and when you've got people like poop, earlier on in the thread saying her cause is more important, that's actually disgusting. what happened to the guy is literally life shattering, his entire life, and future is ruined...
i've never known anybody's life to be affected by a movie or game like that, except maybe an extreme case of phobias... like how my girlfriend is terrified of clowns and wasn't expecting them to make a surprise appearance in zombieland...
i dunno. maybe this entire thing just strikes me as extremely trivial when you compare it to things which are much much worse but get almost no support at all.
Both sides have it right. In one case it's a personal tragedy, in the other it's a cultural one (though her videos not so much). And truth be told, false rape accusations are related to gender roles in culture as they stand right now, just as much as rape is.
you're right, i don't care enough. i think it's stupid that a trivial cause is being backed over a serious one. but i don't care enough to do anything about it.
The main difference is that his story is a rare tragedy, whereas sexism in media is a societal wide problem. Why does his story need wider telling if he´s already a free man now? The obvious conclusion to draw by putting them together is that one thinks false rape accusations is a huge problem, when the opposite is actually the case, rape and sexual assault cases *not* being taken seriously.
Plus, One can choose to believe that the huge amount of sexual assault in western society is entirely divorced from the way women are depicted in popular media, but I personally think they are closely connected. (and you will find most feminists to agree). Rape is a serious issue and if you do believe that it's occurrence is directly correlated to harmful tropes in media, like many of Anita's backers most likely do, then you are backing a serious cause in your opinion.
and when you've got people like poop, earlier on in the thread saying her cause is more important, that's actually disgusting. what happened to the guy is literally life shattering, his entire life, and future is ruined...
That doesn't make her cause any less good, feminism shouldn't take the punishment for the mistake of every feminist out there, much like how males shouldn't take the punishment for every bad male out there.
What happened to this guy is horrible, false accusations of rape DOES happen, but one has to take into account that all over the world a ton of shitty things happen to females on a whole other level of urgency.
I could sit here as a vegetarian an argue that everyones cause is a shitty one because they're possibly not vegetarian and no supporters of animal rights, but that is not getting anyone anywhere.
Everyone chooses to support something, in this case sarkeesian has got a ton of support, and there's nothing wrong with that, the foul response of the internet has if anything shown that her cause is needed.
It's fine criticizing her in valid ways, such as when she in some pretend future runs away with all her money. But until then it should be real things, such as topics you might disagree with.
The main difference is that his story is a rare tragedy, whereas sexism in media is a societal wide problem. Why does his story need wider telling if he´s already a free man now? The obvious conclusion to draw by putting them together is that one thinks false rape accusations is a huge problem, when the opposite is actually the case, rape and sexual assault cases *not* being taken seriously.
Probably because as how we work with these kind of things we tend to see-saw the issue, when we're on one side we belittle one problem, and when we're back on the other side we do the opposite.
rape and sexual assault are serious things, an accusation is also a serious thing, and while every accusation should be taken seriously all the way, we do have to remember that false accusations are not unheard of.
In my full opinion: there's never going to be a shortage of causes, and none is less important.
after looking through a lot of her stuff, i have to say she is not objective at all and is not even trying to be.
first i thought the comparison on the picture above are false, but after watching almost all of her videos, i have to admit it is true (except for her doing nothing and getting money for it).
she totaly overanalyzes everything, focused on womens roles, totaly disconnected from the grand picture.
often her research is flawed, and as i said, she tends to pick out only the parts that fit her picture, ignoring the rest of the subject she analyzes.
also i dissagree on the connection between pop culture and rape.
there has always been rape. i gues we are in an all time low in human history, only thing is that today it is beeing recordet globaly, and there are statistics so that you can see the grand scale of it.
the only reason rape is so prevalent in western culture, is because we have, and we are honest about the statistics. herd about mass rapings in civil wars in africa? that must be related to western mass media!
for the falsely accused dude: its just bad luck. there have been people sued for millions of dollars in the US, for filesharing. their life is trashed too.
I'd like to point out again that Anita's kickstarter's goal was only $6000. People kept donating after it reached it's goal. She never asked for all that money. And, due to the way Kickstarter works, she may be obligated to use the money for the original purpose that it was intended for (the videos) because that's what people agreed to donate money for. I don't think she can just change the terms and start donating it all to charity. If she can, great but she might not have that option.
I support whatever doesn't limit the range of expression in media. I want politically correct depictions just as much as I want incorrect ones. I want more, not less. If this person is intent on creating something that a group of people find appealing and support, then that's great, and there's no reason to ostracize her for it.
My opinion on this matter is: extreme objectification doesn't exclude deep characterization. It's not binary.
you cannot make the people asking for money responsible for how backers give money. You might as well question the "extra" 2.9 million$ double fine made for their adventure project over other projects, say social/medical help...
The way you made this image, you suggest that she took the money away from the others, and people had only the choice of those two where to put their money. Your choice of images is also suggestive, not sure if you intended that.
Anyway it's interesting what kind of emotions her work sets free. I would agree with shallowness being biased in favor of males, just look at E3 Someone surely made articles how trope loaden both male and female are in the past, probably not much of an uproar.
Her work did spark discussion which is always a good thing, gets people to think and express.
You might wonder why this topic causes such emotions and interest, and others don't (and it's out of her control how it spread on the web)
I didn't make the image, someone else did.
Anyway, the thing is, we know exactly what doublefine is going to do with that money. We know game development is expensive, and they were upfront about what the money is going towards. She's an entirely different story. I can see those millions of dollars going into hiring more artists, yada yada yada to make the game more awesome. But what can she possibly use all that extra money on? That's why I really, really hope she donates it to charity or something, because there's no way she needs 160k to make 5 (was it 5?) youtube videos.
she totaly overanalyzes everything, focused on womens roles, totaly disconnected from the grand picture.
often her research is flawed, and as i said, she tends to pick out only the parts that fit her picture, ignoring the rest of the subject she analyzes.
