" when there are comparatively few characters representing any particular group, it is a little easy to fall into these issues.

Games/tv shows/ movies where the cast is equally composed of people of different groups, people are a lot more willing to make the characters have, well, more flaws. In a show/game/movie that has a large female cast, I don't think anyone would think that any one character would be representative of the entire gender. When there is a large cast, but only 1-2 characters are female, people begin to feel that the few individuals represent the whole.

Games/tv shows/ movies where the cast is equally composed of people of different groups, people are a lot more willing to make the characters have, well, more flaws. In a show/game/movie that has a large female cast, I don’t think anyone would think that any one character would be representative of the entire gender. When there is a large cast, but only 1-2 characters are female, people begin to feel that the few individuals represent the whole.

Basically this. When there are less female characters in a piece of media it's hard to give them any flaws or else it would just end up looking like generalized statements about the gender. I find the same exact thing happens if the genders are switched. If you had an all female cast and then one or maybe two male characters and you give them a glaringly negative trait like, say, they're idiotic, then that will make it look like you're making a statement about men as a whole.

A good example of a piece of media that completely avoids this problem is a sitcom I've been getting into called Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The main cast has a very even ratio of men and women (and more than one black guy in the bunch!) and each female character has their own unique trait that separates them from the others. One is a gossipy ditz that sits around on her phone all day, one is an overachieving brown-noser, and one is temperamental and abrasive. You'll notice these are all considered bad traits. Put only one of those female characters in your show and it just ends up looking stereotypical and starts to feel like you're giving a bad representation of women as a whole. Put all of them in your show and the audience will start to see them less like women stereotypes representing a gender and more like actual people with their own quirks and traits (and flaws!). It's quite the beautiful thing to see done well.

So, yeah, while I appreciate this guys effort to make an argument, he totally misses a big part of the equation and as such his argument fails.

It would've helped if we had gender equality at the antagonistic side too (i.e. equal ammount of male/female enemies). However that is not going to happen any time soon, and there's a reson for that, development-wise. In the beginning of gaming we were fighting mostly non-human monsters and did not care for their gender (RPGs aside), and many games that depict fantasy or an earlier historical period are forced to have mostly male enemy cast to maintain semblance of historical/setting realism. But let's take a modern FPSes like Advanced Warfare as an example. Nowadays lots of women serve in US military, but we almost never see them as a part of an enemy groups. Why? Answer is simple: developers would have to make twice the models and voicing to make a female counterparts for male enemies in the game, and that is the issue in most games of that type.

Basically this. When there are less female characters in a piece of media it’s hard to give them any flaws or else it would just end up looking like generalized statements about the gender. I find the same exact thing happens if the genders are switched. If you had an all female cast and then one or maybe two male characters and you give them a glaringly negative trait like, say, they’re idiotic, then that will make it look like you’re making a statement about men as a whole.

In the comment section of the screenshot Jacob made a thread for, a user posted a comic from a tumblr artist about "problems with feminist criticism in the media" or something like that but, if you go to that artist's tumblr and check her comic for yourself, she basically states that there is nothing wrong with feminist criticism of our media (on the contrary!), just that she likes to overthink things.

You know, for me, this rings a bell from the conversation I had with Platus concerning reactions towards Matt Taylor's shirt and how I thought (and I still think) that it was double-standardized slut-shaming as its finest… that has now been made legal when higher officials weighed in to defend those who slut-shamed him.
Overinterpretation of things and overthinking for every argument ever.

So, on this peculiar topic, and concerning what I quoted from you Crimson Locks, I have but one question: Why? Why do people feel obligated to find discrimination, offense and the like where creators are simply trying to add traits to a character, just because that character is from a minority and/or female and where, as you said, there isn't an even share of multicultural/multigendered characters to go with?
Why are we compelled to think that a virtual character that is here for the purpose of the plot musts represent an entire population when it might not be the case?

I don't think that "To push an agenda" is an answer that encompasses everything on this matter.

Agree with the Jacob and Crimson. I'll also say that this involves larger trends as well as individual works too – in addition to having a very small number of women in one game making those women that are there are generalized, if you have a relatively very small number of women in games in general, and those women are generally shown a certain way, that's going to have even more of an effect.

The OP also misunderstand Sarkeesian etc.'s point. They _don't_ want to craft a box that they can force every female character into. It's the opposite – female characters are already forced into boxes and they're trying to break them out of it, by having a bigger diversity of roles. With this in mind, they're obviously going to encourage roles that are different to what's usually seen. I think it's a symptom of the common mistake of people thinking Sarkeesian's critique is aimed at specific games rather than the wider picture.

