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To be honest, I have never seen sufficient evidence, that this is due to demeaning behaviour against women. I am not saying it might not happen, but I have never experienced it. What I have experienced, that women get paid less, but also that they don't push for more payment as much as their male coworkers.
I always felt that attributing this to purposefully mysoginistic behaviour or even subconscious involuntary behaviour is too trivial. After all, we get paid as much as we fight for and I have yet to see proof, that this is only due to women being less respected, rather than that it is not as ingrained in women to fight as much for their money.
I live in a male dominated technical world and I wish there were more women (dating can be frustrating, when there are 10 men for one woman), but I have never experienced women having less of a chance (maybe I am oblivious), if at all, that they get the benefit of being a woman, because there are so few, we are glad, if we have some working with us. The only thing I noted is in general, that their ambitions are not as high as their male counterparts.
Of course there are exceptions to everything, but I feel this might in some parts even be due to the pressure men are under to succeed or not be worth anything. You are right that this is a problem, but mysoginy seems to trivialize the problem and to be too one sided.
It is pressure for men to succeed, women being less egoistic and pushy for their goals, in some parts thinking of women as less capable (maybe because they don't put themselves out there as much) and many other things, that may contribute to this problem. I don't know what it is, but "patronized, underpaid or held back" in my opinion trivializes the problem and prevents us from solving it.
I've been in the computer industry for going on 39 years. At least in the US, "sufficient evidence" is overwhelming. Women who actually push for equal pay, equal promotion, equal treatment, women who actually get into managerial positions and, gods forbid, have the assertiveness to manage, get labeled bitches and get stranded in administrative jobs. I'm not going to mince words. It is scandalous. It has nothing to do with women not pushing for equal treatment; if they have the ambition and guts to push for promotion, the network hammers them down for it. All you see are the women who go along with the system. You aren't seeing the ones who have been driven out by the old boy network, by the glass ceiling, by kids who came from engineering schools or countries where women don't have to be taken seriously. And as a husband and the father of two daughters, I cannot express enough contempt for this system without having to ban myself.
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Sex is a terrible reward CDPR!
No more I say! Its often tacky, out of place and akward. Give me a sword, a recipe,monster info, anything other than a weird sexual encounter with an elf or a Nilfgaardian spy that nearly killed a dear friend.Spontaneous instances such as with Triss in the elven baths is OK once in a while if its considered necessary. It was a great improvement from the clumsy and ridiculous encounters of the first game.
And maybe a little off topic, but what is up with that woman in the griffin video? Some albino stranger just chopped people in half on her front lawn and used magic all over the place and she treats it like a sunny Tuesday. Granted its not a nice neighborhood and its demo video, but I thought it was very strange.
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edit: Since reading material was mentioned
this is a pretty solid paper by Catherine Mackinnon that touches on the thread topic. A lot better than a tweet that is for sure
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@Glaroug: May be she knew who he was. Reaction of villagers in the tutorial of TW2 was more expected.
The more I reflect on this scene, the more I agree, they must know each other. She's pretty nonchalant about witnessing a mob of bandits being carved up; others (such as Blue Eyes, Shani, and even Triss) have been stunned or at least amazed by such a display. And she acts more like she wasn't expecting to meet him than like he was a stranger to her.
Let's not forget that it was a stage demo environment build, so it's could be a character from the game that they just decided to use there because the assets were already there and it's not as low-poly as a regular NPC, to show how random we could come across a random encounter.
HEY! Wait! AS a decrepit old woman as educated and old-fashioned, raised in a country where women were forbidden to make any steps without the signature of their husband or father, well into the second half of the twentieth century, expose:
I respect your point of view (although heavily with a vision, and understanding of the game wrong)
and after seven years playing and reading The Witcher Saga
I declare:
Ciriously, the misogeny is only on the gamer's eyes: those who guess the image of women are mistreated and those who can only see boops and weakness. Certainly not in CDPR's works. (except Saskia armour)
I respect your point of view (although heavily with a vision, and understanding of the game wrong)
and after seven years playing and reading The Witcher Saga
I declare:
Ciriously, the misogeny is only on the gamer's eyes: those who guess the image of women are mistreated and those who can only see boops and weakness. Certainly not in CDPR's works. (except Saskia armour)
Ciriously, the misogeny is only on the gamer's eyes: those who guess the image of women are mistreated and those who can only see boops and weakness. Certainly not in CDPR's works. (except Saskia armour)
...and those who look for misogeny will always find it, anywhere. Sabes ?
