It’s only in naming or profiles, not in actual chat.  That requires user complaints (I believe 15 gets you banned).

Microsoft didn’t “build” this community, though they obviously are responsible for managing it.

And an interesting choice of racial specification in the brackets there, Jesse. no-one who games assumes the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy. That’s an easy slur, and I’d bet that you couldn’t imagine the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy if you were high on acid for a month.

It is not a comfortable thing to play videogames online and be anything but a white heterosexual male

Oh, fuck yes.

This is a great, but very sad, story that pretty much typifies the videogame industry. Long and short is that this awesome game caster was told by some LA CEO that she was awesome, amazing, wonderful! But, well, “You can’t market Mama Cass.” Her follow-up a week later is great - fuck them - but anyway, you get the point.

And an interesting choice of racial specification in the brackets there, Jesse. no-one who games assumes the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy. That’s an easy slur, and I’d bet that you couldn’t imagine the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy if you were high on acid for a month.

You do understand that a great number of videogames come from Japan and are therefore built for Japanese audiences and sensibilities, right? 

Silly me, trying to encapsulate a major sector of the videogame world, especially when someone’s going to respond like a fucking idiot and say I’m slurring people.

Ugh, I hate Xbox Live. I don’t know how most people put up with the constant racial and homophobic epithets. It does not at all surprise me that they would solve the conflict between the need to have spaces for non-assholes with the massive douchebag infestation with that particular solution considering their main franchise signature games are basically giant ego strokes to the type of anxious masculinity libertarian wannabe type of gamer who can’t handle spending less than five minutes between either seeing a hot nearly naked woman or killing something bloodily. (No offense to the console in general, merely the signature lineup which in total is highly problematic).

On Tifa, sigh. It always bothered me that Tifa and Barrett were these brilliantly fleshed out, non-stereotypical characters (far beyond Aeris who had Madonna complex tattooed on her face) stuck in these stereotypical presentation for the characters who would have been overly threatened by having to care about these characters and so needed some goodie bag reward in stereotype presentation. Can’t have the family man single black dad whose tough exterior was all a grim facade without making him look and sound like Mr. T, couldya?

But yeah, I think it’s an interesting time in gaming though, because the massive success into the mainstream plus how it was such a powerful memory for more than just the assumed white male kid, means that we’re seeing more attention being paid to the racial and sexual aspects. This is producing both good exciting works at a greater pace as well as the inevitable “I’m taking my ball and going home” backlash responses.

Jesse, it’s almost like he’s unaware that America isn’t actually the center of the gaming universe and that most games don’t actually come from here.

Which frankly is kinda baffling. What very narrow rock have you been under to never at least have heard about the very very Japanese games that are popular. Exactly how do you not even hear about Okami, the Final Fantasies, or Pokemon.

Did he just assume they were western and white cause “anime-style” or something?

It does depend on the game.  I find there’s generally more acceptance of women (or at least not caring about sexuality and gender) in some MMORPGs.  City of Heroes springs to mind, depending on the server, and that there are gay/transgender/whatever hero or villain supergroups doesn’t raise many eyebrows except among a few of the terminally immature, who generally no one likes.  Of course, CoH isn’t primarily a PvP game, with player cooperation being more important, so that might tend to attract a more emotionally mature player.

The FPS games, though, that’s still the home of the juvenile “UR gay!” gamer twits.  I find, however, it really depends on the server in a lot of cases.  Most of the ones I play Team Fortress 2 on tend to have a lot less less of it because, aside from being offensive, the idiots who act like twits generally won’t shut the hell up about anything and get annoying.

And an interesting choice of racial specification in the brackets there, Jesse. no-one who games assumes the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy. That’s an easy slur, and I’d bet that you couldn’t imagine the identity of a 20 year old Japanese guy if you were high on acid for a month.

You do understand that a great number of videogames come from Japan and are therefore built for Japanese audiences and sensibilities, right?   

Silly me, trying to encapsulate a major sector of the videogame world, especially when someone’s going to respond like a fucking idiot and say I’m slurring people.

Not to mention the standard response to racism in gaming is “But games are made in Japan!  That means they’re not limited to white dudes, and therefore CANNOT be racist!”

So if America isn’t the centre of the gaming universe, how come it’s the Japanese guy in brackets?

I had a long conversation with some friends today about the tendency of feminist analysis of Japan to tend to racism. No-one here knows what the “japanese audience” is thinking, or even if the games which come out in America have anything to do with it. The Japanese video game world is much bigger than you see in America and I would argue a lot more gender diverse, and has been for a long time. Maybe you guys think the anime you see in America is representative of Japanese anime too? It’s funny, but only the most misogynist stuff comes out in the West. I wonder why?

“But games are made in Japan!  That means they’re not limited to white dudes, and therefore CANNOT be racist!”

That usually means they’re MORE likely to be racist (be it intentionally or just through ignorance of what is considered offensive in the US).

It doesn’t help that the gaming community in general has gotten a little hyper-sensitive to criticism after a decade of the Jack Thompson/Joe Lieberman “think of the children” brigade using video games as an easy scapegoat for societies ills.  It’s all too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to any criticism after years of dealing with crap like the “ZOMG graphic sex in Mass Effect!” fiasco.  It’s doubly hard when you have developers who actively try to draw that criticism (I’m looking at you Rockstar).  The Gaming community has suffered from a dearth of honest critics, good on Ms Peterson for having something substantive to say.

That said America is by far the biggest *market* for video games so that influences things, too.

Ben D, you are the proof in the pudding. Japanese more racist than Americans? How would you even know?

Ben D, you are the proof in the pudding. Japanese more racist than Americans? How would you even know?

I’d say they’re less likely to know what would be considered offensive in the USA. Just like I’d be way less likely to know what is considered offensive in Japan.

Let me de-racialize it.

If I made a historical strategy game for Germany about WWII and put in Nazi flags for the Germans, it wouldn’t be considered a big deal here but the game would probably be banned in Germany.

Flasheart, let’s make a deal.

You get to whatever your asinine point is, we all agree that you’re wrong, and whether or not your heart is in the right place is determined later.

