13th December 2015, 1:48 AM
(This post was last modified: 13th December 2015, 1:59 AM by A Black Falcon.)
Dark Jaguar Wrote:The only thing I can say in Nintendo's defense is that Nintendo themselves didn't actually make either of those two games.Isn't Monolithsoft first-party, though? And Nintendo and Koei-Tecmo actually co-own the Fatal Frame IP, though yes, Tecmo-Koei did develop the game.
Quote:However, your hair splitting over it all is... a little unsettling. Yeah, no, I really don't care if they count as "prepubescent" (they certainly look that way to me) or skirt the edge of that definition (it really REALLY doesn't matter when we're talking about 13 year olds, and I don't really care about sparing feelings on that by using some other word), and frankly, saying "at least it isn't literally child pornography" isn't much of a defense either.Definitions matter, though. I know that it is common in this country to use "pedophile" for anything with an underage person involved, but it's not the correct meaning of the term -- it means someone with a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Going by the common "anything underage is pedophilia" definition, it'd be that for an adult and a 16 year old in California because there the age of consent is 18, but wouldn't be here in New England where it's 16. That makes little sense, definitions should be the same anywhere. The key thing is that puberty happens years before the age of consent because human bodies become sexually mature years before they are emotionally mature enough to reasonably have a (non-abusive) relationship. This is a real problem which people in power have often exploited in the past, but fortunately today we're closer than ever to keeping that from happening as much as we can. So, "underage" includes both prepubescent children and also pubescent teenagers, and it should; any decent age of consent must consider the mental as well as the physical.
As for whether those characters are prepubescent though, some of the thousand year old dragon girls in Fire Emblem games do look prepubescent; Nowi in Fire Emblem Awakening... what were you thinking Nintendo, that is NOT okay. "She's actually over a thousand years old" is not a good excuse! I like the game, but I'm not using Nowi in my party, no way. The Xenoblade Chronicles X character doesn't look as young as that, though I haven't played it myself so I can't say as much as I could about FE games. She looks quite young and shouldn't be sexualized as much as she is. I care about definitions of terms so the difference matters, though not too much; both are wrong. As is often said about depictions of female characters in games, one key is that a game character has no agency -- they just do what they were programmed to, nothing more. You can't say "well the character chose to be like that; they didn't, they were written and drawn that way. This clearly differentiates sexualized videogame characters from actual people. Dealing with actual people brings up even harder questions -- teenagers sexting, for example. At least in videogames it's not real, so the question is "just" about how that kind of image may affect people and whether that kind of depiction should be accepted, and not about actual people actually doing questionable or wrong things.
Quote: Comparing it to video game violence isn't exactly fair either. In the real world, we don't have any problems with ninjas ripping out someone's spine, but we DO have a problem with child sex trafficking, so one isn't the other. Though, you could make that argument when it comes to military shooters, of which there are a dime a dozen.You partially answer your own question here -- violence is a huge problem in American society. You are right that the two things are not directly comparable, but they do have some things in common. Yeah, we don't have ninjas ripping out spines, but we do have a lot of gun violence in this country, more than there is in many countries, and also military shooters are very popular. Media generally reflects culture, so in that way the extreme violence in American media is reflective of American society in general. I strongly believe in free speech, so things which are not real like videogames should not be actually illegal unless there is a very good reason, but it is reasonable to continue to study things such as, for example, if there are links between games and violence. Studies are on both sides of that I believe, as usual with studies... :p It's very hard to say how much media influences people's views, and how much people influence what media gets made; both elements work together to keep the circle going.
Each culture has their own views on violence and sexuality. America allows virtually any amount of violence, but sexuality often must be censored, or it doesn't appear at all; our Puritan heritage lingers. In Europe and Japan though, violence is often censored, while more sexuality is allowed. The European view here makes a lot more sense on a lot of levels, allowing more sexuality but less violence. Europe is strict against anything involving children, though, in a way Japan isn't really. Japanese media has a long history of creepy depictions of highly sexualized underage people. Sure the otaku culture that creates the character trope that led to this Xenoblade controversy is a definite niche, but it is messed up regardless.
Personally though, I believe in freedom of speech, so as long as something is clearly not real (drawings, videogames, etc), it shouldn't be illegal... but on consoles, console manufacturers set the rules. Sony, MS, and Nintendo all ban AO-rated games from releasing on consoles for example and always have. They could crack down a bit more on oversexualized children, and that might be a good thing, but the market for that stuff in Japan is lucrative enough that they don't do so. Otaku are often big video game buyers after all, as well as stuff like anime. T here are limits to what is allowed on consoles, but those limits still allow for games with pretty creepy themes like Nowi in Fire Emblem Awakening, this girl in Xenoblade Chronicles X, or Marie Rose in Dead or Alive 5 Last Round to name some who have caused controversies recently. And there should be controversies about that stuff; though I do defend their legality, the morality is different. As I said earlier it is possible to justify violence in a videogame, after all -- the enemies are badguys trying to destroy the world, or what have you. But exploitative sexuality towards children? There is no legitimate way to justify that beyond "we want to sell more copies to the creepy otakus who like that stuff", and that's not a good reason.
