Forums » Smalltalk » Why Bioware Deserves My Money

The internet is made up of people, yes. Video games are made by people, and unless co-op or online options are available, have to do with only the consumer and nobody else on a personal level. The consumer likewise has the option to not buy a game they don't like--at least the internet has the argument going for it that it is useful in many spheres, including very important ones. Video games, on the other hand, are only entertainment, and nothing more. I don't think an argument about morality has any ground here anyway when video games (including Dragon Age) are notorious for their violence, war and murder, much of which can be instigated or performed by the player themselves, and all of which is condemned as terrible and awful in the real world--even though the games don't always go to lengths to make the point that it is.

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/4/47820/1081339-morrigan_large.jpeg

I (personally, again: I DID say this was my two cents, not what I think everyone should believe!) think the objectification of women is a worse issue than some people not being able to get it on with some hot video game character of their choice. It's hard to take a company seriously when they are valiantly defending the rights of everyone to do this in a way that is meant to be demeaning to the complaining customer while they have characters like Morrigan running around.

He's a man too busy for love. I'm sorry.

Morrigan is a romanceable character in Dragon Age: Origins, not DA2. From what I've heard from friends discussing this very same topic, the womenfolk in DA2 are not objectified half as badly.

Of course, that's not taking into account that, y'know, Morrigan as a character theoretically does what she wants. Maybe she wants to dress that way. That's her prerogative, just like it is for any woman.

For the record, I am also a female gamer who has no problem with Bayonetta. Sure, she was designed to be really, really appealing to the creator of the game, but her actions within the game itself are more important than what she dresses like or how she taunts her enemies. On the other hand, I do have a problem with Duke Nukem Forever, and will not be buying it when it comes out (although I'll probably play it at some point, just to mollify a friend of mine who's working on it). Speak with your dollars, and what-not. Still, Wizard, even if video games are just entertainment, they can still speak to people, and can still explore controversial subjects and present to the gamer why certain things are 'good' and 'bad'. Much like movies, really.

If a single thirteen year old kid becomes a little less homophobic or sexist because the games he or she plays are inclusive in nature, there has only been good done, in my eyes.

Morrigan would probably set someone on fire (or worse) if they tried anything she didn't like. That's something reflected in her dialogue with Oghren, the sleazy dwarf who tries to hit on her.

No matter how awesome a female character is, I'm afraid I can't find any respect for her if she goes out of her way to dress half-naked. It is intentionally provocative, it's demeaning, and it flavors perceptions of females in the same way you claim the game would flavor perceptions of homosexuality.

And anyway, if the romance options are as easy to avoid as I'm gleaning, Bioware's crusade for homosexuality is not nearly as evident as their half-naked ladies, and I don't think that does any good at all. (Also, the game is rated M. 13 year olds shouldn't be playing it anyway. :C)

But.. that's one character? I don't notice other characters being that half naked. I actually do like, as a woman, what she's wearing.

The other two main females in Dragon Age Origins aren't terribly sexual
But let's use an example if we're just talking clothing... Leliana:


Wynne: (Wynne is an older, kick ass mage who I primarily used as my mage in Origins, she's probably in her 60s to 70s.)



Awakenings:


Velanna is an older elf mage (by older her complexion is a bit wrinkled and puts her around 40 years of age for a human, I mean older ladies are sexy, right?) but lot's of cleavage. Okay, not too bad.


Mhairi, full plated armor. She's a knight.

Now, Isebella (isn't she throughout all of them?) Is very, very sexual.. but she has reason, there are also some very interesting relationship options with her in Origins (though I didn't get to try.)

Now, those are more main of the ladies or those that are playable, out of all of them two are highly sexualized. There may be more but time permitting that is what I have found.


edited for spelling errors.

Oh, wow, that's awesome! (8 Now, why can't more games have chicks like that?

