alanschu

For the most part it doesn't bother me. But would I feel different if most games had me playing a woman instead? I don't know, since that's not the case. The latter is what I didn't really realize at the time. That it doesn't bother me doesn't invalidate that it may be something that bothers someone else. After all, I *do* still tend to play some level of a self-insert in a lot of RPGs. It's just that, upon reflection, it's pretty rare that I'm not in some way represented if I'm giving a variety of choices. Were the Alpha Protocol conversation happen today, my response would be different. Having said that, for better or worse sometimes games are just going to have male or female only protagonists. I don't think it should be mandated (nor do I think it is practical) that all games have a choice of male/female playable character.

Eh, there's still value in discussing things, in my opinion. Even if it just comes from having an improved understanding on the varying perspectives. Even then, that a mind isn't changed immediately doesn't mean it eventually won't. You could probably zip back to earlier posts of mine on this forum which would include me being confused towards a woman saying that she'd only be able to play Alpha Protocol if she could play as a woman, complete with me justifying my position based on my experience of "I have no problems playing a Lara Croft or something similar" as though her experiences and preferences should be analogous to mine.

I used to make individual posts in response to many different people, but have been told by some that they find that annoying too. I think I just need to come to grips with the fact that I'm annoying Well, I think some of the Tropes vs Women stuff is still useful to consider, even if men were 100% of the gaming market. Though when I meant growth in gaming, I actually wasn't referring to the quantity of games, but the number of gamers. I agree that AAA is releasing less games overall (a decision I do not think is a bad one, btw), aggregate game sales continue to trend upward. I still consider Kickstarter/crowd-funding to be quite niche, though. In order to get exposure for it, you need to be in the places to get exposure for it. And I'd argue that plenty (most) men are included in being oblivious towards crowd funded games. This is all just supposition on my part though; I don't have any data or anything like that. Just a gut feeling. I don't get the impression that Wildstar's feedback was "outrage" either. Just feedback. I think because it involved a contentious topic, however, there's an immediate impetus for a train of thought to simply be "More moral outrage." I agree. As stated (and echoed by someone like Hurlshot), Sam Fisher needs to be physically fit. I think his body type is just fine for the game that he wants. Any soldier/infantry person or anything like that will have to be fit. Any reservations I have against a player model in, say, Call of Duty or Battlefield is that they tend to all be rather samey in their entire appearance: the gruff white dude. For instance, I don't find that the Battlefield 4 guy has an unreasonable body type (and certainly not an impossible one): http://www.hdwallpapers.in/walls/battlefield_4_china_rising-wide.jpg Just pointing out that there is a non-trivial element of geek culture that gives me the impression that they feel women exist in geek culture specifically to be ogled and objectified, yes. Fair enough; it may have been my bad that your issues with Bruce's comments were being more universally applied. Part of this assumption came from what appeared to be a general distaste for the perspective (including the concept of the feminist fallacy) and that those that share it are doing it to help those that cannot help themselves. Mea culpa if that wasn't what you were conveying. (Bold emphasis mine) I don't think people, men or women, really care that "some" fictional character has bigger cups. It's more that *so many* fictional characters have bigger cups (or more specifically, unreasonable body types). Which is why I think it's an issue of overexposure. Coupled with the growth of gamers (and the increase in diversity that comes with that) is more people that feel it is something that should be discussed.

In the video he does say that Lebron is the most dominating player in the league right now. I think he was referring more to overall legacy though (since he actually picked Kobe because he felt Kobe's desire to win gave him an edge. Though this was before Lebron won his second title). So picking Kobe despite saying Lebron is the most dominating player gives me an impression that he's looking at total career projections rather than "at the moment." If you just want to see that part of the interview, it's at the 40:00 mark.

Ouch a 15-0 run to end the game... hahaha. Love his quick release. In the Jordan at 50 interview, when discussing "who is better Kobe or Lebron" he mentions that Durant is the type that's going to sneak in the back door and quietly be the best haha.

I couldn't decide if this belonged here or Off-Topic... It seemed appropriate to put it here >.>

Still, it was rather humorous to see the guy brandishing his pipe (or whatever) only to realize he was, in fact, an idiot.

