Tropes vs Women discussion of the arguments

[Ginger Tea]

I was under the impression Portal exsisted in the HL universe, hell Still Alive references Black Messa which I believe is the research company Gordon Freeman worked at.

So there could be something written in HL even if hard to find that said both characters had a child, if it specifically said Daughter then daughter it is, child is ambiguous.

Had Tim Burton done a 3rd Batman, Billy Dee Williams would have been Two Face, he is shown as Harvey Dent and Harvey Dent is Two Face, so as both Keaton and Burton left, it's easy to not care about the change to Tommy Lee Jones, though you could argue that cannon never really existed between any of the movies.

But had Keaton and Burton stayed and they decided against Williams and went for Tommy it would be an issue, it would mean in cannon that Gotham just so happened to have two district attorneys called Harvey Dent, what are the odds of that? That or he fell in a vat of bleach long before his scarring.

And why cant the dynamic be Mother/son Father/son?
Again I've not seen the scribbles on the wall but could they not also have drawings by or about the alternate son? are there any that specifically can not be swapped or left ambiguous, for example talking about a teen pregnancy being a crucial factor, yeah no son is gonna get knocked up and if he got someone in the family way its not the same as actually being pregnant.

[Kheldarson]

I was under the impression Portal exsisted in the HL universe, hell Still Alive references Black Messa which I believe is the research company Gordon Freeman worked at.

They're in the same universe, yes, but beyond the name drop, there's absolutely no interaction between the two games. Aperture and Black Mesa were competitors. That's it.

So there could be something written in HL even if hard to find that said both characters had a child, if it specifically said Daughter then daughter it is, child is ambiguous.

It's indicated in Portal. It doesn't have to be in any other games.

And why cant the dynamic be Mother/son Father/son?
Again I've not seen the scribbles on the wall but could they not also have drawings by or about the alternate son? are there any that specifically can not be swapped or left ambiguous, for example talking about a teen pregnancy being a crucial factor, yeah no son is gonna get knocked up and if he got someone in the family way its not the same as actually being pregnant.

It could've been if that was the story they were telling. In Bioshock's case, all three games deal with male roles in terms of relationships (son overcoming his father's legacy, father protecting his daughter). In Portal, the dynamic is mother/daughter. A mother's testing of her daughter, of forcing her into a mold the mother was forced into and the daughter is rejecting (see the Companion Cube).

It may not be a "crucial factor" to the game play, but it is still a major part of the subtext of the entire game. That's why the drawings are so. damned. important.

Again, sure, customization in the non-game portion of the game (the workshop) could be nice. But that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not Chell actually has a proper character role in her game. She does. She's GLaDoS' mirror, her foil. She's what GLaDoS desires and what she wants to kill for being her desire. Chell's the unattainable. She's also, arguably, the only way that GLaDos can be free.

[KabeRinnaul]

And again, GLaDoS is shown to be a woman forced by men into a position she didn't want. Another woman defeating her is one thing. A man defeating her is going to almost make it feel like you're playing the villain of the story.

And for the record, even Team Fortress 2 has a story. They've been developing it bit by bit in the comic series, and it gives the characters individual identities. The heavy's name is Mikhail (Misha to his sisters). The sniper is Mr. Mundy. The engineer and demoman are Dell Conagher and Tavish DeGroot, respectively.

[Kheldarson]

Chell as Cave Johnson and Caroline's daughter

[Hyena Dandy]

Because when it comes to first person games I prefer to be the one in the game not someone transported into someone else's body.

It's called immersion.

And like my complaint about Sarkeesian saying she chose portal because of its changes to the standard way of doing an FPS, THAT DOESN'T MATTER. You may not like a particular design decision, when it comes to naming a character vs not naming them, giving them a face or not a face, or whatever. But that doesn't matter when it comes to evaluating if they're a good character. I don't like cell-shading. I've only ever kind of liked it in Guilty Gear XR'd Sign, and Valkyria Chronicles. Anhything else I Just tolerate it. That doesn't mean I'm gonna knock on a game for being cell-shaded, that just means I don't like cell-shading. That's a personal feeling, not some grand statement of how agame should be.

