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[PA Comic] Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - The Rules
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Whatever the fundamental reason for Tycho (the comic writer)'s dissonance, here's the most obvious (to me) difference between the two sets of games.
Dragon's Crown and Hitman: Absolution are aimed at males.
Bejeweled is aimed at females.
That's not the point that TychoCelchuuu is trying to make. The point is that it seem very like that for Tycho (as in Penny-Arcade owner Tycho): "Criticism of things Tycho likes" is censorship but "Criticism of things by Tycho" is not.
Some people are just having a lot of trouble seeing past some specific issues they are exceptionally passionate about to view remotely-related topics from other angles.
I was accused of this once, by those people. Which I appreciate, because now I understand why the communication failures were happening.
It wasn't me.
This seems far and away the most obvious to me. Looking back at the newsposts, Jerry isn't saying Hitman/Dragon's Crown are the greatest things in the industry and every game should aspire to them. He's saying that regardless of what the reaction to it may be, game designers should have the freedom to make those things without being shut down. "More art", not less art, regardless of how terrible the art may be - the right to have and create the art should still be upheld.
With Bejeweled, he's not condemning it. He's pointing out that making it a female-only thing is silly and stupid, in the same way that marketing Legos only to boys or some such thing would be equally silly and stupid.
But of course this applies just as much (and in fact far more) to Hitman and to Dragon's Crown. Women should be able to grow up without being constantly sent the message that their clothes aren't sexy enough (or even worse, that their body isn't sexy enough) but this is exactly the message we send to people when we take assassins and wizards and make them inexplicably sexy in our media. We say that just as boys who like purple are doing something wrong, women who don't want to dress up sexy for men, or women who don't have a body that men find sexy, are wrong. And we also send the message that games are made by straight men for straight men and women certainly need not apply. That sucks, we shouldn't be doing that to women, and this is why Jerry should be calling Hitman and Dragon's Crown out on their bullshit, not writing passionate diatribes where he equates anyone who criticizes those games with censors who just want something to get worked up into a lather about.
I mean, look at what kind of criticism was leveled at Dragon's Crown that set Jerry off in the first place. It's one paragraph long and it says "As you can see, the sorceress was designed by a 14-year-old boy. Perhaps game development studios should stop hiring teenagers? At least they're cheap, I guess." That's the sort of criticism we're talking about! Calling out ridiculous, stupid character art by saying the artist is immature. Surely that's not any worse than saying the Bejeweled people are responsible for making Jerry's son sad.
I mean this is like basic logic.
Jerry is not saying "no one should produce products colored blue or red for boys." Jerry is saying "it should be okay if boys like products that are colored purple."
Stop making false equivalences. Stop creating false dichotomies. Your fervor is doing you a grand disservice.
There is a delicate difference between, "You shouldn't produce that" and "What you're producing harms women, please don't harm women."
They might sound quite a bit alike, but there's a pretty profound difference.
Let me approach this from a different tack. Here's what Jerry's Bejeweled post would look like if the original post had been a Kotaku article written by someone else (call him 'Tycho'):
It has come to my attention, seated as I am upon the Spire of Dil'zahn, where I am attended to by an unceasing flow of winged familiars that bring me a constant stream of "news" from what you mortals might dub "RSS," that our noble hobby is again embroiled in "controversy." I put the word in quotes not because I am quoting - indeed, if we are to believe Tycho, the issue is so obviously one-sided that it lacks a key feature of a controversy, namely, something that might be said to controvert - but because this strikes me, like so many of these other "controversies," as just another tired excuse to get angry, to shovel coal into the flaming maw of the old, antiquated Train of Righteous Truth lately departed from its resting place in the Indignation Station, where it sits in the odd hours it has not been stoked into a white-hot fury, hours that lately are too few and far between. How well-worn the rails must be!
What is the crime, this time, that has the blogosphere all a-Twitter, that has caused us to once again board the train, to destinations unknown but somehow more just? It appears to be the temerity that the makers of the Bejeweled board game have displayed by daring to reach out to girls via the most repressive, vulgar, dare I say sexist means possible: they made the box purple.
