This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
In my experience, most first year undergraduate courses for STEM related degrees more or less match the demographics of the university itself.
I don’t know anything about other STEM fields or other countries, but where I live, most sw engineering courses don’t have above 5%. (And I guess even fewer men in the medicine field. Some fields just seem to attract specific genders, idk why.)
But yeah, dismiss reality I have seen with my own eyes as “The dog whistles! The dog whistles!” And then act surprised when no one outside your echo chamber takes you seriously.
Sure, it’s not a high quality study. But there is only so much effort countering this baseless fear mongering deserves. This study may already be more effort than it deserves.
The fear mongering doesn’t end. Violent movies cause violent behavior. No they don’t. Violent games cause violent behavior. No they don’t, actually research show gamers are less aggressive. Now it’s sexualized games that cause harm. And every time, they don’t even really care about the research anyway.
It sometimes creates queerness as an option rather than a core part of an experience
Because, surprise surprise, most non-romance games don’t have romance as significant part of the game. You don’t get straight tailored experience in Skyrim either. Unless you believe killing bandits or mammoths is how you romance a straight person.
kind of a cop out
This mentality is why so many gamers outside the homophobic conservative circles are pissed at game developers and groups like Sweet Baby Inc. Not cramming gender politics into a game that has nothing to do with them is not a cop out. It is good game design. Skyrim is not a romance simulator and it shouldn’t be turned into one just to “be more inclusive”.
I will ask a different question. In how many mainstream games can you actually confirm the main character is straight? Sure it may be more than the two examples of gay main characters, but still very few compared to where it just doesn’t come up.
No. Not wanting to have your car stolen by a gay person does not make you a homophobe. It just makes you a normal person that doesn’t want to be stolen from. Equally, wanting a game to be entertainment, not political messaging does not make you conservative.
Most people had no issue with diverse characters that are part of a game, see Life is Strange. They do when you turn a game into political PSA at the expense of the rest of the game, see Valeguard.
and want your games to not make you feel uncomfortable.
You are missing the point entirely. Playing as a homosexual character did not make me feel uncomfortable, even though I understand if it did for some people. Even so, not every game is for everyone. It is fine to have games focused at different audiences.
But when you hand over writing your game characters and story to groups like SBI, whose only qualification is “inclusive writing”, than it destroys games for everyone and you get entirely justified backlash from gamers.
Same if you take an established franchise and change the target audience.
Unfortunately, just like you don’t make distinction between the actual homophobes and people who just want good writing and game design, a lot of gamers once pissed of don’t distinguish between good inclusion and forced, badly executed one. And than you get the polarized BS of today.
There’s no “actual homophobes” vs " not homophobic but still unhappy that queer people and ‘forced inclusion’ are in a game people"
That’s the same kind of argument as saying criticizing Israeli genocide is antisemitism. There are objectively bad things done in the name of inclusion. Criticizing them is not homophobic. If you are going to pretend they are, that you are somehow above criticism just because your stated goal is noble, don’t be surprised when people turn against you.
People will take your words as tacit endorsement that queer people “had this coming” because a bunch of businesses responded to a body of queer theory and made some fucking games.
That is exactly why your stance is pissing me off so much. People like you, who don’t care how their ideas impact other people as long as they are inclusive, are pushing massive amounts of people towards the conservative side of the argument. I don’t think that makes those people conservative, for some reason you do. Regardless, we both agree it hurts queer people.
So was it worth it? A bunch of poorly written queer characters in games and movies in exchange for pissing off a portion of otherwise tolerant population and pushing it towards conservatism?
Yes, deflect the question, misrepresent the issue, and blame everyone around. Just avoid any introspection.
There is no “worth it” here for the non-queer gamers in the first place. It costs them (seemingly) nothing to throw queers under the proverbial bus and oppose any inclusivity. The only thing stopping people is sympathy and goodwill. Being a decent human being. Which tends to go out of the window quickly, when you actively try to destroy what those people care about. People don’t have sympathy for people that “picked a fight” with them first. They just “fight” back.