Part of this is because those characters are much older and less overall relevant in today's world. There is certainly loud pushback on a lot of assumptions about comic book/cartoon characters today, however. Some of the more common ones that I'm aware of (with exceptionally minimal understanding of the comic book scene since I have never read them) are things like the Hawkeye Initiative (the most classic pose being the various ones where a woman character is able to show off both her chest and ass cleavage in the same shot). Comic Cons and the like (as well as game cons, and really a lot of places of geek culture that have historically been heavily dominated by males) have started to see movements such as Cosplay is not Consent because it's enough of a problem. A friend of mine is a member of the 501st Legion out of Calgary (and is actually a huge fan of Darth Nihilus and has frequently cosplayed as him) and has had to deal with it personally herself. Please note that you are coming across as stating that my opinion is merely one of a "special interest group" which comes across as a bit dismissive, at best. I don't have this perspective because it isn't something that I think is a good thing. Given that gaming is ostensibly a luxury good that, if it disappeared from the world tomorrow would result in us simply "finding something else to do" I think there's a reasonable argument that virtually all issues in gaming are of relatively similar importance, irrespective of whether or not you consider it of high or low importance. I find it insulting, and conveniently dismissive, that you seem to feel that my position is one of white knighting because evidently I think I know what's best for the majority of women, as opposed to simply being the position of myself and other people, men and women, that I know share the same opinion as me. Would you say your perspective is particularly "prototypical" in a different way? Or, like me, is it a situation of "This is the way I feel, therefore I don't feel I'm being a stereotype" even if the opposite perspective does feel that way? Many of them are starting to get those degrees (or relevant professional expertise in whatever field they feel is appropriate - though there is still potential systemic issues and cultural challenges that may exist). But I still think it's (in)convenient to dismiss people asking for features that they want to be simply "forcing the issue." If you remove a customer's ability to request something from a game, you're just removing a particular form of feedback. Without it, you don't get Double Fine making a kickstarter, which helped prompt a lot of other studios to make kickstarters, including Obsidian's. Crowd funding is effectively a way for people to provide the monetary backing to previously established verbal discourse. Obsidian had reasonable assurances that they could crowd fund Project Eternity because people on this forum talk about what they like about Obsidian's games, and so forth. Would this mean that any feedback for what someone would like to see in a game is effectively "forcing the issue?" That's nice, but it's still a game with immense exposure pretty much anywhere video games are played. As such, the exposure of Mario as a protagonist is more pervasive. The same goes for a lot of games that come out of Japan, although many games from Japan will never make it over due to cultural dissimilarities. This is absolutely true. There are lots of people that don't consider DRM a bad thing either (to use an example that I hope resonates a bit more closely for you). I hope you can understand that this means that your position on DRM is not irrelevant, simply because others don't share it.

I do agree, that if these are the problems we have as a society, then life is pretty good for us. Yes, it can be good PR (though I couldn't quantify how much, nor how many people see it simply as a PR stunt and consider it a negative. Wildstar seems to have its share of people decrying developers forfeiting their artistic integrity for the almighty dollar). Still, I'd rather have discussions about this over a lot of other things, simply because if I am discussing this then my life is likely at an improved level of comfort than it otherwise could be.

So true. I mean, you can see the cultural differences of what is considered attractive between different cultures today. I doubt many of us find neck rings attractive. There certainly are. But they are, in my opinion, very much overrepresented in video gaming (and most culture, really). This seems like a misdirection, however, because the argument is not "there can never big big breasted women ever." That's what I mean by "reading into it" because it seems like the position you think people like myself take is inconsistent with the position that I feel I mean to convey. I'm not against voluptuous women existing in video games. I don't even really care about a game like Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball existing. It's looking at it in the greater cultural picture, especially with this aspect of geek culture (animation and art like comics ties in very closely, in my opinion). So when you say that it comes across as "no big boobs ever for any reason" then it becomes as frustrating for me as the original argument is for you, because it's definitely not the position that I am trying to convey. Note, however, that this ties in somewhat to a systemic issue with asset/model/rigging reuse in video games as well. On the one hand, it's expensive to create varying body types, both in terms of creating the assets themselves as well as resource budgets. There's a predisposition for character models to be built on the same rigging, so on some level developers have implicitly mandated that certain types will not be represented. So you say that big breasted women will be the ones under represented if we move towards more generally smaller breasted women in games. That's a fair enough assessment. But it's sort of similar to male-female disparity, or white/person of colour disparity. People asking for more female protagonists means that there will be a cost of less male protagonists. Asking for more people of colour in games means that those characters will not be represented as white people. Is this a problem? On some level is it "well, you have lots of other alternatives if that is important to you?" This starts to extend far beyond just body types and is certainly a topic I find interesting. If we want to continue along these lines then I could see the thread evolving down that line of discussion too. That's it's not something that bothers you doesn't mean that it isn't something that bothers other people. It's not unlike me going "ugh, another Call of Duty game" even though there's another (several...) person out there that has no problems at all with it because it's exactly what they want. I like attractive women too, and will likely pick an attractive male character if given the choice of protagonist. The thing is, if a woman must be attractive in order to have value in a video game, then that IS a reflection of what I would consider to be a cultural problem. Hopefully more characters like Ellie show that that is not the case, because part of the problem is also a degree of being gunshy by the larger developers. Indie can make an impact and experiment more freely, though at the same time they tend to need less diverse appeal. I'd be interested to see how much overlap there is in people that are upset with this and those that wanted Mass Effect 3's ending rewritten, or Fallout 3's, and so forth. Do we chastize Bethesda for retconning their ending based on public feedback? Enough people evidently spoke up for Wildstar, and the developers changed it for what could be an infinite number of reasons since we don't actually know the reasons. It also precludes the fact that no one internally agreed that it would be artistically better to make the changes. And the market *is* becoming more diverse (and I consider this a good thing). Just as the diversity of those that develop games becomes increasingly diverse as well. There may not be new people playing the latest Call of Duty style game, but there's other game styles out there that introduce people to gaming and lead to them exploring other types of gaming, finding a passion in gaming, and maybe even leveraging that passion into some changes that you and I *do* care about. Unless you'd prefer that the industry keep its heavy focus on Call of Duty style games. Systems like the Wii and games like The Sims have virtually no appeal to me. But for others it works as a gateway introduction into gaming. They may not leave that product space, but some of them try out other games they wouldn't have tried and help create an influence on game features that I am interested in. This is just a red herring and I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just trolling, because you seem smarter than that. As Nonek put it in the news thread, the degree of verisimilitude for one's physical appearance will still be important to some people. You can see similar discussions on this forum with regards to Pillars of Eternity, based on whether or not armor styles should be heavily stylized or have a stronger focus on functional plausibility.