You must forgive me if I once again take issue with the tenor of the conversation. Surely we can forgo the tears Tycho seems to want to inspire when he tells the touching story of his son's favorite pink shirt, squirreled away in some deep, dark hole of shame from whence it will never return. Weep, weep for the poor child's unnaturally restricted choice of clothing! Already the we are meant to see ominous clouds of gender normativity beginning to form in his little mental sky, and see him beginning to distort his personality by developing an unconscious aversion to pink and purple. The horror!
Perhaps my inability to be roused by Tycho's desperate entreaties is the same as my failure to feel the appropriate umbrage at Hitman's nuns or Dragon Crown's sorcerertrix. I cannot and will not ever see these issues as anything other than what they most assuredly are: a path, veiled and twisted and cloaked as it may be, to censorship. Art must be free, and this kind of public shaming does nothing except ensure that art is anything but. Does Tycho have a Grade A, marbled cut of legitimate beef with the poor makers of this Bejeweled board game? Or has he merely been pounding out a flank steak full of Mad Cow? I have my own opinions of the matter, but they are, of course, irrelevant. The issue here is not whether Bejeweled has taken the shirt from Tycho's son's back. The issue, as it always has been and always will be forevermore, is what we must do in response. The answer, which at this point almost rings tired in my ears because it is my constant refrain, is that we must have more art, not less. Censoring Bejeweled will not bring rescue the son's shirt from the depths. Only creation has the power to restore.
It's because it's purple, huh?
Again: there is no connection between the two news posts apart from a very general overall subject matter of sex & gender. This attempt to create a contradiction and attack Jerry over it is not only in your mind, but it's also incredibly distasteful. Here he is posting something that by all measures you should welcome and agree with, but instead the opportunity is seized to launch a new round of attacks about something completely different.
You're sending a strong message: "don't agree with me about anything or I will use that against you in everything you disagree with me about."
So just to be clear here, you think in absolutely no way is Jerry criticising (either implicitly or explicitly) the makers of the Bejewelled board game?
I'm not angry with or annoyed at Jerry by the by. In a way I don't have a horse in this race because I am not generally offended by how women are depicted in games, but likewise if they stopped depicting women that way I wouldn't feel like we're losing something from gaming either. I do think there is a disparity in Jerry's two opinions, but I don't think he's a hypocrite or a horrible person and it isn't some huge horrible disparity. I DO think he's a intelligent person and I do wonder, when confronted with the comparison what his opinion would be.
And for the record I don't think we should be censoring people or telling people to stop producing art. What saddens me isn't that images of women like those in Dragon's Crown exist but that they're so...acceptably mainstream. When I look at those images you know what I see? I see something similar to the art of Doug Winger (whom I heartily suggest you NOT google unless you're NOT at work. it is pornography) except without the nudity. I don't care that there are a certain subset of people who enjoy that sort of thing. But I don't think furries would argue that...that those kinds of images are for everyone. Or that if some people find those images offensive there must be something wrong with those people. I realize that the depictions of women in Dragon's Crown is an extreme example for mainstream video games. But it's just the most glaring example of something that is basically endemic. And it makes me sad that fellow gamers have to defend this stuff that is decidedly anti-women like it's somehow integral to the experience or even their identity as a gamer, or else why would it be defended so vigorously? If part of your self identity is needing to say abusive things (like what happened in the fighting games community) or that your games MUST include giant-boobed women in unnatural, sexual poses, well...I don't know, it's sad.
Wii: 4521 1146 5179 1333 Pearl: 3394 4642 8367 HG: 1849 3913 3132
That's right. How do you force someone to censor themselves anyway? Seems like that would be semantically impossible.
Bejeweled is not a game for girls and Dragon's Crown is not a game for guys. They're both games for people who enjoy them, and screw everybody who says you can't or shouldn't.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Put simply:
On one gender issue, Jerry equates a type of criticism with censorship.
Then on a similar gender issue, Jerry makes a very similar type of criticism to the one he equated with censorship.
In Jerry's own mind there seems to be a difference. I fail to see the difference myself. I would be very interested to have Jerry write in detail about what he thinks the difference is.
And you know, The Sauce, saying things like this
Has a chilling effect on conversation! And several people have reliably informed me that "chilling effect" is just basically the same thing as censorship, so shame on you.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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And now we all understand the Tale of Two Newsposts.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Er, not exactly. You and I know that neither of the criticisms constitute censorship, and even trying to equate the criticisms with censorship is silly. The word censorship itself is, ludicrously, often used in these kinds of conversations as a shorthand way to tell people to shut up.