And before you pretend games are insignificant and people shouldn’t do this “just because of games”, remember you picked this “fight” because of representation in games as well. Can’t have it both ways. Games either don’t matter (in which case what are we arguing about) or they do.
Gamers care about games. They have always pushed back hard against people messing with their games, whether it is “concerned parents” (religious conservatives), queers, or payment processors. If you believe that it is just homophobia, you are deluding yourself.
So I ask you again, is it really worth it to push things like SBI, that produce objectively bad games for everyone, knowing it will destroy sympathy and goodwill you have with gamers?
You don’t have to answer here, just think about it. Because you can’t expect understanding and sympathy from others if you are not trying to understand and sympathise with them as well.
Sure, make it my fault for disagreeing that following fundamental principles of good game design is somehow a cop out. Whatever makes you sleep better.
What is “in it” for the non-queer gamers…
And you proceed to describe what would benefit queer people, if they managed to keep non-queer gamers on their side or at least neutral. Which just proves my point.
People want to feel all nice and accepting and open minded but they never want it to actually inconvenience them.
Some people don’t want to be inconvenienced at all, most people don’t want to be inconvenienced for no good reason. There is a big difference.
It’s worthless to conceed ground over and over again to people who always wanted us to disappear. It doesn’t work.
Yes, what you are doing now seems to be working great. Best of luck with that.
Putting the ridicoulous idea that governments are fair and transparent aside, payment processors need to be international. Otherwise, most countries will not be able to access services because their local payment processor is not supported by smaller websites.
However, the payment processors should be regulated with something similar to net neutrality so they can’t discriminate payments. And EU could probably launch a government run competitor to dilute their duopoly.
I’m not gonna go out of my way to review bomb his game or send him messages or at him on twitter. But I am not gonna stop calling him a narcisistic idiot whenever the topic comes up. People should know. That is not harassment, that is countering misinformation, at least IMO. A meme like this is not harassment in my book either. He is a public figure.
Seems to me like names were censored in the released slack screenshots (except the CEO). Were there uncensored screenshots that I missed or that were deleted?
8TB M.2 SSDs are a thing and you can fit 4 into many high-end motherboards. You can even put them into RAID 0 if you want them to look as a single drive in the OS. Comic does not claim it is a single module.
You can get 16TB, or even more, but not consumer grade, I can confirm that. But I have seen MSI laptops with 2 SSDs in RAID 0 advertised as one number singular in summary, just like in the comic, since it makes no difference to the user.
Funnily enough, the weirder part is actually 25TB HDD. There are 24TB HDDs and even 26TB HDDs but to my knowledge, there is no single module 25TB HDD. And with that capacity, it can’t even be any reasonable RAID setup. The only factorization is 5x5 and 5TB HDD are also not really a thing. That number is the nonsensical one.
My solution to this is to buy at a price I think the game is worth for me, and if I overpay, I think of it as supporting the developer to make more like it.
The thing is though, they don’t care about women in video games, they just care about “ugly” women in video games.
Welcome to 2024, where preferring art to not be that is not ugly is despicable behavior.
I know most left leaning people aren’t this extreme, but this really gives them a bad image and puts off a lot of people. Especially when the non extreme people jump to the defense out of the feeling that opposing extremes is the same as promoting the right.
So they like their art to not be average looking, big deal. Different people have different preferences. If you prefer more average looking women, than say so and leave it at that. No need to belittle other peoples preferences or push your preferences onto others.
And this kind of shit is what I was talking about in the first place. Now it can’t even be art because it looks too lewd to you. Art is subjective, if you prefer
weird and usually “ugly.”
art, that is perfectly fine. But you don’t get to dictate what art other people like or what other people consider art.
Yeah I guess we should just let people keep over analyzing the women in video games, pointing out every single imperfection, every pimple, every asymetry
Yes, you should let other people analyze whatever they feel like analyzing.
because thats what incels do. I’m sure the women in the real world love that behaviour 🤠
What does that have to do with you? If they want to stay incels, that is their problem.
point out every single flaw in a female characters design you are setting a beauty standard for what a woman should look like
If anyone is determining their self worth by comparing themselves to video game characters, they should probably seek out help, regardless of if it is Seuna or what’s her name from Stellar Blade.
letting people keep bullying game studios into designing their characters that way just reinforces that image.
