kcarnes9051

@MrMagic I can’t quote a specific percentage but my personal experience reading a lot of Reddit posts in women and LGBTQ focused communities along with speaking personally with many female gamers (yes, I frequently bring this up) is that there’s a general sentiment that games are better now than they were but there is a degree of oversexualization still present. Across the board women I’ve spoken to and read love the option of having character customization that doesn’t involve just sexy. This squares with my own personal experience and general observation of a degree of oversexualization as well as a pretty vitriolic community of male gamers who bag on any female character that isn’t overtly sexual. This all is combined with a known fact that games are made by a workforce comprised of 75% male developers, and it’s further combined with well documented examples of workplace discrimination and harassment by male players. And lastly sprinkle on a widely held incorrect assumption that women do not play games nearly as much as men do. All of this in my lived experience seems to paint a picture that women’s preferences are not as valued or incorporated into the gaming industry and are discouraged for taking up space. I 100% confirm that many women love sexy female characters, as this squares with the conversations and comments I’ve had and read. But comments that strictly champion hypersexualization are the minority in my experience. Very few dismiss the issue. My experience is not the end all be all, but I am inclined to take the women I’ve spoken to at their word, and the industry environment seems to support that conclusion. Given all this, I find it it extremely hard to understand and pretty unsettling that so many gamers (predominately men in my experience) take umbrage to bring this topic up at all, as it seems to at least be something to entertain and take seriously. For me this seems a fairly reasonable and balanced take.

Would you say in your experience that in speaking with female gamers and engaging with them online that oversexualization of the female form is mostly a non-issue? Is that your lived experiences actually asking them their honest thoughts?

@Zenos Minimizing workplace discrimination is never a good look.

@Zenos I didn't use a buzz word. The toxicity toward women in the gaming industry is well documented.

@Zenos Take this with a grain of salt because it's just one woman's opinion, but this is from what I would consider a pretty average female gamer in her late 20s who I posed this question to: what are your opinions on the sexualization of women in video gaming:

"My thought is that it’s still over-sexualized but not as bad as previously, and women aren’t being cast in stereotypical heroine-in-distress tropes or ditsy airheads. And with all the new world-building games played in the third person, it’s pretty cool to see female characters have cool weapons or useful non-skin-exposing equipment to wear.

I still do think video games are very much catered and made with the male gaze in mind though. Especially when it comes to character dialogue/storyling in the game or how one approaches how to play a game, the thought process is very much masculine and aggressive."

If you don't think that 100s of year of discrimination doesn't have affects in our modern world then we have no basis for conversation. Saying that it's reductionist is a dismissal of every other point I've made in support of my stance.

I've never once mentioned sexism in this entire thread. You keep misrepresenting my words. I said a male dominated view. Whether or not it is sexism is a tangential topic.

In any case, think about any other aspect of life in which women occupying 50 percent of a space controlled by 75% men—and that having a balanced outcome for women.

This like saying that men know what women want. Women know what women want. And men get it wrong frequently. Are we going to debate this?

@Zenos Take a moment to contemplate the fact that you're arguing with me about some perceived actual meaning other than your actual words, without at least acknowledging literally the most important point here that 75% men making content for a demographic made of 50% women is problematic. You don't have to jump to additional conclusions to just admit that.

@Zenos I still don't know what you mean. You expressed fear that women are going to be given jobs that men deserve. What else do you mean?

@thefourfoldroot1 So, at least we can agree that women indeed do share a similar interest in video gaming in general. So when you hear voices asking for a broader representation and less sexualization that these are just a few overreactive activists that are turning against the predominate opinions? Could it just maybe be that the pendulum has in fact not even swung far enough, and we actually haven't even seen the greatest changes in the industry as more women (and men who are feminists) express their desire for change and are increasingly listened to by a changing demographic in game development. Time will tell.

@thefourfoldroot1 you literally were debating the studies are not accurate, which would suggest a disbelief that women are not as enthused about gaming.

Stating that it's a predominately theory was an overstep but the rest of your sentiment flows from that assumption quite fluidly.