This was my problem with her as well. A good example is one of her videos where she was analyzing movies, trying to prove that hollywood is "dominated by males". She went from movie to movie, "Gladiator... about a man...", etc. Then she gets to Silence of the Lambs. You guys have seen that movie, you know its main character is Jodie Foster, a woman, right? Well, when she got to that movie, she claimed that, "Silence of the Lambs, it's about a man that eats people." See what she did there? She bends the truth, changing it up to fit her agenda.
Hypothetically, if she were to cover Fringe in that video, using that logic, she would have said, "Fringe, it's about a male mad scientist." (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, the main character is a female, Olivia Dunham) You can do this for nearly any movie or TV show. It makes me question how many other times she's lied and distorted the truth.
its pretty apalling that aspiring professional artists would suggest profiting for videos is unfair or ubscrupulous
If she were upfront about that and said from the beginning that the kickstarter is to be paid for her work, then we'd be having a different discussion.
Again and again - I would encourage everybody to look closely at the Kickstarter guidelines. I feel like "virtual" projects (ie : the ones costing nothing to duplicate) are not complying to them, and both this and the DoubleFine project just found a loophole (even tho it wasn't their intention!).
Now of course, this is beneficial to both KS (=Amazon) and the project creators but it could very well burst soon. And by the way : KS founding is also not supposed to be used to pay for living expenses.
Sure, no one can prevent people from donating. But it could be argued that she could have posted a project update asking for people to simply stop backing once her original 6k was reached. More money does not equal a better product.
one of the fundamental costs of a production is paying staff. you dont think those 1 man indie game teams take a salary if they make enough?
If it's true that a series of YouTube videos of her sitting in a chair over analyzing video-games costs over 150 grand in production costs, then I sincerely apologize.
Sure, no one can prevent people from donating. But it could be argued that she could have posted a project update asking for people to simply stop backing once her original 6k was reached. More money does not equal a better product.
I looked further into it, and the opposite actually happened... Once she surpassed her 6k goal, she posted updates encouraging people to keep donating.
Honestly, if there's one thing that seriously grinds my gears, it's when people take advantage of others, and that's exactly what I feel she's doing. If it turns out she uses all of this money for something good, then I will come back here and apologize. But I don't think that will be the case. She's already responded to criticism of "What is she going to do with all that money?" by expanding the amount of YouTube videos she's going to make with it from 5 to 12. There's NO WAY she needs over $150,000 to make 12 YouTube videos of her sitting there talking. She's pocketing most of that money, and tons of people got duped.
Well, I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt - I don't think she was out to dupe people intentionally. But in the end, if she does end up being stuck and not being able to donate to charity then she might be in trouble.
Also it's good to keep in mind that there is no such thing as free money - at some point she will have to fill in her tax papers and 150k appearing out of nowhere will certainly be problematic.
Well, I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt - I don't think she was out to dupe people intentionally. But in the end, if she does end up being stuck and not being able to donate to charity then she might be in trouble.
Also it's good to keep in mind that there is no such thing as free money - at some point she will have to fill in her tax papers and 150k appearing out of nowhere will certainly be problematic.
I don't think it was her intention from the beginning to dupe anybody. But once the money started rolling in so fast, more than she ever dreamed of getting, she saw an opportunity.
So originally planned 5 videos, with a target goal of 6k. That's 5 videos valued at 1,200 each.
After she got about 154k more in donations, she promised to "up the production quality", which is vague as hell, and increased the number of videos from 5 to 12. That's 7 new videos, valued at 22,000 each, if she splits up the extra money she got evenly between them. Keep in mind these are YouTube videos about 5-10 minutes in length. I'm trying to come up with scenarios in my head of how she could possibly spend that much money per video in that way.
I'm ready to give her the benefit of the doubt, I'm waiting for her to make an announcement that she's going to donate the extra money she doesn't need to help promote gender equality, or to something else entirely, there's tons of charities out there, pick one. The people who donated to her kickstarter donated because they believe in promoting gender equality, and they believed that by donating to that cause, they could help further that goal. All of that money should be going toward that goal, and if she wanted to get paid for her work, she should have been upfront about it. I think she owes it to the people who donated to be exact in what she's spending all of that money on.
Yup, I totally agree and that is the core of the issue.
Problem is, there might be many people out there who have no clue that there is no such thing as a magic "better production quality" button and truly believe that more money = better stuff. I have the feeling that a majority of her backers are totally fine with her getting free money just because "she deserves it for what she did/does." Super weird.
She isn't allowed to donate any money to charity, by Kickstarter guidelines. She really has to either put all that money into her videos, or decline a part of the backings.
Personally I'm hoping for $160,000 worth of videos, with special effects and celebrity voice-overs and Sarkeesian wearing golden designer outfits.
The obvious conclusion to draw by putting them together is that one thinks false rape accusations is a huge problem, when the opposite is actually the case, rape and sexual assault cases *not* being taken seriously.
Supporting evidence? I've seen cop shows where women who commited driving offences swore up and down in front of a camera in a police station that the cop in question felt them up, yet the onboard vehicle camera that they didn't know about proved them to be complete liars... it's a terrifying idea for a man that there are women out there that will attempt to destroy your life on a whim like that. I would say false rape accusations are more widespread than cops ignoring rape claims.
She isn't allowed to donate any money to charity, by Kickstarter guidelines. She really has to either put all that money into her videos, or decline a part of the backings.
Personally I'm hoping for $160,000 worth of videos, with special effects and celebrity voice-overs and Sarkeesian wearing golden designer outfits.
With that much money she could make a small indy game that represented the things she'd like to see designers doing Ala I'm Ok
Supporting evidence? I've seen cop shows where women who commited driving offences swore up and down in front of a camera in a police station that the cop in question felt them up, yet the onboard vehicle camera that they didn't know about proved them to be complete liars... it's a terrifying idea for a man that there are women out there that will attempt to destroy your life on a whim like that. I would say false rape accusations are more widespread than cops ignoring rape claims.