Woah. Speak to the poster's points, preferably with examples, and let's try not to digress into suggesting anyone pointing out a game has bad things in it should go out into the real world and change them. That's a biig hole to jump into.
It's a videogame forum - not Amnesty International.
Again, the Witcher series absolutely has misogynistic elements - that is to say, parts of the game, you'll see some pretty denigrating portrayals of the female side of the species. Those same elements, like prostitution and revealing sex scenes, are found in many forms of media deemed misogynistic. Porn, for example.
Question is, is the -game- and the -designers- discriminating against women in particular or is it a facet of the story they are trying to tell? It's always going to be a good question, in part because it encourages us to look at the honesty of art.
If you are taking your audience on a trip and some parts of that trip are uncomfortable or offensive, should you omit them? To what degree should you include them? Are your motivations as an artist relevant to the piece? Etc.
Also, this thread is going to be pretty similar to the Sarkeesian thread and any other, "Sexism!" threads that pop up. I do wonder if the poster was aware of that.
It's a videogame forum - not Amnesty International.
Again, the Witcher series absolutely has misogynistic elements - that is to say, parts of the game, you'll see some pretty denigrating portrayals of the female side of the species. Those same elements, like prostitution and revealing sex scenes, are found in many forms of media deemed misogynistic. Porn, for example.
Question is, is the -game- and the -designers- discriminating against women in particular or is it a facet of the story they are trying to tell? It's always going to be a good question, in part because it encourages us to look at the honesty of art.
If you are taking your audience on a trip and some parts of that trip are uncomfortable or offensive, should you omit them? To what degree should you include them? Are your motivations as an artist relevant to the piece? Etc.
Also, this thread is going to be pretty similar to the Sarkeesian thread and any other, "Sexism!" threads that pop up. I do wonder if the poster was aware of that.
Hm. This was a really good post. Kudos.
I remember the chick in Act 2 in Witcher 2. She's outside Vergen in some hut. She's only there though if you saved her from the burning tower in Act 1. If you sleep with her, you get a key that unlocks a shortcut. If you don't sleep with her, tough shit. You'll have to go the long way around.
I always thought that was pretty fucked up. I'm getting rewarded... for accepting a "reward" (in this case she's giving you her body and man, it does rub me the wrong way a bit). There's, in other words, no reason for you to decline her offer. I wish they'd make it a choice between a sex scene or the key. Sleep with her and you have to spend a long time trekking around the mountain. Decline her offer and accept the key instead, you get a very handy shortcut. Actually, now that I think about it, it's creepy no matter how you look at it... I suppose they could've just deleted this part from the game altogether and nothing of value would be lost.
So yeah, I agree with you mate. I still don't think all the sex stuff was too fucked up in the Witcher 2. Well some aspects, scenes and characters were a bit too gratuitous and I hope they omit stupid shit like that. Other than that, I actually thought they handled it very tastefully and in moderation. They were selling the world to us and I can definitely believe this world once existed. I don't think it detracted from the experience. Still, there's too much off it in the industry, hell!, in media just in general. So I do hope RED doesn't just throw shit in there just because. There's a fine line between tasteful and tacky. Actually no, no there isn't. That's a lie. There's an entire ocean separating those two.
I guess the rule goes as follows: if it enhances, elevates or reinforces the narrative, leave it in. If it's gratuitous, blatant fan service or a cheap way to get immature fucks to buy your game and most importantly, if it doesn't add anything to the experience, leave it out. Take the cards from Witcher 1. If those weren't in the game, I'd live a perfectly happy life. I wouldn't miss them at all. Pointless would be an understatement.
Yeah I feel you. I really do.