@Zenos No, I responded according to your words, and I took your words for their meaning. It's not my job to deconstruct what you really meant. If you have fears that women are going to steal men's jobs, please at least recognize that women had jobs kept from them for literally hundreds if not thousands of years. Your crocodile tears over some perceived methods of rebalancing is silly.

@Zenos Hey! You did everything but admit that 75% percent of men making content for an audience made up of 50% women—might just be problematic. It's really easy to make that logical leap. From there we can look at solutions that don't involve knee-jerk fears of stealing jobs from men.

@Zenos Show your critique of these studies and its methodology. You have better numbers somewhere or are you just basing this off your narrow experience? some of these studies go back to the mid-2000. Are you saying they've changed their methodology over time to skew the results?

@Zenos Did I say anything about hiring a woman over a more qualified man? Don't jump to conclusions. The point is women make up about 50% of video game players, and the trend toward greater participation for women has largely increased with some deviation. It's also safe to say, woman love video games about as much as men do. And it's safe to say that women have only increased in their participation in development despite their being evidence that the work environment can still be toxic. There is even some controversy over two women being fired centered around this very issue for this very game. The technology field in general has a long storied history of prejudice against women, often omitting the accomplishment of women. If you can't see how the current state of the industry, with 75% men making decisions about game content for an audience made of up nearly 50% women—it's shocking that you can't see how this could have problematic effects and at least recognize it without launching into imagined solutions that I never suggested.

@thefourfoldroot1 If you think that developers don't have a huge influence in art direction, regardless of focus groups, I frankly don't know what to say. You do realize that there is active pushback by creators against focus groups and PR and that there is generally some compromise? Creators are not some floppy reed in the window. Lordy. This is all without knowing what prejudices the focus group facilitators in the video game industry might have, anyway.

So from a logic standpoint, you're kind of skipping over some variables.

Any chance that a company run mostly by men that hires game developers that are mostly men also might connect with focus group facilitators that are mostly men. I mean, in a buddy buddy world, what are the chances?

The predominate theory that you expressed yourself is that women don't share as much gaming enthusiasm as men do. Basically every study disagrees with your feelings about the matter. The context of the game is irrelevant. A video game is a video regardless if it's on a phone or otherwise. And might it just be that the phone market grew out of a more liberal market given it's more recently development than console gaming. Might it be that women game more on their phone specifically because it's not the same toxic male environment that consoles have a greater tendency to cater toward.

Even still, there is increasing evidence that console gaming among women is much higher than you might believe regardless of what your narrow experience might suggest:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/463558/pc-and-video-games-gender-distribution-germany/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232383/gender-split-of-us-computer-and-video-gamers/

https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-gamers#gamer-demographics

https://playtoday.co/blog/stats/gamer-demographics/

@thefourfoldroot1 One further point, insinuating and generalizing that most everyone who's counteracting the pendulum swing toward hyper-sexualization as followers exposes a prejudice. While, yes, people in movements can be followers, this recognition ignores whether the activist actually have a convincing argument. With men making up 75% of the video game workforce it would be really challenging to argue that the perspective on women isn't one dominated by men still currently.

@thefourfoldroot1 Picture two people with their hands pushing against each other. Person A is pushing harder than person B. Person B then starts pushing a little bit harder to reach equilibrium but still hasn't reached it. But person A is arguing that person B needs to stop pushing so hard because they're getting out of control. Your person A.

@thefourfoldroot1 Incorrect. The pendulum reaches equilibrium when it loses momentum from external forces, I.e. environment, that doesn't give one direction an unfair push, I.e wind, I.e. a male dominated industry work force. Applying additional pressure in the opposite direction just exacerbates the swinging. You haven't even given the pendulum enough time to reach equilibrium, and you insinuate fear that the corrective side is running out of control. And yet women only make up about a quarter of developers while women by some studies make up nearly 50 percent of gamers. You can't criticize a movement when the people running the industry are still 75% men catering toward an audience with a much different makeup. The gaming industry is what 50 years old, and the most progress has been made in the last 10 years. I think it we can also safely extend that 50 years another 100 years or more, as the gaming industry really is just an extension of the computer industry and society at large.

And, yes, we should compare women in video games to reality. It's the only metric by which we can know how distorted they are and if this has any adverse effects. The person with the blasé attitude is you, for goodness sake.