What's way more terrifying than being falsely accused of rape, is being actually raped, which is something women have to deal with every single day of their lives in practically every country on earth. Ask the women in your lives if they ever worry about being sexually assaulted.
You *can* technically just run into a court and accuse someone of raping you,but the chance of them actually getting put in jail for doing it is astronomically low without an external force at play (like racism). So first: medical examination, which provides most of your evidence. You MUST do that in order to get treatment at a trauma or rape crisis center (and in many US states, you must pay for this rape-test-kit yourself). If you decline for any reason you lose most of your evidence and you throw your story into question, even if it's because you are traumatized and don't want to be touched on your genitals/anus/etc by a stranger after what's happened. Then you file charges. This is not as easy as it sounds. You need to provide physical evidence, details, name and places they might be. That's before you even get to court, there you will have your accusation ripped apart, your sexual history dug into, your story called into question. Oh and that's if you were conscious, black out drunk? choked out? hit over the head? too bad. no suspect, no charges.
Not to mention that less than 8% of accusations of rape are found to be false in a court of law, whereas something like 32% of false insurance claims are fake. Combined with the FBI's own reports that sexual assault is hugely under-reported in the US (and similar figures of under-reportage can be found for the UK and most countries).
On top of that, I'm not sure television or sensationalist shows like Cops are a good source of knowledge for forming an opinion on such an issue.
If it's true that a series of YouTube videos of her sitting in a chair over analyzing video-games costs over 150 grand in production costs, then I sincerely apologize.
She gets to decide her host is worth 90k of salary a year if she so chooses. TV hosts make 10 times that. When you fund a project, you're also funding the project's employees, even if they're self-employed.
If you dont like that, dont fund her -- I didn't. This is part of the fundamental nature of kickstarters: When a project asks for investors, it is assumed part of that money is paying the creator and their employees a salary unless stated otherwise. In kickstarter or in a boardroom or in a bank. Whatever arbitrary salary you pick is part of production costs, so long as you make your return to your investor: In the funder's contract with her, her return is a short series of videos. This is the nature of all investments. She has the right to do this as much as you have the right to charge for your art. If people want to pay her for her skills, she gets to get paid for her skills.
I also personally wouldnt fund an indie developer unless i'm willing to accept that part of my money might be a salary paid directly to whoever is running the kickstarter -- hence no money to shit like Ground Branch and similar vaporware. If derek yu or cactus some other underpaid badass who i deeply admire asked for a kickstarter i'd be GLAD to help him write a 160k yearly bonus check to himself.
Being practical for a sec Ben, what would you say would be the reccomended course of action for the average character artist out there ? How can we make some real impact?
Haz! I know you asked ben, but since im the other person championing here, imo:
If you're worried about how your portray women, just aspire to do a better job. Not implying you're doing a bad job, but portrayal of sexes/races is something a lot of people kindof brush aside, and making an effort goes a long way! Talk to a wider variety of people about your art, aim for higher goals of characterization instead of higher levels of technical skill -- Try and design your chicks as people more, objects less. You're a good enough artist to squeeze a TON of personality into a character, even if she's half naked -- so work on doing that.
Being practical for a sec Ben, what would you say would be the reccomended course of action for the average character artist out there ? How can we make some real impact?
Exactly what I kept thinking. The only thing I can think of is to "un-sexy" our women and then I wonder will that really work?
It's been said many times here that we as unfortunate lowly men, don't bloody get it and so the only thing we agree will enact change is more women in the industry with the confidence to tell us what's what. Because there is no rules, no guide, no fine line. One second we could be doing it 'right' and another we won't. Hell we've had immensely more time to do it in movies and books and I gotta say we haven't fixed it there yet either.
On this lady's videos, I agree with Aigik for one reason only:
What she says she's going to do with here videos/exploration is exactly what so many men and women are doing for their PHD's in social/media/games/womens studies - for FREE. Not to mention that while she is tackling the specific topic of women in media, she will unfortunately keep up a very one-sided debate. Men would need to feel much more included in this struggle for equality to feel that her expression of the problem with women's treatment is not just another angry feminist's rant.
So we can't have 'creepy sexualised shells'? They don't exist? Not even in a fantasy world filled with colourful characters and a universal story?
SO next time we think it's pretty neat to make a character like that, just don't? I believe they can exist and be deep entertaining characters for anybody with the ability to suspend disbelief. Hell if I'm looking to be offended I'd say a realistic tough chick like Ruby would have no need to show off her midriff in the midst of battle.
So we can't have 'creepy sexualised shells'? They don't exist? Not even in a fantasy world filled with colourful characters and a universal story?
Where does this black and white nonsense logic come from? Of course you can have whatever, all kinds of people exist. If you ask the question: 'how do i change perception of ____', the answer is 'make MORE positive examples pf ____'. Doesnt mean the negative examples have to ALL go away -- we have plenty of negative male figures in games and comics and still manage to come across as ADORING of men overall.
I'm glad somebody decided to address sexism in a 3d art message board. Anyways lets move on and tackle some other pressing issues that may have relevance in on polycount. This will be a non-exhaustive list:
1. The upcoming 2012 presidential election
2. The economic crisis in Europe and its ancilliary effect on game development.
3. The potential hazards one faces in a studio environment, including sexual harassment.
4. Is the risk for substance abuse higher among character artists than environment artists.
5. Possible psychological ramifications of modeling the female form over long periods of time.
6. Does one's sexual orientation effect how they model the male and female form.
7. How are 3d artists holding up in Syria.
8. What opportunities exists in North Korea for outsourcing content development.
Again non-exhaustive list. I feel the potential for 3d artists to positively effect the political landscape is huge. We just have to try!!
If the thread or concept is something you see as irrelevant or ridiculous, there's nothing really saying you need to post. Game art discussion shouldn't be limited solely to the mechanics of making models - it should include how it fits into a broader context, too.
I love Rubi Malone's design. she seemed somewhat like a real person and still bad ass. Somewhat.
