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**Ginger Tea** · 03-02-2015, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by gremcint View Post

A while ago I saw a list of videos that used to be up on www.feministfrequency.com of the planned episodes but I am unable to locate that probably because the list is changing over time. However I've seen it commented that there is probably going to be about around a dozen episodes so there are more to come covering other topics. When future videos come out we can discuss them here as well.

Those were here Kickstarter videos that she should have completed over a year ago, I wont be holding my breath on those appearing any time soon, even meeting and exceeding the kickstarter has not managed to net more than a few episodes if any (I have no idea which were actually in the can before the kickstarter was announced).

**gremcint** · 03-03-2015, 01:31 AM

look I don't want to get into a discussion about that, I typed that to explain that if/when there are future videos we can discuss them here and at the very least it has been planned for there to be more.

**Gravekeeper** · 03-03-2015, 02:32 PM

It'd probably be easier to work from her more concise list of points from her recent talk:

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 armour" ( 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 colour.

6. Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.

7. Record female character voice over so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic

8. Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies

As for the Kickstarter status, they actually put two additional shows into production and I'm willing to give her a pass considering the first few episodes of the show resulted in the near destruction of her life at the hands of assholes. Her last episode was right around Gamergate and resulted in her being driven from her home, the FBI getting involved, bomb threats, etc. You had to walk through metal detectors to attend her talk last week.

So yeah, cut her a break on the kickstarter. -.-

**Lace Neil Singer** · 03-03-2015, 03:30 PM

I might be in the minority here, but I don't see a problem with sexy female characters in computer games, as long as they're classy and as tough/tougher than the men. A lot of feminists seem to want female characters to be dressed in high necked blouses and work trousers, but I disagree. Just cuz a female character is dressed in sexy clothes doesn't make her nothing more than an object.

**Ginger Tea** · 03-03-2015, 05:37 PM

As both Anita and Mackintosh write under FemFreq I shall not be using Anita's name in case it was the other who wrote anything.

I can get behind many of those points, probably all depending on how it is handled.

Someone redrew SF characters (and a few random side scrolling beat em up's from the 80's) with less revealing outfits, Cammy was the most to benefit from the overhaul, others I cant say as I don't know much beyond SF2 on the SNES, some didn't look as good, but that could just be the artist (it was not a single artist AFAIK redrawing them but a collection found on the net) and their style made them look 'odd', so I was too busy with the mismatched art styles to notice if the choice was more beneficial.

You give a gamer a strong woman and someone will turn around and say its a man with breasts trope, I think the game is dying light (not played or watched a lets play) its the zombie game where it goes to shit at night, so if the name is wrong it's that game. In one scene you are saved by a woman who is ex military or MMA or some form of bad ass (this games Vasques if you will), then during a cut scene or QTA you have to then save her, this was derided by some (perhaps even FemFreq) as being the damsel in distress trope, 5 seconds before hand she was the most bad ass, but even bad asses need a helping hand.

One person rewrote the scene as a male saving the day so there is no damsel trope, but then it got female erasure going against it.

When you give one group something someone will take offence, with some saying that FemFreq was doing both indirectly (I would have to find the post about that at some point), one piece read something like this (paraphrased and possibly from a bias source)

FemFreq We need more women in games
FemFreq Women in games should not be harmed in any way.

Now again, I would have to go back and find links, but if and this is a big if, something along these lines was said, how does that work?

One commenter said it's basically Laura Croft walking around the level and all the bad guys turning around and downing tools to let her walk past uninhibited. Is that a good game mechanic?

Well you could strip Tomb Raider of NPC's and just have traps and keep the old platform/puzzle aspects from the original games, the enemy could just be the environment and still be a good adversary.

There is one game I saw a video of (and I know it's being LP'd by someone I occasionally watch depending on content) where the video gave the impression it was nothing but a damsel in distress trope, I don't know the name, it's the one where in the trailer a high schooler is assaulted perhaps killed in the toilets by her ex? and your character can go all sands of time so you prevent it, either the trailer had you save her more times or the rest I saw as a montage of the others idiocy getting her killed. I could not play that game, save you from an assault by rewinding time, yes, doing the same because you did something monumentally stupid, I might just let the story play out without you, but chances are the game wont let me and I cant see myself enjoying a game where I have to save you every damn time from Darwinism.