Oh, nothing new. Video games have some of the strictest gender roles of anything in our culture. I enjoy games, my wife enjoys games. This should be fantastic, right? Well, try finding games that are interesting to both of us. We end up playing a mix of “intelligent” games like Katamari, Little Big Planet, e.g. games where the intended audience is presumably sophisticated enough to care about more than graphic sex/violence, and also many RPGs because of story/gameplay depth, although as noted above jRPGs are among the worst offenders in creating terrible, submissive female characters (again, no surprise given japanese attitudes/sexual roles/porn).

And this is why I prefer playing with people in the same room - I don’t have to play with stupid teenagers, and it’s very easy to correct someone’s stupidity with a poke in the snout.  Plus I don’t have to deal with idiotic, twisted rules regarding what I can and can’t say about myself.

Oh and re: anything flashheart says, I have that little turd killfiled for a reason.  This is the reason I have killfile in the first place.

Video games have some of the strictest gender roles of anything in our culture.

Like for instance the fact that my playstyle at fighting games is to play the weaker but fast characters, ergo all the characters that cater to my playstyle are either a) female or b) effeminate (Virtua Fighter had Lion instead of a female, and I think that’s it)?

Ben, games depicting historical aspects of WWII are generally modified for sale in Germany to remove Nazi iconography. Games using Nazi icons in non-historical contexts (e.g. Wolfenstein) may be outright banned.

I’m taking bets on whether flashheart is a self-described otaku.

Ben, games depicting historical aspects of WWII are generally modified for sale in Germany to remove Nazi iconography.

Yeah, one of my favorite games is Hearts of Iron II (about WWII) and the Germans use the Imperial flag rather than the Nazi flag, even though that’s completely inaccurate. I looked it up and found out what you just told me.

For the one on sale in Germany it even goes further, calling Adolf Hitler “Albert Hiller” in the leaders screen and removing his moustache in the portrait.

Strangely enough, the same game was happy to be banned in China (it refused to make Tibet part of China at the beginning of the game in 1936 to appease them).

“It doesn’t help that the gaming community in general has gotten a little hyper-sensitive to criticism after a decade of the Jack Thompson/Joe Lieberman “think of the children” brigade using video games as an easy scapegoat for societies ills. “

My husband’s a video game programmer (he worked on Saints Row 2, amongst other things) and his studio actually WANTS Jack Thompson to try to sue them. It’s great publicity and boosts sales every. single. time. Any developer I’ve ever talked to thinks Thompson’s a joke.

Germany in general is much more stringent on what can be in video games than we are here, which makes it tough to get games like GTA and Saints Row passed, though they both have done it.

Like for instance the fact that my playstyle at fighting games is to play the weaker but fast characters, ergo all the characters that cater to my playstyle are either a) female or b) effeminate (Virtua Fighter had Lion instead of a female, and I think that’s it)?

Something I didn’t even realize until recently: Street Fighter II was just a bunch of ethnic stereotypes beating the shit out of each other.

So, Nintendo invented the Wii, which is the game credited more than any other with getting women interested in playing computer games.

Meanwhile, America has Grand Theft Auto.

But yeah, those Japanese, just designing games for 20 year old boys.

My asinine point, Jesse, is that you are making a big claim about a community about which you know very little, on the back of some basic assumptions about that community which are unreasonable. And witness people like Ben D and Woolie jumping into the circle jerk, getting all self-congratulatory about how terribly sexist someone else is.

So, Nintendo invented the Wii, which is the game credited more than any other with getting women interested in playing computer games.

Meanwhile, America has Grand Theft Auto.

But yeah, those Japanese, just designing games for 20 year old boys.

Did you learn to argue off of the back of a cereal box?

“The bee was in the tree!  THE FUCKING TREE, GOLDEN GRAHAMS!”

flashheart, you get a bronze star as defender of the video game motherland, but japan by most measures has huge gender gaps, esp. relative to its development level.

“And this is why I prefer playing with people in the same room”

Likewise… but unfortunately, for some idiotic reason, there are fewer and fewer games that allow single-console split-screen gaming. Even many of the newest FPSs allow co-op play… but not with anyone in the same room, unless for some reason, you’ve got two consoles and two monitors.

Probably, they’d claim it’s due to the giant levels and high rez graphics that the games simply can’t handle that much processing, but I think it’s an excuse so that they can sell more online access fees.

Something I didn’t even realize until recently: Street Fighter II was just a bunch of ethnic stereotypes beating the shit out of each other.

Yeah pretty much. Still the best fighter game ever though.

And at least, unlike the DOA series, they don’t tout ‘realistic breast physics’ as a bullet point feature.

Meanwhile, America has Grand Theft Auto.

Rockstar was founded in Scotland. Better luck next time.

you aren’t making your case any better woolie. In between the dismissive comments about me being a self-described otaku, we have your extensive knowledge about Japanese sexual roles and porn, and the helpful reminder that japan by most measures (rape? diversity of available jobs? availability of abortion? contraception? life expectancy?) has huge gender gaps, “esp relative to its development level”. That last is particularly helpful - when talking about asians we should remember they’re always backward relative to us, so we need to specify their development level - even when we’re talking about the country that invented the bullet train.

I don’t expect you to see what you’re doing though. It’s standard liberal fare to dismiss the achievements of asian cultures and talk up the bad points, and to always talk with that little hint of “they’re backward relative to us.” That’s the subtext of Jesse Taylor’s dismissive bracketing of Japanese game developers, and obviously I must have a social problem if I’m defending them.

Are we really having this discussion?  Japan is at least 20 years behind the US in gender equality.  There is a reason that single women over 26 are considered past their prime there.  And they are xenophobic to such a degree it borders on racism.  Its legal to basically refuse service or to rent to foreigners.  Japan is many things but its not a mecca for equality.

Flashheart, I was putting Japanese game developers alongside American game developers.

You better get back to that box of Honeycomb.  How else will the bear get the honey unless you show him through the maze?

Well I’m sorry if my online experience with 90% of videogamers who go on a wanking fest about Japan’s greatly sexually liberated society (compared to the West) and who have problems with feminists usually are self-described otaku white boys who can’t refrain from spouting how they prefer asian women since they’re oh so more submissive and not corrupted by Western liberalism after around 5 to 10 posts.

