Quote of the Day: The Deadly Words

Quoth Dr. Nerdlove

There are certain words that are applied to women specifically in order to manipulate them into compliance: “Slut”, “Bitch”, “Ugly/Fat” and of course, “Crazy”. These words encapsulate what society defines as the worst possible things a woman can be. Slut-shaming is used to coerce women into restricting their own sexuality into a pre-approved vision of feminine modesty and restraint. “Bitch” is used against women who might be seen as being too aggressive or assertive… acting, in other words, like a man might. “Ugly” or “Fat” are used – frequently interchangeably – to remind them that their core worth is based on a specific definition of beauty, and to deviate from it is to devalue not only oneself but to render her accomplishments or concerns as invalid.

Read the whole thing to get a good idea why throwing around the word “Crazy” against women is a sign of internalized sexism. “Hysterical” is the same btw.

Oh and since we’re on the subject, I want to address the hordes of misogynists that descended upon Anita Sarkeesian in an attempt to silence and cower her. You’re a waste of oxygen and I hope a lightning surge burns out your VGA and console.

Endless Space short pre-review (beta version)

From my reply to a reddit thread

So I’ve been playing Endless Space for something like a dozen hours by now. Still on my first game on a small universe. It seems to progress slower than I expected.

In general, I’m very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the game. I love how streamlined the empire building is and how you take decisions about your systems with very little micromanagement. It still ends up requiring quite a bit of system building in the end, since the AI governors are not very smart but it’s not that bad. I particularly enjoy how they managed to work with so low “population units” per planet in a way that is very simple and easy to grasp.

I also really like the ship design, how each ship type is better suited to different things, how resource abundance reduces costs (thus giving you a reason to trade) and thus making different empires focus on different technologies just out of what resources they end up having around. I like how the support modules are limited and give interesting effects.Needs more ship types/models though. I hope they’ll eventually allow people to make their own.

I like the Civ way of handling resources. That along with the bonuses for abundance or monopoly really promotes people playing more aggressively or diplomatically. The AI needs a lot of work though, as it’s ridiculously stupid in trades.

I don’t like that there is tech trading. I don’t know if there’s an option to turn that off, but I find that tech trading really cheapens science and research. Your hard choices don’t matter because you can just trade yourself to what you need and in multiplayer the absolutely best strategy is always to try to trade techs with other players as much as possible.

Combat is “meh”. I hope they improve it so that you can take a bit more significant choices rather than the “pick & pray” luck-based method they have now, that barely involves any strategy at all. I’m also not a great fan of the speed at which I need to choose my cards which requires that I learn them by heart before I go into battle. The cinematic gets kind of boring after a while as well. Nothing is happening except the same old “sit at opposite ends and pew-pew”.

Also combat is fairly straightforward. There’s no funky tactics to use. No weird weapons. I can’t make a boarding ship with tractor beams and boarding pods and the like. No big-ass Laser beams (ala Freespace), no Huge Mass Drivers, none of that (or perhaps it’s unlocked later on? I don’t know)

All in all, it’s very nice and if they improve combat and diplomacy it will be amazing!

A Kickstarter that I can support, and so should you.

I’ve made it no secret that I do not approve of the way most game developers are using kickstarter, that is, as a way to double-dip on their fans. I’ve also always said that something that is publicly funded, should be publicly owned as well, by which I mean that the end result should belong in the public commons, which at the moment means Open Source and Creative Commons for code and art respectively.

So to my grand delight I had the chance to put my money where my mouth is by supporting Haunts: The Manse Macabre. They are not only going to release the source as open source (under the BSD license) but also all the assets as creative commons.  This is great news, both for the culture, which will be able to reuse and improve on that base, but also for the game itself which will open itself to be extended by the public.

The game has already been funded, and now there’s a few days left to put some money towards adding more content, which makes sense to support given that we get to use it in the game as well as to make it part of the commons.

So what are you waiting for. This is the kind of game that needs all the support it can get. I do hope to see this become the norm in the future as well as the benefits to me us a supporter increase exponentially the more such games are made and passed to the commons, given how easier it will become to see more games built upon those foundations.