Again only seen the trailer and a 'many deaths of X' video, the game mechanic might not solely focus on one woman to save but others in the town, but I also don't want a fail state to be implemented because I didn't save X even though I could go back and do so, the game should have numerous endings depending on who lives and dies by your inaction, best case scenario I might find that whilst I was with X, Y died, so I rewind to save Y but in doing so I am not with X, who now dies as I am not there to prevent it, I would much rather have the choice of who to save, so I will check up on how far into the story they are to find out if this is the case.

I also found an screen grab of a youtube comment (not sure where it was taken from) that also says why there are few women protagonists.

Why video game protagonists are white males. or why it's Guybrush and not Galbrush.

Mentioned before was the reimagining of beat em up characters clothing, included is Poison, IIR the game she first appeared she was a woman, then the west got all shirty about being able to beat up a woman (pre SF2 days) and retconned her into a man in drag later to be pre or post op transsexual, why couldn't they just say "no, in this game there are some women fighting against you and you will have to fight them as they have no issues fighting you."?

**Gravekeeper** · 03-03-2015, 09:44 PM

Originally posted by Lace Neil Singer View Post

I might be in the minority here, but I don't see a problem with sexy female characters in computer games, as long as they're classy and as tough/tougher than the men. A lot of feminists seem to want female characters to be dressed in high necked blouses and work trousers, but I disagree. Just cuz a female character is dressed in sexy clothes doesn't make her nothing more than an object.

Honestly, I find if the phrase "a lot of feminists" makes its way into your argument you probably need to go back and take a closer look at the topic at hand. No offence.

Originally posted by Ginger Tea

When you give one group something someone will take offence, with some saying that FemFreq was doing both indirectly (I would have to find the post about that at some point), one piece read something like this (paraphrased and possibly from a bias source)

I'm going to go with biased source. Anita devoted a good chunk of her last talk to this topic. Hence two of her points about including more female enemies but not making the violence sexual in nature ( the orgasmic voice over thing especially ). Its sort of an extension of the damsel in distress problem.

Developers are reluctant to present female enemies due to the "women are weaker/need to be saved" crap. Thus 9 times out of 10 when they add a female enemy or female villain she uses weaponized sex. Rather than being able to fight the player on physical or mental terms. Even if they are willing to allow a female villain to fight her fighting prowess is presented as sexy for the benefit of the player.

Which goes back to the problem with what Lace said. The issue is so much more complicated than that. In an equal and objective world there would be no problem with a female character who is "sexy" so to speak. But the problem is that the female character's sexiness is always for the benefit of the male player. Which is the fundamental problem with the topic Lace brought up.

A "sexy" female character is practically always created for the benefit of the male viewer. Rather than for the character or anyone who identifies with the character. In order to find female characters actually written and presented by women you typically have to go to a company like Bioware who has a better gender balance on its creative staff.

With Dragon Age Inquisition for example the majority of the writing staff is female and it shows in the characters. Meanwhile it faced criticism from entitled masturbators for its female characters not being attractive enough for their standards.

**Andara Bledin** · 03-03-2015, 10:58 PM

Originally posted by Lace Neil Singer View Post

I might be in the minority here, but I don't see a problem with sexy female characters in computer games, as long as they're classy and as tough/tougher than the men. A lot of feminists seem to want female characters to be dressed in high necked blouses and work trousers, but I disagree. Just cuz a female character is dressed in sexy clothes doesn't make her nothing more than an object.

The problem isn't that there are sexy females in fantasy games.

It's that for females you get nothing but sexy females. You get guys that are everywhere from scrawny pipsqueaks to musclebound behemoths to gorgeous hunks to scarred up freakshows... But for gals, you get one body type with minor dimensional variation.

It's pandering. And it's insulting. And it's boring and unimaginative.

If a female character is a character first, it won't matter what she's wearing, but far too often (the vast majority of the time, relaly), female characters are either tokens or eye candy with little to no development or necessity to the plot other than someone said "Oh, hey, we need to break up the sausage fest, throw in a female somewhere that won't break the game."

Not all lingerie armor is bad. Having one entire half of the character base having bare inner thighs through the entirety of the character progression is disturbing. If the men were given similar treatment, even something vaguely close to similar treatment, then it wouldn't be as bad, but typically, the guys get functional and appropriate armor while the women are given breast plate armor that would be deadly in real life with zero explanation of why women have magic armor but men don't. >_<

Originally posted by Ginger Tea View Post

In one scene you are saved by a woman who is ex military or MMA or some form of bad ass (this games Vasques if you will), then during a cut scene or QTA you have to then save her, this was derided by some (perhaps even FemFreq) as being the damsel in distress trope, 5 seconds before hand she was the most bad ass, but even bad asses need a helping hand.

