Women Gamers Encourage Empowerment, Positivity in a Post-GamerGate World

[Teek]

Why don't they speak out about the publishers and their fellow developers buying reviews and locking Youtube lets-players into glad-handling contracts?

Why is there suddenly a big problem with gaming journalism now that social and gender issues are involved?

Your premise is wrong.

This isn't suddenly a big problem. From the firing of Jeff Gerstmann to Doritosgate, this has been an issue for a long time. The difference is that, in those cases, when something screwy happened it was reported on by other journalists.
This time however, they circled the wagons, declared "Gamers are dead," and labeled all of their critics as misogynists. Social and gender issues only got involved because that's what these people used to deflect criticism. (Hence, the creation of #NotYourShield)

[Xero Kaiser]

Heck, it's not like Ivy is even the only oddly dressed character. Voldo was rocking BDSM gear long before Ivy came into play.

Yeah, but Voldo's a man, so him literally fighting in thongs and ballgags doesn't count because reasons.

And why does everybody always focus on Ivy?

Because focusing on Hildegarde, Xianghua, Cassandra, Pyrrha, Talim, Leixia...basically any female character that isn't Ivy (or Taki, I guess) won't give you anything to complain about.

[Agent Z]

This is one of her points that I never understood, why is any female who uses her sexuality openly seen to be sexist? Bayonetta was designed by a woman. People don't look at sexually open women on shows like Sex And The City and scream sexism.

I just never understood this complaint about Bayonetta, are they using sexuality to sell the game yes, but is it sexist or detrimental to the character when openly embraces it? I don't see how. I remember when people tried using the same argument against Lara Croft and it never really found any traction. =/

Bayonetta was designed by a woman with input from the male project director. The problem with the 'she embraces her sexuality' defense is that as a fictional character, Bayonetta has no true control of what she says, does or wears. It's all the result of the (mostly) male writers. And I say this as someone who like Bayonetta.

[Nyssane]

You know what? I think we're forgetting that this thread is about empowerment and positivity in video games. Let's all try to take this thread in a more positive direction.

[Immortal Weapon]

Bayonetta was designed by a woman with input from the male project director. The problem with the 'she embraces her sexuality' defense is that as a fictional character, Bayonetta has no true control of what she says, does or wears. It's all the result of the (mostly) male writers. And I say this as someone who like Bayonetta.

It's still her design at the end of the day. Look at a series like Hyperdimension Neptunia. There's fanservice galore in that series and most of the design staff for those games are women.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Much of that series they talk about each other's breasts and there's a pretty heavy lesbian subtext to many of the characters...but yeah there's plenty of fanservice...and odd that in the SoulCalibur series there's only one female character that people complain about...I don't think that to many people complain about many if any of the Street Fighter ladies...the ignoring the Rumble Roses ladies altogether...

[Immortal Weapon]

Much of that series they talk about each other's breasts and there's a pretty heavy lesbian subtext to many of the characters...but yeah there's plenty of fanservice...and odd that in the SoulCalibur series there's only one female character that people complain about...I don't think that to many people complain about many if any of the Street Fighter ladies...the ignoring the Rumble Roses ladies altogether...

I've seen a few complains about Cammy's design and the ass focus she tends to get. Capcom only does fanservice with SF on occasional unless it's Juri and Poison as being sexual are parts of their character.

[Agent Z]

It's still her design at the end of the day. Look at a series like Hyperdimension Neptunia. There's fanservice galore in that series and most of the design staff for those games are women.

Hideki Kamiya directed development of Bayonetta at Platinum Games since January 2007,[19][20] and the game was "more-or-less complete" by October 21, 2009.[21] The group developed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console, while Sega—with Platinum Games's original data and support— handled Nex Entertainment to port the game to Sony's PlayStation 3.[22] Kamiya had worked on previous games such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Resident Evil and its sequel, and as such, the game makes occasional references to these games, as well as other Clover Studios titles and various Sega franchises, such as a minigame inspired by Space Harrier.[23][24]