We're talking about if Chell is a good character or not. The fact that you could make a similar game with a different looking protagonist is irrelevant. Yes, you COULD make a game VERY LIKE Portal, in fact potentially exactly like Portal in gameplay, and hae a male protagonist. You could make a movie very much like Jurassic Park with an all-black, all-female cast. But you didn't make Jurassic Park. You could make a game very much like Portal with a different gameplay mechanic. But that doesn't mean you made Portal. Now I can certainly sympathize with the fact that gameplay and story should integrate, so I could possibly see it as a mark against portal that if the puzzle mechanic were different by the characters were the same, there wouldn't need to be much difference. That said I don't think that that's something we should say makes Chell not a great character.

I know very little about Portal, I'll admit. I've seen a fair few let's plays, played a bit myself, and the co-op of 2. The more I hear the more that it's obvious there's more story than I ever saw, and a lot of it is hidden. Which is cool. I like that a lot of story can be inferred and pieced together and theorized rather than it being shoved down your throat. That's something I'm quite happy about.

You can change things and you'd have a different work of art that was otherwise similar. Now, if your question is "Does that necessarily mean that the points that Sarkeesian makesare the be-all end-all of good characterization, because not much would need to change to make someone more definitely meet more points?" then yes, that can bring into question what her points are - That said, I don't think (or at least I hope) that she isn't saying that this should be true of all games. Not every game should have a nonsexualized female protagonist and nonsexualized female antagonist. I would hope that maybe about 1/4 of games (or less, since I think MOnster Girl Quest is a modern masterpiece and that wouldn't be counted) would have that. About half male, half female protags, half male half female antags, and not every woman should use sex as a weapon. Some can, cool. I too like Poison Ivy, even if she is less seductress and more rapist. But whatever.

Point I'm getting at, though, is that I would agree that not every game should meet that. But when it comes to one of the things I think is quite wonderful - Highlighting things that DO do stuff right, which shows such stuff can sell - Then it's good to have a few that work. After all, a common counter-argument is that games with women don't sell, and yet Portal has sold very well, and is a cultural phenomenon.

But Chell still IS a character. You may not like her being a character, but she is. Things can be inferred about her. Some characters the player is meant to put themselves in more than others. But "Should FPSes have main characters who have distinct identities?" is a question very different from "Is this character a character?"

[gremcint]

ok why are we talking about portal right now. I mean how does this relate to the tropes vs women topic? are you saying that you disagreeing with one of her examples disproves her point or what?

[Gravekeeper]

The initial argument is that Sarkeesian has a checklist for measuring whether or not your female cast is diverse enough to not be trope-y/continuing to be discriminatory. However, Chell, according to Sarkeesian, passes fairly well.

This led to a counter point that she can't/shouldn't even count as a character because she's a player avatar rather than a full character herself. This argument has been supported by the fact that, according to Ginger Tea, Chell could be replaced by any model and the game would remain the same. Same with the puzzles or even GLaDoS and Wheatley.

The whole flaw with Ginger Tea's strange ongoing argument is the the total and abject confusion between character and character design. Anita's list is clearly about character design and presentation. While Ginger has dragged the whole thread down this rabbit hole about character as in personality/traits/story. The list is about whether Supergirl's costume is sexualized and she's been giving the physique of a supermodel so the camera can linger on her ass. Not whether or not Supergirl has a deep and engaging character arc.

The 8 point list was not "What makes a good female character" as Ginger continues to inexplicable and confusingly argue. In fact its original title was "8 things game developers can do to make games less shitty for women". The list is about the design and presentation of women in games. The fact Ginger is doing this based entirely on Lets Play videos rather then personal experience with the games in question just makes it all the more aggravating.

I really have no idea what the point of the argument is even within its own context.

[Ginger Tea]

Your original post about the 8 points she made didn't say "Character design" or anything so it was open to interpretation.