Cthulhu didn't save the world

Just finished the third installment of the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness and it was good. Even though I’m not particularly impressed in the faux 16 bit graphics, the mechanics were solid and the game was enjoying to play. With that experience in mind, I tried playing Cthulhu saves the world, which comes from the same developers and I got disappointed. The game is missing all the improvements that made the RSPoD game enjoyable and just turned into an annoying grind. I tried playing in hard to have a challenge (because in RSPoD normal was too easy for me) and quickly found out that hard in this game doesn’t mean more challenging encounters, it merely means one needs to grind more to proceed. I just spent 1 hour sitting in one spot in the map and doing random encounters until I realized that the game is just not interesting enough to worth doing that. The battle is not even as interesting as RSPoD. Half the time I didn’t know why I lost, and that, combined with the fact that you can actually lose the game and thus from minutes up to hours of play as well (if you forgot to save and didn’t have “continues”.)  Combine that with the fact that mana points carry over from one battle to the next and first town was so designed that I needed to travel one minute to refill my MP, and it was just an exercise in frustration.

Perhaps the game would be not so annoying had I not played in hard, but if your only difference between the modes is how much grind you need to do, then that’s bad design right there. I hope they reuse the engine of RSPoD to more games because the ones they had before just don’t grab me in the slightest. Not in gameplay, nor graphics not even story.

Meh.

"'A key that can open many locks is called a master key, but a lock that can be opened by many keys is a shitty lock.'”

It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor, it’s that you’re unoriginal and sexist.

Ha ha, what a funny joke, right?

No.

Quoth Ricecake:

That’s a pretty shitty analogy. It only holds if you already accept the conclusion. I can come up with several that make just as much sense, but would lead to different conclusions.

If you have a pencil that can be sharpened by any sharpener, you have a normal pencil; if you have a sharpener that will only sharpen certain pencils, you have a shitty sharpener.

A man who can ride any horse is a cowboy; a horse anyone can ride is a good horse.

A function that can be computed by any machine is a simple function; a machine that can compute any computable function is a Universal Turing Machine.

A man who’ll dance with anyone is fun at a party; A woman who’ll dance with anyone is fun at a party.

A better way for you to have phrased it would have been “look at it this way: ‘ I approve of promiscuous males, and I disapprove of promiscuous females.'”

Emphasis mine. Face it, the joke is only funny if you’re already a misogynist who is against female promiscuity.

And if someone says that to you, and reason is not an option just retort with this:

“Sooo… you’re about two inches long and often found in the hands of authority figures? Sounds about right, from what I’ve heard.”

Quote of the Day: Staring at women's bodies

Should women take it as a compliment when men catcall them or stare at them? No!

In response to this comment, SRSister Kelderwick replied:

Not sure if “subjugate” is actual transcribed word or a totally clueless yet perfect mis-remembered “objectify”. (Despite shitthatneverhappened.txt)

But okay really dudes. Thought experiment thing time yeah? You are at the gym, running, and your workout clothes are somewhat showy and fairly form-fitting. In the mirror you notice Jane Random Runner inspecting you – awesome, says you. Okay sure, whatever. What if JRR is still staring at you ten minutes later – are you still fine? That’s not intrusive at all? Now pretend her expression isn’t neutral – she’s obviously interested. Doesn’t say a word, just stares at you or takes long glances. The whole time. You are still not affected at all by this? She keeps watching you.

Sure. Now, it isn’t just JRR anymore. Now she has 10 peers all using machines behind you. Some of them don’t look, one of them stares like JRR, some of them take the odd glance. One of them wrinkles her nose in disapproval because she doesn’t find you attractive, or so she whispers to her friend beside her. Thinks she’s being quiet, probably, but maybe not? Wait, was that a camera her friend just slipped away? Hmmm. Oh well.