I completely agree. Some of my favorite characters are females, and they're the ones that are more real. Characters like Ellen Ripley and Olivia Dunham. It's depressing that they're so rare.
What's way more terrifying than being falsely accused of rape, is being actually raped, which is something women have to deal with every single day of their lives in practically every country on earth. Ask the women in your lives if they ever worry about being sexually assaulted.
You say that like all women cower in fear, all day, every day in abject terror of being raped instead of living their lives normally.
Morality is such a flimsy thing, and to believe otherwise is delusional. People exist in a reality outside of your own, and to dictate a commonality between our shared realities is dangerous business when done under the guise of a morally absolute position in an ever flowing stream of consciousness. Maybe that's a bit too metaphysical, but I can't help but laugh when someone stands on high and preaches right from wrong, up from down, and good from bad; because these people spend everyday separating themselves, and ostracizing themselves from musings of other people's realities.
While this thread has had many a great point worth contemplating and reflecting on, I can't help but shake the distinct feeling a vocal minority has been trying to grind an axe.
You need to provide physical evidence, details, name and places they might be. That's before you even get to court, there you will have your accusation ripped apart, your sexual history dug into, your story called into question. Oh and that's if you were conscious, black out drunk? choked out? hit over the head? too bad. no suspect, no charges.
sounds like the concept of innocent until proven guilty which is one of the reasons why our justice system works as well as It does (I say that with as little snorting as possible)
Where does this black and white nonsense logic come from? Of course you can have whatever, all kinds of people exist. If you ask the question: 'how do i change perception of ____', the answer is 'make MORE positive examples pf ____'. Doesnt mean the negative examples have to ALL go away -- we have plenty of negative male figures in games and comics and still manage to come across as ADORING of men overall.
Sorry if it came out the wrong way, but my post was also meant to be pointing out that this is an issue built of grey areas including what is a 'positive example.' It just seems like a lot of the proponents are interested in boiling it down to such, where instead of artists simply choosing what is best, they are choosing between what will offend or not.
What's way more terrifying than being falsely accused of rape, is being actually raped, which is something women have to deal with every single day of their lives in practically every country on earth. Ask the women in your lives if they ever worry about being sexually assaulted.
There was a news-story recently about a young man who had fallen asleep while drunk out on a park bench and ended up getting raped here in sweden, this was a statistical anomaly though, but it tells us an important story:
You're correct with the fact that women will have to think twice before going somewhere alone and have to live with that fact for their entire lives, but as my wise wife will often say; young men tend to see themselves as immortal, often doing the stupid things like getting drunk and sleeping outside, and ending up robbed and often worse. Women run the risk of getting raped, men run the risk of getting beaten up, most sexual assaults on women happen in their own homes, at the hand of their own husband/boyfriend.
Men should worry just as women do, for their own sake.
You say that like all women cower in fear, all day, every day in abject terror of being raped instead of living their lives normally.
No, but I am paranoid every time I have to walk to my car alone near or after dark. I also feel threatened and disgusted every time I have to walk by a large group of men that gathers in the hallway in a place I frequent almost daily and make comments about me as I walk by. Every single woman I personally know has to deal with these kinds of fears and anxieties on a regular basis. It's part of normal life and it sucks.
It's also not gender specific, it's just reality. As a man, walking past groups of certain 'classes' (for lack of a better word) of other men alone can be equally intimidating, especially at night.
It's also not gender specific, it's just reality. As a man, walking past groups of certain 'classes' (for lack of a better word) of other men alone can be equally intimidating, especially at night.
It can be, but you're statistically less likely to walk past a group of men that are undressing you with their eyes and making comments about the process than a woman, that's quite a common reality for women, even worse depending on where you live.
It's also not gender specific, it's just reality. As a man, walking past groups of certain 'classes' (for lack of a better word) of other men alone can be equally intimidating, especially at night.
That's kind of a false equivalency. What I'm talking about is gender specific because men rarely feel intimidated walking past big groups of women in the same way. When women feel threatened by big groups of men who are catcalling or commenting about them, it's a totally different kind of intimidation. I'm not saying it's worse than the threat of physical violence, it's just totally different. In most cases it's not a fear that the men will attack you, but that they are shamelessly and vocally scrutinizing and objectifying you and there is nothing you can do about it. It dehumanizes you and makes you feel powerless. It's not even something you can retaliate against.
It can be, but you're statistically less likely to walk past a group of men that are undressing you with their eyes and making comments about the process than a woman, that's quite a common reality for women, even worse depending on where you live.
well you can turn this around a hundred times.
for example as a men you may end up beaten up by a couple of guys, just because they feel like it, or they like your jacket.
as a women getting raped... not so much. especialy in public places.
in my location there have been cases of men getting beaten to death for virtualy no reason.
What's way more terrifying than being falsely accused of rape, is being actually raped, which is something women have to deal with every single day of their lives in practically every country on earth. Ask the women in your lives if they ever worry about being sexually assaulted.
You *can* technically just run into a court and accuse someone of raping you,but the chance of them actually getting put in jail for doing it is astronomically low without an external force at play (like racism). So first: medical examination, which provides most of your evidence. You MUST do that in order to get treatment at a trauma or rape crisis center (and in many US states, you must pay for this rape-test-kit yourself). If you decline for any reason you lose most of your evidence and you throw your story into question, even if it's because you are traumatized and don't want to be touched on your genitals/anus/etc by a stranger after what's happened. Then you file charges. This is not as easy as it sounds. You need to provide physical evidence, details, name and places they might be. That's before you even get to court, there you will have your accusation ripped apart, your sexual history dug into, your story called into question. Oh and that's if you were conscious, black out drunk? choked out? hit over the head? too bad. no suspect, no charges.
Not to mention that less than 8% of accusations of rape are found to be false in a court of law, whereas something like 32% of false insurance claims are fake. Combined with the FBI's own reports that sexual assault is hugely under-reported in the US (and similar figures of under-reportage can be found for the UK and most countries).
