Anita Sarkeesian presents: Eight things developers can do to make games less shitty for women.

Eight pages? We have a lot further to go than that if we want to beat the Skittles thread.

Imagine that.

Games can be art. However big budget titles often up as focus-group driven compromises where any original artistic vision has been wiped away by the hands of a hundred middle managers trying to justify their paychecks.

I have a former colleague who is now a character artist at one of the worlds biggest developers/publishers. He retold a story of how while working on a franchise with selectable player characters he requested to work on a female version of the main character.

He was immediately knocked back and told there wasn't the time to waste on that, then watched as countless hours were spent in the following weeks by character artists making sure that a female NPC had boobs that jiggled just right.

The thing I take away from these sorts of suggestions isn't that artists need to be restrained, that shackles should be put onto creators lest they stray outside the bounds of political correctness, but rather that content creators should stop from time to time and look at their assumptions. Half of gaming audience is female, yet game developers area largely male and the default position is to assume players will be too, with any nod towards female players treated as a grudging concession to be made if there is spare time.

The GTA series has many legitimate criticisms levelled at it, but at least it is self aware. Whether or not people agree with the world it presents, it is the execution of a specific artistic vision, a knowingly stylised world. The problem is games that don't know, and the developers that treat over-sexualisation and dismissive mid-representation as the default norm.

Yeah, gonna need specifics about this "friend" and what he worked on. IF he actually exists.

And do I really need point out how you guys dismiss anecdotal evidence without even considering it on other topics?

Nobody owes you shit, cupcake.

Nope, details like that get around too easily and it's not my place.

It's up to you if you don't want to believe the story (and most of what I said doesn't even rely on it) but it matches up with attitudes I saw from some people in my time working in console game development.

The reply I expected, but I will dismiss it as made up bullshit...just like you do to anecdotal evidence that doesn't fit your opinion.

EDIT: I'll also add, that we've been giving you tons of anecdotal evidence in these threads which you've completely ignored. Now you conveniently have this "friend", and your time in console development. Yeah that's amazingly hypocritical and convenient.

I don't see what's hypocritical. I just shared something which I freely admitted was an anecdote, and which can be easily ignored without affecting the rest of the post. Some people like getting insight from people who've had first hand experience in an area, if you don't that's fine. If you have a story from yourself or someone you know that I missed please reshare it though, I'd like to read it.

Wait, people make up anecdotes? How dishonest is that?

People lie on the internet ??

Some people do, but assuming everyone does is paranoid and silly. So you have to consider a couple of things. What do you know about the poster relating the information? Have you ever known Bailey to be anything other than an honest, reasonable poster? (I know you’d consider him a Librul, but since he’s not American, maybe you can remove that filter for a moment.)

Second, there’s the content of the information he’s conveying. It’s detailed and informative. If there’s anything about the information itself you doubt, you should be able to refute it. Your emotional reaction to it doesn’t count as proof.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, the essential fact of video games is that they're simply a form of escape. I want my video game characters to be attractive (female or male), just like 99% of famous Hollywood actors. It's fantasy, folks. If I want to see fat ugly people I'll visit my local Wal-Mart.

I can't speak to the sexism of the video game developer community itself, but my comments have nothing to do with that and everything to do with consumer demand. If Miranda was a zit-faced witch and Sheperd was an obese bastard with hair growing in all the wrong places, do you really think the Mass Effect games would be so popular regardless of how good the gameplay was?

Entertainment is about fantasy and escapism. Period. Full stop. We don't play video games or watch movies or listen to music just to see the real world. We do those things to get away from the real world.

Do MMPORPGs let you customize your appearance? I ask because people escape in different kinds of ways.

Fair question and I would assume so, although I don't play those type of games.

EDIT: You also raise an interesting point. If MMPORPGs do allow people to customize their appearance, it would be interesting to do a study as to how attractive people make their avatars vs. their real-life appearance.

Actually, assuming everyone is telling the truth is ignorant and foolhardy. Given that study after study has shown that the primary usages of the internet are pornography, social networking and shopping -- all of which are completely exploited by organized crime, identity thieves, terrorists, child predators, Star Trek authors and the NSA -- the only rationale starting point is to assume that you are either being lied to or scammed.

There are generally 3 groups in MMOs

Those who will make their character attractive and the same sex.

Males who will play as a female and make her as sexy as possible.

Idiots who try to be funny by making their characters as ugly as possible.

Irrelevant, since no one's doing that.

Illogical.

Your assumption? Absolutely. Does gaming result in binary-think or is it innate?

Don't fall for their Sarah Palin crap. Plenty of you real Americans out there who don't agree with her, plenty of us gamers who think nothing like them.

GTA-V has fat chics in the game. So there at least partly, she has her desire to have normal looking people in a game. And has she ever played Star Trek Online? You can make your character look however you want, but anytime I've played. I have never seen someone's character who if female, is fat or has small tits. Every female character in game, that is not a non-playable character has always been big titted and shapely. So I would venture to guess that in itself would say what type of characters players seem to prefer.

Most of the time it doesn't matter, so it's easier to assume people are being truthful.

It's also not the either/or decision WAB seems to be suggesting.

People making wild, unsubstatiated claims can pretty much be dismissed, but Bailey's post contained enough detail to be credible - in addition to Bailey himself being among the saner people here.

I'm sure Bailey is quite proud of himself for getting me to believe him.

The fact that I included "Star Trek authors" in the post would be have been the first clue that I was being hyperbolic. But that kind of subtlety seems to escape the old hag.

No matter what "side", of this bullshit you're on, it comes down to this.

Are triple-A games going to be the same in 10 years?
Yep.
Yep, they are.
Money always wins.

So, who gives a shit?

Imagine how hard we'd laugh today at anyone who was stupid enough to say that ten years ago.

IOW, if I ignored the "subtle" troll, you'd just go full Sokar. Got it.