To be clear, I am against bullying game developers in either direction. Seuna fits well in her setting and I don’t think anyone bullied them into her looks. Ciri is even better example of well made character overall.
I oppose things like Sony forcing censorship on Stellar Blade. I oppose DEI “consultancy firms” lobbying and even extorting game companies to make their characters uglier. Let game devs create their art as they see fit. And let gamers vote with their wallets on whether they like the games.
Most people including me did not complain about “ugly” characters in games until the above came to light. And since it is difficult to say which games are affected, there are innocent games caught in the crossfire.
it makes even less sense because male characters usually aren’t held to the same standards. it’s because gamers (mostly men themselves) don’t care about male characters…
I mean, yes. You are correct that we care less about male characters. I don’t follow why that would not make sense. Especially, since there was no push to make male characters uglier as far as I know.
because they’re not trying to satisfy their sexual frustration through them.
the “art” as you call it is just gooning material for lonely men
Idk how to react to you fixation on how you imagine some gamers reach sexual gratification.
I guess I can only add that IRL I know two people who oppose this push for uglier game characters, and both are happily married.
Yeah, that’s correct. You can like or dislike any art. The people arguing it must only have sexy women or it’s bad are in the wrong.
Yes, you are correct. But that is a small minority of trolls.
What most people protest against is that publishers like Sony force censorship on developers and that self proclaimed “DEI consultancy” firms, “game journalists”, and other people lobby, pressure and extort developers to make characters uglier.
What even is this? It looks like a mix of putting things in my mouth and making straw-man arguments.
In the case of The Witcher 4, she looks how you’d expect given her age, physical abilities, what she’s gone through, and also the book descriptions. (The books basically say she looses her physical appeal.)
I have no issue with Ciri and am looking forward to Witcher 4. Never said anything to the contrary.
They’re making games primarily to make money. The companies are trying to maximize that. If they’re telling them anything about character design, it’s to make characters that sell the game. I think it’s significantly more likely games with the ridiculous clean, skimpy, sexy characters are having that dictated from above.
I gave an easy to verify example in Sony and Stellar Blade, when the game developers publicly spoke out about their intentions to not censor.
It is difficult to verify what effect the pressure from “game journalists” like Kotaku had, but the articles are public so you can see them advocating for “less sexualized” characters and giving bad reviews to games that don’t comply.
There is also plenty more evidence like deleted tweets. But if this isn’t enough to protest against, then nothing is. So the question is, do you really believe that developers should not be put under pressure in either direction? Or do you believe it is only entitled when we demand “more beautiful” characters but perfectly fine when other demand “uglier” characters?
Complaining when art isn’t being made to appeal to you specifically is the most entitled thing you can do. Play the game or don’t. I don’t care.
Exactly what I was saying I want as well. Doubly so if you are not even the intended audience and are just pushing your religious/moral beliefs.
The Mona Lisa isn’t a particularly attractive woman, but it’s one of the most famous and renowned pieces of art. Personally, I think it’s highly overrated, but that’s just my opinion and doesn’t change the fact other people love it and DaVinci chose to make it on purpose.
What does that have to do with anything. DaVinci was not pressured into drawing Mona Lisa the way he did.
Thats what this thread is about. Why are you even commenting this kind of stuff if you don’t care?
I was replying to a comment that was general. In the first place, the few complaints about Ciri I saw was about playing as a female, not her looks.
Which includes the belief that all the characters need to look attractive, right? You’re angry at them too, right?
Yes. Not all characters need to look attractive. Ciri is an excellent example of a character whose looks fit her setting and story.
I am even more angry about them, since they muddle the argument I am trying to make and make me look bad.
On the other hand, I 100% support putting pressure on Games to not cave in to the outside demands for “uglier” characters in all games. This creates an awkward dynamic where there is no way to verify the original intent of the artist so we just have to guess based on how well the art fits the game. There may be some Games being falsely accused, but I find this less problematic than doing nothing and having the pressure in both directions not be balanced.
