It’s the whole point of the thread being here, so they can discuss this. Trying to stop them from discussing this in a thread specifically made for this type of conversation will not help anything.
while I think the conversation has gotten a little too heated at times, at the end of the day, I think this is a good conversation to have, regardless of the game, and I’m honestly impressed that:
- everyone’s followed through and hasn’t leaked BACK into GD or Q&A etc. the thread is serving it’s #1 purpose splendidly.
- while it gets really heated at times, I have yet to see the argument devolve into simple shit slinging. Most everyone seems to have kept their wits about them in this thread, and considering the topic, that’s a good thing.
I agree. It’s been pretty civil so far and that’s awesome. I also think it’s an interesting debate. I would weigh in but I don’t really know how I feel on the subject yet one way or the other. Love following the thread though. Personally, this kind of stuff is infinitely more interesting than 95% of what goes on in the GD thread so I’m glad the topic was moved and not just straight killed.
it is an interesting topic, and it’s also an important one for us as a community, and as an industry, to discuss. There IS a problem with sexism and over-sexualization in many, many games. Heck, it’s not even games, this is still a problem in Film and mainstream comics as well. This is a topic that NEEDS people to debate about it and nail this shit down. what is acceptable and what isnt? This is important, and both sides of the argument are 100% welcome in my eyes as long as the conversation stays constructive.
as for my own opinion, alot of what has already been said by some members mirrors my own so I’ll try to keep my piece short.
I acknowledge that this game has some sexualized characters, and personally, I am not bothered by it. However, not that this is not because I just want to see some ladies in skimpy clothing. I’m not bothered because I feel all the other visual and personality traits the characters possess not only outnumber the sexualized traits but VASTLY outweigh. I will make note of Valentine though, as her sex appeal and sexualization is noticeably more emphasized than the other characters (not that I think that’s a bad thing. variety is the spice of life.) For example, I like the characters and costumes of the all the ladies in SG, but personally HATE the character designs used for the ladies in Mortal Kombat. Both series have a noticeable amount of sexualization surrounding most of their female characters (or 3/4 of SG’s current roster). However, I feel as though MK uses that sexuality in a far more immature fashion, while SG uses it in a bit more as a humorous, pastiche, and comes out alot classier IMO.
I’m not saying SG is perfect, at the end of the day, a pantyshot is a pantyshot and that always has some level of crassness associated with it, and Valentine is… Valentine. But I feel this kind of stuff doesn’t detract from the game as much as it does with other games due to its presentation. The art style is exaggerated and cartoony, as are the character designs and scenarios. The game is not even humoring the idea that it is anything other than pure fantasy. It is not trying to be “real” in any fashion, so to me, alot of it’s more sexual aspects come off as more humorous, and tongue in cheek and outright “YOU GUYS SHOULD HAVE A BONER WHEN PLAYING THIS, SRSLY”.
Hell, I find Valentine fucking hilarious because of how blatant some of her moves and actions are. She throws ninja stars from her cleavage. I’m sorry, my brain reads that as funny WAAAAAAY before it starts thinking about the sexual aspects of this. If you want a male equivalent of this kind of humor, look at Vamp from MGS. The guy keeps his knife over his crotch at all times, and is hyper sexual about it whenever he uses it or brings attention to it. rather than thinking “wow, that’s really sexual” I think “lol. vamp, never change”. I’m not saying all of the sexual aspects of this game are meant for 100% humor, but I firmly believe alot of it IS.
before I end, I’d like to say I would NEVER ask a person to like the sexualization if they do not like it. If a person doesn’t find pantyshots funny, or if underwear bothers them (I can understand that sentiment), I can understand and respect that. and that goes for anything else in the game.
ok, so I wrote a little more than initially expected, but hey, I guess I had alot more to say. I’m genuinely curious about any counterpoints anyone has.
Nitro you totally got this covered. I will just like all your posts.
Any sexualization doesn’t really bother me unless it seems to be at odds with the character herself. Taking the sex out of Valentine would be about as silly as taking the sex out of Morrigan; that’s their motif and a lot of it is just as (if not more) funny as it is sexy.
I do have some issues with, say, Parasoul though. She’s a very serious and proper young woman; her disciplined mannerisms sort of give me a Prussian vibe. She’s certainly not the type to say “Hey look boys, PANTIES!” and it makes more sense to me for her to be wearing pants. Filia gives me a more conservative vibe too (though in a completely different manner) so the shortness of her skirt seems at odds with her character as well.
we should totally have a recorded skype conversation about this and use it to promote both Skullgirls and thoughtful discourse, hohoho.
If you try I will personally cock punch anyone involved.
Oh, sorry, Im being sexist there. I will personally cock punch or cooter punch anyone involved.
See if you can keep up with this. I will try to use small words for those of you with liberal arts degrees.
- ‘Sexism’ is generally considered bad. I think we can all agree with that.
- There is a segment of society that will avoid things that have been labelled and judged by others as sexist. Afterall, since its bad, it should be avoided; see #1.