You guys got me scouring Youtube. Came across two "Player at 50" interviews with MJ and Sir Charles. The MJ one is nothing really new (for me) though I still enjoyed it. Charles is just a great interview and always has been http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de6DE0lREOA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwJJpqHZg30

Hahahaha it looks SO WEIRD

Price discrimination will (or at least should) become increasingly popular as things become more and more digital too, in my opinion. According to the article places like Ecuador are still behind high speed which is necessary for that sort of stuff, but it's a huge deal for reducing costs. I think there's still some level of trepidation with respect to it working the other way, however. In that, ensuring that someone in the US wouldn't be able to circumvent price discrimination to a place that is a lot poorer by comparison. Not sure how big of a deal that would necessarily be, though I think it does happen with Australia (who somehow is hit with a higher price than other places).

What the hell provoked the guy to start all that? :S

Recent topics had me checking out some youtube Enjoy.

Haha that was some sweet defense.

Yes I know. It was more a poke at the rest of the ideas which were pretty much the antithesis of recent MMOs

I agree that it's an outrage that he didn't win the third MVP. I do think there's kind of a conspiracy to vote against the incumbent after a while. Even Michael wasn't able to pull that off, though I'd argue he deserved it in '92-'93.

Moved to a new thread, here, since people can get pissy at me for derailing the news thread

Moved to here so as to not derail the news thread further. The motivation for Ellie, right from the words of Gearbox, was to look "the exact opposite of how most females tend to be represented in games." link Which is part of the problem. Ellie is seen as a statement by the developers themselves, because women that look like her are rare in games. They even made a point to make sure that there were no circumstances that she could be mocked, judged, or pitied based on the way she looked. (Good for them, by the way). Then, to be frank, I think you're just reading into it superficially and taking all of your preconceived perceptions about the discussion. I literally have stated that it's an issue about diversity to me yet it seems you have already overlooked that. The issue isn't even about attractiveness. The new Lara Croft is still a very attractive woman. She just isn't absurdly and inhumanly proportioned like she was in many of the early PSX games. Even then, if someone is dead set against having women characters with extreme proportions, there's also the degree of "that's their prerogative." Just as it's yours to be upset that these people want things to change. I have to ask, do you NOT want the changes to be made? Or are you suggesting that there should be increased outcry against Marcus Fenix types too? I'm making the assumption that those that requested a change like this see it as increased value added to the game experience. The issue does crop up with male video game characters. Again I MENTIONED IT, and Nonek gives an indication that he doesn't care for it much either. Two people in this very thread, but we don't seem to count. I think stuff like Marcus is mostly absurd. It's just less overall pervasive. Further, characters like Sam Fisher are, in terms of physique, nothing like Marcus Fenix. From Blacklist: http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130512134461/splintercell/images/e/ec/Sam_Fisher_Render_SCBL.png Chaos Theory: http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/584/584443/tom-clancys-splinter-cell-chaos-theory-20050201025832169.jpg Conviction: http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110823073712/splintercell/es/images/b/b6/SF_Darkside.jpg Sam does not suffer from muscle bound grotesque meathead. Though he does suffer from the issues Nonek mentions in his post. No, it's just a different part of the same problem. Again, you seem to be under the impression that it's almost exclusively women that voice these concerns regarding video games. And since we're pointing out logical fallacies, that some women follow Real Housewives of LA doesn't mean that it's the same women that do get upset about the depiction of females in video games. Don't you get pissed off at the stereotype that men that play video games are nerds and losers that are incapable of meaningful social communications and are doomed to be lifelong virgins? If so, why stoop to the same level of those poor assumptions by making equivalent ones yourself?