The question is why Jerry doesn't understand the ridiculousness of crying "censor!" over one subject, then turning around and duplicating the work of the "censors" in almost the very same subject. The answer to that question is not to be found in a Simpson's meme.
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This is the last time Jerry accused anyone of censorship:
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I mean unless you want to argue the sarcasm in the first sentence doesn't exist, which is a thing to do I guess.
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How possible is it to censor yourself?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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Ask Jerry, I guess? I'm not sure what you're getting at.
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See, I think for a lot of people on a lot of topics, they don't want to make a law restricting behavior - they don't want to censor people. They want to get people to see how it is wrong and so, in learning why something is wrong, the person stops the behavior on their own.
Like, nobody wants to make a law saying you can't call people a retard, for example. They want to educate people that it is a hurtful thing to say so people will stop saying it on their own.
So in this case what he's railing against is the idea that people don't want to keep you from drawing giant-breasted women, they want you to understand why it is anti-women so you want to stop doing it. Which in this case for Tycho is an insidious kind of censorship.
Wii: 4521 1146 5179 1333 Pearl: 3394 4642 8367 HG: 1849 3913 3132
The answer is that is it not. You can control what you say, but it will always be your choice. Your freedom will not be impinged just because someone told you to stop talking. In a society free of censorship, the only thing people will have the power to censor is themselves. They are free to communicate, to criticize, and to criticize criticism ad infinitum because nobody should be able to force you to shut up. Nobody censors anybody. You were agreeing with Tycho the whole time.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
mare_imbrium explained it really well, if that helps you at all.
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It's weird that we let other people tell us what we should like and what we should hate. It's weird that people do this to each other, and it's weird that we let them do this. They're not censors, though - oh, no no. They're the people who tell you what to believe and what not to believe, and you believe them without question. When they tell you to censor yourself, you comply the best you can - even though that's impossible, because they understand more than you. And by some weird power, the people who cannot censor you in any sort of legal sense change your behavior, even though you are under no actual obligation to do so. It's not censorship, but it's weird.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
That said, there actually is a discussion that could be had about the marketing of Dragon's Crown, which would have been a great discussion to have if people weren't overly caught up in what was in the game. The actual piece of art that gets the most criticism was, in fact, a marketing piece done for Japanese game stores at the request of those game stores. What's interesting is that the artist had art in a relatively similar vein with the male characters, but none of the game stores wanted it. The artist has communicated a sense of annoyance about that (I believe it was in the news post's thread, but maybe in the DC thread instead).
That kind of thing actually would be a problem (the notion that only guys want to play beat-em-up video games), and I think Jerry would have been happy to make similar statements as the Bejewelled game if that was the conversation that was taking place. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
Instead what we got was a juvenile shaming game played with large amounts of snark, lots of smarmy image insertions, and Agree-button fist pumping, Broseph style. Thor help you if you had the least bit of a non-conforming voice, too.
The three dwarves thing? Uh, no, that image is nowhere near the level of sexualization of the Sorceress. It only even qualifies as barely erotic because of the wink. If he wanted to make that an image of how sexy the dwarf is, where is the bulging package, where is the over-the-shoulder-look-at-my-ass pose?
I'm a little appalled at the level of self-deception you're going to to "get back" at people who dared to disagree with you.
Edit: Also? No it wasn't just the promotional images that oversexualized the Sorceress. I've seen the video of this character's gameplay. She's very clearly overly sexualized in the game, too.
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the number one rule of agree club is don't talk about agree club. It cuts down on repetitive posting and helps people strive to a better standard, and the only way to exacerbate its group-think side effect is to rail against it. Just wear the pink shirt and be satisfied.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
On a very basic level, this is correct, but both show problematic approaches to the way the are marketed and designed as if they are. Bejeweled makes the assumption that girls like purple and that - for god knows what reason - they are also more likely to want to play a game about shifting around gems. Possibly this attitude is even linked to video games, where I have seen the equally damaging idea from many make gamers that girls don't play "real games". Every time a woman who is in the public eye says they play "Real games" plenty of people come out of the woodwork to say "Are you basically just a booth babe".