So yeah, I’m still taking those bets for now.

Germany in general is much more stringent on what can be in video games than we are here,

From my experience in general, Europe tends to be more strict about how much violence can be shown while Americans get uptight about how much sex can be shown.

flashheart, right, Japan has such a heightened awareness of sexism that a Japanese developer would never make and market, say, a rape simulation game, there would never be a game based on the haptics of putting your finger inside a box to “interact” with a woman, and surely, at the very least, “dating-simulation” games would not be consistent best sellers.

I wasn’t even talking about “western” vs. “Asian”. If, say,  Finland made tons of video games there’d probably be a lot of racist things in them, not because Finns are evil but because their country is nearly 100% homogeneous. Making them way less likely to know what is offensive and what is not.

Thompson is a joke now, but in years past there was a real chance he could do some harm to the gaming industry.

I wonder how long it’ll be before MS bans mentioning that you’re female on XBox Live?  After all, nothing sets off the howler monkeys that make up the community like a real live giiiirrrlll, and if vidya games have taught us anything it’s that women are inherently sexual, and really nobody wants to play with a girl anyway.  Makes as much sense as banning someone for mentioning that she’s a lesbian.

Maybe next they’ll ban black people from identifying themselves as such.  After all, that’d cause people to fling around the N-word and make watermelon jokes, and banning a few N-words is easier than reigning in their jackass community.

Thanks for bringing this story to my attention, btw.  It convinced me that I don’t want to sign up for their service just so I can get mudstomped in Street Fighter IV.  Why the hell would I give my money to an organization that explicitly discriminates against lesbians?

I find there’s generally more acceptance of women (or at least not caring about sexuality and gender) in some MMORPGs.

While this is true, MMOs have their share of sexism as well.  The obvious example is this (warning- douchebag alert).  The basic gist is that many WoW guilds simply don’t allow women.  See, the guilds are full of horny, out of control dudes who can’t be expected to concentrate on keeping their 2223224322232243 pattern going in the presence of an actual girl, and besides girls are gold-diggers who cause guild drama.

At first glance, these games have an egalitarian design, in that usually males and females of the same race and class have the same stats.  Men are not stronger than women in WoW.  Final Fantasy XI, that series’ online outing, does the same.  However, for some odd reason when women in FFXI put on pants they magically transform into thigh-high leggings.  Don’t even get me started on the race of Lamia who have a special attack which rips the clothes off your body.  They could use a belly-dance attack which would turn players over to her side temporarily.  The game is also notorious for having cute and spunky 14 year-old girls as characters in almost every storyline.  Who then inspire mountains of hentai.

I’d point out that all of these aspects of FFXI are pretty typical of Japanese game design, but someone might call me a racist.

MMOs are the pits. My GF had a bunch of drama on COH because geeks assume that ‘I like to team with you for missions’ == ‘I am your girlfriend now’. At least the one time I verbally confronted some douche who had just joined our guild because he was using the ‘gay’ word (as in ‘this mission is gay’) the rest of the guild backed me up.

On full pants that turn into a thong on female models:

I once had fun following my male guild leader’s female pally around in WoW with the special healing pants. “Oh, Joel, could you put your tabard on?  Your ass is kind of hypnotic and I think your wife is going to hurt me if I keep staring.”  There’s nothing quite like upgrading your armor for more protection only to find out you’re wearing even less than before.  I’ve been quietly lobbying Blizzard for years to add something you could wear over your gear to cover up, since tabards don’t always do the trick.

I’m always a little stunned at the gamer doods who will not leave me the fuck alone when they find out I’m female.  I’ve learned the hard way, don’t ever let them give you something or they’ll treat you like you owe them marriage, and oh the whining if you fail to fall all over yourself saying “thank you” for how nice they’re being to you.

I humbly submit that it might not be women causing the drama in game.  Just a thought.

That last is particularly helpful - when talking about asians we should remember they’re always backward relative to us, so we need to specify their development level - even when we’re talking about the country that invented the bullet train.

You dipshit, woolie was saying that the gender gaps are especially large when you consider what a highly developed, advanced, modern country Japan is in most other respects. The whole point was that a country that has developed to level that Japan has should really be more egalitarian.

Thompson is a joke now, but in years past there was a real chance he could do some harm to the gaming industry.

And now he’s disbarred and disgraced.  If only we were as successful with Lieberman.  Actually given the fact that Ol’ Jack was a raging homophobe I wonder what he’d think of this particular controversy.

I wonder how long it’ll be before MS bans mentioning that you’re female on XBox Live?

Well they already have like half the clothing and hair options for the female not-Miis (something which annoys the ever loving hell out of my wife).  It’s sometimes hard to believe this is the same company who made a game where you could be a (quasi) Lesbian one of their flagship titles.

It’s sometimes hard to believe this is the same company who made a game where you could be a (quasi) Lesbian one of their flagship titles.

Actually strike the quasi. I was thinking about Mass Effect, but forgot about Fable II which lets you be a gay person of either gender and actually has a side quest where you help a father come to terms with his son’s sexual orientation.  And it’s directly from MS to boot!

I live in Japan.  Don’t even begin to tell me that Japan is not sexist or racist, because I live with racism and sexism every day.  And I’m white.  (Some people think that whites never ever experience racism ever—hi, this country is NOT majority white.  Geez.)  The only reason I don’t get stopped for random ID checks is because I’m not busty and blonde and I don’t own a bicycle (foreigner + bicycle = OMG STOLEN BICYCLE!!!).  Let’s not even start with the black people I know who get random visits to their door from police who are just “checking up” on the “neighborhood.” 

Additionally, I’ve studied the psychology and sociology of modern Japan quite a bit.  I know what I’m talking about.  It bugs me when people who have no clue spout out nonsense out of some weird allegiance to the superiority of Japanese society.  For one thing, anime featuring lots of girls is NOT feminist—those girls are all there so they can cover every “type” a guy might want (the feminine one, the tomboy, the 12-year-old, the nerd, the ditz ...)  Japan is cool, convenient, I can walk in my quiet neighborhood at 2am rather safely, and I get health insurance from the government that covers all sorts of crap including dental, but it has a long way to come as far as sexism and even longer to get over racism.  But, shou ga nai, what can you do about it, omg we can’t figure it out.  (Regarding increasing the birthrate, the government almost literally said “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”  How about making it easier for women to work and have kids at the same time??  Nope, haven’t tried THAT.)