Did she mean character model, and only character model?
And I agree that Chell is non offensive in that regards, so are many NPC's in GTAV.

The live tweets someone posted months ago of the exact same text didn't say anything about character design either, so you could use the list for character model and character personality and story.

And the guy who was at the talk didn't say "Oh btw guys she's only on about how the character looks".

---

Then why is the Smurfette principle on the list?

Using the 8 points for her character model if that is what the design part indicates, then the smurfette principle doesn't belong there, because you could have the texture artists make 8 designs for the woman in L4D but he or she has no control over which ones get picked or how many are going to be playable in the game (or even released as DLC), they are just tasked with making a believable human to go onto a rigged skeleton that may or may not be used with mo capped data.

The Smurfette principle is to do with the game over all, something character design be it the look or the personality, is only a part of.

You could tenuously argue that the smurfette principle could apply to the design of her skin if you tell the artist to make one and one only and it will ship once it's been tweaked to their desired level.

But the artist making the skin might only be making one character rig after the initial design phase went through 18 different sketches and mock ups on paper so 17 rejected designs doesn't mean only following through with one character for the game makes it a valid reason to say Smurfette.

In L4D she's Smurfette, as is Princess Leia for the most part, but there were many other actors auditioned and screen tested for the roll. So a movie with one woman in it will fall under that term but the casting department doesn't.

They are not in control of the story or number of male or female playable characters, that decision was passed down to them, there is only one Jabba, but there were dozzens of designs for him before Lucas signed off on the slug, so it's fair to say that they didn't just draw one woman and call it a day, rare exceptions when it comes to basing the character off a real person.

[Gravekeeper]

Your original post about the 8 points she made didn't say "Character design" or anything so it was open to interpretation.

...No, it really isn't. They're pretty clearly design/presentation points. Also since you referenced the talk I would assume you would have some vague idea of what the list was about. Although, to be blunt, you have demonstrated through out this entire thread that you honestly have no idea what you're talking about.

Even now you're just grasping at straws to try and maintain some argument that had no clear point to begin with. And for the record, Anita did not create or define the Smurfette Principle. Its a well established trope.

So you trying to drag it out as this feeble argument against or for....whatever the hell you're talking about now. Frankly, I don't understand what your problem is at this point aside from "Rawr, Anita bad because vague technicality and some other people's comments I copypasted".

[Ginger Tea]

The whole flaw with Ginger Tea's strange ongoing argument is the the total and abject confusion between character and character design. Anita's list is clearly about character design and presentation. While Ginger has dragged the whole thread down this rabbit hole about character as in personality/traits/story. The list is about whether Supergirl's costume is sexualized and she's been giving the physique of a supermodel so the camera can linger on her ass. Not whether or not Supergirl has a deep and engaging character arc.

The person who attended didn't post a whole transcript as they were unable to record due to venue restrictions, just various notes as different TLC's which I was skimming through (it was a longish thread)

So I was taking the list one way, including the whole.

But as you bolded character design (the concept sketches and the final 2/3d character model) and said me focusing on personality/traits/story or "Not whether or not Supergirl has a deep and engaging character arc." was derailing, says the list is not about the story and the smurfette principle is IMO only active towards the whole.

It's the dual nature of the word character when discussing games, there is the Player Character and the Story Character, hence why I used avatar to avoid "I'm talking about the character not the character."

Also some would say character design also encapsulates their role in the game and their traits/personality. But as that is against how you wrote your paragraph, when I say character design in this post I mean only the visuals as that is how I am reading your interpretation of it.

Presentation can mean she is presented as the kidnaped NPC you set off to rescue, that is story. She is a warrior, that's a trait and as I was told off for focusing on those.

---

Star Wars toy analogy

If you hand someone who has never seen Star Wars your vintage collection of toys and ask you to rate them by a list, they cant say Leia is the smurfette when they don't know all the other Leia toys are Leia, also they don't know Star Wars so they couldn't say if the story included one.