They have a horrible habit of utterly ignoring context for the purpose of "making a point." It's terrible debate and really undermines the point being made.

On the Women as Antagonists side of things, it's depression how often writers turn to the "uses sex to achieve her objectives" as opposed to, you know, having her use the same types of strategies as a man would use. And for the people who complain about that just being a "Ms Hero" situation; fuck 'em. Sometimes, the only difference between how a woman would deal with a situation versus a man is None.

**Ginger Tea** · 03-04-2015, 03:14 AM

I was trying to find where I read about her being double standards on one of the topics, "we need more playable women in games" "women should not be hurt in games", but as it's FemFreq it's hard to search when you get a gazillion results.

However, one poster attended one talk and I had a quick skim along some points, mostly from the Smurfette Principle.

Avoid the "Smurfette Principle"

In this section, Anita defined the "Smurfette Principle" as when a story or narrative has a cast of characters of which only one of them is female. She gave the Left 4 Dead series, Borderlands 1 & 2, and The Wonderful 101 as examples. Her solution for this was to incorporate a cast of multiple playable female characters.

Where posters brought up the point that in L4D all characters are blank slates or 'Trousers' as the oatmeal or someone else put it when regarding whatever her name was from twilight. Yes there is a 3:1 ratio, just like Gauntlet, none of them are characters with a story or a voice, they just parrot phrases, yes there is only one woman as a playable character, but the game itself would not play better or worse with 4 women or 4 men or any combination thereof.

I never saw any story cut scenes when I watched some play throughs, it was basically 3D gauntlet but with zombies, Dead Island had character interaction but L4D I did not see anything of the kind.

TTT, Murder and other Gmod games enable you to play as numerous characters, originally the group that was playing L4D had it on the default skins and would be random male and female characters with Nato Alphabet names, now they can play as Dorito's packets, Mountain Dew or random characters from Starwars and LoTR.

There is little difference between playing L4D as a woman and 3 men as it is Chewbacca, Walter White, Peabody and Legolass.

Yes they should have made more character models to ship with the game and not as DLC if they made any or some form of character creation.

Comment:

The Left 4 Dead series has no characters. A character has to be defined or developed in some way. It has avatars that your friends control. The difference between an avatar and a character is pretty huge.

Most times you don't have the choice and it makes zero difference to the game play. She's grasping at straws with that one.

To which someone replied

Yeah. Aside from opening dialogue, none of the characters are developed. Unless you consider " I GOT PILLS HERE" or "LET ME AXE YOU A QUESTION" or even "BOOMER BILE" to be a deep convo.

Anita presented four examples of games that she felt have positive portrayals of female characters:

Portal 1 & 2

Mirror's Edge

Beyond Good and Evil

Gone Home

Which had this comment and reply chain

Anybody else notice how three out of these four games are played in a first person perspective? You only see yourself if you happen to come across a reflective surface or something. So is Anita saying that these games did it right because they basically took the female out of the game entirely? Kind of sounds like it.

The Portal example really baffled me. Chelle never talks, and GLaDOS is an AI. There are so many better examples of female characters (hell, just the Final Fantasy series has plenty of badass leading ladies) and this is what Anita chose? Even more proof she has no idea what she's talking about.

Again Chelle was nothing more than an Avatar, yes there was a back story, but you could ignore all of GLaDOS' dialogue and just do the puzzles and it wouldn't matter if you were Barney the Purple Dinosaur, I watched a speed run to find out what the deal was with the cube and TBH I forgot quite quickly who Chelle was as it was not her in the maze but some random guy on the internet. One can only assume She meant GLaDOS as even in the sequel Chelle had zero dialogue and I forgot she was even in it as I only remember Altus and Peabody as Co Op LP's of it were a thing at the time.

**KabeRinnaul** · 03-04-2015, 04:36 AM

Strictly speaking, Borderlands 2 has two playable female characters, though only Maya is in the basic game. Gaige is DLC. Borderlands the Pre-Sequel has two from the start, and both are pretty positive depictions. Well, Nisha is a psychopath. But a strong character, yeah.

