Now, that is a fair critique of the article. And c'mon guys, whoever is downrepping actual thought out responses...Fever's post does not deserve to be low rated, I argue, should be high rated given that it is fairly topical and a push in the right direction toward actual discussion...
So, lets get to the real meat of the issue. What is your take on the "Quiet" character? Do you have an issue with it? Onto the playsets, do you feel its wrong for Quiet's action figure to have soft breasts? Does it matter that the same playline uses the same soft material for Punished Snake allowing movable pecs?
How about the exclusion of Black Widow from the Ultron playset? Where now Captain America or inexplicably Iron Man (who can fly) are now riding the motorcycle? The argument from the creators was that the playset was geared to boys, hence the decision. I saw in comments that the Frozen playset did the same thing, gearing the toys toward girls. Is there a problem with children playsets being geared to a single gender?
Not saying there are correct answers to these questions, but there are obviously those who are arguing in the extreme of both sides. Where should the line be drawn? Is it really okay for certain feminists to complain every time a female character is portrayed in an attractive manner? Is it really okay for people to complain so hard about the depiction of Snake in drag?
Expanding the topic a bit, from Adrian Chmielarz's criticism of Arthur Gies' Witcher 3 review, is this...
Note that I am not sure that adding “strangers from the strange lands” to the game would solve anything for the chronically offended. Based on everything I learned about them in the last year, and I learned a lot, if you put a person or a few from any non-white race, they would be called “token characters”. It is the Token Minority trope after all — and, as we know thanks to the megaphoned dilettantes, tropes are bad, mmkay?
The only way to please the outrage factory would be to have every race, every gender, every minority imaginable represented equally. As long as the hero, Geralt, is not a straight white male. And whoever replaced him, they would certainly not be allowed to be nicknamed The White Wolf.
If you think I am exaggerating, then you haven’t been paying attention lately, have you? I so envy you — and I’m not even kidding.
Are these complaints about inequality and tokenism in games just? Or is it easier to complain about something than to propose a fix? Especially in the wargame genre where its very likely that the player base is strongly majority male, do you really think changing the protagonist to a lesbian female Hispanic character will improve sales? Is the demand from women who want to play wargames, plus LGBT, plus non-white races, enough to make up for those who might give up on the franchise? Is it sexist that certain types of games are played by more men than women? Is it sexist for certain types of games which are played by more women than men?
It's one thing to claim there is a problem, what's the solution? Thoughts?