Yeah, there’s a looooong way to go.  It may be safe, they may be good at improving upon technology, but there are a lot lot lot of problems that become very apparent when you’re faced with them every day.

Re: MMOs

I thank the Gaming Gods every day for the raiding group I managed to get myself into; the GMs in both guilds are women, about 40% of our regulars are as well, and there is very little sexism (or racism, we’ve got a diverse bunch).  I can’t even think of the last time I’ve heard a “gay” slur.  I’m definitely not the norm, though.

The Xbox Live TOS clearly and explicitly prohibit anything related to sex or sexuality in your Gamertag or profile. She chose to ignore the TOS, and got booted. But I guess that doesn’t gin up enough Authentic Outrage as saying “ZOMG MICRO$OFT BANNED SOMEONE FOR BEING GHEY!!!”

I started online gaming with Diablo I and a dial-up connection… and learned really quick that I should stick to a nice androgynous name like “kodiak” so the gents wouldn’t know that a femme had wandered into their midst. Even when you play female charachters they assume you’re male without any additional information (weird actually…).

The amount of shit that you get for being a femme gamer out there is not worth it. I decided not to get involved with WoW (even though I have a longstanding love affair with Blizzard games, since Warcraft the first) because there was such a heavy reliance when raiding on Ventrilo and the like. There’s no hiding I’m a girl if you can hear my voice, and I don’t want the drama of it all, so I took a pass… I’ll wait for D3 and see if they make online multi a heavy portion or not (please not!) and decide if I want to dip my toes into it again.

(on a side note, Puzzle Pirates is an adorable Massively Multi, and you all look like lego charachters and while there’s a good deal of PvP it’s all in puzzle games… and adorably fun! If you like puzzles, check Three Rings for that… addictive, fun, new challenges on a fairly regular basis, and I have encountered very very few assholes since the whole thing is about working together or your ship gets sunk and no one gets nothing… (er, dubloon oceans may be the exception)).

The Xbox Live TOS clearly and explicitly prohibit anything related to sex or sexuality in your Gamertag or profile. She chose to ignore the TOS, and got booted. But I guess that doesn’t gin up enough Authentic Outrage as saying “ZOMG MICRO$OFT BANNED SOMEONE FOR BEING GHEY!!!”

I love it when people respond to arguments that weren’t made.

People are very hung up on the “Microsoft is just being fair. Rules are rules.” argument on gaming forums discussing this. Of course, its quickly pointed out that this isn’t true. There are plenty of people with straight identified gamertags or heterosexual identifying information in their profiles. Heck, when I thought about it, I realized *I* identify as heterosexual in my profile. No one is banning me. Because my sexuality seems “normal” so it goes unnoticed. If you mention a girlfriend, say you are married, etc. you’re identifying as straight. XBL gives you no trouble. Their perverse way of dealing with harassment is to make the harassed go away and that’s very distressing.

I love it when people respond to arguments that weren’t made.

I must have hallucinated this…

a woman being banned from XBox Live for declaring herself a lesbian in her profile

She wasn’t banned for “declaring herself a lesbian.” Her sexual orientation had nothing to do with it. She was banned because she decided to ignore the very clear TOS on her account.  Whether that particular section of the TOS is well thought out is open to debate, but its existence is not. It’s highly misleading to imply that she got banned because she was a lesbian, when that simply isn’t the case.

She was, in fact, banned for declaring herself a lesbian in her profile.  You know why?

Because the story says she was banned for declaring herself a lesbian in her profile.

However, being banned for declaring yourself something is not the same thing as being banned for being that thing. 

So, no, you didn’t hallucinate.  You just have trouble reading.

The Xbox Live TOS clearly and explicitly prohibit anything related to sex or sexuality in your Gamertag or profile. She chose to ignore the TOS, and got booted. But I guess that doesn’t gin up enough Authentic Outrage as saying “ZOMG MICRO$OFT BANNED SOMEONE FOR BEING GHEY!!!”

Huh, that took longer than I figured.

First, no.  Second, no, and this is proven - see BStu’s comment.  Third, shut the fuck up.  Fourth, no.  Fifth, shut the fuck up even harder.  Sixth, please get some reading comprehension and grow the fuck up.  I think that covers it all.  Oh, no wait… seventh: no, and shut your filthy noisehole.

You’re either a troll or an idiot.  Either way, cram a bastard in it.

Yeah pretty much. Still the best fighter game ever though.

I’m sorry, your comment was not about Soul Calibur and is therefore wrong. (Being only a little bit serious here.)

Also, SFII was a broken mess in comparison to its revisions - which brought forth even more brokenness.  Plus they were maddeningly hard for no good reason other than the computer being a cheating bastard.  Great game, yes, and an important step in modern gaming, but ‘best’?  I dunno…

Man. This is like saying a soldier wasn’t discharged for admitting he was gay, he was discharged for violating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

BY ADMITTING HE WAS GAY.

The fact is the service agreement defense is a ruse at best and a farce at worse. Split the diff and you have a fruse. Given that the rule is selectively enforced almost exclusively against gays, the rule is a deception. Its just pretending to be even handed when the reality is that the execution is anything but. MAYBE that wasn’t intentional, but its still the reality and that’s what we’re talking about.

“Even when you play female charachters they assume you’re male without any additional information (weird actually…).”

For whatever reason the husbandman plays female characters/avatars about 1/3 of the time, though he always has the same semi-masculine name.

Most of what I know about online gaming I’ve gleaned through him. The only MMORPG I’ve done was COH and I ran with a bunch of people I know in real life. I tend to avoid online gaming because I just want to button mash and be silly and so many people are way too hardcore about it (the husbandman included….)