Also, there are a couple notable NPCs in 2. Lilith is a major leader of the resistance, and Angel, while arguably something of a DiD, orchestrates a good chunk of the plot.

**Gravekeeper** · 03-04-2015, 05:29 AM

Originally posted by Ginger Tea View Post

However, one poster attended one talk and I had a quick skim along some points, mostly from the Smurfette Principle.

That's the talk I am talking about. =p

Originally posted by Ginger Tea View Post

I never saw any story cut scenes when I watched some play throughs, it was basically 3D gauntlet but with zombies, Dead Island had character interaction but L4D I did not see anything of the kind.

Man, seriously? To start with L4D is a multiplayer game while Dead Island is a single player game. Obviously they are not going to have the same approach to story telling. Especially with a game by Valve who pioneered fps storytelling without resorting to cut scenes.

Second of all, they are characters with personalities, back stories and relationships. The game also does have story. Something even a basic look into it would have told you instead of you basing an entire opinion on it because you watched a gameplay video. For a game you never played?

Also, the modability of a game has shit and all to do with its content. You can play Skyrim as Fluttershy too. Does that mean Skyrim has no plot?

As for Chelle, of course she's an avatar. Any character the player assumes the role of is an avatar. These are just fancier ways of saying PC and NPC and obviously the PC can be a character.

If you read anything on this thread so far you would see why Chelle is on that list. Chelle's gender has no bearing on her role in the story or her abilities. Chelle is not sexualized. She has normal proportions. She is not dressed sexy ( and yes you can see Chelle in game ). She does not make organismic noises when taking damage. She does not rely on or only gain agency through interacting with male characters.

With Mirror's Edge, again, Faith is not sexualized. She has normal proportions. She is not dressed to be sexy. She doesn't orgasm when taking damage. She is also one of the extremely few female Asian characters that actually looks like an Asian woman. She is capable in her own right and does not only have agency when interacting with a male character. Also, Mirror's Edge does have cut scenes and Faith is seen in them from a third person perspective. So the gameplay perspective being an FPS is completely moot point.

I'm not even going to touch the reference to the Final Fantasy series as a bastion of strong female characters. Final Fantasy is notorious for most the shit Anita is talking about. That some random internet commenter thinks those are good female characters should tell you all you need to know about the underlying problems in the industry and the community.

On a side note is there some reason you're trying to find some major flaw with her positions but posting other people's arguments?

**Ginger Tea** · 03-04-2015, 06:59 AM

That's the thing with LP's, if there was story in the game, it probably got talked over or cut out, I don't recall anything that said L4D has a story hence my likening it to 3D Gauntlet, but instead of Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie or Elf (and iir you could select 4 of the same class) it was Old guy, Black Guy, Girl and The other one.

The game wasn't on my radar to play (not that I had a gaming rig at the time) but the channel had started to expand at the time and as with most LPer's it's not the game played but the person playing that drives the traffic. So when ever the videos came out, my exposure to the characters was "This is you. not Dave Smith a cabbie from New York, but you." Like I said "Trousers".

I enjoyed the videos whilst they were out and enjoy similar output from Gmod, though I normally just listen to it not actually watch. So as the story was talked over or cut, I cant but help see it as a Gmod type game and those have zero story and all players look that way because they didn't have the version that allowed them to run around as Doritos.

So the parts I bolded were on about story and I saw none, so even if the game was 3:1 women to men the game would be no different to Chewbacca, Walter White, Peabody and Legolas and as I said, should have shipped with dozzens of characters even split or given you a character creator.

Had I seen an LP or even played it myself showing the story, I wouldn't have this opinion.
The story is "Zombies, try not to die." and the difference between Miss Scarlet and a Ludo piece is Miss Scarlet was given a name.

Yes Chelle wasn't hyper sexualised or even tweaked in the slightest, but again she is a pair of trousers, the story didn't need to be there, Sokoban didn't need a story to get you to push boxes around, yes the story was fun and clever in parts, but like I said, I forgot she was in the sequel as the co op was what most were doing.

So her from L4D and Chelle I don't class as characters, not in the same way as an NPC or many other games are, they are great examples of how to create realistic people, but when I hear the word character, I don't think of blank slates.

Lego Starwars characters are, well characters, if I played Han Solo on the Xbox version, I am playing Han Solo, same goes for Padame, Leia and Wicket.
But Chelle would be like bringing your own minifig into the game and playing as yourself or how you wish to be seen in game, the only difference is Portal wasn't customisable.