With this line of thought Isebela is too sexual, she wears a low cut shirt, has a sultry voice, doesn't really wear pants.. more like stockings/loin cloth. Isebela's character is supposed to be alluring and sexual, I'd say it is a part of who she is.
I fully understand your line of thinking but I think that it sort of falls.. flat when talking about Dragon Age.

edit again; What I am getting at, you may have an issue with one character but you can't say DA is completely like that.. look at the wide variety of female characters. The fact they have older female characters, Flemeth and Wynne are two examples. That's what I love is that variety of your companions.

Yes! Leliana!

If every female character in Dragonage was scantly glad, then maybe I'd believe that they were treating women as objects but that's not the case as Dylan has demonstrated. I always felt that Morrigan dressed that way because she wanted to.

Personally, though I'm sure this also applies to other people, I probably wouldn't respect someone who presents themselves with no dignity like that if I met them in real life--in fact, I'd likely steer clear of them, too. Why is Dragon Age different? I'm confused!

EDITED TO ADDRESS OTHER EDIT: Oh, I see what you're trying to say.

Ahhh... but then that brings in a whole, and utterly different, line of thought to this thread. Personal, perhaps moral, beliefs.
This also brings in the 'judging a book by it's cover.' Now getting back to video games... the same thing with characters... because Morrigan may look like a floozy doesn't mean she is. Like darth says, Morrigan does it because she wants to. She's hard nosed, but she isn't an intentionally sexual character in behaviour like Isebela. Hinting at sex or doing the naughty. You can't force her do anything... and that's pretty sexy if I say so myself.

(I just want to make a note, I really do enjoy this discussion. I certainly believe that females, and female sexuality, is an issue in most video games.)

No dignity? What the hell, dude? If that's not a seriously demeaning line of thinking in and of itself, I don't know what is.

I'm going to try and couch this language so it doesn't cross over RPR's lovely ratings guidelines, but do forgive me, o mods, if I fail.

A girl can dress however the heck she wants. She can dress in a highly sexualized way, if she wants. Girls are allowed to have sex, and allowed to find sex fun, and doing any amount of the above does not mean she has 'no dignity' or is a s***. There is nothing wrong with living one's life the way they want to live it.

You may find reading this helpful as to understanding why. Warnings for discussions of mature topics and repeated s-words (but not the s-word you may be thinking of - man, why are there so many s-words?).

Looking like something does a lot to give off an impression, no matter who you might actually be. Characters like Morrigan just contribute to the throngs of oversexualized females in the video gaming industry that young men are perpetually exposed to--and a lot of us are more concerned with the boobies than the personalities of these females, which isn't to be unexpected, given that probably 90% of these characters don't even HAVE solid personalities.

I guess the point I've been trying to make is that the problem is still being contributed to, even by good games like Dragon Age. Those three or four modest chicks don't balance out the game's less-so ones and the constant perpetuation of females as sexual objects that is prevalent in not only other video games, but also in movies, books, and the unfortunate opinions of people who have come to believe that females are, and should be, like what they see in fiction.

On the other hand (and going back to the main point, which I really deviated from, sorry!), there is no mass abundance of easily-accessible media that gives the same lesser impression of homosexuals. Movies, books and video games don't go out of their way to objectify gays for the appeal of their fanbase (unless it's yaoi or something, but let's not go into that).

People praising a rebuttal delivered by a company to a single fellow who was disgruntled because something he didn't like was in his game seems so shallow and dull and flat when there's larger issues in the industry (and society, alas) that are absolutely not being addressed at all.

Edit for Dragonfire!: I'm sorry if I offended you with my wording--it wasn't my intention. Really, though, what IS dignity? How can you genuinely have dignity when you are going out of your way to make people think of you as something they want? You're free to live your life, certainly! I would never argue against that. But do you have to do it in a way that compromises others' opinions of you? Can't you do the same thing while maintaining that others still have respect for you as a person, and not just as someone who is sexily playing dominant? You can definitely dress however you want, but you can't affect how other people will think of you if you do. That's just how it is, and unfortunately we have to conform to this to at least some degree.

I realize where you're coming from Dragonfire, and putting personal beliefs aside I think we need to reiterate that everyone has their own opinion. It might be best if we want to discussing feminism and modern day, real life female sexuality to do so in another thread and try to keep this post at least to the original topic if possible. Which is well.. relationship options and perhaps sexual orientation and open-mindness in video games. (I realize the two tie in together.)