There are games in which it’s easy to be a fully dressed female, COH (my char wore a 3 piece suit) and Saints Row being two examples. So, it’s at least not universal, and I do know that it’s talked about in my local game design studio.

Um, flashheart, where was the game “Rapelay” developed, again?  And you’re arguing statements that haven’t been made, so stop saying the NASA is a waste of money!  How else will we make Star Trek real?  And if we don’t make Star Trek we’ll never have holo-decks where nerdy antisocial gamer boys can have physical interactions with women.

Oh, and don’t play Skate 2.  I made a female character and as soon as I started playing, I got an achievement…  The “Gender Bender” achievement!  Because obviously a girl wouldn’t play a skating video game so it must be a dude making a girl character!  And then in the “plot” parts of the game, they still referred to me as “him”.

And sorry, I have a soft spot for Virtua Fighter as the best fighting game even though I suck at all fighting games, but the VF1 had the best “enter your initials” music ever.  I still have the Saturn version and the music on there was in normal CD format so I pull it out just to play that song every once in a while.  My brother and I will sing it together on the phone.  Ah, ah, ahhhhhh!

I still have the Saturn version and the music on there was in normal CD format so I pull it out just to play that song every once in a while.

Sega seemed to like doing that - I have VF2 and Sonic 3D Blast for the Saturn I picked up a few months back, and I’ve seriously considered digging out our blank CDs just to make CDs of the soundtracks to one or both.  The music in 3D Blast is particularly badass - if you’ve never heard it, I suggest you do so.

Jesse, it’s almost like he’s unaware that America isn’t actually the center of the gaming universe and that most games don’t actually come from here.

Highly debatable at best.  On Nintendo, certainly.  But if you’re talking PC or Xbox, Japanese developed games are a distinct minority.

Aside from that, the primary issue with Xbox live isn’t any kind of problem with how Microsoft manages it, it’s the fact that lots of teenagers are and always have been assholes—especially if they’re anonymous. Until that changes, learn to make use of the variety of muting options typically available and try to play with people you know whenever possible.  It’s easy to blame MS for their draconian and occasionally illogical measures, but you’re fooling yourself if you think teenagers in general aren’t going to act small minded.  It makes little difference how inclusive the games themselves are unless the population as a whole changes its attitude.

Finally on that subject, this post was a good one on blacks in video games. http://primeplus.blogspot.com/2009/02/black-history-month-special-black.html

Wow, what an awesome torrent of self-congratulatory racism. Japan is “20 years behind the US”. They “may be good at improving upon technology” (they can’t invent anything for themselves, don’t you know, because they’re uncreative robots). All Japanese are racist (but we’re not, oh no, not here in the last nation to abolish slavery). ZOMG They stopped me to check my bicycle! It must have been because I’m foreign! All Japanese are sexist, and every 20 year old boy is into rape games.

If America had the same lack of censorship laws that Japan had, you would see all these “rapeplay” games there too. The differential clothing in RPGs should be sufficient hint for that. The fact that these things bubble up in the gaming market which happens to be largest and least censored is not proof that it is more sexist than the world of Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto and that awful detective from the 80s.

Japan is the country where a game company developed new technology explicitly so they could make a game system which women would be interested in. It has much better uptake of computer games among women than in the west, and a much wider range of games and comics aimed at women. FFS, ikebukuro has a street full of butler cafes and manga porn stores aimed at women.

You guys clearly don’t understand this, and think that because the J-games you see marketed in the west are as sexist as American games, they must represent the nicest end of the J market, since America is the mecca of equality, right? But they don’t, anymore than the first anime to be exported from Japan in the 80s represented anything except the sick fantasies of the fanboys who discovered it. So then Jesse bracketed Japanese developers as if the product you see represented them, and now a lot of people are assuming that this is because all Japanese are racist and sexist.

And, to defend yourselves, you assume I have “gone native”, and am some crazy otaku who thinks all J-girls are submissive. I think that belief is projection - ask woolie about Japanese “sexual roles/mores” and you’ll see the confirmation.

flashheart, telling the truth about a country’s very prominent failings regarding equality and progression != racism.  Please pick up your Certificate of Failure at the door as you leave.

stormhit, that’s not what this is about, and encouraging a lax stance on the stupid little cockwaffles who populate XBL doesn’t do anything.  These stupid children need to be taught lessons, and I’d say punishing them through the system is the best way to do so.  As for Microsoft, if they choose to look the other way while obnoxious little turds scream epithets at a rate of a dozen or more per minute while banning people for telling something about themselves, then yes, it is a problem with how they run it, and all your blather won’t change that.  A second certificate will be waiting for you after flashheart picks up theirs.

“The Xbox Live TOS clearly and explicitly prohibit anything related to sex or sexuality in your Gamertag or profile.”

So you can’t mention if you are female or male?

Ahhhh, MMOs.

I play WoW and consider myself fortunate to be in a guild that does not actively promote hatred of everything not straight, white, and male.  But it’s no picnic, either.  When I first joined the guild, language and risque chatter was actively discouraged by the leadership but that has relaxed a lot in the year I’ve been here.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Lately though I’ve been becoming more and more uncomfortable in the guild.  A woman joined who is much, much more flirtatious than any other women in the guild, and it has caused a predictable uproar.  Several male players who I thought were my friends have all but stopped speaking to me and clamor for her attention.  Other male players have suddenly decided that the kind of banter the new girl likes is now acceptable for all women in the guild.  So I find myself frequently the target of really, really bad innuendo.  For example, one time I was joking about something completely innocent, and a long time member of the guild who I like and respect a great deal but with whom I have never flirted made some comment about giving me a bottle of lotion (presumably for masturbatory purposes).  It made no sense in the context of the conversation, and makes no anatomical sense either (since when do women need lotion to masturbate?).  When I said that what he said made no sense I was inundated with comments about my apparent naivete and innocence and youth.

I like the new girl a lot actually; she’s friendly and speaks her mind, and whenever I’ve been able to talk to her alone or do things with her in game its a lot of fun.  But it’s like she’s turned over a rock and shone a light on the nastiness I didn’t want to believe was in the guild.  I wanted to believe that most of the guys in the guild liked me because, well, I’m me, and not because I have boobs.  I wanted to believe I could be online and that I could speak without worrying that someone would twist my words into a discussion of my sexuality and body.  I guess I really was naive!