It isn't a huge stretch to imply that the same gender stereotypes that produce things like bejeweled being a "game for girls, because it is marketed with certain colors and is about gems" is not far away from video games. Video games are marketed "for men" in similar damaging ways, as was argued and you willfully ignored for most of the previous discussion. Dragon's Crown is not inherently "For men" and neither are video games in general: but video games are just as exclusionary as the people who say "Your son cannot wear a purple/pink shirt, because that's for girls". No a game is exclusionary because it routinely depicts women as agency devoid objects to be rescued, impossible proportioned supermodels or maybe just not at all.
Didn't you read the actual thread previously and notice how many said women were a great "feature", like something you add to the box as an afterthought. Did you, at any point, wonder how utterly absurd it would be for a video game or anyone to write being a man about a video game was a "feature". Before even remotely continuing, please think about this first and how it relates to the color discussion (which occurs at a much younger age). It is really the same concept.
And yet you wonder about if games are being implicitly made or directed at men in particular, trying to claim that is wrong? That is, by definition willfully missing the entire point of the argument and completely showing you didn't take the time, or effort, to understand any of the arguments made to you previously.
Of course if you agree that telling boys pink/purple is wrong, do you therefore disagree that it's okay for women to have constant body image issues caused by the media at large? Do you think it isn't okay to tell girls that "Games are for boys" and then think that is reinforced by the depiction of most women in games (if present at all), the abuse that women receive online for speaking in an online game with men (which is absolutely no different in its effect in being exclusionary and enforcing gender barriers to Jerry's son being bullied for wearing a pink shirt FYI).
Because from your arguments, I don't get a clear idea that you think either of these things aren't okay, or if you don't think they are okay (I hope), that they are actually major problems that the games industry needs to solve.
The thing we are bringing up here is that it is extremely weird, IMO, that Jerry correctly recognizes the exclusionary and wrong effect of telling boys (or girls) they should like something based on color or some design (moving around gems), while missing that video games - perhaps not deliberately but in effect - exclude women for a multitude of reasons given above that he ultimately defends as "art". That's the core point, because both of these things are wrong and inherently produce an exclusionary atmosphere or artificial gender barriers.
Edit: And I would point out that board games and toys also do a lot of similar things in their marketing, only at early years it's about colors or styles of games (pretty puzzle games for girls, war games for boys etc). Then once hormones kick in it becomes more about blowing things up and women with massive tits and strange proportions for boys, and then those same "gamers" implying that women only want to play "non-games" like - and I say this with all irony intended - bejeweled.
And yet you act so confused why there is a problem with rampant sexism in the games industry towards women and where it comes from. Have you ever considered it starts early and becomes increasingly reinforced over time?
But you don't get to decide that, and you don't get to decide what non-topical stuff hormones do to boys or whether girls should give some video games a pass because there are some bad apples in the community. You could very well be right, but you could also be wrong - passion came before acceptance in the entrance of women into art, books, movies, music, and now games, and I choose to believe that women won't quit until they've found their place, and it will be without the patronization of anyone - even themselves. A game is not a urinal, it's not a tampon, it is at its very base an entertaining shared toy meant to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, and everyone loves toys. Some games people may like more than others, but hating all games on principle? That is probably pretty rare.
How I feel about games is in at least a slight way under my control, and if you tell me I should feel bad about playing a game, I may or may not take up that sentiment, but whatever I do is entirely my choice. I at least have control over my own preferences should I wish it, and if that brings on exclusion, I have the capacity to weigh the benefits. If you want to try and change that, by all means; I believe we are on equal footing at least right now by how much we let each other affect our beliefs, so the only power we wield is by the leave of the other individual. That is the most comfortable way to argue.
You can judge people, men and women, for playing Bejeweled or Dragon's Crown, but that doesn't mean any of the judges or right or any of the judged should care. They do because they want to feel accepted, or for some other valid reason, but that doesn't come without a price.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
So unless you actually want to debate the substance of my post Paladin, I don't think there is anything further to gain from continuing to reply to you. You have not addressed anything I wrote and I won't let you drag the argument down irrelevant rabbit holes.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Nah man, not because Aegeri or anyone else says so. This conclusion comes 100% based on the content of your posts.
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