And those quotes I posted, they were echoing what I had already written and am rewriting in this post.

Chelle is the Dummy in the book shop that Will Smith (GLaDOS) talks to, you wouldn't give a mannequin an Oscar, nor would I call her a character, she could have been revealed at the end of the game to have a face crab and it would not have effected how you had played the game prior to that point.

Doom Guy (the original not Doom3) is not a character.
There might be a pilot in the R-Type, but not a character.
Most used to be unnamed protagonists as it was meant to be you filling their shoes, just because you named the vessil doesn't make it more a character than before if it has zero to say of it's own free will.

Even more so if the game is presented in the first person, some games used to have it where you couldn't see your feet if you looked down, so outside of multiplayer, you were just arms in front of your face with a gun.

So it was NEVER Chelle I saw doing the puzzles, but whomever was playing, had the game been in 3rd person, I might be more inclined to see otherwise.

**Hyena Dandy** · 03-04-2015, 07:21 AM

I think one issue that seems to go undiscussed is that there are distinct, cultural differences between Japan and America when it comes to male characters, female characters, the way things are marketed, etc. It's much easier to find a Japanese game with male characters intended for eye candy and sexiness, than it is to find the same in America. The Sephiroths of the Final Fantasy series are as much eye candy as the women are.

This isn't to necessarily to say Japan is more progressive - In many ways, by the standards of 'Progressive,' they aren't. But Japan is a culture where something - To take a non-gaming example - Like "Iwatobi Swim Club" can get made.

I think there's a problem with the premise of Feminist Frequency, which seems to be an unspoken idea that there is one 'Game Culture' that we can identify the issues with, by examining the storytelling tropes. There's two game cultures.

Looking at something like "Monkey Island," the Monkey Island games draw a good portion of their humor out of an inversion of the standard swashbuckling tale. Without the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, Monkey Island - Though it would still have humor - Would be very different. Guybrush works in part because of our knowledge of those old pirate movies. We know the character he SHOULD be, so his incompetence is even funnier. We have the same damsel in distress, so the fact that she saves herself is funny, because THAT'S NOT HOW THIS STORY WORKS HA HA A HUMOR HAS OCCURRED. Guybrush isn't just funny because he's terrible, he's funny because he's terrible at the role we know he shouldn't be terrible in.

We're talking about two different cultures, marketing primarily to places with different cultural norms, and different narratives and tropes they expect. Women are portrayed differently in Japan and America. Of the games on the 'good' list, two are American, one is French, and one is a Swedish subsidiary of an American company.

Now, I'm not saying that gaming has no problems at all. But I'm saying that it's an awful tempting trap - One that I feel FF falls into and isn't alone in doing so, to approach it as if American games and Japanese games are comparable, at least in the respect of being one mass of 'Problems in Gaming.' They're not products of the same culture, so while people from both cultures get them - The Japanese can play and enjoy Halo, and I know I have a lot of fun with games like BlazBlue and Street Fighter, we're looking at different cultures, and different tropes.

There are issues, in both America and Japan, but they're different issues and require different approaches. Context is important.

**Andara Bledin** · 03-04-2015, 09:25 AM

I'm not sure that trying to find the dividing line between a player character and a player avatar is really very meaningful. I honestly think that the context is more important and how the player fits within it.

Using the examples from a few posts up that I've actually played:

Portal 1 & 2 - This is a game with a player avatar, so the PC can be named Pants for all the personality she has. Her gender is entirely irrelevant to the story, other than how she is treated by GladOS. This could be a positive portrayal of a female (competent and capable) or an example of a Ms Hero (the game wouldn't change one bit with a gender bend).

Gone Home - The PC is another example of a game with a PC that is effectively gender neutral. There are several other characters in the game, but you don't actually interact with any of them.

The problem with many of the critics (and I used to be just as bad) is that they often aren't sure what they want but "they'll know it when they see it."

Cheesecake is fine and awesome. A steady diet of nothing but cheesecake is not.

**s_stabeler** · 03-04-2015, 01:16 PM

There is a simple rule: with a female character, if they were killed off, could their role be replaced by a porn mag? If so, that character should probably be redesigned.

The same applies to any situation where ALL the female characters use sex appeal- or a situation where there is a token unattractive female.

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