seaspanky: I find this idea that the only thing happening is merely innocent "
questions, discussion and dialogue" rather ridiculous when that very post I responded to listed out several methods of social pressure to try to force specific changes.
babark: The example that started this topic was an RPS interviewer simply asking about a character design in a game. There had been no animosity, or censure, or hatred.
I never mentioned "hatred". I did however allude to specific agenda driven efforts to use political correctness as a standard to hold people to. What he specifically said was "
RPS: But it’s not even about a message. The goal is to let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified. This is a genre about empowerment. Why shouldn’t everyone feel empowered? That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: letting everyone have a fair chance to feel awesome."
The RPS interviewer informs the game director that the entire "
goal" of his game is actually to "
let people have fun in an environment where they can feel awesome without being weirded out or even objectified", that the entire MOBA genre is actually about "
empowerment" because "
That’s what it’s about at the end of the day: letting everyone have a fair chance to feel awesome"...
hahahaha. What kind of delusional half-wit even voices such dimwittery to the game director of a game in an interview, arrogantly asserting his own agenda driven delusions concerning the supposed "real" underlying purpose of his game and the genre at large?
Is this what passes for "journalism" today? An egocentric condescending end to an interview with a promised further hit piece to come?
babark: But since you brought it up, do you think there is something wrong with trying to motivate the industry towards a more balanced portrayal of gender in video games?
And what balance is this exactly that you are referring to? You know, the one that is always vaguely described but never defined. What exactly does a "
balanced portrayal of gender in video games" entail exactly? An equality of outcomes? Where the "
portrayal of gender" matches the real life percentages of women vs men, or male vs female video game players? What exactly? I think that the reason I have yet to see this defined is because once it is defined, it loses its edge and power to leverage and control, something that it has when it is purposely vague and ambiguous. The obvious answer would be there should be no forced or contrived "
balanced portrayal of gender in video games" because that only serves the interests of the pressure group demanding unequal protection and status. I, as the end consumer, am best served by a standard that allows for and promotes the ability of creators to create their works and then have the market decide what makes it or doesn't based on some kind of standard of excellence, rather than false contrived standards of political correctness and racial/gender quotas. But your ilk always loses that battle for the minds, hearts, and pocketbooks of the masses, which is why the efforts to what amounts to thought control is the inevitable choice to force change in the direction they desire.
babark: As a perhaps somewhat extreme example, there isn't really any specific censorship going on with regards to such ideas in movies (aside from a rating, of course), but that there has been a reduction in the huge amount of cowboy movies where the heroic cowboys gleefully kill the savage and villainous red indians.
The reason that there was a reduction in the production of Westerns wasn't because moviegoers suddenly realized that what they loved was actually nothing more than "
heroic cowboys gleefully kill the savage and villainous red indians". You couldn't know or understand westerns and then twist and distort the entire genre like that. The reason they are no longer being made is thatwesterns aren't perceived as profitable ventures nowadays, especially since the advent of big tent-pole moviemaking by the studios, the huge failure of Westerns like "Heaven's Gate", the shift towards profitability through foreign markets, and lastly shifts by the studios towards a flawed knee-jerk politically correct Lowest Common Denominator type products. Profits drive production.
babark: As an aside, and completely divorced from the subject at hand (of any supposed underhandedness on the part of RPS or the industry in general) do you believe that gender portrayal in games is balanced? Do you believe it should not be improved?
I answered this above. But again,