On top of that, I'm not sure television or sensationalist shows like Cops are a good source of knowledge for forming an opinion on such an issue.
You act like women are the only people who are raped.
Exactly what I kept thinking. The only thing I can think of is to "un-sexy" our women and then I wonder will that really work?
Then you aren't thinking hard enough. The idea is not to change only their visual appearance from sex doll to butter-troll, it's to change their personality so that it exists *at all*. They should have names, preferences and a history in your mind. They should exist as real people so that your design decisions reflect that instead of just trying to think how to get the perfect ass shape and narrow sexy waist. By all means do that as well, but if you are imagining her *as a full person with agency and a personality* not only will your design be stronger, but it will help you avoid a ton of pitfalls in making shallow lifeless fucktoys.
You can see this mentioned over and over and over at conceptart.org, or in any story writing class. Even if you aren't going to mention the character's backstory, you should have thought about it. Thinking up a short bio like:
What did his/her parents do?
What was his/her childhood like?
What are some defining moments of his/her adolescence that helped form them into the person they are today?
What is his/her favorite color?
How does he/she make their living?
What culture were they raised in?
By answering these questions, your character/vehicle/weapon will subconsciously take on more authenticity, and can even help you decide design choices you might have had to randomly grab out of a hat without otherwise writing this short bio.
There are a ton of physically sexy female characters that feminists (and gay men!) adore, because they are full people with agency. The annoying ones are those that have had thought put *only* into their sexual appeal and physical presentation. The idea isn't to subtract, but to add to.
well you can turn this around a hundred times.
for example as a men you may end up beaten up by a couple of guys, just because they feel like it, or they like your jacket.
as a women getting raped... not so much. especialy in public places.
in my location there have been cases of men getting beaten to death for virtualy no reason.
This thread is starting to take a really weird "one-upping" path, lets try to get it back on topic. IE: related to games in some way. Polycount, not Rapecount.
Being raped, living in fear of raped, being falsely accused of rape, or living in fear of being falsely accused of rape - all are real and terrible issues. Putting them on a scale and weighing there "terribleness" against each other serves no purpose but to make everyone involved look like an insensitive jackass.
Then you aren't thinking hard enough. The idea is not to change only their visual appearance from sex doll to butter-troll, it's to change their personality so that it exists *at all*. They should have names, preferences and a history in your mind. They should exist as real people so that your design decisions reflect that instead of just trying to think how to get the perfect ass shape and narrow sexy waist. By all means do that as well, but if you are imagining her *as a full person with agency and a personality* not only will your design be stronger, but it will help you avoid a ton of pitfalls in making shallow lifeless fucktoys.
You can see this mentioned over and over and over at conceptart.org, or in any story writing class. Even if you aren't going to mention the character's backstory, you should have thought about it. Thinking up a short bio like:
What did his/her parents do?
What was his/her childhood like?
What are some defining moments of his/her adolescence that helped form them into the person they are today?
What is his/her favorite color?
How does he/she make their living?
What culture were they raised in?
By answering these questions, your character/vehicle/weapon will subconsciously take on more authenticity, and can even help you decide design choices you might have had to randomly grab out of a hat without otherwise writing this short bio.
There are a ton of physically sexy female characters that feminists (and gay men!) adore, because they are full people with agency. The annoying ones are those that have had thought put *only* into their sexual appeal and physical presentation. The idea isn't to subtract, but to add to.
This. I can think of a few female characters that are physically sexy, but that have more depth than just that (Doctor Who comes to mind, and even Battlestar Galactica in some regards, despite Anita bashing it). You can also simplify the questions to the 5 W's:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? If any of the answers to the questions aren't "just because", it's a good start.
Then you aren't thinking hard enough. The idea is not to change only their visual appearance from sex doll to butter-troll, it's to change their personality so that it exists *at all*. They should have names, preferences and a history in your mind. They should exist as real people so that your design decisions reflect that instead of just trying to think how to get the perfect ass shape and narrow sexy waist. By all means do that as well, but if you are imagining her *as a full person with agency and a personality* not only will your design be stronger, but it will help you avoid a ton of pitfalls in making shallow lifeless fucktoys.
You can see this mentioned over and over and over at conceptart.org, or in any story writing class. Even if you aren't going to mention the character's backstory, you should have thought about it. Thinking up a short bio like:
What did his/her parents do?
What was his/her childhood like?
What are some defining moments of his/her adolescence that helped form them into the person they are today?
What is his/her favorite color?
How does he/she make their living?
What culture were they raised in?
By answering these questions, your character/vehicle/weapon will subconsciously take on more authenticity, and can even help you decide design choices you might have had to randomly grab out of a hat without otherwise writing this short bio.
There are a ton of physically sexy female characters that feminists (and gay men!) adore, because they are full people with agency. The annoying ones are those that have had thought put *only* into their sexual appeal and physical presentation. The idea isn't to subtract, but to add to.
I just wanted to chime in here and say that this is an excellent response. You know I give you a lot of shit for posting in these political hot-button threads, so credit where credit is due.
I would love to see you expand on it even further, with various examples and imagery as how ones upbringing, or other specific preference would relate to the physical appearance of a character. I think this would be a great resource not only for overcoming cliches and tropes, but for character design in general. I'm not much of character artist myself so I wouldn't have much to contribute, but I'm sure you would get some good feedback from Pior, Haz, and the rest of the bad ass character artists here.
This thread is starting to take a really weird "one-upping" path, lets try to get it back on topic. IE: related to games in some way. Polycount, not Rapecount.
Being raped, living in fear of raped, being falsely accused of rape, or living in fear of being falsely accused of rape - all are real and terrible issues. Putting them on a scale and weighing there "terribleness" against each other serves no purpose but to make everyone involved look like an insensitive jackass.
You're right, it's too easy to get overly emotional about this and take personal offense/inadvertently attack each other. Sorry about contributing to the derail. I just felt like I should speak up from a female perspective since there aren't a lot of women in here. Let's segue back to video games.
