jamyskis: Is it just me or is it getting impossible to have a normal conversation with normal people on a gaming forum nowadays? Everyone seems to lurch to one political extreme or another. Is there anyone here who isn't a misogynist or xenophobic prick or a white knight SJW? Because I'm honestly having difficulty in finding anyone who doesn't overgeneralise about women, gamers, Muslims, Americans, Europeans, old people, young people, console gamers or PC gamers.
Yes, misogyny happens in gaming. A lot. But call people out on it as and when it happens. Exposing the individual is the best way in shaming them. Like tort1234 for example, who has proven himself to not just be a vile racist prick but also a misogynistic wanker as well. Letting them hide among gaming communities by generalising just lets them redirect the blame.
And the extreme feminist wing/the SJWs really haven't done themselves any favours by desperately trying to exaggerate the problem by raging over "hero saves princess" storylines and bikini-clad warriors.
The reality is when it comes to politics nuance is the enemy of everyone, and most people will construct arguments using the most extreme examples, and those who ask even the most honest and common sense questions will be labelled and discarded because quite frankly, it's simpler and easier.
I try to keep my generalization to one thing, that the overwhelming majority of the human race is fairly simplistic and stupid when you approach in any 'general' manner. In small groups there's plenty of nuance and thought, but once you connect it to a large structure (either business, government, or whatever), most people will throw their intelligence away to be accepted by the 'Pack'.
Trilarion: On the other hand I really wonder why games so often stay within traditional role models. I mean: Men is warrier, Women is housekeeper, Men+Women+Kids is family. This somehow does not reflect modern reality as I know it and lacks behind it in a certain aspect. And the 1 millionth "hero saves princess" actually can be quite boring, even if every individual one is kind of okay.
Instead of being progressive and mature in a way many modern video games seem to take conservative and also somewhat primitive views on genders or social relations. This is the biggest problem I have with this whole debate.
I think the easiest answer is 'Because Business is Slow and Stupid', the more complex answer would take a while to type out but I think the TLDR of it would be, because these stereotypes are fairly safe, you don't have to worry about a game being labelled as promoting violence against women if the women aren't around to be attacked even as the main character. And I think the current climate of everything having to be PC and 'Progressive' is only going to make it worse because the only move is quite simply, not to play.
Honestly, I could have told you gaming's biggest problem when it comes to any gender, it's that the biggest and most interesting characters tend to have franchises with multiple games (4-5 at the bare minimum) before you have anything that resembles a decent and complex character. Characterization in gaming sucks, and it affects male characters and female, because unless it's a JRPG or a game with a huge length and room for story, you aren't getting much since the plot has to keep moving.
And I'll be bluntly honest, most indie 'progressive social' games are probably even worse then the AAA games that people use to point this out, with far less characterization except to throw labels out at people. Characters need to be written as people and actual people need to stop throwing labels at creators for how characters turn out, sometimes characterization works one way, sometimes it works in others. And honestly that's where these conversations get under my skin, but that's a rant for another time.