@thefourfoldroot1 What does well researched mean here? Like, are we talking academic research of the gaming industry with tables and charts with quantifiable metrics? Or anecdotal research? I ask both facetiously and honestly. Because if true, I'd be interested to see the distribution of overt sexualization over the years in a well research manner.

I am in no way shape or form arguing against our shared assumption that depictions in gaming is fairly balanced now.

I would argue that that has only happened in the last decade, and a decade is not enough time to wash away engrained programming that socially tilts scales in certain directions and that that comes out in social media.

And I would equally caution against dismissing the opinions of fringe social media communities as largely irrelevant, as you seem to be doing, as they can signal a larger gradient of beliefs deeply rooted in the social psyche.

I would also argue that while now, yes, men are depicted sexually in a fairly equal manner to women, the male body as depicted as muscular makes sense for the level of athleticism required in the roles they fill.

While the female body as generally depicted currently tends to be more clothed now, their physiques, while toned down sexually, are still pretty much waffer thin with little muscle on them, which doesn't quite so much make sense for combat roles they often fill.

Of course, these games are fantasy and cater to wish fulfillment, so artistically people can do as they please.

The inherent problem though here with the current paradigm, is that a bulky body for a man will always make sense for a combat role, and while it could be scrutinized for sexuality, it has the excuse for being realistic. A wafer thin female body, with skinny arms and huge tits makes less sense for combat.

So a wafer thin female body, even if prudishly clothed, automatically has a larger disconnect from reality.

I would argue if you were to look at people in the military, actual people in actual combat roles, that men in the military look more like their video game counterparts than women do.

That's not to say that women, or men for that matter, in video games need to look like people in the military.

But this introduces discordance in evaluating each side for oversexualization with the same standards.

And in the case of women, this is partly why the depiction of the feminine form attracts greater scrutiny, as their depiction largely gets stretched farther outside the realm of reality than men, even when the sexuality is toned down.

In any case, I view societal norms as a pendulum swinging. When they change, the pendulum does what a pendulum does and over corrects past the equilibrium point. Criticizing the overcorrection is criticizing the solution to the problem, given that the overcorrection is largely unavoidable and necessary.

In other words, we'll get the sexy characters back, as very much appears to be the case.

Lastly, I'm very much aware that some women are also drawn to overly sexualized women in games. It's all on a spectrum.

@thefourfoldroot1 The problem is more complex than you’re giving credit, and it’s eluded to in my comment. When you have a significant outcry over realistic depictions of women or minority depictions that clash with the hypersexualized norm of old, then the problem is still very real. That outcry represents a push toward the old paradigm of exclusion and the male dominant viewpoint.

The video game industry has a history of being male dominated and over-sexualizing women and being uninviting to women developers and players. I hope we don’t have to argue this point. Is it as bad now? No. Has the issue been resolved? You would think that in an industry that has had this historical problem that the logical answer would be: there’s a good chance it’s still a problem. Let’s at least keep an eye on it.

Singular examples of hyper-sexualization were never the problem. Stellar Blade’s sexualization wouldn’t be the problem either. Sex sells. People like it, and there’s a place for it in all media types. The problem is domineering trends toward hyper-sexualization and how that contributes to the unwelcoming history that gaming has had toward women and how that has historically contributed to unhealthy body standards for women in combination with other media types. As well as unhealthy expectations that men have toward women.

It is impossible to fully police this though, and that really shouldn’t be the goal. The goal should be open dialogue about the composition of the industry and its larger effect on the community. Raising concerns. Listening with an open ear and airing it out.

When people openly object to raising of concerns and wave it off as some woke propaganda, pearl clutching, prudish Karensplaining—they are shutting down honest inquiry and warranted concern for the known historical facts about the gaming industry.

If their appears to be an ongoing sentiment that hypersexualization of the feminine form isn’t something to be at least concerned about and that all that matters is our own individualized lust for huge titties—then it would seem self evident that it’s still a problem to some extent. If there’s a significant sentiment that depicting other more realistic body types is worthy of insult then we have a problem.

