Only to make the bodies appear more massive, though. It's funny how a small dick can make everything else appear bigger.

You have activated my trap card!
EXACTLY - that's why I've capitalized "SUGGESTS". It does NOT state that anywhere, yet here it is, mentioned in an article titled "Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People’s Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions". They're not SAYING that is the case... because it would have been a flat out, unapologetically straight lie. What they do is weave that study into the context of the current one, saying "Oh BTW - there's this correlation".
One might imagine a reader stopping and asking them:
"What exactly is the relation between rape-supporters and gamers?"
"We don't know."
"Is there a causal link?"
"We have no idea."
"What sort of contribution does this study exactly make to your text?"
"Uhhh..."

It's intellectual dishonesty. The thesis here seems to be "Men are evil, especially young men, especially young men who play games".
- - -
Wait a minute... Whoa... Whoooooooooa...
"We only studied the visual images of male and female video game characters throughout the magazines. We
believed this to be a meaningful approach since video game magazines are image laden. Because images are
attention grabbing, readers leafing through the magazine are likely to give primary focus to the images more than the
text. Future research should also analyze the text of the magazine articles themselves. One potential focus for this
analysis would be describing the pro-gaming stance, which we predict would be consistent with the findings of Brenick and colleagues (2007) that gamers do not believe stereotyping of video game characters and violence in video games has negative effects. "

Are you fucking kidding me? A peer-reviewed research article that explicitly (though not literally) says "We only looked at the pictures, perhaps we should try reading the text next time"?!

I think feminists have a point.

If I just take Sacred 2 for example, if I play a female character I can choose between:
- a super hot & sexy good Seraphim
- a super hot & sexy high elf
- a super hot & sexy dryad.

On the other hand, if I play a male characer, I get to choose from the really fantastic variety of the following:
- a decaying ugly undead soldier
- a lifeless robot
- an evil inquisitor.

So I agree, Sacred 2 sets the bar pretty high for females and pretty low for males... so low in fact that you could be 6 feet under and still not trip over it.

OK, on a serious note, everyone is different. Whilst I might be looking at Sacred 2 and complaining about it's awful DRM (that was thankfully removed in the GamersGate version), someone else might be complaining about its shallow depiction of women, whilst another might compliment the game for portraying women as being the equals of men with respect to being able to kick just as much butt.

My view: men and women are different and we should embrace those differences: they're meant to be complimentary, not adversarial. Do we often have unrealistic expectations of each other? Sure! Does the media often focus on stereotypes? Sure! I think the reality is that we all generalise more often than not because it's too complex to break every single thing down into its specific elements. So whilst we go though life with a shallow view of many things, there are a couple of things that we focus on and which mean more to us than others for various reasons. And if we all take up various causes, that's good for society as a whole. However, it's also a good idea to represent a cause in the appropriate setting.

If one has a generic game review site, and then force an agenda on an unsuspecting public, that's maybe not such a good idea. On the other hand, if that review site has always made clear its stand on certain social issues, then those making use of such a site won't feel blindsided when there's a review that might otherwise appear to be out of context.

There was some overeager misinterpreter in this thread who took "remember to close your door" as "if you leave the door open you are asking (and deserve) to get robbed"... was it you?

The study was about video game characters and the way they are depicted. In magazines that are read by gamers. I posted it because I was asked for proof that female objectification and sexualisation in video games exist. I have linked to other studies that use in-game screenshots. If that's not enough, here, have another study: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1

Somehow, I suspect that no amount of studies would be enough for this thread, though. There are none as blind as those who don't want to see.

Why not go back and look?

Peer review in physics is meaningful. Peer review in the social sciences is substantially less so. Group think in this area is endemic.

In this case, I'd hazard that the data was contaminated the way that it usually is with research of this sort. I take it your not familiar with the Bradley Effect in politics, because that's effectively what goes on here. People answer questions knowing not wanting to be viewed as racist and you get skewed results that change when the election is held. In this case it would likely be similar, except that the 3rd party isn't really involved, who wants to answer questions like this that would make themselves appear to be sexist or discourage helping women? The test subjects are usually aware on some level of the study and of the social constructs that are at play as a result you can't be sure that the results are what they would be if nobody was looking.

As a result you can easily wind up with an echo chamber where you get back the results that you want, and each time a paper like this is published, it makes it more likely that the future results will be contaminated in a similar fashion.

Peer review is useful, but if you're not careful about who is doing the peer review and how, you wind up with something that's still a steaming pile of turds.

Even if you suppose that the paper is accurate, which it isn't likely to be, you're still stuck trying to figure out the specific causal relation.
That's stupid, they only had pong back then. I know I always feel more masculine after playing pong for some reason..,
I'm not sure what kind of neighborhood that person lives in. My friend's family always left the door unlocked and not once did they get raped or wake up murdered.

Now in neighborhoods where it's a common occurrence, I could at least understand how one could conceive of that being asking for it.