They wouldn't know that Leia never met Padme outside of being born, so they see the late 90's rerelease and continuation line Leia and Padme toys, they don't know they were never in the same movie as adults, but could pick them up and pretend play they were sisters as context has not been established, so this hypothetical person who has never seen Star Wars could not call your collection out on the smurfette trope even if you say "These 7 are all Leia just in different clothes, just like these 6 are all Lukes."

But they could tell you if they were a good representation of the human form and if they sexualized women, IIR only the Slave Girl and Twilik dancer ones would do that also being the only one to get the "That's not armour." strike (not that it was sold as such).

---

You can rate a character model by the list taking out the smurfette principle (which I am aware is far older than her referencing it) and the villain one unless the character in question is a villain.
EDIT: scratch that, their morality has nothing to do with a 3D model just as an action figure, being a hero or villain is story and not character design by my understanding of your usage of it.

The game might have a smurfette and the character might be said smurfette, but when rating a 3d model by itself (character design), who she is in game is irrelevant.

You might be asked to rate 7 DLC alts for Laura Croft, if you were given all 8 (original included) well you could be facetious and say "well there are 8 women here and none of them are blue."

Instead you should judge each one by how it looks outside of the game outside of the character, more so if its a new IP and you know nothing about who and what they are, for all you know they might be polling people as to which one they should include in the game and which to scrap never seeing the light of DLC.

When designing a game "DON'T make a Smurfette", can't be translated to "when making a female character don't make her the Smurfette", the character artists and animators are just doing their job and making one character or 5 and only one being picked by someone further up the chain.

Unless you are a small team then that paragraph can work as the one designing the game could also be the one who will eventually be making the character models, if they wrote the story and only wanted one female character or NPC in the whole game, then yes it is in this case the 3D modellers fault that the character is the Smurfette.

---

Back to the analogies, it is not the casting departments fault that the story only has one woman in the script, their job is to get the one they feel is right.
It's only the casting departments fault when the author is the one casting.

I honestly don't know how many movies (bar Alien) get to casting with "We haven't decided on this characters gender yet so let anyone read their lines." That one you can blame on casting if you get a sausage fest.

[Hyena Dandy]

Your argument seems to be rapidly descending into incoherence. The argument about the smurfette principle applies to the entire work of art. Not to the process behind it. I don't think it's just about character models, I think the point is character depiction. That it would be quite good if more, though not necessarily all games, were more like this.

No-one would blame the casting department for having only one woman in it. But in talking to the film industry as a whole, which the things seemed to be aimed at, you can still complain about the whole "Well there's only one character, and her personality seems to be "Is the girl in the story." The design docs will address what is and isn't expected to be in the game, so you can blame in the case of a SPECIFIC GAME just the design docs. However the thing is, it's not a problem with one specific game, that you do not have what she talks about. It's a problem with the amalgamation of games, and what she sees as the totality of the industry. Now, I may be wrong about her specifically, and over time I have seen enough to convince me that Sarkeesian in specific is not someone I want to trust on specific games, but certainly when I talk about a dirth of good female heroes in videogames (Western ones, at least, I don't play enough games generally from Japan to judge) I'm not talking about the lack of good female characters in specifically Call of Duty. Or specifically in Sniper Elite. Or some other game that Doesn't have a lot of female characters. I'm talking about the lack of good female characters in an amalgamation of games. Indeed, some games have a good reason not to feature a female player character. Sniper Elite V2 is set in WWII, featuring an American soldier, and while there were female snipers in the war, they weren't Americans. There were also women involved in things other than the army. But that's a good reason. If I were to make a game about a historical figure, regardless of how accurately, the character would hopefully be the gender they really were. There are stories I can tell that need a male protagonist. A story about fatherhood, for example, can't have a woman as the role of a father, that would just make her a mother.

But it's the amalgamation.How often and how many characters are poorly made, that's being discussed.

[Ginger Tea]

The argument about the smurfette principle applies to the entire work of art. Not to the process behind it. I don't think it's just about character models, I think the point is character depiction. That it would be quite good if more, though not necessarily all games, were more like this.

