Danny Tamez
Professor Elinor Rogosin
English 112
31 October 2013
Trying to Find a Balance in Gender and Race in Video Games
In current AAA gaming space, the big companies like EA, Microsoft, and Activision make these Giant budgeted games, and is not the problem. The problem is that these giant games are marketed to the typical frat boy and young teens, and in this process they end up make these all white washed characters, the main protagonist is always a buff, brown haired, and 30 year old man; if there is a women in the games she is almost always big-breasted love interest. Now when anyone tries to talk about sexism and race in gaming it always becomes nothing more than a mean spirited argument.
Post launch for a game called Dragon’s Crown, (which is a game I get into later) news editor of Kotaku Jason Schreier. Criticized Dragon Crow’s Character design mostly because the character Sorceress character has giant breasts, so what did the lead artiest of Dragon’s Crow George Kamitani do in response to the article? He ended up drawing three Shirtless Dwarfs standing next to each other and said “I bet Jason would prefer this instead the original design.” Basically he was calling him gay for not liking the big breasted women on dragons crow. Now here is the real kicker about this whole story is when they actually stared emailing each other back and forth they ended up being a neutral agreement.
It’s really sad to that it seems like that whenever there is a real conversions about the portal of women in video games they got into a neutral agreement, so now the real questions is why this kind of thing started. It goes way back to that early 80’s.
So sexism is a huge part of gaming has been fallowing really bad tropes. Now that being said sexism isn’t the only trope in video games, but the fact that all protagonist in gaming are all 30 something year old men
Most video game protagonists are all tall white men and almost never women. Recently with the game called Bioshock Infinite had a pretty huge backlash over the cover art of the game. Was just a man standing with his chin down, eyes up, and holding a shotgun over his shoulder. This was a huge thing because it looks very similar every other video game cover ever; comparing it to Uncharted 2 in specific. In an interview with Series creator Ken Levine he stated that, “I looked at the cover art for BioShock, which I was heavily involved with and love, I adored. And I tried to step back and say, if I’m just some guy, some frat guy, I love games but don’t pay attention to them… if I saw the cover of that box, what would I think? And I would think, this is a game about a robot and a little girl. That’s what I would think. I was trying to be honest with myself. Trust me, I was heavily involved with the creation of those characters and I love them.” What he is saying is that the target demographic is the frat dude just walking into a game stop trying to buy whatever dumb new game. Which is a shame that they ended up going down that route because that game had so many interesting characters that they could have ended up putting on that game, but they ending up putting a bait and switch where they advertised the game as like every other shooter when that game was so much more than that. Although in the end they did making a variant cover for the fans that where really mad about that the fact that the game ended up looking like every other game ever
Professor Elinor Rogosin
English 112
31 October 2013
Trying to Find a Balance in Gender and Race in Video Games
In current AAA gaming space, the big companies like EA, Microsoft, and Activision make these Giant budgeted games, and is not the problem. The problem is that these giant games are marketed to the typical frat boy and young teens, and in this process they end up make these all white washed characters, the main protagonist is always a buff, brown haired, and 30 year old man; if there is a women in the games she is almost always big-breasted love interest. Now when anyone tries to talk about sexism and race in gaming it always becomes nothing more than a mean spirited argument.
Post launch for a game called Dragon’s Crown, (which is a game I get into later) news editor of Kotaku Jason Schreier. Criticized Dragon Crow’s Character design mostly because the character Sorceress character has giant breasts, so what did the lead artiest of Dragon’s Crow George Kamitani do in response to the article? He ended up drawing three Shirtless Dwarfs standing next to each other and said “I bet Jason would prefer this instead the original design.” Basically he was calling him gay for not liking the big breasted women on dragons crow. Now here is the real kicker about this whole story is when they actually stared emailing each other back and forth they ended up being a neutral agreement.
It’s really sad to that it seems like that whenever there is a real conversions about the portal of women in video games they got into a neutral agreement, so now the real questions is why this kind of thing started. It goes way back to that early 80’s.
The video game industry has always been considered a boy’s room kind of situation, and in the 80’s when arcades were just full of men and hardly any women in them. Video games were just full of big busty women and buff dudes and the people that play them are all just dudes and that’s why it’s kind of a boy room situation. The people that even made the games back then were all men. It was a for men by men situation, but with the time changing the people who play video games now a days has changed more and more women play video games than ever. In a recent study by the nice people at Online Media Daily, had a massive survey showing that 44 percent of women own gaming console compared to 33 percent of men own a gaming console. So now the people who are playing video games has really changed, but the huge problem remains is that the kinds of characters that are being made have not change what so ever. The white washed characters that are buffed up and women with huge breast has not changed what so ever.