The only thing I can say is that how women are treated in the games is a mean to an end, rather than an end in itself. It's supposed to paint a very unequal, sad, non-progressive picture in order to sell us the idea that this is what it was like to live during the, very aptly called, Dark Ages. That's not to say that there ain't any bad ass women who wield equally much, or sometimes even more, power than their male counter parts. But yeah, they're still sexed up. I agree, it's pretty messed up. But again, they're depicting a world that's based on a medieval society. Even then, if you were a chick, you probably had to be pretty in order to get anywhere in life.
I've always seen RED as merely reflecting society as it was back then. Not that they're making any kind of sociological statement on how shit should be today. But it's good. They're creating games that truly and unapologetically depict the awful circumstances that women found themselves in the medieval times. Because someone should give those poor women a voice. That's important. We need to remember how shit used to be in order to prevent it happening in the future. Bah, I'm starting to ramble. I'll shut up now.
The only thing I can say is that how women are treated in the games is a mean to an end, rather than an end in itself. It's supposed to paint a very unequal, sad, non-progressive picture in order to sell us the idea that this is what it was like to live during the, very aptly called, Dark Ages. That's not to say that there ain't any bad ass women who wield equally much, or sometimes even more, power than their male counter parts. But yeah, they're still sexed up. I agree, it's pretty messed up. But again, they're depicting a world that's based on a medieval society. Even then, if you were a chick, you probably had to be pretty in order to get anywhere in life.
I've always seen RED as merely reflecting society as it was back then. Not that they're making any kind of sociological statement on how shit should be today. But it's good. They're creating games that truly and unapologetically depict the awful circumstances that women found themselves in the medieval times. Because someone should give those poor women a voice. That's important. We need to remember how shit used to be in order to prevent it happening in the future. Bah, I'm starting to ramble. I'll shut up now.
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Thank you, Foggy, you nailed it. What's more, this must be the society the game portrays, because the themes of the game and Geralt's character get their meaning from that society that treats everybody badly and women worst of all.
Geralt is a hero as hardboiled as the pickled eggs on a tavern bar: Chandler's Marlowe, Hammett's Continental Op -- the man who must walk the mean streets, every day in danger of losing his humanity to them, and acutely conscious of how much he has already lost and what he still has to lose. His heroism is not in saving the world, but in saving himself.
You cannot tell his story in an enlightened world of sexual equality and political correctness. Blue Eyes's "Thank you, witcher. For your... humanity" would have no meaning there.
EDIT: Somebody else reminded me I should eat my words on that last point. A story like that works a treat in a world like Stig Larsson's fictional Sweden: where progressiveness, political correctness, equality of women, things like that are mandated but are nothing more than a Potemkin village, behind which the inhumanity not only continues unabated but has taken over the system in order to make a pretense that monstrous crimes are the new good.
Two thoughts:
Geralt without pants would have been an improvement for TW2 (with smart camera angles I guess, cause too many people wouldn't want to see his primary reproductive organs).
Women using sexappeal and physical beauty to get their way (sorceresses for example) is at least as demeaning to men as it is supposidly objectifying women. Making men senseless dogs, that are trained to bark, when they are given the figurative bone is not that flattering really.
But I wouldn't even argue that it is a misrepresentation, it is probably true for most heterosexual men and probably for some other groups in part too, that physical female beauty can be very effective and I would argue rather than calling this an objectification of women it is a stupification of men (or probably both). It actually empowers some women to a ludicrous degree and even though I am not a historian, I am sure, that it was used a lot as a manipulation tool in the past.
Geralt without pants would have been an improvement for TW2 (with smart camera angles I guess, cause too many people wouldn't want to see his primary reproductive organs).
Women using sexappeal and physical beauty to get their way (sorceresses for example) is at least as demeaning to men as it is supposidly objectifying women. Making men senseless dogs, that are trained to bark, when they are given the figurative bone is not that flattering really.
But I wouldn't even argue that it is a misrepresentation, it is probably true for most heterosexual men and probably for some other groups in part too, that physical female beauty can be very effective and I would argue rather than calling this an objectification of women it is a stupification of men (or probably both). It actually empowers some women to a ludicrous degree and even though I am not a historian, I am sure, that it was used a lot as a manipulation tool in the past.
