Interesting article on Kotaku today in which activist Anita Sarkeesian expresses what she’s looking for from game developers.
Ultimately, she is looking for games to keep 8 guidelines in mind when making games:
1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.") 2. "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.) 3. Have female characters of various body types 4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's. 5. Include more female characters of color. 6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move. 7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic 8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies
So how does Stardock do?
Let’s take a look at Stardock last released game, the popular, critically acclaimed PC strategy game Fallen Enchantress:
1. Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")
Our last game, Fallen Enchantress has female leads and allows players to design female units in total equality with males with equal resource allocation (i.e. we spent an equal amount in the form of hundreds of thousands in art costs) on separate clothing, armor.
Stardock spent hundreds of thousands of dollars creating unique character models and assets to ensure that both males and female units could be created by players.
2. "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)
Same. Fallen Enchantress female armor was functional, practical. As you can see in the above screenshot, the armor is not only not “lingerie” but it lacks breast definition because real female armor wouldn’t have that.
3. Have female characters of various body types
We include multiple models for male and females in the game. As any game developer can tell you, this was a non-trivial cost, especially to a small studio because it meant we had to create different types of armor (our armor is not a texture being applied).
4. Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.
We modeled our units proportions based on real world measurements.
In Fallen Enchantress, players can design their own units, leaders, etc. Multiple body sizes included.
5. Include more female characters of color.
Done.
Literally any color you’d like. Even blue.
6.Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
7. Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic
8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies
The Villain, Ceresa was female
and
according to statistics the most popular HERO of Fallen Enchantress was…
Procipinee. Queen of the West, heir of Amarian. The world’s most powerful channeler of magic.
But wait…that’s not all…
>50% of the source code in Fallen Enchantress was written by women (plural) and much of the art in the game was created by women.
I look forward to Ms. Sarkeesian holding Stardock up as the model of what game studios should be doing. In fact, her and her allies are welcome to find any modern game or studio that has comparable representation of women both in terms of in-game characters as well as development.
I won’t hold my breath.
Other people having no sense of humor isn't my problem. Try cultivating an intellect instead of a chip on your shoulder, it's an absurdity to find offense over a comment you find absurd.
It's also my Mother's actual opinion that women should never have been allowed to vote. I figure we were doomed anyway, Woodrow Wilson was one of the biggest fuckups to ever be elected president, and he was one of the main obstacles to the suffrage movement, as opposed to a product of it's success once he gave up blocking it over protests and hunger strikes during WW1.
The point is moot regardless though, history is rarely true in such things. From a historical perspective, the Democrats are the party of suffrage and the evil Republicans are waging a war on women. That their right to vote passed despite a democratic filibuster clearly didn't hurt the party that was on the wrong side as they've simply rewritten it to their benefit thanks to the idiocy and ignorance of the population at large.
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Sorry. I've nothing much to contribute to this discussion.
Been a bit distracted ogling Google images of Lara Croft.
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I'll be back in a minute.
Make it ten.
I was going to state that he was 'alleged' to have harassed someone. In fact said harassed person had to write an apology for the false accusation. The previous poster did not do any research on Brad at all. This is exactly the kind of crap SJW's love to push and it works with un-informed people as we see here.
You missed the point completely. Whether true or not, the SJW narrative is that Brad is sexist and harassing employees.
Come on now, people not laughing at your jokes is always a problem for a comedian.
It has been established in my real life conversations that I have both a sense of humor and an intellect, maybe even above average in both categories. They both lead me to the conclusion that your problem is that you are just not funny, at least not in this case.
Whether it is you or me that is the problem, maybe both, there is a problem and all your denial will not change that. Everybody's over-reaction on both sides may make the discussion tiresome, but denial will make it worse. Brad seems to know it is a problem and does what he can about it as CEO of a gaming company. I admire that. Others campaign cluelessly. That is contemptible. Then others try to deny everything with a poor attempt at humor. Find your own appropriate adjective for that kind of behavior.
There is a problem and it deserves better responses than you and many others seem willing to give it. There are people who deserve mockery, but the issue does not.
Okay I admit, I haven't read all the comments. With that being said here are some arguments and compliments to the original post.
Compliments...
Arguments...
Overall I love Stardock games and think they are on the correct path. I agree women are not "sex" objects and "lingerie" is not armor. You shouldn't promote that, however, in the real world men and women do use "sex" to get ahead. Don't know how you could add that to games without going overboard but, if I have a nice six pack tan and what women tend to think of as a nice body, maybe I try to sneak in using other strategies other than fighting my way through the gate, strip off my armor and give the ladies something to look at? Same thing the other way with women.
Like I said that is not appropriate in every situation, however, if I'm a spy for a certain level sure. If I'm fighting my way through sewers and prison cells no, I'm most likely not dressing sexy.
Start paying me for the pleasure of reading my posts, and I'll start caring about whether you find them funny. Until then, I'm not being paid to type this.
I consider my responses to the problem to have been quite magnanimous. That I don't simply laugh my ass off and run people over for claiming gender discrimination is quite the accomplishment. It's almost entirely bullshit.
If I were the male equivalent of a feminist, I'd be some horribly emasculated loser that cried every time he looked in the mirror because his hair was thinning, he didn't have a six pack, and his prick wasn't 8 inches or larger. Instead, I look in the mirror because I need to comb my hair. Well, the half of it that's left anyway.
The video games industry has little if anything to point to. The vaunted boob armor comes with matching male armors that don't even cover the chest to begin with, and there are probably a higher percentage of female programmers and artists designing them than there are female gamers playing them. Now if you want to complain about why women can't drive in Saudi Arabia, go for it.
And I could care less about what Anita Sarkeesian thinks or wants. Far more interested in what Christian Hoff has to say, at least she isn't a misandrist who uses double standard sexism like Anita and most of her supporters.
You know she's just a paid mouthpiece right? She's all raving against Hatred and then come to find out she's invested in a company doing writing for other Very Violent video games. Do some digging into her, you'll see. She's not as squeaky clean nor half as self righteous as she pretends to be. If I were you Brad I'd distance Stardock from even mentioning her name if I were you. Her hypocrisy is overwhelming. She says she's against all this stuff and then her and her friends are making money on doing the exact same thing. There's some Youtube videos where Youtubers have done investigations into her and her friends and the proof for what I'm talking about and her making money on it is there.You don't want Any Attention from Anita Skankeesian, good or bad.
Isn't Brad a panelist on an upcoming GG debate? I think he's aware of all this
Also he's had plenty attention from that circle since that sexual harassment lawsuit... I'd guess he doesnt give a fuck about that anymore.
I expected better from you, Heavenfall. I'm not one to take sides or push an agenda, but when the complaintant had her case dismissed with prejedice, you have to believe that the whole thing was a farce.
___I___ know that. But it's not what I know or believe, I'm talking about what the SJW narrative is.
Someone's sarcasm indicator broke...
I'm mostly just pointing out that she doesn't really believe what she says.
Ah, gotcha. My bad. Tone is hard to interpret on the 'netz.
Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but I'm not sure I see how you've achieved that?
By creating a game that fits within the parameters these social justice warriors are demanding, then observing a total lack of interest in said game by such parties, he demonstrated that these people do not actually want what they say they want, but instead are looking for targets to flail against. The lack of coverage for Fallen Enchantress proves these people have no interest in a game that is not sexist.
Mind you, i havnt played Fallen Enchantress. This is simply my interpretation of frogboy's stance.
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