@Sinael:

many games that depict fantasy or an earlier historical period are forced to have mostly male enemy cast to maintain semblance of historical/setting realism.

So it's fine to have dragons and orcs and magic spells, but female combatants? Never! I'll accept this is games that truly aspire for strict historical accuracy e.g. Crusader Kings 2, but in fantasy I don't buy it.

Nowadays lots of women serve in US military, but we almost never see them as a part of an enemy groups. Why? Answer is simple: developers would have to make twice the models and voicing to make a female counterparts for male enemies in the game, and that is the issue in most games of that type.

Why do they never make all the enemies female, then?

Tomberry wrote:

Why? Why do people feel obligated to find discrimination, offense and the like where creators are simply trying to add traits to a character, just because that character is from a minority and/or female and where, as you said, there isn’t an even share of multicultural/multigendered characters to go with?
Why are we compelled to think that a virtual character that is here for the purpose of the plot musts represent an entire population when it might not be the case?

An interesting question, but not one I entirely have the answer to. My best guess as to why audiences think this way is because we like to find our characters relatable. When there's a wide range of characters there's that much more opportunity to find a character to relate to/want to aspire to be like. Generally audience members will start to cling to characters that are most like them on the surface (i.e. same gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.). When there's a very small range of characters then certain audience members may feel left out or can't immerse themselves in the media as effectively. If a person from a minority can only find one character from their group they might think "Do the creators want me to relate to this? This is nothing like me!" and thus feel like their minority is being generalized. I don't think many people purposefully think like this, it's just the direction their minds end up going. That's my own theory anyway.

I think an important factor to consider in designing "flawed" minority/female characters are the stereotypes already associated with that group. If you have a black guy who doesn't support his family, who is involved with gangs and who is a stereotypical "thug" it is much more likely to be seen as racist than a dumb asian. A big part of it is just finding different flaws then what you would expect based on race, gender, etc.

@Twee
Fantasy setting is originally based on mythological medieval, and all restrictions stem from there. Of course fantasy tropes evolved in literature, and there are lots of settings where females and males are truly equal, and protagonist has as much luck of encountering a female enemy, as a male one. But not so much in gaming. Many developers that do not wish to go too in-depth with their world either don't pay attention to the matter, making it medieval but with orks, dragons and magics, or base it off older fantasy archetypes that, in turn are based off mythological medieval, so they all end with a setting in which gender inequality is the norm.

Making all-female enemies makes no sense, unless player is fighting against all-female army of amazons. Making a gender-diverse enemy cast requires doble the work done on them. Dev's prefer to go with the easy route, considering nobody payed that much attention to the issue until recently.

Also, have you actually watched Anita's videos? She does not try to break characters out of the box, rather than define what is appropriate for female characters and what is not, based on her own views, which is akin to taking women characters out of the box she does not like, and stuffing them into another box, that is no better in any way, just different.
I REALLY don't think she (or any radfem for that matter) would allow any gender diversity in an enemy cast in videogames.

Also I think that games, like any medium reflect our society, and to change games we need to change society first – that's one thing radfems completely missing. They are fighting the simptoms, not the illness, and that can actually make the illness worse.

Achieving gender equality in videogames is unlikely to cause any impact on the real world problem, and what radfems are fighting for, which can be summed up as enforcing more /ethical/ depiction of man→woman relationship in videogames, can actually make matters worse.

Games were always a form of escapism, and they were much better at it than literaly anything else. They allow player to harmlesly do whatever he couldn't do in real life, without suffering any consequences. If you deny that outlet to them, they become more likely to do it IRL, if they actually have the urges/tendencies. It wouldn't surprise me if after radfems would've achieved their goal the levels of domestic violence would significantly rise up.

Sinael wrote:

Fantasy setting is originally based on mythological medieval, and all restrictions stem from there.

Uh, perhaps I have a much more broad definition of fantasy. The Romans and the Greeks had fantasy long before the medieval era. Cultures everywhere have their own fictional tales which have nothing to do with medieval Europe. While medieval fantasy is the most well known form of fantasy to most people today, I wouldn't say the fantasy setting is originally based on it. Don't get me wrong, lots of other cultures that have fantasy had gender inequities. Still, if I'm playing a fantasy game, my experience is not going to be ruined because there's a female guard when the culture it is based on traditionally would not let females serve that role.