This really comes down to the health of the industry. A healthy industry would be one where everyone is welcome and there is a plethora of choice that fills a variety of needs/desires. A industry that veers toward exclusion by way of catering moreso to one demographic (i.e. hypersexualized feminine forms for men) should be scrutinized.

@ZhuckelDror No, maybe just realize this isn’t something to argue about since you seem to be the only person struggling with the current definitions. Don’t feel bad, just update your database and move on.

@ZhuckelDror you’re being pedantic and convincing absolutely no one.

This looks bad and then I saw it was made by Eli Roth and was like, well, of course.

I don’t get the love for this game. Generic alien landscape. Generic looking aliens. Jumped into a few matches. The landscapes looked relatively the same in each. Missions kind of similar. Doesn’t seem like mych content and boring level design. The dodge mechanic lays you out on the ground when you’re trying to run away. Maybe I’m stuck in Dark Souls mode where I’m trying to dodge roll away, but it’s not clicking. The second match I played glitched out with some player shooting his gun for infinity. The shooting animation just wouldn’t stop. Infinity ammo. My guns disappeared and the game didn’t register the completion of mission objectives. The bugs wouldn’t aggro but moved around haphazardly. It’s like the game world glitched but I was still able to run around in it. Was pretty underwhelmed overall.

Get this, Square Enix: You don't need to turn a one-game remake into 3 games. A one-game remake should take no more than 5 years tops. 20 years is absolutely ridiculous.

The first playthrough will probably require 50+ hours, at which point I’ll be ready to move onto the next game. I don’t have enough time in my life to play these long games over and over. And there’s too many other great games to dive into. So long as the base game is quality I could care less about the rest. It feels as though players have come to expect more and more out of their games that require more development investment and bigger staffs for the same priced games when factoring inflation from 40 years ago. If companies want to charge extra for these extra modes I could really care less. I have no expectations that a game give me additional modes on top of a base game that can still be played through multiple times. Some games simply don’t even have this option at all. You can’t even pay for it because it doesn’t exist. Simply put, when it comes to post game modes and content, there’s really no consistency in the industry. Companies try out a variety of approaches. That’s their right to try strategies to make money on their hard work, and paying $15 extra in the grand scheme of things hardly seems exorbitant if you really want extra modes. I’m getting my money’s worth and then some regardless with the base game costing me about a $1.5 an hour for entertainment and experiential art. People used to play the base game of older games with no additional modes multiple times without expectations that they deserve more. It seems we’ve gone through an evolution of ever-expanding entitlement to more and more post game content when we’ve already received great value in what we payed. Maybe it’s that the gaming industry is at times in an arms race to sell games and developers at times include bonus content to sell, and then gamers expect that from every developer. The truth is there will always be a spectrum of post game content from a variety of games offering more or less at a range of prices that aren’t consistent.

Nobodies forcing you to buy a remaster. Don't want it. Don't buy it. Remasters are not holding up new games. They have different teams for different projects. They only develop so many new projects simultaneously, and there's only so much development money to create new projects. A remasters requires low investment and is only drawing a minimal amount of resources while new titles are in early development drawing most of the in-studio focus. Remasters are likely resource management to ensure that all team members are working on developing something that is contributing to making a profit, while newer titles are finding their footing. Remasters are efficient and capitalize on the long-tail profits that an IP can generate, and those profits keep studios in business and fund future games. If there's a market for a remaster a developer would be crazy not to make and miss capitalizing on the demand. Every other media type does this. From movies to music.