- Whether something is ‘sexist’ or not is entirely a subjective thing. What is sexist to one person may not be sexist to another. There is no ‘#include <sexism.h>’ in the code. It is simply a perception.
4.The people who judge it to be subjectively sexist by experiencing it themselves are the ones who try to spread perception that it is or isn’t sexist. - The segment of society who may avoid based on this subjective sexist label would only learn about these labels from seeing the discourse. The more discourse there exists about it, the larger the segment of people who belive it is in fact sexist.
You’re attempting to try and have a lively discussion about how perceptive you may be to other people’s feelings and promote the idea that you’re a better person because you see these things that could affect others. Good for fucking you. The end result of this ‘discussion’ is that Skullgirls will be seen as sexist and avoided by a larger segment of the customer base, because there’s more discussion for them to come across and make the decision for them.
Despite games that clearly would deserve the label more, you instead decide to damage an independant small development group, because they have the most to lose. It’s not like any of you self important jack holes have ever actually said ‘You know, if you’d tweak this this and this, it definitely wouldn’t be sexist’. Of course not, because its a subjective view and not anything factual or objective. You’re a troll with a hard on because you realize that your actual words could do actual harm to a group of people working their ass of, and a community who actually wants them to do well.
Small words as promised, YOU ARE HURTING SKULLGIRLS. I want you and everyone else to realize this. The discussion, pro or con, will increase the number of people who believe Skullgirls to have a sexist label, and lessen their sales, hurting chances for expansions, DLC, PC ports, disc releases, everything.
If you’re offended enough that you think Skullgirls should be hurt and lose sales based on what you’ve seen, then by all means, continue. But every single last fucking word that continues on this topic hurts them, period. If you’re actually of a reasonable “Hey, maybe something could be seen as mildly offensive, but I want the game to succeed.” then the only correct course of action is for you to NOT argue it, STFU about this, and if anyone makes mention of it in person that you’re trying to convince to pick it up, look at them with the most deadpan ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ expression until they can actually make an opinion for themselves.
I think we’ve said the same thing before. But I think you’ve said your point much better than I did.
user “Toodles” -
for you to suggest that “talking about something being sexist is wrong because then it might convince people that it is sexist” is actually straight up offensive! I enjoy a lot of things, and I criticize all of them because I think that’s the best thing someone can do to something they enjoy. It’s fine that you’re interested in strange censorship tactics in the name of purely maximizing the number of people who play the game or whatever, but in that case I guess you also believe that Skullgirls should throw in comeback mechanics, 3D graphics, and other cool user-friendly features that will obtain tons more users!
Naturally that’s not the case at all, and what you really want is a game that does what you believe to be the “right thing,” whether that’s its combo system, netcode, character design, or whatever. If Skullgirls wasn’t running GGPO, I’m sure a ton of people would complain about that, and yeah, maybe a lot of potential users would pass the game up for something else. Would you complain to them about “hurting Skullgirls” by discussing something they sincerely, rightfully consider important? I’m going to guess “no,” just like I’m telling you right here right now to step back and realize how ridiculous the entire premise of your post is. Stop discussing the allegedly-sexist content of the game because discussion might make some people take a side in the discussion? Yeah, okay there.
It’s also just generally laughable that you’d criticize anyone of “hurting Skullgirls,” considering the bizarrely aggressive and alienating rhetoric in your post alone. If anything in this thread ends up harmful to the long-term success of the game (which is a stretch), I think it’s:
(wow)
I guess all of this extreme and unwarranted antagonism is designed to attract incredibly aggressive Skullgirls players, or something?
yeah, this topic would never get brought up in a more popular fighter’s forum like SF or Tekken to talk about Christie, Anna, Nina, Elena, Cammy, Juri, Viper, R. Mika, Urien, Oro. Got to pick out the small game because it’s an easy target.
Elena/Urien/Cammy have more panty shots than this game and you can actually see Oro’s penis when he does crRH.
But Skullgirls is the game with bullseye on it.
Juri is way more suggestive than Valentine and looks way more displaced on her. A lot of people are acting like it’s SC3/SC4 and DoA levels of sexualization in Skullgirls.
I don’t this is what they mean by “pick your battles”.
I totally agree that it’s unfair that Skullgirls is singled out for this (I think this happens more because of the female characters being at the forefront compared to other games though, rather than that it’s a “small game”). I think I mentioned that in my first post in this thread! That doesn’t make the complaints themselves any less legitimate, though.
I’m like 1000 times more pissed off by the recent SCV Ivy ads than by anything in Skullgirls, by the way. Like that’s just total bullshit, but I’m not nearly that interested in SCV at the moment so I haven’t run across many interesting forum discussions about it!
WELL THEN STOP SINGLING IT OUT.
Holy fucking shit. Go bother the SCV people, there big company wont disappear because the sale of their game were already good enough to warrent DLC characters/sequels. Reverge could just vanish after Skullgirls comes out because too many people heard it was sexist. And it would partially be you people’s fault.