Anyway, about WoW in general, yeah, when women put on “breastplates” they frequently become “shiny belly shirts”, or when they wear leg armor it becomes a thong.  Not all armor, but enough of it.  The upcoming dungeon armor set for Paladins exposes the female characters’ midriff.  The Paladin class is supposed to be heavily armored, but I suppose the belly isn’t a vital spot, now, is it?

They’re also adding an Achievement relating to the in-game Easter type holiday.  It’s called “Shake Your Bunny Maker” and requires you to use an item that puts bunny ears on a female character level 18 or older.  Now, there is a lot of “off color” humor in WoW, from poop jokes to cross-dressing, but very, very few things specifically target women characters.  So to have this Achievement not only targeting women but women that are “over 18” is really creepy to me.  Especially since I have reported guilds named some variation of “She Said She Was Level 18” to Game Masters and the guilds have subsequently been forced to change names due to violation of policy.

Flashheart, the fundamental flaw in your premise is that it’s idiotic.

The secondary flaw is that you’re so desperate to prove that Japan isn’t racist, sexist or homophobic in any way that you’re admitting it produces the very material we’re discussing, but then blame it all on evil Americans, in some sort of patronizing assertion of Western cultural dominance over Japanese popular culture. 

Get some help.

flashheart—

I know it was a full sentence and so probably difficult for you to fully get but it was:

“Japan is at least 20 years behind the US in gender equality”

That has nothing to do with anything besides “gender equality”

Denise, my World of Warcraft guild (<Thought and Memory>, The Scryers ((why yes, I am an RP fag, thank you so much for noticing))) until recently strongly discouraged salty language.  Fortunately the person who found ‘suck’ offensive has left, and I may now return to my normal vocabulary already in progress.

Many of the armor problems—not just the plate armor bikinis but the godawful color schemes in The Burning Crusade—have remedies in Wrath of the Lich King.  I am grateful that can now take my priest out in public without having to have her in shadowform.

It’s not because I’m worried about TOS violations, but I almost never mention in games that I’m a lesbian in real life.  My guild knows, and they’re a fairly mature bunch of people.  But I have received enough attention from allegedly lesbian characters that it got creepy in a big hurry.  The forsaken woman who kept calling me ‘sister’ despite my insistence that she was not was about the last straw for me.

It is, however, almost funny to tell boys that I have boundaries (don’t touch me uninvited; if you must call me by something other than my full name, use the nickname I chose for myself and don’t argue with me about it; und so weiter) and watch them sputter when I tell them they’ve been cut off for repeated violations of my own personal TOS.

Jesse,

If your intention was not to at least imply that this woman got banned specifically because the was a lesbian (or at least said she was), rather than because the specific action of discussing her sexuality (homo or hetero) violated a more general clause in the TOS, then I’m unsure as to what her relevance is to the rest of the post.

Blue Fielder,

Profanity-laced name-calling? Awesome. Feels just like a round of Halo 3… Why not call me a faggot for good measure?

Bstu,

Man. This is like saying a soldier wasn’t discharged for admitting he was gay, he was discharged for violating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

BY ADMITTING HE WAS GAY.

No, not even close. The ONLY way you can violate DADT is by telling somebody you are gay. It is a policy explicitly pertaining to homosexuality. The TOS are not. The relevant section of the Xbox Live TOS can be violated with <i>any<i> reference to sex or sexuality, regardless of what variety it may be. “slutbanger_69” is ever bit as prohibited as “hawt_le$bian1212” or whatever. Do you honestly not see the difference?

The fact is the service agreement defense is a ruse at best and a farce at worse. Split the diff and you have a fruse.

What does this even mean?

Given that the rule is selectively enforced almost exclusively against gays, the rule is a deception. Its just pretending to be even handed when the reality is that the execution is anything but.

You have data to support this, right? (As opposed to anecdotes, because we can trade anecdotes all day. One very straight male on Kotaku was suspended from XBL for having a reference in his profile to walking around with his pants down.)

IM,

So you can’t mention if you are female or male?

Yes, you can. It mentions nothing about gender.

“highly developed, advanced, modern country Japan is ...” etc. etc.

Uh, are people really operating under the assumption that modernity has some necessary connection to equality and social justice?

Sure some modern technology enables greater social equality (e.g., really effective birth control). But its potential to restrict liberty and reinforce is just as great (e.g., surveillance, really effective propaganda).

Fascism and global corporatism are perfectly modern. Japanese culture is perfectly modern. It’s not the vision of modernity that we’d like to see.

Nineteenth-century myths of progress die hard regardless of the ideology served, I guess.

in other words, Japan is not *behind* or *backward* in terms of gender politics—because there is no natural path of historical progress— it is simply *wrong*

both views are bound to offend (no one likes being called backward or wrong), but only the latter view is in fact offensive in terms that should really matter, i.e., it’s colonialist and condescending

CTD, do you have any proof that the policy isn’t being enforced selectively? I mean, if I don’t get to use anecdotes to talk about information that is obviously not public, why do you get to draw conclusions?

I’m following the discussion at Kotaku and the anecdotal evidence offered in support of the suggestion that the policy is being enforced selectively is overwhelming. Even the anecdote you offer to support your case has NOTHING to do with the issue being discussed and is sadly representative of the mismatched prioritizes of those defending the banning of teh gays from our sight. I saw a lot of that on Kotaku. “Its like a man saying he likes pussy.” “It’s like talking about walking around without pants.” “Its like talking about having sex with prostitutes”.

NO. Its like saying you’re married in 49 of the 50 United States. Show me Microsoft preemptively banning everyone who identifies as being married for identifying their sexuality. Again, one of my “anecdotes” was MYSELF. I didn’t set out to identify as straight on my profile, but I do. Because that is a normal state, it will go far less noticed than “I’m a lesbian.” The reality is that by only enforcing this policy when people complain, Microsoft ensures that the policy is enforced selectively. If I’m hetero, I have to literally take my dick out to get banned. If I’m gay, I just have to be gay and acknowledge that. Sorry, but I’m not going to agree with your efforts to pretend this isn’t punishing people for being gay. It is. If you don’t want the responsibilities that come with owning that bigotry, maybe you should return it to your local GameStop.