But now it’s not just JRR and her peers, it’s your female co-workers. Most of them are decent enough folks and don’t bother you. But Gwen does. She leans in too close when you talk, she watches you a bit too long when you wear shorts. Whenever you go to office parties Gwen always corners you and tries to make conversation. She doesn’t take well to rejection. But she’s nice enough most of them time, right? And she’s never, you know, said anything – she is married, after all. Definitely hasn’t done anything either. Well okay there was that one time she put her hand… It doesn’t matter, she was a bit upset that day (home stuff and all that). Besides, you talked to Stephanie and she figures you just over-analyzed the whole thing.

Okay. But now it’s not just JRR and her peers and your female co-workers and Stephanie. Now it’s women on the street. Some of them whistle at you. Some are rather more lewd. Usually you’re too tired or too determined and just ignore them. But if you flip them off and reject them, sometimes they get mad.

They get real mad.

And their friends get mad too.

Now listen, you bunch of shitlord smugfucks who’ve never experienced fucking anything like this, who have no comprehension of the experiences of women who are subjected to this very predominantly male behaviour, get a fuckin’ clue: they are people out there. They have to fuckin’ live a whole life in this context. You, you who felt so stung about getting called out, or vicariously felt so, or were so morally stoked by the thought of such happening that you made it up to circlejerk with your like-minded shitlord friends like a bunch of fucking leeches writhing in a pool of liquid fucking manure, fuck off. Your little sting, that was nothing – one hair pulled out from the arse of an elephant. There is no thing, no habit from women or overbearing cultural narrative and tropes, there is no thing that gives you any fucking perspective on this.

P.S. You, shitlord, do not think this means that gender-flipping situations will be a good tool for analyzing every situation. It is not.

This is actually a very common complaint from men and a prime example of how male privilege works. For us that we have never experienced anything like this in our day-to-day lives, it’s impossible to intuitively comprehend why staring/leering/creeping at random women is not flattering to them. The thought process above is exactly what is meant when one asks us to “Check our Privilege”.

/inb4biotruths

Quote of the Day: Hipster Racism

Quoth Shattersnipe:

So straight off the bat, anyone who says they refuse to get angry about rape culture because that’s what everyone else is doing – or, to use Tycho’s words, because they “don’t do compulsory” –  has, much like the hipster racist, completely sidestepped the issue of whether bad things are genuinely happening in order to try and look cool. Which, yeah, no.

On a related note, reddit is still shit (surprise, I know). I think my comments got in the negative hundreds in /r/games when I posted this article for discussion. Redditors were falling over each other trying to explain how not-offended they are. Ugh.

A discussion about sexism in Guild Wars 2

Is Guild Wars 2 objectifying women, or are they doing things right?

Even though really excited about Guild Wars 2 coming out in the near future, I can’t really be silent about the failing it still has on issues of gender and race. So when someone posted an article on reddit pointing out (among others) that, you know, the presentation of women in GW2 leaves something to be desired, I was expecting the usual redditor scumfuckery galore.

Among the usual fanboi/geek sexist responses of “Who cares/I think it’s fine/More Bewbs/Sex Sells” poop however, I did manage to have a more thoughtful discussion with a person I’m familiar with on the issue of sexism in the game. I thought I’d repost the argument here and hear what y’all think of this.

Quotes in yellow are mine (Indented quotes were new comments that were replying to a specific point, I’ve put them like that to avoid re-quoting the same things all the time)

Can we stop equating revealing clothing with slutty? Thanks.

I wouldn’t call it “slutty”, because I hate the word for its woman-hating vagueness, but I would claim that some of the sample armor for women is meant to be titillating. The female mesmer is a striking example. OTOH GW2 fortunately did not make this a rule, so we fortunately have some awesomeness like the female engineer armor.

The problem is not so much that the armor is titillating as such, but rather that this is only the case for female armor.

I don’t think the solution is so much straight equality (because that may not please many people) but to try to please both male and female audiences, and offer both audiences the ability to choose whether they wish to be dressed in revealing or less revealing clothing. The trouble comes when game designers force that choice on either side.

Come on now, those people don’t deserve to be pleased. I really don’t care if bigots are left unsatisfied :-/

Yes, the choice is to allow both sides to be dressed as they want. But that should be done with an eye for equality, not with an eye for pleasing the male gaze.