I can only say that as a woman, i have rarely enjoyed computer games as much as i enjoyed the Witcher games. Not a single sexual encounter is a game-breaker and personally i found them to be admittedly clichéd on occasion, but sometimes really quite fun. any player who is really put off by them can easily choose not to engage in them.
as for context, i view the Witcher universe as essentially a medieval european world and some handsome, sterile, disease resistant stud strolling into town and ridding it of evil and monsters hardly seems like the most unlikely scenario to have women throwing themselves at him ... just my 2 cents
as for context, i view the Witcher universe as essentially a medieval european world and some handsome, sterile, disease resistant stud strolling into town and ridding it of evil and monsters hardly seems like the most unlikely scenario to have women throwing themselves at him ... just my 2 cents
First, the title. How exactly the game discriminates against the women players? And it is not a fault of translation. What benefits/features women, who play the game, do not get, while men get it all??? It is not like women do not get all DLC, or miss some other content.
Second, I agree with Guy and Foggy. It reminds me of a recent post on yahoo when a documentary about white actors playing as blacks (long time ago, in USA) was banned in one of US schools, and the teacher was suspended, for promotion of racism. I have no idea what these idiots think racism is - some sort of an infections disease you can get just by looking or reading about real history? Isn't it one of the main points of studying history - not to repeat old mistakes?
The same with the world of the witcher. Sure, it is full of shit, but it pretty much shows how far we progressed from medieval times. Women were treated badly, as well as minorities, serves, prisoners of war, and any undesirables. Instead of ditching these historical realities because some people feel offended (go to a fucking shrink if you are), we should actually learn about it, may be just to feel good and grateful about our society and not a bitch every time we have some economic or personal seat-back. May be we simply should remember how it was in order to appreciate what we have now.
Second, I agree with Guy and Foggy. It reminds me of a recent post on yahoo when a documentary about white actors playing as blacks (long time ago, in USA) was banned in one of US schools, and the teacher was suspended, for promotion of racism. I have no idea what these idiots think racism is - some sort of an infections disease you can get just by looking or reading about real history? Isn't it one of the main points of studying history - not to repeat old mistakes?
The same with the world of the witcher. Sure, it is full of shit, but it pretty much shows how far we progressed from medieval times. Women were treated badly, as well as minorities, serves, prisoners of war, and any undesirables. Instead of ditching these historical realities because some people feel offended (go to a fucking shrink if you are), we should actually learn about it, may be just to feel good and grateful about our society and not a bitch every time we have some economic or personal seat-back. May be we simply should remember how it was in order to appreciate what we have now.
Yes, I always found this completely non-anachronistic outfit particularly evocative of the role of women in a late medieval society:
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The very period-authentic fishnets are clearly symbolic of the patriarchal bondage women of the age were subjected to, while the exposed cleavage speaks to how truly vulnerable women were. I'm not sure if the fur trim means anything. I think it's actually just fur.
View attachment 4889
The very period-authentic fishnets are clearly symbolic of the patriarchal bondage women of the age were subjected to, while the exposed cleavage speaks to how truly vulnerable women were. I'm not sure if the fur trim means anything. I think it's actually just fur.
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The problem with this is that there's a conflicting view of what constitutes "sexism".
One view, and one that seems to be prevalent now, states that sex is something that only men can enjoy, and therefore all intercourse represents male domination and is therefore, by definition, misogynist.
The alternative view is that of course women enjoy sex, and that trying to depict women as a slut or a victim for "allowing" a man to have intercourse represents an attempt to depict women as lesser creatures, and is therefore, by definition, misogynist.
Two conflicting views, both widely held, but representative of the problems of modern feminism. It seems that there is nothing that ISN'T misogynist if someone wants it to be.
The elven woman also gets rewarded, and her dialogue explicitly says that. Nobody has forced her to make the offer, and she intends to enjoy this just as much as Geralt. The same applies to the barmaid in the Vizima outskirts, I've forgotten her name, who rewards Geralt for walking her home.
The succubus is a different issue - here, she's offering the "reward" in return for services to be rendered in the future, i.e. she's trying to bribe Geralt to judge in her favour. The same applies to Abigail in TW1. These could be described as demeaning to women. Or as demeaning to men, by implying they could be bought-off so easily.
Agreed.
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