Sinael wrote:

Making all-female enemies makes no sense, unless player is fighting against all-female army of amazons. Making a gender-diverse enemy cast requires doble the work done on them. Dev’s prefer to go with the easy route, considering nobody payed that much attention to the issue until recently.

I can think of two
two games off the top of my head that have (nearly all) female enemies. Sure, most all the characters in the game are female to begin with, but I don't see why you can't just create your own premise of why a certain group of NPCs is all female. As long as you don't make it so the only females are enemies, I personally don't see it being a problem (though I can't say I speak for everyone).

I keep seeing people say that female characters double the work, but it really depends on the style of game. In some cases, all you would need to do is change the face/hair and the voice. The base model and NPC behavior pattern should be pretty much the same for both. Sure, there are games that would require more work than this (as well as others that would require less work than this) and I'm not saying that this should be pursued in all cases. Unless you are actively trying to make women and men all that different from each other other as possible, however, I don't see how it would literally double the amount of work. In games that have things like dragons, spiders, trolls/orcs, horses, giants, goblins, and skeletons, is having a slightly different human model really to breaking point for game developers? Don't get me wrong, I get that people can be lazy, but considering the amount of people requesting this, it really feels like doing a little extra work to give the consumer what they are asking for is what they should be doing, especially when it does not negatively impact consumers who are not.

Sinael wrote:

Also I think that games, like any medium reflect our society, and to change games we need to change society first – that’s one thing radfems completely missing. They are fighting the symptoms, not the illness, and that can actually make the illness worse.

So, how exactly do you suppose we change society? Trust me, if we could do something to easily and immediately end all sexism, racism, and all other forms of bigotry in our society, don't you think that it would have been done by now? While I do agree that the root cause is social bias, and that issues such as this are largely just reflecting this, minor changes such as giving other groups more equal representation in media I really think would do more good than harm. Part of the reason these ideas continue to persist is because people are continually exposed to things that seem to tell us that this is okay. I'm not saying we should censor things just because they may not be "PC" to some people, but I would like to at least see some minor effort to have more media that tries to more equally represent different groups. At least the way I see it, the "symptoms" in this case are part of what help keeps the the "illness" spreading, though I really don't like using those terms for stuff like this.

Sinael wrote:

Games were always a form of escapism, and they were much better at it than literaly anything else. They allow player to harmlesly do whatever he couldn’t do in real life, without suffering any consequences. If you deny that outlet to them, they become more likely to do it IRL-

How would having more female characters in video games possibly be denying anyone from the ability to play or do certain things in them?

@Tomberry:

Why do people feel obligated to find discrimination, offense and the like where creators are simply trying to add traits to a character

Short answer, they don't. Despite what some would have you think, people generally don't spontaneously decide to go out of their way to find something offensive. If you're offended by something or feel discriminated against by it, that's an emotional response that you can't just choose to not have, and if that worsens their experience they're justified in pointing that out.

More to the point, it doesn't matter if the creators are "just trying to add traits to the character"; they can have all the good intentions in the world but that's irrelevant when the work speaks for itself. If they don't want their work to say things they'd prefer it didn't, they have to consider the implications those traits carry in the larger contexts of media and society.

Why are we compelled to think that a virtual character that is here for the purpose of the plot musts represent an entire population when it might not be the case?

Because that's what happens. People consistently see cigarettes being smoked by cool people in media, they think smoking cigarettes makes them cool. People consistently see black people being idiotic and violent in media, they think black people are idiotic and violent. People consistently see women being helpless objects in media, they think women are helpless objects. This is an exaggeration, but media does influence people, and when you consistently see people or things being represented in a certain way in the media you consume, that's going to have an effect on how you perceive things. This is why having critical eyes on media is important.

@Ignaeon:

Women can’t be enemies because “it adverkates veolance against weemon”.

I disagree. In my experience, the people who are criticising games' treatment of women are generally all for having female enemy NPCs (and AFAIK that includes Sarkeesian). It just depends on how it's framed.

@Cultural Marxist:

Exactly. This is also why things like sexualized or victimized men in media don't have the same effect as when it happens to women, because there isn't the existing context of men relatively frequently being sexually objectified or seen as victims.

@Sinael:

Of course fantasy tropes evolved in literature, and there are lots of settings where females and males are truly equal, and protagonist has as much luck of encountering a female enemy, as a male one. But not so much in gaming. Many developers that do not wish to go too in-depth with their world either don’t pay attention to the matter, making it medieval but with orks, dragons and magics, or base it off older fantasy archetypes that, in turn are based off mythological medieval, so they all end with a setting in which gender inequality is the norm.