I think you’re misinterpreting what I mean–take for example TERA. TERA “solves” this problem by objectifying both male and female characters to a staggering degree. This only “solves” the problem by allowing female characters to still be objectified while technically being equal and politically correct.

No. Not even close. While there is some equal opportunity objectification in Tera. It is not even close to an equal scenario. Women are ridiculously objectified in Tera, even for the very low standards of geek culture.

http://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/tera-followup-no-male-castanics-are-not-as-bad-lots-of-pictures/

But having both be covered up all the time would just be conservative and would be equally objectifying, and it’s not what female players want either. I want my character to show some skin, as do many female players I know–when male players jump out and say, “stop showing so much skin”, they speak for female players and as usual miss the point. Male players need to STOP speaking for female players.

This is not what people are asking. And no, it’s not just male players that are asking for this. In fact most women I know ask for equal representation (not* conservative attires). I’m glad you like to show skin, but understand that not everyone does and that forcing that as the default, for women only, is extremely problematic.

The real solution I think is in trying to please both male and female players, rather than pleasing one or the other. Is it really a big deal if the game starts me out in a skirt when I’m a spellcasting human? No, because I think it would be equally annoying to ME, a female player, if the game started me out in a turtleneck and a Corduroy ankle-length dress with stockings etc etc.

It’s reasonable for a game to make that choice with your very first outfit. They can’t please everyone with the first armor, that’s why they give you different choices as you go. But I myself found it easy to very early on acquire clothing that covered up and looked far more realistic than the starting armor.

This is a false dilemma. The option is not only between the tu-tu and the Corduroy. Female characters might start just fine with a normal attire for an adventuring woman, much like the men are! If you want to dress up like you’re going to beach party later on, you should have the option, but making that the default for women only, is sexist, plain and simple.

I don’t see why realism for women needs to be done as an extra step, rather than, I dunno, the default as it is for males. Yes you can’t please everyone and as I said, in such cases it’s the bigots that should be left unsatisfied.

1. I’m not disagreeing that women are ridiculously objectified in TERA–but TERA was known for having skimpy outfits for both men and women. While they’re not 100% equal (is anything?), it still shows that blindly calling for equality in clothing isn’t the answer.

2. I think you misunderstand. Just because I want the option to have revealing clothing doesn’t mean I want to force my preference on anyone else. You don’t want more revealing clothing forced on players, other players don’t want less revealing clothing forced on them. Neither option is inherently more or less objectifying, it’s the act of forcing that choice throughout the gameplay that objectifies women and denies female players the ability to feel comfortable and represent themselves how THEY, not the male audiences, want to be represented. That’s what I want. Forcing conservative options is just as bad as forcing revealing options. There’s an inherent problem here, an inherent patriarchal bias it betrays, to find it more objectionable to have revealing armor forced on players than non-revealing.

3. (Continuing from above) Yes, as you say, it’s not a choice between lingerie and the turtleneck. But “normal attire” still forces a choice on someone. Starting gear simply can’t please everyone, and frankly I think when the argument comes down to “okay, the game in general offers enough variety to please most of the spectrum, but for the first few levels you have to wear something you don’t like!”, then that argument has frankly lost sight of the point. The game offers plenty of choice once the player spends some money or does some quests. It did not take me long at all to switch from a miniskirt to a more realistic adventure gear. And keeping that in mind, I just don’t see where anyone is coming from when they make a big fuss over what’s maybe an hour of wearing something they don’t like. The game designers spent a lot of time offering choices that range from realistic cover-alls to lingerie-esque clothing. They simply cannot please everyone with the default outfit, someone is going to have a choice forced on them straight out of character creation. The fact that the game offers easily-obtainable, multiple options that can please most people, and that the game allows the player to transmute their armor to look how they want with the stats they want, just makes me scratch my head at people’s reactions.

Plenty of choice is offered for both male and female gamers, at all armor tiers, and all armor types (medium, light, heavy). You can change your armor appearance. It is really not an issue that some people don’t like what they wear for the first hour of the game, imo.