In which case, your entire argument should have waited for Male DLC. Operating on an assumption is never a valid argument. -_-
Almost completely. I do expect some male characters to be sexualized in some way, and you are wrong to assume that I’m fine with discriminatory anything. However, since not all of the female characters are sexualized, and those that are are not reduced to mere sex objects, it wouldn’t be a clear case for ‘discriminatory sexualization’ in the first place, even if there aren’t any sexualized men.
No, that’s you dismissing the concept. Art can have an impact on culture and society, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Objectification is incorrect because there’s no person to objectify. You state that the sexualization of the Major has clear implications, but why do you assume that? Of all the things that GitS could and could not be stating about real society, why does an ass shot have to imply anything about you as a viewer? Or about society?
It’s called projecting. It’s an English word, not alien, I assure you.
Hah! If it’s not a valid argument, disprove it. Subjective supporting arguments are the invalid ones, not pointing out the flaw of being subjective.
Shrugs I’m interested in *accurate *dialogue. Don’t go accusing me of being defensive or dismissive just because my aim in this dialogue is to systematically shut down the points I can disprove. I read, absorb, and respond to any arguments I disagree with with clear discussion, which is more than I can say for your points. IOW, when you’re wrong and I can show it, I’m going to call you on it.
On the other hand, you haven’t taken on any of my rebuttals head on yet. The best you can come up with is accusing me of being an alien while badly paraphrasing my points (which is unnecessary, because I mean what I write). Who’s really not interested in dialogue here?
At any rate, let me tell you how this ends, and what this all boils down to.
The only thing that can be proven in this topic, about this game so far is that sexualization exists in it.
From that, we have variants of two opinions:
Opinion 1. The sexualization in this game bothers me.
Opinion 2: I don’t mind the sexualization in this game.
Neither of which ultimately matters, as we aren’t creating the game, and neither of which can be proven or disproven, as they’re opinions.
After hashing it all out and getting rid of invalid subjectivity, we are left with a completely pointless line of discussion, unless something happens with the game that can be called out on sexism or discrimination beyond a reasonable doubt.
In which event, those crying foul will have to deal with the overarching counterargument of all of this, which is that *it’s not a big deal, it’s only a damn video game. Get over it. *And there’s no real defense against apathy.
Some people really should pick their battles better.
The End.
So, come on then. Say what you have to say, so we can get to the end already.
-_- Something has been building up in me for too long. What i’m about to say is not just my feelings on the games sexualization but, also how the community can make a serious impact.
First off, I don’t really care for the sexualization in the characters. It doesn’t really bother me, it’s just not something I enjoy. I’m actually ok with it in this game because it is for the most part, it’s worked into the characters personality. Their personalities are what I pay attention to most.
The thing is though, my statement and every other defense for this game could end up getting thrown out of the window IF a certain something happens. A loud community/fanbase can have a very high impact on peoples perceptions of a product and I think the last thing we need is a bunch of loud/obnoxious people parading around the sexulization. I know we are not doing this here but that dosen’t mean that there can’t be a point in time where some people would pull that stuff. Still I would love to think we can all be mature about this matter and leave a good impression about this game on others. If we keep showing people that we enjoy this game other reasons, this whole problem might end up dissipating.
I feel that you can’t just look at something one way. Listening to other peoples feeling on the matter is good but, sometimes you just need to step back, look around you and get a different perspective. That’s what I tryed to do.
Maybe there are more to the characters.
The way Filia talks sometimes, suggests suggestive nature (but never a panty shot, I like that)
Parasoul seems to take a liking to Number 13, so maybe she’s showing off for him?
Well if it turns out that Filia was a prostitute before she lost her memory that would certainly explain some things.
Not buying the Parasoul thing though. Even if I assume you’re right about the crush (I really have no idea either way, I don’t know enough about the characters to judge) showing off her undergarments doesn’t seem like the method Parasoul would go about securing a relationship with him.
Then again, if you’re right then that is pretty hilarious. I can accept the funny.
Their relationship is pretty funny (haha funny)
Number 13 going in as a shield? “NNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO”, it’s so grandiose, it’s hilarious.
Oh, Number 13 is the blocking assist? I thought he was just one of the potential snipers in the Take the Shot super.
If that’s the case Parasoul owes that man as many gratuitous panty shots as he desires.
Or maybe she doesn’t really care if people can see her panties because she’s focused on kicking the opponent in the head? Just because she’s a serious person, a leader and a princess or whatever, doesn’t mean she has to be ashamed of something like that as part of her personality. One reason I don’t buy into her being over-sexualized is because although Parasoul is sexy, it’s never presented to us as her showing herself off to us as viewers, which is what sexualization is generally about. She dresses as a professional office woman would, and fights without hesitation. Isn’t it possible that she just considers herself above embarrassment in her manner of dress when it comes to being in the middle of combat?
Either way, we don’t really know enough about the characters to say definitively anyway.