To Kamiya, the core theme of the game and its protagonist's attacks is "sexiness".[4][32] He said Bayonetta's ability to transform into a panther reflected the developers' desire to "make her a sexy witch".[8] To emphasize "her femininity and sexuality", the developers made Bayonetta lose rose petals instead of blood when hit, and used a butterfly motif that manifests in her wings (which appear in her shadow and during double jumps), her giant fist attack (a butterfly appears on the back of the fist), and the arms of her glasses.[33][34] Her giant boot, fist, and monster attacks reveal some of her body—her hair is magically formed into clothes but must be temporarily reallocated to forming offensive weapons—and when the player targets an enemy, red lips mark the enemy's chest; this led IGN to call the developing game a mix of "action and a great big helping of fan service".[2] The game's sexual tone is reflected in its age rating in the United States: the Entertainment Software Rating Board rated the developing game "Mature" ("M", for ages 17 and older) for containing "Partial Nudity" and "Suggestive Themes", as well as "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence," and "Strong Language".[2] (By comparison, Japan's Computer Entertainment Rating Organization rated the game "D", also for those ages;[35] the British Board of Film Classification rated the game "15" for "strong language and bloody violence";[36] and it is rated "18" under the PEGI system used in the United Kingdom and other European countries for its use of violence and language.[37])

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonetta

I'm not familiar with Hyperdimension Neptunia but with Bayonetta the male project director was heavily involved in the character's design as you can see.

[simbob4000]

Why don't they speak out about the publishers and their fellow developers buying reviews and locking Youtube lets-players into glad-handling contracts?

Why is there suddenly a big problem with gaming journalism now that social and gender issues are involved?

Suddenly? This is stuff that's been building for years, years. My only guess could be that you don't follow gaming news if you think people having problems with gaming journalism is some sudden thing. The big thing about that whiny blog post that seems to have kicked the Gamergate thing off was that it involved Kotaku, which is a gaming site that's become increasingly reviled by gamers over the last few years.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

I used to visit Kotaku every day...it had some sister sites I guess that would be far more against this whole problem than it...in Hyperdimension Neptunia series it's about how the different gaming systems become worlds or lands of their own with a CPU "goddess" that governs it, the names like Leanbox, Lastation, Lowee, and Planeptune, the goddesses can transform into an uber form where three of the 4 of them are well endowed and show it off to a bit, especially Vert the Leanbox CPU...then comes the dlc costumes and such...the swimsuits and such...when the characters interact the figures actually move, the breasts bounce and the characters talk openly about sex stuff without going into to much detail, they break the 4th wall a lot to, there's plenty of fanservice in the series.

[MikeP]

I've spent the last few weeks (months?) looking up information on all this, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm... sympathetic to GG. I'm not part of the movement, mostly because I hate Twitter and refuse to use it for any reason. However, I'm disgusted by a lot of what I'm seeing from the gaming media, particularly with their outright and clear contempt for their own audience. Its obvious there is some harrassment going on, but its going BOTH ways, and its by a very small minority. The gamergate supporters that I've listened to and even spoke to have no problem with women in gaming, and I've seen no evidence of some widespread campaign of hate directed toward one gender.

I find it very telling that all the supposed evidence of this hate is coming from the very sources accused of bias and corruption.

Just one man's opinion.

[NeutralGamer]

I've spent the last few weeks (months?) looking up information on all this, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm... sympathetic to GG. I'm not part of the movement, mostly because I hate Twitter and refuse to use it for any reason. However, I'm disgusted by a lot of what I'm seeing from the gaming media, particularly with their outright and clear contempt for their own audience. Its obvious there is some harrassment going on, but its going BOTH ways, and its by a very small minority. The gamergate supporters that I've listened to and even spoke to have no problem with women in gaming, and I've seen no evidence of some widespread campaign of hate directed toward one gender.

I find it very telling that all the supposed evidence of this hate is coming from the very sources accused of bias and corruption.

Just one man's opinion.

I agree with this. I'm not a fan of twitter either and don't use it. It's a well known fact that the internet is full of assholes so giving them a way to remain anonymous and say what they like why is everyone surprised there are a lot of trolls and insults on it? It's a loud minority of every side of every argument/discussion.

I does seem that it's the people that have done the most research that are neutral or maybe leaning a bit towards pro GG. Not a surprise when the anti GG side blocks everyone who disagrees with them and doesn't really listen to other peoples opinions. Like Ben Kuchera throwing a temper tantrum when the head of EA communications Chris Mancil linked to one of his articles when talking about how the anti GG twitter autoblocker
https://medium.com/@veilovtheabyss/t...r-566d8d0f90fe
cost him almost 2500 followers for simply retweeting something Milo Yiannopoulos said about how chess is really feminist.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInActi...ommunications/

Anti GG have a you're with us or against us mentality just look at the amount of hate and abuse Brianna Wu got for having coffee with Brad Wardell.

http://imgur.com/a/vpJX8

You should also watch this. It talks a bit about the autoblocker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uGdfOJZoF4