1. This is not “blindly calling for equality in clothing”. I don’t see how having a little bit of skimpy clothing for males somehow makes up for the extreme sexism and objectification in TERA. I don’t see anything you said there actual proves that “asking for equality isn’t an answer”.

“Neither option is inherently more or less objectifying, it’s the act of forcing that choice throughout the gameplay that objectifies women and denies female players the ability to feel comfortable and represent themselves how THEY, not the male audiences, want to be represented. “

No seriously, having tittilating clothing be the default only on women players, or having less options for sensible clothing than males is absolutely more objectifying to females.

You keep insisting that the options for clothing that they gave (or forced at the character examples, and starting clothes, and majority of available outfits) are just to provide an option for women to dress their toons like that, and I don’t know if you’re deliberately ignoring the fact that this was done primarily by male designers for the benefit of a male audience. I’m glad you feel this is empowering, but most feminists I know disagree and this is the primary reason many women avoid male-dominated geek culture.

Forcing conservative options is just as bad as forcing revealing options. There’s an inherent problem here, an inherent patriarchal bias it betrays, to find it more objectionable to have revealing armor forced on players than non-revealing.

You keep mentioning that as if it’s an argument someone is actually making. It’s really annoying. Stop attacking that strawman.

But “normal attire” still forces a choice on someone.

Any attire “forces” itself on someone. What you’re trying to justify is that having a disparity in the starting or default attire for men and women, which conveniently is far more titillating/objectifying for women, is just the same as having the same kind of attire for both and letting both choose to be more or less titillating later on by themselves. This makes no sense!

One option provides equality and treats both genders as equals, while the other treats one gender as being there by default for the enjoyment of a straight male demographic. These options are not equal. The fact that women can later choose more sensible choices (less options of course than males have) does not change how they’re treated by default or how the game expects and/or forces them to dress and behave. As a sexual visual gratification for the male gaze.

You’re going to force a starting attire on male and female toons no matter what you do. All I and other feminists are asking is that the initial choice be equal and not reinforce cultural norms of female objectification that continue marginalizing women and driving them out of this hobby. Specifically I wouldn’t have a problem with, say, the female mesmer, if the male was dressed similarly. Btw, I don’t see you defending this option for all those males that want to start by default titillating to others. I wonder why.

 

My apologies, this one is going to be a bit of a ramble. But I feel this ramble is long overdue, because I think the majority of people are dead wrong when it comes to what exactly is wrong with the game industry’s portrayal of women, and how to fix it.

I don’t know if you’re deliberately ignoring the fact that this was done primarily by male designers for the benefit of a male audience.

This is incorrect, much of Guild Wars 2’s armor was designed by women.

I’m glad you feel this is empowering, but most feminists I know disagree and this is the primary reason many women avoid male-dominated geek culture.

db, I think we owe each other a little better than to downgrade each other’s opinions just because we or people we know disagree. I can say exactly the same thing, but in reverse. But my point is: what I find empowering is having a choice, not having someone else demand that there be less of what I am perfectly happy with because they, a male, find it sexist. That’s all. If your feminist friends feel insulted and denied power just by the fact that sexy clothes exist in games, then quite frankly, they are being threatened by empowered women just as much as empowered men.

Maybe it’s because I actually work in the epicenter of geek culture, but I can’t help but feel like you are letting the vocal majority drown out the content, silent minority.

You’re saying that women have less sensible options than men, but that’s only true by a small margin–the armor itself is by and large equal. Women actually wear armor that covers their bodies and can be called armor–while leather and clothing ‘armor’ are in a large number of the cases, equal between the genders, unless you’re a real stickler: here are some great examples:

1 2 34 5 6

The differences we are talking about are just not that big. The majority of armor in Guild Wars 2 is like that–reasonable, not lingerie, and only venturing into lingerie-for-women territory when you get to scholar armors. And even then, it’s not the vast majority of armors. The ONLY real big difference is in starting human caster armor. The starting heavy and medium armors for women are not remotely objectionable.