Disclaimer: I do not believe video game portrayals of men and women are the sole factor towards rape. I do believe they are a contributing factor as is MOST modern media with less impact than major offenders such as television, movies, and modern music. Less impact however is not the same as no impact, as such I am saying video games MIGHT contribute to a rape-culture for both women AND men. Thank you.

I don't know, it's pretty rapey over here. How rapey is it? Well let's see!

According to the study Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors done by Finkelhor D, Hotaling G, Lewis IA, and Smith C. in 1990, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men are sexually assaulted before they are 18.

T he New York Times states that 1 in 21 men have been raped by a woman. The real trouble with male rape statistics is that the percent reported is far, FAR lower than what actually occurs. The NYT does not appear to list which study they are referring to however, I would guess that it is the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Study for 2010 which reported that 1 in 21 men were forced to penetrate someone (summary here: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_executive_summary-a.pdf.)

That same study (NISVIS) found 1 in 5 women have been raped. 1.3 million of whom "reported being raped by any perpetrator in the 12 months prior to taking the survey." Similarly, "1 in 20 men experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in the 12 months prior to taking the survey."

Various studies give various estimates some as low as 1 in 6 and some as high as 1 in 3. In general, the median of results lies between 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 (for women raped in the United States).

So, yeah, I'd say it's pretty goddamn rape-tastic over here. Which sucks for both men and women. Rape just sucks in general. I'm going to go shoot some aliens or something.

There's "depicted" and there's "depicted", if you know what I mean. How can one actually know what, say, Mona from Max Payne or Zoe from Dreamfall are depicted like without PLAYING THE GODDAMN GAMES, or at least READING the articles that describe them? That's like writing a paper on books based on the data collected by looking at many covers. I don't think my expectations are set unreasonably high.

That's pathetic as well...
Have you seen studies where the authors have actually PLAYED the games they analyze?
Then again - I imagine they'd get sidetracked by the gameplay, forgetting to focus on all that juicy sexism ;P.

You are right. There are reasons for this too - it's arbitrary as hell. Some people say "the depictions objectify, hypersexualize, and show characters that are violent", while others might as well write "the characters are not only attractive - they KICK ASS :D!". Which is right? It seems to depend on what question one asks, and what VOCABULARY one uses to describe the world. In other words - it depends on the PARADIGM.

Aside from all of that - there are, obviously, personal reasons for why these "findings" are unacceptable.
I love women. I've spend my life among many, I have very often preferred their company to people of my own sex. A lot of the women I know and have known are gamers in some capacity. These studies seem to suggest HORRIBLE things about most of my known world. My friends and family, philosophers and designers, acquaintances IRL and people from the web... If this study describes the reality we live in, all of them should, allegedly, either be affected or exceptions to the norm. I know I am an exception to virtually any norm I've ever encountered, but it appears that everyone around me is as well. That's hardly a statistically significant sample size, but it appears that this scientifically proven, peer-approved reality is in no way connected with my own. Is there really such a world outside where women and men suffer because of how fictional characters are dressed in my beloved games?

That's the thing, it's really hard to do. However, the burden of proof is on the part of the individuals who claim that this is hazardous to women.

They would have to establish not just a correlation, but a causal relation and set up an experiment that was free of obvious selection or confirmation bias and contamination.

I don't write the rules, but the generally accepted rules with regards to research studies dictate that the experiment be free of unaccounted for external variables, or at least sufficiently so that the results hold up to peer review and replication. In terms of that study you referenced, It's such an obvious study that it's naive to think that each and every participant knew what the purpose of the study was and what the PC result was.

This is why double blind research studies are the gold standard for medication research. You don't have the situation where the person doing the observation knows which people have and have not taken the medication and you're less likely to end up in a situation where the researchers have influenced the study.

There's also the issue that results need to be forward looking. You need to have results that ultimately make predictions which are then tested to verify that they match the conclusions.

That would be interesting to read, honest. I bought so many books simply because I liked their covers... I even begin to think the fancier the cover, the shittier the book actually is. I wonder if there is an actual correlation. :P

That's generally how men feel after playing with balls.

Might I interest you with http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=242 She actually does a quite a few of these. :D

Alright, I would like to ask a counter-question then. What is the harm in having more realistic depictions of women?

Literally judging books by their covers :P

What I meant though, I wonder if the publisher knows the book isn't very good, but they think it will sell for some other reasons, if that means they would invest more money into fancy cover or not.

I know they did something similar in Poland with Metro 2034, which is shitty beyond imagination and much, much shorter than Metro 2033, but they made wider margins, bigger font and shoved empty pages after every chapter so the book appeared just as big as the first part. The price was also the same.

People were screwed by the publisher who sold them a nicely packaged turd.

At the same time, this is the cover of one of the best s-f books I've read in my entire life:

http://www.illustration-fantasy.com/cache/655_595lem-solaris-book-cover.jpg