“Exactly how do you not even hear about Okami,”
Very easily, apparently, because it doesn’t seem to have gotten nearly the popularity it deserved (though it evidently sold well enough to warrant a Wiimake)...

“There are games in which it’s easy to be a fully dressed female, COH (my char wore a 3 piece suit) and Saints Row being two examples.”
Guild Wars is pretty good about that too, every profession’s got at least one or two fully clothed armors (except Paragons, but with them even the male ones aren’t wearing much…)

CTD,

Cry some more.  You don’t like it?  Try getting some reading comprehension and using it.  Or, better yet, shut up while the adults talk.

If your intention was not to at least imply that this woman got banned specifically because the was a lesbian (or at least said she was), rather than because the specific action of discussing her sexuality (homo or hetero) violated a more general clause in the TOS, then I’m unsure as to what her relevance is to the rest of the post.

Oh, I see.  You saw the word “lesbian” and stopped reading.

Well, nothing I can do about that.

You really honestly don’t get it do you Jesse? You compared a group of people you know nothing about to a group of people you do know something about. You have been presented with pretty clear proof that this aside was wrong, and wrong because you know nothing about the society regarding which you made the aside. You refuse to take back the comparison because that would mean admitting that you made a racist aside so casually that you didn’t even think about your racist assumptions, assumptions made about a society about which you know precisely nothing. This is okay to do because you think your American-ness makes you special.

When challenged your horde of flying monkeys went off the handle, basically claiming that all Japanese are racist and sexist and all japanese men are a bunch of rapists. And my attempts to defend this nation are construed as a nerd who loves submissive japanese girls being one-eyed about a fucked up culture.

I have Japanese male friends who have experienced so much racism since they moved to the west that they basically don’t leave their house except to go to English class. I never experienced anything like that when I was in Japan. My (female, white - I have to specify this against the ludicrous assumptions of your flying monkeys) partner was paid the same wages as a man for the first time in her life when she was in Japan and felt safe in public for the first time in that nation. Do you have any idea how angry it makes me when I read about how “racist” and “sexist” Japan is while my female Japanese friends are being constantly sexually harassed in the west and my male Japanese friends can’t make friends because they’re considered so worthless?  My male Japanese friends can’t meet western women because every woman they meet is struggling under the feminist critique of Japan - all men are sexist and racist with small dicks. This is the consequence of western “feminism” for Japanese people - that western men can openly make racist statements like “all Japanese men are sexist” because every feminist with a blog is supporting that claim - while western men sit back and watch their Japanese girlfriends do all the housework. Does this strike you as maybe just slightly racist?

This is why, walking through London on New Year’s Eve, my Japanese male friends said “hidoi machi” in front of me - “fucked up town”. They are invisible here because of the exact kind of racism you are spouting.

I lived for 2 years in japan, I studied in a small country town and my (white) partner worked there. We married at a Japanese shrine, we had friends - male and female - from various circles while we lived there. These throwaway lines of yours - claims about Japanese game developers which go against the history and present experience of game developers; the charming assumption that Japanese can only “improve upon” western technology; sly reminders that we need to consider their “level of development” (which no American would ever append to a statement about the UK); generalisations about Japan based on slanted western interpretations of a culture about which you know nothing - are just racism plain and simple, mixed with western liberal triumphalism and a healthy dose of “we won the war nyah”. Of course I don’t expect you to see it, but you’re a fool if you think that the Japanese don’t notice it, and ask themselves - why did I welcome this white guy, and pay him to study here, when all they give us is racist abuse?

The secondary flaw is that you’re so desperate to prove that Japan isn’t racist, sexist or homophobic in any way that you’re admitting it produces the very material we’re discussing, but then blame it all on evil Americans, in some sort of patronizing assertion of Western cultural dominance over Japanese popular culture.

This is so completely asinine it’s ridiculous. For starters, there are hordes of comments here about America “admitting it produces the very material we’re discussing” and the implied assumption that it’s all Japan’s fault (because you know, the only games they produce are sexist and evil, even though they produced the Wii, the PSP and the Nintendo DS - all very popular with Japanese women).

But beyond that, I didn’t “blame it all on evil Americans”. I claimed that the Japanese releases in America aren’t the entirety of the Japanese market, and represent decisions to market in America that which Americans want - suggesting you should look at your own gender issues rather than Japan’s.

I know this is probably a rather sophisticated argument, which is why it really is rather amusing that you think I should “get some help”. I think there is a cereal packet waiting for you…

Robert, this:

I know it was a full sentence and so probably difficult for you to fully get but it was:

“Japan is at least 20 years behind the US in gender equality”

That has nothing to do with anything besides “gender equality”

is really begging the question: do you know anything about anything outside of liberal US human rights issues? There are about 50 years of post-colonial studies which have so much to tell you about the phrase “X is at least 20 years behind Y in gender equality”. There’s also a bunch of comparative gender studies material you might want to read.

I don’t really expect American liberals to get this. I mean, you guys won the war right? So you can say what you want. But as your economy tanks you might want to think about just exactly where this attitude is taking you vis a vis China and Japan. You might also want to consider it from the perspective of basic manners, or even a basic kind of human perspective of humility. You guys aren’t the bees knees, and running around telling the world you’re better than them doesn’t win you any favours.

You do get that, right?

Flashheart, your entire point is that I must be wrong because I don’t understand a culture in the same bizarrely fetishized and idealized way that you do, without you actually providing any reason why I’m wrong or why you’re right other than anecdotes which do absolutely nothing to prove your point.

Congratulations - you just lost an argument on the internet!

I mean, you guys won the war right? So you can say what you want.

You’re a fucking moron.  I tend to agree with you that a lot of people on this thread are spouting off about Japanese culture without really knowing much about it.  Guess what, crying about WW2 isn’t doing anything to educate them.  It seems you didn’t even want to bother with that, since we’re all a bunch of Americans who just wanna bomb away our disagreements, amirite?  Always looking for a new neck to stomp on, those yankees.