The problem with subscriptions is that the average gamer probably only plays a few different titles a year. They are not consuming numerous titles like they would be consuming numerous shows or songs. Subscriptions initially sound amazing because you have all of these games at your fingertips. But you soon realize that you're really only going to be able to tackle a handful. You realize that you could have owned two-three games for about the same price as the yearly subscription, especially if you buy older or on sale games, which, for subscriptions ends up mostly being the case anyway. And then you can sell them or have a physical collection. And you don't have to worry about the games you own leaving. Just because content subscriptions work really, really well for some content types it doesn't mean that people's behavior around all types of content are the same. This is why gaming subscriptions have been slower to dominate than television and music. Players only have so much time to play, and if it's a 50 hour game that's like 50 hours of television or in other words, 2-5 seasons of a show. Hence why the plethora of games on subscriptions is largely inconsequential to a gamer's ability to play even a fraction of them. Gaming subscriptions would probably dominate faster if games were shorter or more bite size, like shows, so that gamers could feel justified in being able to play a lot of titles. But, as with all games, there is a learning curve. There is the element of wanting a challenge. This creates a demand for replayability. We want to invest our time in titles so we grow as players in those worlds. So there is less mindless channel surfing. There's less just trying things out. Games are stickier, if you will. Shows and music are just fundamentally different, so the subscription model doesn't pan out quite the same for gaming. There's, of course a place for game subscriptions, and it may well completely take over, but I have a feeling that ownership will stick around.

Ditch the ultra realism and leather-core boyband aesthetic. Ditch the quest compass, markers. Ditch the checklist. Ditch the immersion-breaking NPCs who look like modern day tourists and business people. Incorporate the original artwork the sprites were based on. Bring back playable party members. Bring back the strategy. Elemental weaknesses. Armor and weapon attributes. Chocobos that aren’t just glorified cars. Iterate on the ATB. Meaningful secrets and side quests. Explorable areas. Fun puzzles. Hidden challenging bosses. Make leveling feel consequential. Make the actual gameplay feel like Final Fantasy, again! Not just Final Fantasy window dressing. Not just Final Fantasy skins.

@Elodin its heavily story-driven and continues from the first. The controls aren’t all that difficult so warming up on the first isn’t all that necessary. You could watch a summary on YouTube. It can be pretty intense though so you won’t get that experience or relate as strongly to what the characters have already been through, which has been very traumatic. So if you want to fully experience how the gameplay synergizes with the feelings the story evokes then playing the first is definitely worthwhile.

Already bought Plagues Tale Requiem and am currently playing. But not disappointed one bit, and stoked for everyone who gets it at a tremendous value.

Kind of tired of the coy Nomura ambiguity leading into this game. Like, seriously, just tell a good story. Mystery box storytelling is never a good sign, especially if the mystery overshadows attention to craft elsewhere. Wasn't a fan of the Kingdom Hearts, over-the-top anime cringe additions in Remake. Enough faithfulness was in there to keep me interested, but all of the extra tangents distracted from a story that didn't really need them. The Marvelization of the story with different timelines feels played out and derivative. So many eyeroll moments. If the basis of a story is time travel and alternate dimensions that's one thing. But to insert it into a classic that never referenced it is groan worthy. As soon as time travel is introduced into an established story with consequences then everything starts to feel meaningless. If you're going to change stuff, you better make sure it's as good or better than the original, otherwise you look like a hack, which is doubly lame when Nomura was heavily involved in the creation of the original.

@knowles2 if the third part has the same production timeframe as the second part then it will release probably around the second half of 2027, which will likely be within the PS5 lifecycle, as it will be 7 years old. Chances are the PS5 will have a longer lifespan than the PS4 because this generation got a slow start. So maybe PS6 in 2028 or 2029. In any case, developers will be really getting the most out of the PS5’s capabilities around the time of the 3rd game, which is exciting to think about.

Great, move on and create a FF games that actually feels like a FF game from a gameplay perspective, not just aesthetics.

@Ooccoo_Jr I’m a fan of it.

@Mythologue It is not the same. At all. A subscription service is not the same as buying a product and a license to use it. You must know this difference. You're being ignorant. It is not the same as when a company pulls a piece of media you've purchased outright. A subscription does not confer ownership or grant permission to access the exact same content in perpetuity.

@Mythologue You're paying for a subscription to a service in which media comes and goes just like any other media subscription. The expectation that games will forever stay on the service is an unrealistic one. It is entitlement to think that just because you subscribe to a service that the exact same content will always and forever be on that service when it's expressing outlined in the terms of service that games will come and go. Acting aghast when games leave the service is ridiculous when it's plainly known that that the service is in constant flux and that that is inherent to the service. Acting as if you deserve something when you've agreed to certain terms upon signing up for a service is exactly entitlement.

