The Lounge: Official Spamzone Community Thread

Just watched BvS. I liked it.
I still like Snyder, but I still think he's not meant for Superman films.
Whatever genre of film he wanted to make was not the one he ended up making it. Those scene-transitions were just...horribly non-existent.

 

Parents are jerks. I can understand now things like Lalamon's digivolution to Rosemon as @Stardust pointed out in my thread, but this isn't even sexual because the focus isn't on the butt, but the pose.

 

Looks more like a deformed orange tbh

 

pretty sure they wont stop until all visual representations of humans are stick figures

 

Well what's odd about this complaint to me is that it's not really a comparable situation; this isn't a public television broadcast for kids where censors might feel compelled to be particularly content-careful, this is a purchasable product with a Teen rating (so equivalent to PG-13 really) with every opportunity for parents to review the content and decide if it's appropriate for their children ahead of time.

If I were to hazard a guess I would say that the main reason this became an issue is because the straps on her legs, which are probably pretty innocuous otherwise, happen to make her butt stand out from this angle. The request comes off a little strange to me -- a young child is not the intended audience for the game, so at a glance it seems almost like he's asking them to change that for his daughter's benefit. But more than that, he goes on to admit that there are other characters with provocative poses that he's okay with, and by extension ostensibly okay with letting his child see... Just not this one, because she's become a role model (& honestly being sexy and being a strong character are not mutually exclusive things, but that's kind of a separate discussion I guess). So is that the sole character he thinks his daughter will take a liking to?

Especially because of that last point, I sympathize with people feeling like this is an overreaction... At the end of the day I guess I don't see it as a big deal in itself though, like little was lost from this imo? They may well just come up with a different pose to replace it, maybe even something ultimately more dynamic or interesting, and I'm personally impressed with Blizzard's responsiveness. I just feel though that there are a lot of parents out there that have never caught on to the fact that games are not always for children, and that there is a clear rating system in place to tell them so that they are free to utilize, much like the MPAA. :v

 

I just laugh because apparently it's bad to have a girl see a clothed, virtual butt, in a character's default outfit but it's cool that she's playing a game where she's shooting people with guns and making them die with blood.

Conservative American(?) priorities yay.

But yeah not a big deal. Just stupid that it even was a thing, instead of just putting an option for people to see it or not.

Options are fantastic, game devs. No one can complain about options.

 

okay but those pants are ****ing ridiculous (we're talking abt overwatch right? didn't click the link. the orange pants)
idc really abt the pose but I'm so tired of seeing women stuffed into wedgie leggings. idk how overwatch works but I saw the same character in the same pose with a different outfit and it was nbd
blizzard could have just changed the pants. like literally just remove the buttcrack and I'm okay

 

Do you have issues with Bayonetta? Not trying to come off as rude or anything. I'm just curious if her portrayal and outfit are comparable in your opinion.

 

*grabs popcorn*

Okay, not to be an old school Luxord super dbag or anything....BUTT (I've dropped my puns and I cannot get up)...

I don't see the actual problem with this. Now I understand that some people have a problem with women being "overly sexualized" in video games, but this kind of thing brings up what I like to call the "Mona Lisa" argument (idk if I'm the first one to call it that). If video games are considered to be an art form, what gives anyone the right to make a developer change something just because they don't like/agree with it. It's like saying "nah man I don't like the way Mona Lisa looks, it's wayyyyy too *fill in the blank*." When you look at it from that angle, this is all kind of ridiculous.

I also don't understand how people will go up in arms of an effing butt crack, but not giving a flying phuck about the merciless slaughter that is common place in a ton of video games. Think of fighting games, I have heard more complaints about sexual themes than I have heard about the depiction of the "overkill death scenes".

"Oh that person got their spine ripped out, head torn off, or was literally punched into space?" Fine by me as long as they don't show too much Ashe or tits.


*bows out*

 

my only problem with this is that its not sexualized MORE. love the character designs but gameplay looks boring af. some skin would help me get through that.

 

never played bayonetta. from what I have read/heard about it it seems to be parodying design of female characters which is great but I worry that it is still implicitly benefitting from that which it attempts to spoof/satire. without having played it I don't think I can comment broadly on it

nobody made blizzard change it though? from what I understand they were responding to comments from their userbase. theoretically it's the same as if some people complained an enemy was too strong so they nerfed it. it was blizzard's choice to change it and obviously they did not feel that strongly that the pose was part of their artistic vision (though they left the buttcrack as-is, which I would argue that most people who took issue in the first place would have preferred)

is overwatch a very violent game? I know nothing about it. my interest/investment in this spans as far as "I saw it on Reddit and the buttcrack bothered me"
but they're still kind of separate issues. and there's not really proof that a violent video game leads to violent behavior in the player, whereas portraying women as existing to cater to the male gaze causes men to see them less as humans and more as objects according to many studies. within feminist circles, violence in games is often criticized if

• the game is geared towards children (or played primarily by children)
• the violence targets a specific group (like killing hookers in GTA)
• the game glorifies senseless violence or war

these critiques don't gain as much attention because they're not as popular of an issue amongst those circles as problems of objectification and the male gaze. they also don't gain as much of a reaction from others because developers rarely do anything about it because violence is such a hot topic amongst gaming and one that many feel is intrinsic to the medium (not to say developers often do anything about their ****** designs and portrayals of women it's becoming more common but still way far away from what it needs to be). and certain gamers react more to feminist complaints about the portrayal of women because it interferes with their video game tiddies

 

I was saying that it's a bit weird that people ignore the overly violent themes in video games like that's any less damaging than the way a character's butt looks.

I also never said violent video games lead to violent behavior. It's just that people seem to be very selective with the "issues" that are in video games.

 

there are plenty of people who do critique violence in video games though, it's just very limited to conservative circles and not as much within the industry as portrayals of women are right now. most likely because gamers are very torn on the issue. if you bring it up as "the violence in overwatch (or games in general) concerns me more than the way women are portrayed" that's fine and dandy. but bringing the issue up when people are trying to dissect a portrayal of women is deflecting and distracting from the issue. the critiques can exist concurrently and if you want to talk abt violence in overwatch that's cool but it's a peeve of mine when people bring up a totally different issue and point to it and say "well why aren't you working on THIS" there's roughly a million answers to that like that that issue doesn't resonate with me or that I don't know how I feel about it or I'm just at this particular moment focusing on one thing.
like my point is that it's great you want to talk about violence in video games! but not when it's stopping others from talking about other issues in video games. I'm hoping you're talking from the perspective of "the violence in video games bothers me more than the portrayals of women" and wanting to discuss that but it shouldn't come at the cost of the other discussion, people who care abt the portrayals of women in video games aren't hypocritical or ignoring the issue of violence just because they're choosing to focus on a different issue

 

This is like the Rainbow Mika butt scandal but way worse and more outrageous apparently.

#FreeTheBooty

 

Hatoful Boyfriend is so sad omg. I thought it would be a happy game ;-;

 

I stand by my point that there should have been options put in place, not outright removal. Misty is against the pose (not saying you're like up in arms); I'm not offended by it, so why can't Blizzard just let us choose for ourselves? And no, Blizzard wasn't forced to do this, but the motivation behind it and how easily they made the decision is what weirds me out, and I'm curious if anyone else's poses or outfits are subject to being removed.

Overall, this was only "news" because of how Blizzard handled the issue. Do it without saying anything and I wonder if anyone would have noticed. What I'm also very curious about is what pose they replaced this one with.

 

If you listen closely you can hear my heart shattering