Topic: toxic males in gaming article

[affinity]

it does make sense

https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/25/17593516/video-game-culture-toxic-men-explained

the industry excessively and almost exclusively pandering to white males for generations has produced so much homogenous toxic thinking and rejection of demographics and types outside their own.  it also increases racism among other things.   see its better for games to have character creation and let players create and play as character they can relate to or their own ideal type of protagonist they wanna play as. there's lots of examples of games that still tell the story they wanna tell, while still adaptable to any type of human/character being the protagonist.

but a lot of devs dont do that because they are bigots, racist, sexist, and only care about their own kind.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

I...
......
Do people actually think that people make games with white males in them because they don't like black people or women or asians?

White devs make white characters not because they think they're superior, but because it's something they relate to. Just like Samus wasn't created to be a symbol of female power or because women are better. Samus was literally a woman because they thought it would be cool, no other reason. People read way too deep into this shit. Game devs aren't white males because of the patriarchy, anybody can learn on their own, and is free to create what they want.

Would Mega Man be the same if you could play as an old hispanic woman in a robot suit?
Would Tomb Raider be the same if you were a huge beefy black dude?

[Super Waffle]

I'm a guy but I associate as a quadraxian from the planet Remulak.

[Abnormal Freak]

Toxic hyperbole/hysteria.

[zangetsu468]

The same argument can be used for why in almost every anime, despite people being aliens and from other planets or what have you, everyone speaks Japanese... Why aren't they doing what GITS did and inventing languages?(YouTube "Torukia")

Yeah there are racist people and prejudice people, just like there are criminals. But if I had to play as a version of Shanoa who was in a wheelchair or male it wouldn't have had the same lasting impression on me.

I don't think you can entirely blame "the white man" for all of the world's issues, moreso because multiculturalism and mixed ethnicities are at an all time high compared to where they were. The traditional English white man will be made obsolete in the next hundred or so years because of this.

If you want to go down this road, ask yourself why it's preferable to be light skinned in Chinese culture? It dates back to royalty in old dynasties. It's preferable to be light-skinned because it somehow enhances the social status of that individual or family.

Can I also point out, Affinity, that plenty of these Japanese games where there are a lot of schoolgirls involved that either look too young or too over-developed are promoted by yourself on these forums. Do you not see there's a level of what you yourself would generally seen as male sexism involved there? Because it seems to me this may be something that's conveniently been overlooked on your behalf. Just saying.

[Dracula9]

nah guys

cis white male scum are responsible for all bad things to ever happen ever

if you don't agree with this indisputable irrefutable fact of the universe then you're one of them and an evil pig who should be shot and flayed

and by shot and flayed i mean "complained about on the internet by people who lack either the will or the ability to actually do anything else about something they perceive as a problem"

didn't you all know that by now, everything bad that ever has or will happen is the fault of light-skinned mammals who have penises and nothing can disprove this obvious law of nature

[VladOfWallachia]

These kinds of threads always quickly devolve into a complete mess, but I'll chime in from the perspective of a game developer.

The development team of Carpathian Night is 100% male. We have zero funding, publisher, or backing of any kind, so the only way I was able to get any kind of help on this project was by asking people who grew up playing Castlevania games throughout their childhood. These are the only kinds of people passionate enough to work on such a demanding project without compensation. With few exceptions, this group of fans is overwhelmingly male, and it absolutely has to do with the way the games were marketed in the early days of the series. The hero for almost every classic-vania is a hyper masculine Conan lookalike that serves as a proper vehicle for male power fantasies. The same could be said about much of the game industry in the 80s and 90s, and the effect of that is still visible in the year 2018.

I don't want to make the same mistake and perpetuate this problem further with Carpathian Night. The grizzly looking hero of CN is Dorin, who fits the part of the hyper masculine warrior we identified with as kids. Right along with him, I introduced Irina, the female heroine that is likewise defined by her ability as a warrior without the hyper masculine component to it. She is also properly equipped for battle, wearing armor that looks fit for battle instead of fit for sexy cosplay.

Before releasing the demo, I had a friend test play it, along with his 8 year old daughter. When it was the girl's turn to play, she had no interest in playing as Dorin and immediately picked Irina. Without the inclusion of Irina, there would be no relatable character for the girl to play as. The experience simply wouldn't have been the same. Video games can be really immersive experiences, and different people relate to different personas. Having a relatable persona onscreen can make the fiction of the game more personal, convincing, and real.

So as a game designer, who's job it is to create immersive fictional worlds, it only makes sense to consider what different people find relatable and do my best to include that in my game, regardless of my political views on feminism. Luckily, I feel like the industry is trending in that direction, more so than ever before, despite all the backlash over the past few years.