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and when you've got people like poop, earlier on in the thread saying her cause is more important, that's actually disgusting. what happened to the guy is literally life shattering, his entire life, and future is ruined...
i've never known anybody's life to be affected by a movie or game like that, except maybe an extreme case of phobias... like how my girlfriend is terrified of clowns and wasn't expecting them to make a surprise appearance in zombieland...
i dunno. maybe this entire thing just strikes me as extremely trivial when you compare it to things which are much much worse but get almost no support at all.
How about you back his videos for $160,000, or just make your own videos? No? Well, obviously you don't care enough and it's not important. Right?
what's your point?
Plus, One can choose to believe that the huge amount of sexual assault in western society is entirely divorced from the way women are depicted in popular media, but I personally think they are closely connected. (and you will find most feminists to agree). Rape is a serious issue and if you do believe that it's occurrence is directly correlated to harmful tropes in media, like many of Anita's backers most likely do, then you are backing a serious cause in your opinion.
That doesn't make her cause any less good, feminism shouldn't take the punishment for the mistake of every feminist out there, much like how males shouldn't take the punishment for every bad male out there.
What happened to this guy is horrible, false accusations of rape DOES happen, but one has to take into account that all over the world a ton of shitty things happen to females on a whole other level of urgency.
I could sit here as a vegetarian an argue that everyones cause is a shitty one because they're possibly not vegetarian and no supporters of animal rights, but that is not getting anyone anywhere.
Everyone chooses to support something, in this case sarkeesian has got a ton of support, and there's nothing wrong with that, the foul response of the internet has if anything shown that her cause is needed.
It's fine criticizing her in valid ways, such as when she in some pretend future runs away with all her money. But until then it should be real things, such as topics you might disagree with.
Probably because as how we work with these kind of things we tend to see-saw the issue, when we're on one side we belittle one problem, and when we're back on the other side we do the opposite.
rape and sexual assault are serious things, an accusation is also a serious thing, and while every accusation should be taken seriously all the way, we do have to remember that false accusations are not unheard of.
In my full opinion: there's never going to be a shortage of causes, and none is less important.
first i thought the comparison on the picture above are false, but after watching almost all of her videos, i have to admit it is true (except for her doing nothing and getting money for it).
she totaly overanalyzes everything, focused on womens roles, totaly disconnected from the grand picture.
often her research is flawed, and as i said, she tends to pick out only the parts that fit her picture, ignoring the rest of the subject she analyzes.
also i dissagree on the connection between pop culture and rape.
there has always been rape. i gues we are in an all time low in human history, only thing is that today it is beeing recordet globaly, and there are statistics so that you can see the grand scale of it.
the only reason rape is so prevalent in western culture, is because we have, and we are honest about the statistics. herd about mass rapings in civil wars in africa? that must be related to western mass media!
for the falsely accused dude: its just bad luck. there have been people sued for millions of dollars in the US, for filesharing. their life is trashed too.
I support whatever doesn't limit the range of expression in media. I want politically correct depictions just as much as I want incorrect ones. I want more, not less. If this person is intent on creating something that a group of people find appealing and support, then that's great, and there's no reason to ostracize her for it.
My opinion on this matter is: extreme objectification doesn't exclude deep characterization. It's not binary.
I didn't make the image, someone else did.
Anyway, the thing is, we know exactly what doublefine is going to do with that money. We know game development is expensive, and they were upfront about what the money is going towards. She's an entirely different story. I can see those millions of dollars going into hiring more artists, yada yada yada to make the game more awesome. But what can she possibly use all that extra money on? That's why I really, really hope she donates it to charity or something, because there's no way she needs 160k to make 5 (was it 5?) youtube videos.
This was my problem with her as well. A good example is one of her videos where she was analyzing movies, trying to prove that hollywood is "dominated by males". She went from movie to movie, "Gladiator... about a man...", etc. Then she gets to Silence of the Lambs. You guys have seen that movie, you know its main character is Jodie Foster, a woman, right? Well, when she got to that movie, she claimed that, "Silence of the Lambs, it's about a man that eats people." See what she did there? She bends the truth, changing it up to fit her agenda.
Hypothetically, if she were to cover Fringe in that video, using that logic, she would have said, "Fringe, it's about a male mad scientist." (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, the main character is a female, Olivia Dunham) You can do this for nearly any movie or TV show. It makes me question how many other times she's lied and distorted the truth.
If she were upfront about that and said from the beginning that the kickstarter is to be paid for her work, then we'd be having a different discussion.
Now of course, this is beneficial to both KS (=Amazon) and the project creators but it could very well burst soon. And by the way : KS founding is also not supposed to be used to pay for living expenses.
Sure, no one can prevent people from donating. But it could be argued that she could have posted a project update asking for people to simply stop backing once her original 6k was reached. More money does not equal a better product.
If it's true that a series of YouTube videos of her sitting in a chair over analyzing video-games costs over 150 grand in production costs, then I sincerely apologize.
I looked further into it, and the opposite actually happened... Once she surpassed her 6k goal, she posted updates encouraging people to keep donating.
Honestly, if there's one thing that seriously grinds my gears, it's when people take advantage of others, and that's exactly what I feel she's doing. If it turns out she uses all of this money for something good, then I will come back here and apologize. But I don't think that will be the case. She's already responded to criticism of "What is she going to do with all that money?" by expanding the amount of YouTube videos she's going to make with it from 5 to 12. There's NO WAY she needs over $150,000 to make 12 YouTube videos of her sitting there talking. She's pocketing most of that money, and tons of people got duped.
Also it's good to keep in mind that there is no such thing as free money - at some point she will have to fill in her tax papers and 150k appearing out of nowhere will certainly be problematic.
I don't think it was her intention from the beginning to dupe anybody. But once the money started rolling in so fast, more than she ever dreamed of getting, she saw an opportunity.
So originally planned 5 videos, with a target goal of 6k. That's 5 videos valued at 1,200 each.