I’m sorry, but calling this lingerie while armor like this  gets the same amount of outrage is not helping the problem. (Not that I think you actually did call it lingerie–don’t think you do–but someone along the line did and jesus christ this has become a long, convoluted thread! Why do we always do this to ourselves, db? lol!)

How exactly are we to expect that game designers will bother to provide more varied options for men AND women when the most progressive AAA MMO title out there gets just as much flak as TERA? Really, why should they bother when they are still getting raged at just as much? ArenaNet is leaps and bounds ahead of their competition and they deserve some credit for providing a lot of variety.

The only point at which they don’t provide you with variety is the very, very beginning of your character’s life. And it is only for one small portion of the characters (female, human, caster) to whom they don’t provide reasonable, non-sexy clothing. All of the other female races and classes start out perfectly fine. It is honestly a very silly thing to get up in arms about.

I’m not saying that revealing armor SHOULD be forced on players to start off. Of course the developers should strive to start off all characters in neutral, reasonable armor that will offend as few people as possible. But when the developers have made a very big effort to provide so many non-revealing or equal clothing options, it’s such a very small point to get angry over. And frankly I can’t take it seriously.

Here’s my problem–revealing =/= objectification. People love to jump on the women’s studies and feminism bandwagon without really thinking this over. Female clothing designers produce revealing clothing because it’ is sexy, and many of us like how it looks. The female designers of the armor for ArenaNet were not thinking,

Being sexy is not an objectification thing. Women want to feel sexy, many of us want our characters to look sexy. Because WE want it, not because it was forced on us. Sexy clothing is not inherently or by default an act of sexism–and suggesting it is not a method of objectification. When Guild Wars 2 starts me off with TERA armor, then I’ll see your point. Starting characters off in lingerie is certainly objectifying. But a skirt? Really?

Wanting skin to be shown is not just for men!

What you’re trying to justify is that having a disparity in the starting or default attire for men and women, which conveniently is far more titillating/objectifying for women, is just the same as having the same kind of attire for both and letting both choose to be more or less titillating later on by themselves. This makes no sense!

I’m not trying to be argumentative but I think the sentence got lost grammatically somewhere along the way. I am seriously confused :S

P.S. I’m not defending that option for males because I don’t SEE any men actually wanting to wear revealing armor. Most men don’t, while many women do want to play characters who wear revealing armor.

 

Unfortunately you still continue missing my point and attacking strawmen. ):

  • I am not saying that GW2 is as bad as TERA, hell I think GW2 has made very good progress in this issue but it still has a long way to go. There is nothing wrong about pointing out the failings of GW2, even if they’re not as ridiculous as TERA. I, and the OP, are not angry at GW2 and its developers. Hell, I’m still planning to play the fuck out of it. Not every criticism comes from anger for crying out loud and there’s nothing wrong with making criticism about improving the game in gender equality.

This is why I don’t understand why you keep bringing TERA up. I did not say that TERA is better, or even as bad. TERA is attorocious and the rampart sexism is the primary reason I never even bothered to look at the game. GW2 is much better, but it’s not perfect, and while you may be able to ignore some things, me and others can’t, and I’ve already lost people who I’d like to play with, such as my wife, who took one look at trailer I showed them, saw the Barbarian Bimbo, rolled their eyes and dismissed it…

  • I am not saying that there should be less revealing armor in the game. I am not trying to take away your options to dress sexy, or revealing or whatnot. I want equality!

You insist on acting as if the choice to dress some female characters more revealing, and make them universally more appealing (without option to avoid this, such as in the face) is like a standalone example of catering to players like you. As if we do not currently live in a patriarchical society with rampart objectification of the female body. As if the geek culture is not unbelievable sexist and catering to the male gaze at every chance it gets. As if we’re living in an age of egalitarianism and I’m being a prude. This is frustrating to hear coming from someone who knows better!