The point was that art can be whatever the artist desires.
This point we seem to agree on.
Hell, even still the incels complained that it was censored because a few outfits were slightly different, a few with a tiny bit more cloth.
I chose this example because it is easy to verify it was not the devs choice. Yeah, the difference is small, but the principle is the same.
This is the entire issue. You’re assuming there’s some horrible outside pressure to make characters ugly, so you’re in favor of outside pressure to make them attractive.
I am not assuming there is outside pressure. Among other things, the articles criticizing games for unrealistic body standards and the negative reviews of otherwise good games from “game journalists” are public. (note that reviews are recommendation for which games to buy, so giving bad review as a journalist is the same as saying not to buy a game)
It’s marketing.
Ok, so in your interpretation, the Game producer/developer I am criticizing tricked me into criticizing them. Then fuck them. They reap what they sow and I still want to express I am opposed to what they pretended happened.
You can find a games journist saying practically anything. Who cares? Don’t give the ones you don’t like views.
I just explained why I believe we shouldn’t let pressure from one direction be unopposed. So no, I will not ignore them. And yes, it absolutely is pressure, when bad reviews from several large sites try to lower sales and deprive devs of money they earned.
So do you care about people putting pressure on game devs or not? You can’t have it both ways where we should just ignore one group but the other one is an issue.
That’s totally unrelated to being ugly. Can people with normal shaped bodies not be attractive to you? Do you only get off to hentai?
What people get off to or what you find attractive is completely unrelated to whether it is what the devs wanted to make.
Also, you bringing this up and throwing around words like hentai and incel really makes me doubt that you want no pressure on artists in general, rather than just being opposed specifically to more “over-sexualized characters” or “beautiful characters” or whatever you want to call it.
I meant the people behind Stellar Blade were saying they weren’t censoring was pure marketing.
I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say. What does that have to do with anything?
No one was trying to censor them.
So the last minute changes appeared themselves? Or the devs voluntarily made them, for some reason after already shipping some physical copies and after saying they would not make those changes? (whether for marketing or other reason) Consistently across multiple outfits? Together with other censorship-like changes, such as blood splatter reduction/removal? Unlikely.
“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed”. As reported by Polygon, that’s an argument put forth by a new lawsuit...
IMO if every such game came with a large “Playable until [Date]” sticker, a lot more people would care about preserving them. And just the market pressure may save a lot of games.
I mean sure, that is how some (mostly strategy and tactical) games do it, but for an FPS, figuring out where the buffer should be would be a programmers nightmare. I guess you would have to try to calculate all possible lines of sights a player could have within some buffer time (100-1000ms) and then all players that could in theory enter them… Add physics and it is practically impossible.
Also, corner hack is useful enough and it does not address aimbot. IMO the answer is some combination of human moderation and ability to play with “friends” instead of randos. E.g. you could ask people to like or dislike a player at the end of a match and try to pair players that liked each other in the past.
When corporations acting in their best interest also act in the consumers best interest, the system is working as it should.
Intent matters for individuals, not for societal systems like governments and corporations. Incompetent governments/corporations need to be removed just as much as evil ones.
Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to research (www.psypost.org) angielski
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
Whine harder you assholes angielski
Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Thank you, Thor! 🥳 angielski
It looks like someone at Activision is leaking Slack screenshots to right-wing X users (www.gamedeveloper.com) angielski
Cutting edge (lemmy.world) angielski
It's like they wait for you to buy it (lemmy.world) angielski
A fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and it’s not clear YouTube can stop him (www.theverge.com) angielski
Inspired by another post angielski
Guaranteed the word “woke” will be thrown around left and right
Ubisoft is being sued over The Crew in a lawsuit that compares the server shutdown to a bumperless pinball machine (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed”. As reported by Polygon, that’s an argument put forth by a new lawsuit...
Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.
Paradox Interactive has completely cancelled "Life By You" (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Very surprising. The game looked like it had a lot of potential and could’ve been the most popular sims alternative, but it’s suddenly been cancelled.
The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines (forum.paradoxplaza.com) angielski
TL;DR:...