After she got about 154k more in donations, she promised to "up the production quality", which is vague as hell, and increased the number of videos from 5 to 12. That's 7 new videos, valued at 22,000 each, if she splits up the extra money she got evenly between them. Keep in mind these are YouTube videos about 5-10 minutes in length. I'm trying to come up with scenarios in my head of how she could possibly spend that much money per video in that way.
I'm ready to give her the benefit of the doubt, I'm waiting for her to make an announcement that she's going to donate the extra money she doesn't need to help promote gender equality, or to something else entirely, there's tons of charities out there, pick one. The people who donated to her kickstarter donated because they believe in promoting gender equality, and they believed that by donating to that cause, they could help further that goal. All of that money should be going toward that goal, and if she wanted to get paid for her work, she should have been upfront about it. I think she owes it to the people who donated to be exact in what she's spending all of that money on.
Problem is, there might be many people out there who have no clue that there is no such thing as a magic "better production quality" button and truly believe that more money = better stuff. I have the feeling that a majority of her backers are totally fine with her getting free money just because "she deserves it for what she did/does." Super weird.
Personally I'm hoping for $160,000 worth of videos, with special effects and celebrity voice-overs and Sarkeesian wearing golden designer outfits.
Supporting evidence? I've seen cop shows where women who commited driving offences swore up and down in front of a camera in a police station that the cop in question felt them up, yet the onboard vehicle camera that they didn't know about proved them to be complete liars... it's a terrifying idea for a man that there are women out there that will attempt to destroy your life on a whim like that. I would say false rape accusations are more widespread than cops ignoring rape claims.
What's way more terrifying than being falsely accused of rape, is being actually raped, which is something women have to deal with every single day of their lives in practically every country on earth. Ask the women in your lives if they ever worry about being sexually assaulted.
You *can* technically just run into a court and accuse someone of raping you,but the chance of them actually getting put in jail for doing it is astronomically low without an external force at play (like racism). So first: medical examination, which provides most of your evidence. You MUST do that in order to get treatment at a trauma or rape crisis center (and in many US states, you must pay for this rape-test-kit yourself). If you decline for any reason you lose most of your evidence and you throw your story into question, even if it's because you are traumatized and don't want to be touched on your genitals/anus/etc by a stranger after what's happened. Then you file charges. This is not as easy as it sounds. You need to provide physical evidence, details, name and places they might be. That's before you even get to court, there you will have your accusation ripped apart, your sexual history dug into, your story called into question. Oh and that's if you were conscious, black out drunk? choked out? hit over the head? too bad. no suspect, no charges.
Not to mention that less than 8% of accusations of rape are found to be false in a court of law, whereas something like 32% of false insurance claims are fake. Combined with the FBI's own reports that sexual assault is hugely under-reported in the US (and similar figures of under-reportage can be found for the UK and most countries).
On top of that, I'm not sure television or sensationalist shows like Cops are a good source of knowledge for forming an opinion on such an issue.
She gets to decide her host is worth 90k of salary a year if she so chooses. TV hosts make 10 times that. When you fund a project, you're also funding the project's employees, even if they're self-employed.
If you dont like that, dont fund her -- I didn't. This is part of the fundamental nature of kickstarters: When a project asks for investors, it is assumed part of that money is paying the creator and their employees a salary unless stated otherwise. In kickstarter or in a boardroom or in a bank. Whatever arbitrary salary you pick is part of production costs, so long as you make your return to your investor: In the funder's contract with her, her return is a short series of videos. This is the nature of all investments. She has the right to do this as much as you have the right to charge for your art. If people want to pay her for her skills, she gets to get paid for her skills.
I also personally wouldnt fund an indie developer unless i'm willing to accept that part of my money might be a salary paid directly to whoever is running the kickstarter -- hence no money to shit like Ground Branch and similar vaporware. If derek yu or cactus some other underpaid badass who i deeply admire asked for a kickstarter i'd be GLAD to help him write a 160k yearly bonus check to himself.
If you're worried about how your portray women, just aspire to do a better job. Not implying you're doing a bad job, but portrayal of sexes/races is something a lot of people kindof brush aside, and making an effort goes a long way! Talk to a wider variety of people about your art, aim for higher goals of characterization instead of higher levels of technical skill -- Try and design your chicks as people more, objects less. You're a good enough artist to squeeze a TON of personality into a character, even if she's half naked -- so work on doing that.
Design female characters that (visually) people respect and connect to more than creepy sexualized shells.
Exactly what I kept thinking. The only thing I can think of is to "un-sexy" our women and then I wonder will that really work?
It's been said many times here that we as unfortunate lowly men, don't bloody get it and so the only thing we agree will enact change is more women in the industry with the confidence to tell us what's what. Because there is no rules, no guide, no fine line. One second we could be doing it 'right' and another we won't. Hell we've had immensely more time to do it in movies and books and I gotta say we haven't fixed it there yet either.
On this lady's videos, I agree with Aigik for one reason only:
What she says she's going to do with here videos/exploration is exactly what so many men and women are doing for their PHD's in social/media/games/womens studies - for FREE. Not to mention that while she is tackling the specific topic of women in media, she will unfortunately keep up a very one-sided debate. Men would need to feel much more included in this struggle for equality to feel that her expression of the problem with women's treatment is not just another angry feminist's rant.
edit:
So we can't have 'creepy sexualised shells'? They don't exist? Not even in a fantasy world filled with colourful characters and a universal story?
SO next time we think it's pretty neat to make a character like that, just don't? I believe they can exist and be deep entertaining characters for anybody with the ability to suspend disbelief. Hell if I'm looking to be offended I'd say a realistic tough chick like Ruby would have no need to show off her midriff in the midst of battle.
Where does this black and white nonsense logic come from? Of course you can have whatever, all kinds of people exist. If you ask the question: 'how do i change perception of ____', the answer is 'make MORE positive examples pf ____'. Doesnt mean the negative examples have to ALL go away -- we have plenty of negative male figures in games and comics and still manage to come across as ADORING of men overall.