So sexism is a huge part of gaming has been fallowing really bad tropes. Now that being said sexism isn’t the only trope in video games, but the fact that all protagonist in gaming are all 30 something year old men
Most video game protagonists are all tall white men and almost never women. Recently with the game called Bioshock Infinite had a pretty huge backlash over the cover art of the game. Was just a man standing with his chin down, eyes up, and holding a shotgun over his shoulder. This was a huge thing because it looks very similar every other video game cover ever; comparing it to Uncharted 2 in specific. In an interview with Series creator Ken Levine he stated that, “I looked at the cover art for BioShock, which I was heavily involved with and love, I adored. And I tried to step back and say, if I’m just some guy, some frat guy, I love games but don’t pay attention to them… if I saw the cover of that box, what would I think? And I would think, this is a game about a robot and a little girl. That’s what I would think. I was trying to be honest with myself. Trust me, I was heavily involved with the creation of those characters and I love them.” What he is saying is that the target demographic is the frat dude just walking into a game stop trying to buy whatever dumb new game. Which is a shame that they ended up going down that route because that game had so many interesting characters that they could have ended up putting on that game, but they ending up putting a bait and switch where they advertised the game as like every other shooter when that game was so much more than that. Although in the end they did making a variant cover for the fans that where really mad about that the fact that the game ended up looking like every other game ever
In a similar story, the game The Last of Us got some in some boiling hot macaroni water for this as well. They had the same problem that Sony didn’t want to have any women of the cover of it what so ever. But the game developers really pushed for the game to have one of the female protagonists on the cover.
The game Dragon’s Crow got in some super hot water for their two characters the Amazon and The Sorceress. It’s not hard to understand why these two women really stirred up some hardcore controversial. For starters the Amazon has a giant ass, huge thighs, and is basically wearing a bikini with some plates of metal. As the sorceress has huge water balloons boobs, a blouse that in every frame that she moves in you can see all the way up to her ass, and the blouse only parlay covers up her boobs. These characters are obvious overly sexualized, but it’s funny a game that has these gross overly sexualized characters has a example of a female lead that is an example of a good female characters is in this game as well. The Elf is short, gray haired, and has a small flat chest. That is wearing a hooded tunic and has boots that go all the way up to her thighs. She is not showing off any of her lady bits what so ever and is still a very cute and neat looking character. It’s really funny that Elf is in the same game as that Amazon and Sorceress, they are very opposite ends of the septum.
So when I came down to asking the game lead artiest why they made these choices in this game. He said that he was trying to copy to old dungeons and dragons art style, But the part that really ended up really sucking about this whole situation is that no one was having a real conversation about the matter at hand is that no was having a real conversation about the matter. Whenever something like this come up it always turns into a pissing match. Plus those are never any fun it just a lot of name calling and just really mean spirited.
The game Dragon’s Crow got in some super hot water for their two characters the Amazon and The Sorceress. It’s not hard to understand why these two women really stirred up some hardcore controversial. For starters the Amazon has a giant ass, huge thighs, and is basically wearing a bikini with some plates of metal. As the sorceress has huge water balloons boobs, a blouse that in every frame that she moves in you can see all the way up to her ass, and the blouse only parlay covers up her boobs. These characters are obvious overly sexualized, but it’s funny a game that has these gross overly sexualized characters has a example of a female lead that is an example of a good female characters is in this game as well. The Elf is short, gray haired, and has a small flat chest. That is wearing a hooded tunic and has boots that go all the way up to her thighs. She is not showing off any of her lady bits what so ever and is still a very cute and neat looking character. It’s really funny that Elf is in the same game as that Amazon and Sorceress, they are very opposite ends of the septum.
So when I came down to asking the game lead artiest why they made these choices in this game. He said that he was trying to copy to old dungeons and dragons art style, But the part that really ended up really sucking about this whole situation is that no one was having a real conversation about the matter at hand is that no was having a real conversation about the matter. Whenever something like this come up it always turns into a pissing match. Plus those are never any fun it just a lot of name calling and just really mean spirited.
What did I gather from all of this? It’s that when game have big breasted women it stirs some controversy and that a good thing that now a day that people are pointing out when game are being sexist to women and that everyone in video games is just some white dude, because back in the arcade days there was hardly any one anyone pointing this out.
Now I’ve have been talking a lot about how some games have some really bad reputations of women in them, but I really don’t think the we should live in a world were, if someone wants to make a game with sexy looking characters. I think that the whole gaming community shouldn’t shun them just for doing so. As an artist myself it sounds really lame to start limiting yourself to making people look like a bunch of boring normal looking people. Drawing silly anatomy cartoon characters are really fun.
Now I’ve have been talking a lot about how some games have some really bad reputations of women in them, but I really don’t think the we should live in a world were, if someone wants to make a game with sexy looking characters. I think that the whole gaming community shouldn’t shun them just for doing so. As an artist myself it sounds really lame to start limiting yourself to making people look like a bunch of boring normal looking people. Drawing silly anatomy cartoon characters are really fun.
I Honesty think it would be sad world, if games like Skull Girl and the whole Shantae series couldn’t exist just because the characters have reveling clothes. Unlike games like games like Dragon’s Crow that are really in your face about it. In games like Shantae, the characters just kind of have revealing clothes and there not in your face and super gross about it. Now when I was talking about this with my peers the point they would always bring up was that I was trying to have my cake and eat it to. Now what I have to say is that is, “What’s that point of having cake if you can’t eat it?”
