Friday 6 September 2013

Weekly dose of gaming sexism with your tea?



Well it's been another week where controversy in gaming is running rampant and it still, primarily boils down to the topic of sexism and degradation. Oh joy! So here's a quick round up to depress you, because I'm a giver! And just in case a trigger warning should be noted.



First we have PAX creators Mike Krahulik not doing himself or Penny Arcade any favours by claiming that he wish he hadn't of taken down the Dickwolves Merchandise.
For those unaware of why this is a big deal at all, check out this timeline that highlights basically all you need to know, in a gist, about the nastiness that came from a webcomic posted on the PA site

Then we have 343 employee David Ellis, labelling MGS5's design for as 'disgusting'.

David Ellis Tweet initial tweet 

See for yourself what image he was talking about.


Ellis is part of the team that brought us Cortana, who is essentially a 'nude' blue holographic AI and so many people are claiming that Ellis is being quite hypocritical in his remarks, which is fair enough. But there is a blatancy and a complete ridiculous lack of reason why someone in combat would be designed like an even more exposed, wannabe frat-boy Lara Croft.
I always assumed that Cortana was given this look because she was suppose to emulate a human in the basic design and emotions element, but yeah I don't think I was right or that flies. They're both just to appeal to groins.

Killer is Dead features quick-time like events where you can gain more points by ogling women's breasts. Remember that game where you got loads of experiences points for staring at a guys crotch? Nope me neither.

PewdiePie can't seem to do a video without saying rape over and over and yet people still follow his screaming antics. Though this Polygon article completely brushes over it. I'm still confused about the mass hysteria like appeal of PewDiePie and I've watched a couple of his videos to try and figure it out, I really have.
Meh...

Hotline Miami 2 is making people feel uneasy as it includes a scene of a character being sexually assaulted and in a bloody mess. 



Dennis Wedin of Dennaton (the team behind the Hotline hit games) spoke to RockPaperShotgun and said very level headed respectful to all things, yet I can't help but feel a lot of that was simply to appease. Nevertheless what got me what that we were told there was a reason for this season and not once did they tell us what it was, they just kept avoiding giving a clear answer and talking about how everyone is entitled to their opinions.

I really can't wait for the time when all this nonsense just stops, but that's not likely to be any time soon. In fact I'm worried that time will never come. Every instances of sexism or something bigoted hitting the gaming news world occurs, it has never really been justified. I'm talking about hard hitting stuff and also just lazy sloppy mistakes. People aren't interested in letting stuff like this slide, either because they are against it morally or because (whether it's positive or negative) it makes for easy comment fodder.



I'm going to be a douche and quote myself from an interview I did over at the Destructoid C-Blogs but what the heck

"It (controversy) helps in the most hurtful manner, as in "any news is good news" for attention. But regardless how much it smothers the medium in terms of negativity, we still don't seem to care and games are only becoming more dominant as a form of entertainment."

"it's the same damn thing and we argue or watch arguments, then there's a lull...then it happens again. It's such a sensitive, widely discussed topic and yet action is lacking. The more it appears as an issue the more it gets diluted, ironically. People just get fed up and let it stew and that's a problem in itself. It needs to not get to that stage where it's so expected, that it's easy to ignore and leave on a conveyor belt. "

Something needs to be done, I wish I knew what.

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