1. The upcoming 2012 presidential election
2. The economic crisis in Europe and its ancilliary effect on game development.
3. The potential hazards one faces in a studio environment, including sexual harassment.
4. Is the risk for substance abuse higher among character artists than environment artists.
5. Possible psychological ramifications of modeling the female form over long periods of time.
6. Does one's sexual orientation effect how they model the male and female form.
7. How are 3d artists holding up in Syria.
8. What opportunities exists in North Korea for outsourcing content development.
Again non-exhaustive list. I feel the potential for 3d artists to positively effect the political landscape is huge. We just have to try!!
I completely agree. Some of my favorite characters are females, and they're the ones that are more real. Characters like Ellen Ripley and Olivia Dunham. It's depressing that they're so rare.
You say that like all women cower in fear, all day, every day in abject terror of being raped instead of living their lives normally.
While this thread has had many a great point worth contemplating and reflecting on, I can't help but shake the distinct feeling a vocal minority has been trying to grind an axe.
As they say...
I wish I could say that to her everytime she cites Xena Warrior Princess as a shining example of modern pop-culture
Sorry if it came out the wrong way, but my post was also meant to be pointing out that this is an issue built of grey areas including what is a 'positive example.' It just seems like a lot of the proponents are interested in boiling it down to such, where instead of artists simply choosing what is best, they are choosing between what will offend or not.
There was a news-story recently about a young man who had fallen asleep while drunk out on a park bench and ended up getting raped here in sweden, this was a statistical anomaly though, but it tells us an important story:
You're correct with the fact that women will have to think twice before going somewhere alone and have to live with that fact for their entire lives, but as my wise wife will often say; young men tend to see themselves as immortal, often doing the stupid things like getting drunk and sleeping outside, and ending up robbed and often worse. Women run the risk of getting raped, men run the risk of getting beaten up, most sexual assaults on women happen in their own homes, at the hand of their own husband/boyfriend.
Men should worry just as women do, for their own sake.
No, but I am paranoid every time I have to walk to my car alone near or after dark. I also feel threatened and disgusted every time I have to walk by a large group of men that gathers in the hallway in a place I frequent almost daily and make comments about me as I walk by. Every single woman I personally know has to deal with these kinds of fears and anxieties on a regular basis. It's part of normal life and it sucks.
It can be, but you're statistically less likely to walk past a group of men that are undressing you with their eyes and making comments about the process than a woman, that's quite a common reality for women, even worse depending on where you live.
That's kind of a false equivalency. What I'm talking about is gender specific because men rarely feel intimidated walking past big groups of women in the same way. When women feel threatened by big groups of men who are catcalling or commenting about them, it's a totally different kind of intimidation. I'm not saying it's worse than the threat of physical violence, it's just totally different. In most cases it's not a fear that the men will attack you, but that they are shamelessly and vocally scrutinizing and objectifying you and there is nothing you can do about it. It dehumanizes you and makes you feel powerless. It's not even something you can retaliate against.
well you can turn this around a hundred times.
for example as a men you may end up beaten up by a couple of guys, just because they feel like it, or they like your jacket.
as a women getting raped... not so much. especialy in public places.
in my location there have been cases of men getting beaten to death for virtualy no reason.
You act like women are the only people who are raped.
Then you aren't thinking hard enough. The idea is not to change only their visual appearance from sex doll to butter-troll, it's to change their personality so that it exists *at all*. They should have names, preferences and a history in your mind. They should exist as real people so that your design decisions reflect that instead of just trying to think how to get the perfect ass shape and narrow sexy waist. By all means do that as well, but if you are imagining her *as a full person with agency and a personality* not only will your design be stronger, but it will help you avoid a ton of pitfalls in making shallow lifeless fucktoys.
You can see this mentioned over and over and over at conceptart.org, or in any story writing class. Even if you aren't going to mention the character's backstory, you should have thought about it. Thinking up a short bio like:
What did his/her parents do?
What was his/her childhood like?
What are some defining moments of his/her adolescence that helped form them into the person they are today?
What is his/her favorite color?
How does he/she make their living?
What culture were they raised in?
By answering these questions, your character/vehicle/weapon will subconsciously take on more authenticity, and can even help you decide design choices you might have had to randomly grab out of a hat without otherwise writing this short bio.
There are a ton of physically sexy female characters that feminists (and gay men!) adore, because they are full people with agency. The annoying ones are those that have had thought put *only* into their sexual appeal and physical presentation. The idea isn't to subtract, but to add to.
This thread is starting to take a really weird "one-upping" path, lets try to get it back on topic. IE: related to games in some way. Polycount, not Rapecount.
Being raped, living in fear of raped, being falsely accused of rape, or living in fear of being falsely accused of rape - all are real and terrible issues. Putting them on a scale and weighing there "terribleness" against each other serves no purpose but to make everyone involved look like an insensitive jackass.
This. I can think of a few female characters that are physically sexy, but that have more depth than just that (Doctor Who comes to mind, and even Battlestar Galactica in some regards, despite Anita bashing it). You can also simplify the questions to the 5 W's:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? If any of the answers to the questions aren't "just because", it's a good start.
I just wanted to chime in here and say that this is an excellent response. You know I give you a lot of shit for posting in these political hot-button threads, so credit where credit is due.
I would love to see you expand on it even further, with various examples and imagery as how ones upbringing, or other specific preference would relate to the physical appearance of a character. I think this would be a great resource not only for overcoming cliches and tropes, but for character design in general. I'm not much of character artist myself so I wouldn't have much to contribute, but I'm sure you would get some good feedback from Pior, Haz, and the rest of the bad ass character artists here.
You're right, it's too easy to get overly emotional about this and take personal offense/inadvertently attack each other. Sorry about contributing to the derail. I just felt like I should speak up from a female perspective since there aren't a lot of women in here. Let's segue back to video games.