The game is not trying to be empowering to you. The game is reinforcing the common tropes of female objectification rampart within normal, and especially geek culture! It’s fine and all that you find ways to be empowered by this expression of patriarchy, but don’t dismiss the criticism of those who aren’t. I’m not asking you to lose your options to express yourself, but myself and many other women I know of, feel it’s degrading that the default or only type of female adventurer of some class is protrayed in a style that is impractical, whimsical and caring more about appearance than function. The reason why male characters are not shown this way, is not because males don’t cater for it, it’s because it’s not a cultural expectation that a male would act this way and thus if they did make a male mesmer look like the female mesmer, there was going to be an outrage from all the males who were offended. It’s only ok to offend people as long as they not straight white cis males…

  • I am not saying that all revealing/sexy clothing is objectifying. I don’t understand why you keep insisting on this. I am saying that a disparity in clothing and appearance for males and females, that is in line with the greater patriarchal culture we live in, shows that the game attempted to please the male gaze, and not to provide for players like you. I am pointing out that you are not the target of those decisions except incidentally. And I am saying that you should not be happy with the general state of affairs merely because you are catered to, even when significant number of other women feel excluded because of how male-oriented games such as GW2 are. (And again, yes GW2 is more friendly to women. But it’s not there yet)
  • I am not making a big deal out of this. I am making a big deal out of how much this very small criticism is blown out of proportion by people who think GW2 can do no wrong, because it’s taken some steps in the right direction. It’s OK to say that things can be improved. We’re NOT saying it’s as bad as TERA whenever we ask for more inclusivity for women (and LGBTs, and PoCs, and and and).

 

Bah, I think I’m losing track of who said what. I’ll just say this: I disagree that ArenaNet is the group of sexist hounds you seem to think they are. The game doesn’t need to empower me or anyone else, it doesn’t need to try. I and other women shouldn’t be looking to commercial developers to empower us in the first place.

I completely disagree with your assessment of the development team for Guild Wars 2 as working solely for the male gaze. As I said, there’s a great deal of women on the team–the design of female Charr (and the story behind their design) says a lot about the development team. As I said, I think our disagreement at its core comes down to just the starting equipment for one small segment of the possible characters in the game, and I just don’t think that’s evidence of rampant sexism when the rest of the game provides so much more in both the starting and later levels.

 

I disagree that ArenaNet is the group of sexist hounds you seem to think they are.

I don’t think that exactly. Most males and females are raised sexist (Patriarchal expectations etc etc) and it takes significant work to overcome. I’m sexist on some issues as well (and I’m working on it). “Sexism” is not an ultimate denouncement. It just means that we, as humans, need to work on our shit. As I said before, I think ArenaNet is doing a lot of good things in that regard, but they still need work.

The game doesn’t need to empower me or anyone else, it doesn’t need to try. I and other women shouldn’t be looking to commercial developers to empower us in the first place.

I never said that either. I and I believe the OP, is not asking for direct empowerment (altough tools to allow women to achieve it wouldn’t be bad either), but merely to not be objectified/marginalized.

I completely disagree with your assessment of the development team for Guild Wars 2 as working solely for the male gaze. As I said, there’s a great deal of women on the team–the design of female Charr (and the story behind their design) says a lot about the development team.

While the female Charr are awesome, this does not change the fact about how Humanoid women are protrayed. Women can be just as bad at reinforcing sexism btw. The fact there are women designers who might have designed the human women is not proof that they can’t be sexist.

As I said, I think our disagreement at its core comes down to just the starting equipment for one small segment of the possible characters in the game,

Not exactly. I have issues with

  • The lack of options for creating humanoid females that do not look like Bimbos or Dolls.
  • The disparity between clothing between males and females. Occasionally the female clothes are designed to appease the male gaze, rather than be functional for their role (i.e. armor with midriff/cleavage showing etc), while the same is not true for the male version.
  • The general protrayal of women NPCs in the world, such as the aforementioned Barbarian Bimbo in the Norn storyline.
  • The disparity in number between Female and Male NPCs and their roles in the world.
  • The almost complete absence of People of Colour NPCs.

While ArenaNet has done a lot of things right (I totally dig a lot of badass female clothing options, and the fact that not every outfit shows “tits & ass” and the female Charr are great) they can still do better. They’re still sexist, but they’re merely less sexist than most.