Unless this is becoming a too heated topic for people.

I'm going to ask that this thread not be turned into a discussion of moral beliefs, what is dignity, what is appropriate for female sexuality in real life or in a video game.
I think it would be more appropriate for this topic to be discussed in an adult thread if we do get one or in an adult RPR group, seeing as the forums I think are best rated as PG and that sort of topic could easily get out of hand.

Sure thing. I didn't intend for the discussion to get as out of hand as it did. I was just confused by what I saw, and then an argument began!

Rrrgh. Apologies. As a feminist, that kind of thinking just really, really bothers me. People are allowed opinions, sure, but opinions can be harmful. Hence, discussion, and attempting to let the other side see that.

I know the above post was off-topic - let's see if I can keep this one moreso on.

You are right, Wizard, in that the post by Gaider should not be something that we should be celebrating. It would be totally awesome, believe you me, if we saw things like that every day from game designers and directors and writers. The thing, though, is that we don't.

This is probably the first time I've ever even seen someone from the 'creative' side of the gaming community acknowledge that people other than straight men/boys play 'mainstream' video games. (It's been acknowledged for years that women are a huge, majority component in the 'casual' games market, playing things like The Sims and Bejeweled, but this has always been looked down upon by those in the 'mainstream' market - we don't play 'real' games, you know.) It's the first time I've seen someone acknowledge that maybe people who aren't straight men/boys might like to be recognized, might like to be able to see a part of themselves in a game. We have a ton of games with straight men as the heroes. Being able to play as a gay or bisexual (or heck, even asexual) man, or a woman of any of the above flavours, is something (sadly) new, and it is amazing.

The response by Gaider is such a small thing, but in another sense, it's a huge thing. Bioware could've ignored it. They could've said nothing. They could've said 'oh, sorry about that, blokes, we didn't mean to alienate you', forgetting that they've been alienating some of us since the beginning of time. Gaider didn't, though, and for that, I'm really impressed (even if I shouldn't be).

Besides - you can't stop society's problems all in one stroke. Baby steps, no matter how small they might seem, are important, too.

...If it weren't obvious, this is a topic I can get kind of passionate about, hehe.

Of course! The applause just seemed so disproportionate. There's plenty of organizations and advertisements and people and companies and schools and jut about anything else you can think of that all champion homosexuality all over the place, but no attention is paid to other issues, several of which video games actually contribute to. Not allowing a PC to have homosexual partners in a video game is nowhere near the worst thing the industry has ever done. People acting like some great justice has been delivered is irksome to me. Everyone else is expressing their feelings on the subject, am I not allowed to express mine?

Everyone's opinion conflicts with someone else's, so I'm not sure how this could possibly be true--unless we are talking about a sensitivity issue, in which case someone who gets offended by opinions probably should not participate in an exchange of them.

How a character dresses has nothing to do with whether they are objectified by the work in which they exist. It is the treatment of the character by the work which determines that.

The reason clothing in video games has become short-hand for objectification is because in most games, there IS no treatment of characters - they aren't presented as characters at all, so their clothing is the only thing we have to go off of.

In this case however, we must look at how Morrigan (as this was the example presented) is treated by the work. Is she presented as a fully-developed character who happens to have a sense of fashion that you disagree with? Or is she presented as a silent, passive paper doll for the audience to project their fantasies on to?

These aren't rhetorical questions. I haven't played the game, so I can't have an opinion on this yet.

Also, let me reiterate: it doesn't matter if there are "more important" things to worry about. Ignoring the fact that no agreed-upon metric exists by which we can make such an evaluation, if we used this reasoning all the time, nothing would get fixed. There will always be a "more important" problem to worry about. This is something that affects us, or we care about it anyway, so the conversation is valid and warranted.

Ladies in skimpy clothing aren't going anywhere, there will be plenty of time to talk about that if we want to.

Also if the mods direct us to a different thread for this, I'll be happy to follow.