[Dracula9]

tbh both sides of the extreme get it wrong

macho man invincible conans all the time are a problem

DOA bikini volleyball girls all the time are a problem

but on the flipside, girls with shit like functional armor and development beyond "look i have tits" are great, and guys with actual fucking emotional depth (bonus points if they're also not a conan) are also great

conversely, conans and sexies aren't inherently all bad either--kratos has always been a power fantasy but has had more emotional depth with every new installment (yes, he had some depth prior to 4, shocking i know), and bayonetta's sexuality is fine because that's the kind of person she is and the sexual aspect isn't just tacked on (and she was created by a woman but nobody ever really seems to care about this little nugget)

you've taken a step at least in the right direction, vlad, simply by presenting the option of choice--i could argue against the general industry mindset of "guys wanna play as guys, girls wanna play as girls" since there's way too much assuming going on there, but that isn't really what your mindset appears to be

but all the same, it's a good step in a good direction and gets brownie points for not sticking the woman in a chainmail bikini and on that note can we get more brienne of tarths in fantasy games, skyrim set a damn good precedent and we're starting to move away from chainkinis but goddammit give me my badass warrior women whose skill is such that their gender doesn't even factor in that's how it bloody should be dammit

the real problem is a joint combination of "does [controversial aspect] actually have weight to the character beyond outward appearances" and people reading way too much into things and seeing very real problems that aren't actually there

which of course deviates from the instances where it is actually there and defeats the purpose of trying to fix the problems--funny how that works, eh?

[VladOfWallachia]

Yeah I have no beef with Conan clones- classic Simon is still my favorite character in the whole series. I thought the barbarian vampire hunter was f-ing awesome as a kid, and I still do as an adult. I don’t like any of his re-designs at all either, especially the red-haired Dr Frank N Furter from Chronicles. I was so hyped when the Kojima art for Grimoire of Souls was released featuring Conan Simon in her awesome art style.

 

[FlyingMudBlock]

To be honest, this is the kind of mentality that is killing videogames(and all kinds of art in general) and it seems most people are super happy with it for some random reason.
Games are meant to be entertaining, FUN!, a distraction.
But it seems that now days people just want to sprinkle things with effing Politics, POLITICS!!.
For something's sake, we are not politicians, we are just gamers, we play games for fun and to escape life, not to kill each other just because somebody has 7 tentacles and an eye or a talking face in their pants, or because that one guy is blue or the other green.
So what i'm trying to say is i just wish for everybody just to throw the effing politics to the trashcan fire and enjoy the vidya, that's all.

P.S:
I'm a mud block, my gender is dirt and my pronouns are it, this and that.
I'm not white or male nor cis.

[Dracula9]

I don’t like any of his re-designs at all either, especially the red-haired Dr Frank N Furter from Chronicles.

did he make you...shiver? in antici

[Shiroi Koumori]

Given the choice of playing a male or a female character, I always choose the male character. Does it mean I'm male?
But I love looking at anime male husbandos in reverse harem tropes, and do internal squeals when I see a handsome man... so I'm female?
But on certain days, I don't care and say I'm a plant.
Oh maybe I have gender identity issues.... LOL

[Dracula9]

Given the choice of playing a male or a female character, I always choose the male character. Does it mean I'm male?
But I love looking at anime male husbandos in reverse harem tropes, and do internal squeals when I see a handsome man... so I'm female?
But on certain days, I don't care and say I'm a plant.
Oh maybe I have gender identity issues.... LOL

this is basically what i meant by "industry devs assuming players want to play as their gender identity is usually full of too many assumptions"

personally, at least in regards to MUH BERUMONDOS, i like conan simon because he's a fun power trip, and i like chronicles simon because goddamn he's gorgeous

it's a pretty simple concept when one thinks about it--people are gonna like what they like, so spend less time trying to appeal and just make characters that are fucking interesting either narratively or meta about their appearance tropes

[zangetsu468]

Given the choice of playing a male or a female character, I always choose the male character. Does it mean I'm male?
But I love looking at anime male husbandos in reverse harem tropes, and do internal squeals when I see a handsome man... so I'm female?
But on certain days, I don't care and say I'm a plant.
Oh maybe I have gender identity issues.... LOL

I'm the same on the flipside. I'm male, given a choice I'll more than likely choose a female protagonist. Purely because I'm not a woman, I've always found women more intriguing than men. When I was a kid I loved Simon Belmont, but I wouldn't have cared if he was Sonia Belmont, I just wanted to traverse Wallachia, power through Castlevania and defeat Dracula.

This is also one of many reasons I love Metroid and why I have a soft spot for Shanoa. I'm a male, I like intriguing women, but I also really like playing from their perspective.

[X]

I myself almost always play a female character in games, unless said games do not have that option. I think out of 99% of my Skyrim play-throughs only 1% of the time I've chosen a male character. Same with Fallout. Women characters I do find way more intriguing then playing a dude, unless it's a classic protagonist Like conan Simon; the CV hero I grew up with.