Diablo 3 is just too short (and other annoyances)

While it’s an enjoyable game, Diablo 3 just disappoints on too many issues.

So obviously I’ve been playing D3 in the last week and while the game is quite enjoyable (albeit far too easy on Normal mode) I find that it is unexpectedly short. The game follows the same pattern as Diablo 2, of having 4 acts, of which the 4th one is very small comparatively. Each act takes around 3-4 gametime hours to complete, if one is not completely rushing. But the whole game can be completed in 5 hours if one just rushes the main questline. People had reached level 60 on the first day, which means 3 complete playthroughs within 24 hours, probably less.

What I can’t understand is why the game is so short! The freaking thing has been in development for as long as any MMORPG, perhaps even longer, and yet we get an amount of content that is normal, if not short for any AAA game coming out. Why didn’t we get a huge campaign to play through I do not understand. MMOs typically have 5 year development cycles and then come out with content that is vastly larger than what D3 delivered. Just look at the size of the world that World of Warcraft has when it launched, or the size of the world that Guild Wars 2 will have.Did Blizzard get rid of their design and graphics department once they’d crafted those 4 acts? It’s a bit disappointing to tell the truth.

Other than that, while I’m having a lot of fun, the shine of  a new blizzard game does quickly start to rub off and I start to notice the defects below. Except the disappointingly short length of the game, I am not sure I like the way that things were overly simplified. A few things that bothered me:

  • Why are there so few socketing items? There’s only 4 types of gems available, that are all very very similar and downright bland. One gem for each base statistic, and they don’t really have a lot of variation for where you slot them. I really miss having a special ability for slotting them on shields or off-hand items.
  • The way the base skills work is just boring and does not promote any diversity in characters. Basically, for each class you get one primary skill that has the same effects as the other primary skills for the other class. They add both damage resistance (in some form) and damage increase. Because your base skill increases the two things one most needs in the game, there is absolutely no reason to increase your other skills except vitality. This is just brain-dead. There’s practically no decision-making required whatsoever as all you need to do is look for the items with the most primary or vitality stat, depending on if you want more damage or survivability.
    I remember in Diablo2, I was playing a wizard that used to go into melee range and use close range powerful magic. Maybe not the best build but it was fun. To do it, I had to increase my strength a lot, in order to be able to equip heavier armor, which was cool as I ended up as a mage in plate armor. But there’s no such experimentation here. Whatever build I go for, the same choices are always the best: Primary stat + Vitality. Meh.
  • The Auction House seems to cheapen the whole experience. When we first started playing, we had a lot of fun and excitement for finding good drops, even if not good ones for our class, since our team mates could use them. But then one of us started using the Auction House to pimp themselves out. It started with them buying some high quality gems to put in their weapons but soon enough it was better items. Given that you can buy on the Auction House far better items than you can craft or find (within reason), most of the time, there was very little reason to even check if what you found was better than what you bought on the AH. 99% of the time, it isn’t. That, coupled with the fact that 90% of the magic item drops you get are complete junk that you just sell, even rare items, and there is very little excitement about finding anything. It becomes a mindless item harvest to sell for gold to buy what you need on the Auction House.
  • The weapons you use are almost always just cosmetic. There is no functional difference between any weapon type. Swords do not differ from Axes do not differ from Polearms, except for attack speed and using 1 or 2 hands. There’s no cool weapon specialization as there was in Diablo 2, where one could become an expert on a particular weapon type and get some cool abilities out of it. Other than some small decision on what kind of skills to use depending on your weapon’s attack speed, you can interchange weapons with impunity. That’s possibly a conscious decision, but it’s boring.
    Why don’t hammers work better to bypass armor? Why don’t swords and daggers work better against unarmed enemies? Why don’t polearms have a longer reach? Everything is the same.
    Add to that, that the spell casters of the game can equip any item but never use it. I equiped a honking two-handed sword on my Witch Doctor that I never swung even once. I had fun with my two handed-carrying wizard in Diablo2, because I would smack people with it, but now it’s just used to calculate the damage of your spells? I’m left unimpressed.

What do y’all dislike about D3?