PvP flags? What is this kindergarten!?

Interesting. Nash's explosion in Phoenix is what brought me back into the game, so I didn't really know about any of this. Interesting that is sapped Nellie's desire to coach!

I think that's part of the entertainment! But I'm becoming an unwilling serial killer! "I think that's part of the entertainment!"

I'm going on a crusade to make sure all male video game characters have more realistic physiques. That is, pot bellies and can't run for more than 50 feet without huffing and puffing. I mean, apparently big breasted female video game characters give a bad message to girls. So the same should really apply to the risk of boys feeling bad about their bodies because they don't look like those muscle-bound hunks in their video games. It's more an issue with diversity. I mean, look at Mario. Although "I mean, apparently big breasted female video game characters give a bad message to girls" is somewhat telling, given that I'd argue it's not the girls that it sends the wrong message to. It also has the implication that it's exclusively women that have issues with this. Frankly, I think it sends a bad message to everyone. I don't care much for Marcus Fenix body types. Nor do I care for Tomb Raider 2-esque Lara Croft body types. Unfortunately I feel oversaturated with them that I tend to bring additional, and sometimes unfair, assumptions into character archetypes and the games that go with them as a result of this (mostly because I'm human). Men with suboptimal body types are still represented. How often are women with suboptimal body types presented? More importantly, what responses does she normally receive? I mean, the mere fact that the body type has been changed in the MMO appears to be threatening to people. If we're truly measuring the value on purely their function, shouldn't we not care how they look? Incorrect. Again, it comes down to diversity. It took me zero seconds to come up with a popular male character protagonist that does not come close to an idealized physique. Yes, hyper idealized men exist (and frankly, I do consider it a problem as well), but like I said above it comes down to diversity. Feminism, at its core, is simply having men and women being treated equally. It's exceptionally important to note that feminism agrees that men are treated unfairly with respect to things like having the pressures of being the primary income earner for a family, that they are typically denied jobs that are considered only appropriate for female (nursing was the big one - and in many cases men still get teased for this), and the big one that often comes up is child custody. The problem, of course, is moderate perspectives don't proliferate. No one cares about the moderate posts, but when some man hating misandrist goes around people will share that ("Look at this crazy person") point and laugh, and make implicit assumptions to how common that perspective is simply based on how frequently it's posed. Exposure is important. For the same reasons YOU get annoyed because you see something like this SO much, the other people are feeling over exposed to things like excessively endowed women and it's making them annoyed. Does this link even get shared here if it's about the MMO making less idealized male physiques? Does Nepenthe get upset? Or is it something that doesn't register because it's a topic that simply doesn't come up enough? The ironic part is that I would never have identified as a feminist until the frothing anti-feminists (not so much you, but the people that have extreme and unhealthy retorts to people like Anita Sarkeesian wanting to do a video) created such vitriol that not only did they expose me to topics and perspectives that I hadn't really given much thought towards, they also provided a perspective that I had a particular aversion towards which pushed me away from the perspective they were championing. Gaming is becoming mainstream, and it's not just "ours" anymore. The muscle bound meathead of Gears of War is likely not going away though, nor will women with very large breasts. But there's dozens upon dozens of games that don't feature the muscle bound meathead like Marcus Fenix. But with that comes people that are going to have issues with other things than you and I care about, and they're going to talk about them. While excessively large breasts are more likely to get me to do an eye roll rather than anything else, other people are perfectly within their right to voice their own concerns for what they feel increases or decreases the level of enjoyment they receive from the game. (NOTE: If we want to have a more detailed discussion of feminism, and specifically feminism in video games, we should probably take it to its own thread).

It's funny because in Dallas Nash was a solid player, but he just hit an extra gear when in Phoenix. I'm sure he had his number called more frequently than in Dallas which didn't hurt, but yeah he really made a statement when he returned to Phoenix.