Overall, I hope that over time Japan gets less sexist. Japan's serious gender bias against women is a core cause of these problems (not the only one, but one cause), and if Japan can gradually become a less sexist place, people will eventually realize that those kinds of depictions are wrong and should not be as accepted in their media like they currently are. Decades ago sexism was widely accepted in American media, but now it isn't; change is possible. Japan is well behind us on that. Pressure does work, though -- consider how Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 won't be releasing in the West, probably in part because of Marie Rose being in the game. I am quite fine with us not getting a terrible game loaded with super-creepy imagery of that "oh she's totally 18 really" character, and even if I had a PS4 I certainly would not be importing the game. Criticizing media can have a positive impact. In the videogame industry, as horrendous as the horrible torrent of sexist hate people like Anita Sarkeesian are still being subjected to is, this industry is probably better off with those issues actually being something discussed, versus before when the underlying issues existed but they just weren't talked about much.
Oh, and maybe something will lessen America's violence obsession as well... here's hoping.
Quote:Os a side note, Nintendo themselves don't seem to fall for those gaming tropes so hard, they're perfectly content with their own set of tropes. It's taken years to get them to break away from their core characters even just a little. I've been wanting them to make Zelda games that star characters other than Link for a good long while. I'm not even asking for a character creator, just original leads for each game (which, as a happy side effect, means female leads in some new Zelda games). Mario has been dipping a toe into switching up lead characters, what with the Wario Land series, the Luigi's Mansion games, Super Princess Peach (sadly, just one game there, and some have noted thematic issues), the Yoshi's Island games, and the Donkey Kong Country series. However, they've basically stuck with JUST those characters. They won't put in a lead that doesn't have a long history as a secondary character. They aren't willing to take that risk on an unknown, and that's not a good thing. Pikmin is the one exception to this rule. Miyamoto has been perfectly content changing the lead or leads from one game to the next, and I love that. (I also love Brittany's design. Not just as a female lead, but her "look" steers clear from anything like traditional "good looking" female characters and she fits in with the rest of the cast much better than, say, Peach does with the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario included.)Here, I agree entirely with everything you say. Yes, Nintendo definitely needs better representation in their games. It's notable that a game like Mario Kart 8 has no non-light-skinned human characters you can play as, for example; these things do matter. Nintendo's reluctance to allow female playable characters in their major titles in far too many cases is frustrating and sexist, of course, and the ones they do have are too often sexist stereotypes -- Princess Peach, Metroid Other M, etc. And the less said about how much Nintendo adores the sexist trope "the plot is rescue the kidnapped girl", the better!
I haven't been suggesting different leads for Metroid games though. For one, that series takes place over a very small slice of time, and the games themselves are pretty rarely released, the spat of Prime games being the one exception in it's history. For second, I was afraid that if they went the "different lead for every game" route, we might not see a female lead for years. That second fear seems pretty valid what with the new Metroid multiplayer game. To be fair, at least those soldiers look pretty ambiguous, and I do like that, but in exchange they've got no personality. Actually, the introduction of "Zero Suit Samus" is, in retrospect, one of the bigger mistakes in the series. I'm one of those people defending her being in a swimsuit looking outfit at the end of the older Metroid games as the only way to really get across the "this is a girl you've been playing as" message back in the 8-bit era. Nothing particularly scandalous there, she was just standing straight and looking at ya. By Fusion, though, the ending scenes were these fully drawn pictures of Samus with some odd focus, and Smash Bros has made that "zero suit" into a community-wide joke. Not that I'd say she needs to be removed, but that suit defies physics more than her jump boots and laser whip do, and something a bit closer to the design of a character like Chell from Portal would be more appropriate I think.
As for Zero Suit Samus, I agree that it was a bad idea from the start, but it's gotten worse over time -- at first, at least the Zero Suit had flat shoes, for example... but now she's got crazy heels, a seriously sexed-up figure, and more. Nintendo doesn't have much in the way of non-sexist female characters who are actually playable in their games. Lots of other publishers are also lacking in this respect of course, but Nintendo does stand out in prominence and in how long they have been failing to improve as much as they should. The disconnect between more-sexist Japan and the less sexist West is certainly a key part of this of course, but Nintendo's largest market is outside of Japan, so they need to care more about these things.