Okay, so we've established it's lack-of-thought/laziness, rather than an actual restriction they have to abide by to maintain realism?

Making all-female enemies makes no sense

In what way does having all-female enemies make no sense while having all-male enemies make sense, if they can both fulfil combat roles?

Also, have you actually watched Anita’s videos?

Yes, I've watched nearly all of them since before she ever started talking about video games, and I've never got the impression even slightly that she wanted female characters to be fit into a small box. As I alluded to in my previous post, if someone wants a diversity of female characters and existing ones tend to be restricted to a small amount of roles, they're going to criticize them continually being made that way, and talk about encourage roles that run counter to that. That doesn't mean they think characters should only be the way they're encouraging, they just want to see more of it at this point in time to mix things up.

The whole point is to have better female representation; this means characters that represent women as human beings with all the diversity that entails, not bland caricatured stereotypes that are lazily thrown together because that's how it's been done before. The only thing close to a "box" I can see her advocating is characters that are well written and complex, something I'd argue is better for all characters regardless of gender.

Also I think that games, like any medium reflect our society, and to change games we need to change society first – that’s one thing radfems completely missing.

This is a false dichotomy. Media is part of society, and so is influenced is influenced by the rest of it, but the reverse also happens. Art is a powerful tool for shaping and challenging existing attitudes. You change art, you change society, and vice versa.

I REALLY don’t think she (or any radfem for that matter) would allow any gender diversity in an enemy cast in videogames.

… she's not a radical feminist. Anyway, I disagree with your point. See these for examples of feminists arguing for diversity in enemy casts.

Games were always a form of escapism, and they were much better at it than literaly anything else. They allow player to harmlesly do whatever he couldn’t do in real life, without suffering any consequences. If you deny that outlet to them, they become more likely to do it IRL

I believe catharsis theory has been debunked – it actually increases aggression rather than lessening it.

Regardless, as Jacob rightly pointed out, having better female representation in games is hardly going to wreck games potential for escapism, it really just allows more people to enjoy that escapism without being thrust out of it by how their gender is treated. I think it's telling that you used "he" here – can the player not harmlessly do things "she" can't in real life too?

This reminds me of some quote or something I found out a while back about how depraved homosexual and similar tropes can be used without any unfortunate implications if the stereotyped/evil character is contrasted with gay/bi people who are not stereotyped/evil. The same idea goes for any minority group in media, including the situation here.

Basically, if you've got only one nonwhite/female/gay person in whatever your work of fiction is, it's inevitable that it'll give the impression that "this person represents the whole group since we only bothered to include one member," and any qualities they have are extended to the whole group in question. Inevitably, the result is either the character's flaws, whatever they may be, getting extended to the whole group, or the "magical minority" cliche.

The solution to this isn't very complicated: just put more than one of whatever minority in your work, and give them distinct personalities and traits. No one's going to freak out if there's more than one girl or black guy waltzing around, and tokenism is stupid as shit anyway.

This is why having critical eyes on media is important.

Of course it is. But, as a matter of fact, it's as important to have the same critical eyes on the ones who claim they are offended, and want to criticize things.

Platus brought to me this interesting read on this.

@Jacob
Im not natively english speaker, I thought term "medieval" included those periods. But none the less, my point stands – in those mythological times roles available to women still were very limited, and while basing their worlds off that base developers often forget, neglect, or do not see the reason to update the results to the modern standarts of gender equality.

Also simply adding different facial/hair features and reshaping the rest is not enough? simply because "woman" is not equal (however mysoginistic it may sound) to a man with breasts and hips. It would also require animation and voice acting – if you just put a female model on a male rig, the result will be offputing, because players would expect a female move like a female, not like a man with breasts.
Once upon a time a man decided to put gender equality to Oblivion's (or was it Skyrim?) horses. Results were scandalous.

Only a very small portion of consumers are actually asking for it, which makes it possible for companies to neglect the voice. Also, acceptance of such practices by big companies would make it hareder for smaller ones to keep up, because they would lack the resources to keep up with moderns standarts of gender equality.

You pointing out two Japanese games, forgetting about the culture difference – it's fairly common for a japanese game to have all-female cast or all-female enemy cast because of the anime tropes and all the fanservice.
Try to find western games instead, preferably the ones that came out before 2010. I can think of only one, and It's an obscure Russian shooter "Operation: Matriarchy" which features the player fighting a race of aggresive genetically modified space amazons ruled by said matriarchy.