What is wrong with all of the entitled gamers on the comment section. It just boggles the mind that people expect games to stay on these services for forever. There are literally hundreds games, many great games, that you can play and have ample amount of time to finish. I pay both physical and play digital. New games I don't want to wait to play on a sub I'll buy at launch and resell when I'm done. Eventually they'll make their way to a sub if I want to play whatever DLC might be released at a later date. Games I don't need to play right away, I just let them come to a subscription and I test it out then. It's the best of both worlds and it keeps my gaming habits low cost. It's so strange to me when people complain endlessly. Games are cheap if you buy them right, and subs can have a place in any gamer's life and contribute a boatload of value.

@Pranwell I've finished probably 10 games on PS Plus Extra in the last 2 years and never had them yanked while playing them. It's tremendous value even when games come and go.

For a very lackluster base game, it doesn’t surprise me they’ve done the bare minimum with this dlc.

@SlySnake0407 honestly, this is an issue for the Supreme Court, in the U.S. at least. Once you purchase a piece of media, you should be able to play in on any device capable of playing it. There needs to be a method of transferring DRM or verification of it. This is within our technological ability. Blockchain maybe?

How is this legal? If you purchase media you legally do not require a separate license to play your media. And a device that the media was purchased on should not require a license. Even if these are lame reality tv shows, I feel like this is a class action lawsuit or some kind of legal challenge in the making.

@Martijn87 Cloud gaming is literally a video stream.

@TheCollector316 Cloud gaming is essentially a video stream. This company specializes in optimizing video streams for high quality at low bitrates. There’s no reason their expertise can’t be applied to streaming games.

@DragoonZied good thing it only takes like 10-15 hours to beat. You could probably knock it in week or much less if you have the free time. Will probably make the experience playing the new one even better.

@DragoonZied many have said that it’s a good idea to play the first or to at least look up a YouTube recap.

@Savage_Joe

Spanish speaking localizers were faced with translating meaning conveyed in English when referring to a gender non-binary person in the game. Thus the translator is forced into a dilemma: translate the English into Spanish and ignore all gender neutral implications or use a gender neutral form of Spanish that actually exists in reality that is accepted by non-binary Spanish speakers, even if they don’t represent that majority of Spanish speakers.

Meaning is lost if the translation from English to Spanish doesn’t include a gender neutral implication.

One solves the dilemma of translating meaning from one language to the next and one does not.

This is an example of a translator finding a solution when it comes to the incompatibilities that arise with language translation.

For the record, I also think the word Latinx sounds ridiculous, just as I think folx sounds ridiculous, just as I have difficulty wrapping my head around they/them.

But it’s not so big of a problem to get upset about it. It’s really no big deal. I also have a compassionate understanding that their are minority groups that use language differently within my own language, and while challenging at times, I prefer to understand and accept their way of speaking as valid because all language is transitory and fluid over time. This is simply true. I do not presuppose that I or any larger group speaks the correct way because there is no inherent correct way from a macro view.

Just as there are different languages in different countries, there are different languages in different communities. We can call these dialects. This idea that one language only has one way of being true is simply not true.

While it is true that company’s do at times push certain world views it is also true that those world views exist within certain groups and arise organically out of them. Both can be true and one does not invalidate the other.

@Matroska and yet it was a word created by a segment of the Latino population. Its popularity is irrelevant to the point I was making. Just because I generally dislike the word folx because folk is already gender neutral, it doesn’t change the fact that folx is in the lexicon and that it was created by English speakers and thus not offensive to use within the context of someone who would use it using it in the way they would use it.

Also, Latinos also has the word “Elle” which is also used as a gender neutral by certain Spanish speakers.

The point being that an English speaker at Insonmiac did not come up with this linguistic trend that has arisen around the discussion of gender dynamics within the Latino community. It exists.

@IslandLogic Gender neutral Spanish words have been around for decades. Ever heard of Latinx? It wasn't white people at Insomniac that came up with this idea.

The first game blew me away, but by the end I was pretty done with it. Tried getting into Miles Morales but it felt like more of the same and got quickly bored. I feel like I should be excited about this new game but I’m just not. Maybe just open world fatigue. Anyone else feel this way and tried it out and ended up getting over that blah feeling about it?