The whole flaw with Ginger Tea's strange ongoing argument is the the total and abject confusion between character and character design. Anita's list is clearly about character design and presentation. While Ginger has dragged the whole thread down this rabbit hole about character as in personality/traits/story. The list is about whether Supergirl's costume is sexualized and she's been giving the physique of a supermodel so the camera can linger on her ass. Not whether or not Supergirl has a deep and engaging character arc.

"Here is a photograph of Carrie Fisher dressed as Princess Leia, discuss the outfit, but don't discuss Princess Leia" is what I got from that.
You cant call Carrie Fisher in costume Smurfette on one single photograph, you can however call the character she plays when seen as a whole IE the actual movie.

Say when Star Wars was brand new you saw a group photograph of every character that had lines or prominence in the movie. You would see Aunt Beru and Leia, so you would say "well two women isn't many but it's not one." so if you have the photograph and nothing else to go on, Two a smurfete principle it doesn't make.

Watching the movie however it dawns on you that you could have two Smurfette's as neither meet in their respective parts of the movie.

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So how can you gauge if someone is the smurfette when you are looking at the character design? To know she is the only woman in the game means to look at the game as a whole.

To look deeper than the visuals you have to look at the character and that brings up the rabbit hole as GK put it, about character as in personality/traits/story.

---

Is the list about the whole or the visual appearance of a piece, IE the character design?

For the piece point 1 and 8 are negated as both rely on the whole.
for point 8 you don't need the whole, but in order to flesh them out you would need a lot of it.

"Why is she evil?"
Answer back story.
"What is the back story?"

To circumvent this she would just be evil 'because'.

[s_stabeler]

Can we all agree that the issue is when a game features a woman either just to provide a love interest ( including situations where a woman is just there for Fanservice, or ( even worse) simply to be a convenient victim? Wheras when a character has had some thought put into it ( for instance, to use Princess Leia as an example, she had been captured by the equivalent of a gangster, and the outfit was explicitly the gangster's idea- and she manages to kill said gangster fairly early on- and is dressed far more reasonably the rest of the movie. To use an example of a character that really needed a better writer, look at Starfire in the New 52. Has she even been able to help much in a fight yet? ( I quit reading comics a couple of years ago ) IIRC, she's practically a ditz dressed in even less than if she wore just a bra and knickers.)

[Gravekeeper]

"Here is a photograph of Carrie Fisher dressed as Princess Leia, discuss the outfit, but don't discuss Princess Leia" is what I got from that.

What are you even arguing? Seriously, what the fark man? This is completely incoherent at this point. What are you even attempting to prove and how are you still so horrifically failing to grasp any of this? The Smurfette Principle is pretty clear. Anita's talk wasn't quantum physics. Christ, I even linked you the trope. Aunt Beru is not part of the main cast. The Smurfette Principle doesn't get negated because one other vagina appeared somewhere in an entire franchise as a bit character or extra walking past in the background.

For God sakes, man. Do you understand a single thing being discussed? Are you just farking with us? Do you seriously believe it was about ethics in game journalism? Whats going on here? ><

I am sincerely at a loss.

[gremcint]

why don't we climb out of this rabbit hole and move on, besides in a couple posts he'll probably talk about how we can't take a joke or something like that.

I've kind of lost where we were going before this so I'll bring up a couple of points i've seen made elswhere.

One popular tactic I see is people attacking a single example as though that disproves the entire argument. The main one is in here damsel in distress video where she brings up double dragon. Now this is a case of damsel in distress rather obviously but the counter some have brought up is that in the ending animation Marion delivers the final blow to the boss. The issue is that it doesn't change the fact that she was still damseled. Then the further issue that comes up is that simple fact that even if this did disprove that specific example it doesn't change the sheer quantity of damsel in distress examples.

I find the largest issue is that the opposition simply doesn't or chooses not to understand what is being presented to them in clear simple english.