@Twee
Making all-male enemies makes sense because at the time depicted chance of meeting a female combatant on the field of battle was neglectably small.

Regarding the escapism part I may have been wrong, but I spoke out of my own experience. Also we may be seeing different things while watching same videos – maybe our initial beliefs affect that i dunno.
I'm ll for diverse enemy cast, but only if it's justified lore-wise (IMO EVERYTHING should be justified lore-wise, buth that will increase the effort that needs to go into a setting tenfold). In case of Antony Burch (second example) butchering the lore of Borderlands franchise to add female enemies "just because" – I consider it one of the worst things to happen to the game's lore – for it to be twisted, shifted, and reshaped to fit into standarts it wasn't originaly meant for.

@Tomberry:

Of course it is. But, as a matter of fact, it’s as important to have the same critical eyes on the ones who claim they are offended, and want to criticize things.

Indeed, though one must be careful as to how much you're genuinely just putting a critical eye on them and how much you're trying to find flaws because you feel threatened by what they're saying. And regardless of criticism you can make of them or their methods, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to wrong in what they're saying, or that they're not justified in feeling that way.

Re: the article, I generally agree with it, and already try to apply its advice to how I approach things. I don't think this sort of thing applies only to left-leaning or social justice groups, however; the potential for this is everywhere.

@Sinael:

Making all-male enemies makes sense because at the time depicted chance of meeting a female combatant on the field of battle was neglectably small.

But again, if it's fantasy it's not "at the time", it's fabricated from the ground up. The chances of facing magic on the field of battle was also neglectably small, but that doesn't stop a ton of games from featuring it as a major element. And if it's a modern day or future setting, the time doesn't even come into it since, as you say, women are frequently involved in combat roles and that's likely to only increase in future.

Also we may be seeing different things while watching same videos – maybe our initial beliefs affect that i dunno.

Yeah, I think that's the trouble. People tend to build up assumptions as to what she and people like her think based on their own preconceived ideas about what someone like her would think, rather than what she's actually saying. She does try to clarify, but that's not always going to be effective.

I’m ll for diverse enemy cast, but only if it’s justified lore-wise

Are you as concerned about it being justified lore-wise if it's not a diverse enemy cast? I know you said you wanted everything to be, but by the sounds of it it doesn't really bother you when it's all men without a specific explanation for why that it – it's relatively easy to accept.

Tomberry posted:
bq. So, on this peculiar topic, and concerning what I quoted from you Crimson Locks, I have but one question: Why? Why do people feel obligated to find discrimination, offense and the like where creators are simply trying to add traits to a character, just because that character is from a minority and/or female and where, as you said, there isn’t an even share of multicultural/multigendered characters to go with?

This is the true question to everything. Sorry for saying a pointless thing, but this is a great question.

Twee Wrote:

Why do they never make all the enemies female, then?

Asking for change and diversity in media is actually a way to combat the sickness, because media shapes society just as society shapes media. Adding diversity and equality in videogames does ease the concep in real life. The best way to do it is simply pu diveristy of characters, and NOT attract attention to this fact, just treat it as it is normal, the status quo, no big deal.

I am personally all for equality and diversity in videogames. It would makes things a lot more fresh and don't complain about it being not realistic because, let's be honest, 95% of videogames aren't close to be realistic.The problem is often that several feminists will make different demands, often contradictory, and claim to speak in the name of all women. Also, we have the problem that most of the people attracted to this industry are males, and honestly, a man will never truly know what is to be a woman. Even if a man does the best to write a real, deep, female character, the best case scenario is "miss male character" which is something Sarkesian complained about, but if miss male character is wrong, then I don't know what is right. I don't know if more talented people can pull it off, but as a man, If a tried to write the best, more complex female character posible, my best try would be miss female character.

This of course could be resolved more easily with more women on the industry, where there is defnitely inequality, but if you ask me, all those screams of "MISOGINY!" of the ferminists worsen the problem instead of making it better; the reason? well, if you tell women everywhere that this industry is full of misoginy, you will actually discourage women from entering the field, and thus a vicious cycle is born.

And then of course, we have the real spanner on the works, the so called feminists that don't want equality and improvement, they just want a enemy to demonize and attack, I'm talking of course about the kind of feminists that don't want to let you put women in any posible negative light, that actually want to push back things because there can't be females that can be killed in the game and such.