Yes, when it comes to excising prejudice, let’s follow the example of flashheart.

flashheart: Poster child for the Stick Rule.

Jesse, do you really think that the Wii doesn’t stand out as a shining example of how wrong you are?

Jrod, if you have some better reason for why Western liberal feminists feel they have the right to condescend to Japan about its level of political development, ignorant of any nuance or facts, feel free to share. I would have thought “we won the war nyah” is about the best one there is - the alternatives are pretty murky.

But while you’re on the topic, those yankees are pretty much always looking for a new neck to stomp on (exhibit A: Iraq) and those of you who aren’t supportive of that little tendency should try and show a little more humility about your nation’s history of imperialism and war when you’re being challenged about your attitude to other nations.

You know, Flashheart, you came in here with such a huge chip on your shoulder, I’m surprised you were able to type. You could have engaged BonAppetit’s experiences in Japan by comparing them to yours, instead of mocking them. You could have said “Yes, Japan makes assorted rape games, but it also produced the Wii and DS, and many titles for those that interest female gamers, let’s discuss why that might be.”

But you didn’t. You took an aside in the article, ignored its point (game companies seemed to be geared overwhelmingly - to the point of negatively effecting a portion of their audiences - towards young males of the majority race in whatever region their based in) and proceeded to launch a tirade about Western liberal feminists and their view of Japan. Which has very little to do with the topic of the article.

Flashheart would just like to say, for the thousandth time, that he’s so much more progressive than feminists will ever be. Duly noted.

I heard America has a fat ass.  Flashheart, comments?

Wow, this threadjack is pretty much the platonic ideal of all threadjacks.

Matty, it may surprise you to know that Western liberal feminism can be racist, and American feminism has a strain of holier-than-thou interventionist rhetoric and action which can be detrimental to feminist and non-feminist progressive politics in other countries. American puritanism and individualism is not necessarily welcome in other countries, and American feminists’ unwillingness to accept the primacy of other political movements, especially in other third world countries, can be a major problem for women trying to advance their causes in those countries. As a trivial example, pretty much every foreign man I meet in Japan who is a sleazy nasty little turdbag to his wife/girlfriend defends himself on the basis that he’s so much more progressive than the J-boys. This is a small hurdle which those women wouldn’t have to deal with if it weren’t for the constant crude stereotypes western feminists (and I’m sorry, it is western feminists) construct about this aspect of japan.

Not all of this patronising attitude is driven by progressiveness either. As we have seen from the outpouring of scorn here, there is a serious racist trend underlying some of these ideas. This is why I “mocked” Bonappetits experiences in Japan (I didn’t mention them btw, I mocked something else she said)  - because she dropped a classic racist dismissal of Japanese intellectual life into her summary. These racist asides are actually pretty common on feminist websites (how about that commenter at Feministing who asked “are Iranians even human” and didn’t get taken to task for it?)

And I should point out that these racist ideas also get used to mock me. When I talk about how my partner feels safe in Japan and gets paid the same as a man, Jesse says I have a wierd and fetishistic view of Japan. How is it that respecting a nation that respects my partner is fetishistic? This is essentially the modern feminist version of saying I have “gone native”, and until I revealed I had a white partner the general assumption was that I had gone native because of Japanese women. Can you read between the lines of this narrative?

I come to this blog primarily to read Amanda’s opinions on feminism and relationships, which I really like. I also have serious issues with American feminism’s view of itself as monolithic guardian of the world’s women, and source of all universally applicable analysis of women’s issues in any place and time. I am quite happy to point out to the posters when I think they’re contributing through thoughtlessness to the continuation of that nasty aspect of American feminism, and I am quite happy if that causes the occasional threadjack. I don’t do that to prove myself more progressive than the locals (as asdf suggests) but because I think it’s a serious flaw in the movement, and it needs to be pointed out a lot more than it is. All the time commenters here get taken to task if they use even faintly gender-specific language, because people don’t want that culture of dismissiveness towards women to continue. Unless this site is intended as a self-congratulation circle for holier-than-thou Americans, I don’t see why I shouldn’t occasionally point out these racist asides to the posters.

And Jesse, I take your comment above as final proof that you didn’t know what you were talking about when you made your aside, and didn’t care.

Jrod, if you have some better reason for why Western liberal feminists feel they have the right to condescend to Japan about its level of political development, ignorant of any nuance or facts, feel free to share. I would have thought “we won the war nyah” is about the best one there is - the alternatives are pretty murky.

Ignorance and false perception.  Perhaps nobody ever told them that Japan has not only a lower rate of rape than the US, but a much higher conviction rate.  Perhaps they’ve been exposed to a large amount of cruelly misogynistic Japanese media, and mistakenly believed that it was more accepted in its homeland than it really is.  You could have used this thread as a chance to educate, but you decided you’d rather rant about WW2.  Really?  You’re gonna use the last time American soil was attacked by a military force as your big example of how bloodthirsty those yanks are.  OK then.

But while you’re on the topic, those yankees are pretty much always looking for a new neck to stomp on (exhibit A: Iraq) and those of you who aren’t supportive of that little tendency should try and show a little more humility about your nation’s history of imperialism and war when you’re being challenged about your attitude to other nations.

Cuz everyone in America was gung-ho for another pointless war.  See, you complain about the commenters here judging Japanese culture as a whole based on one aspect, but you do the same for American culture.  While the commenters here may be able to claim ignorance as their excuse, my guess is you can’t do the same.  That is why you’re a stupid asshole.

“Wow, this threadjack is pretty much the platonic ideal of all threadjacks.”

Which is why I am gritting my teeth in an attempt to avoid it.

Aaannndd….I can’t. I just want to address one point of many in the ongoing Flashheart (Blackadder? just curious) debate.

While I realize then when a person is feeling attacked they may lash out, I really must protest the characterization of “Western liberal feminists” or even just “liberals”. Describing everyone you put under this heading as a singular entity who perform in exactly the same manner is quite similar to what you are accusing others of doing. There are western (or more to the point, American) leftist women identifying as feminist who contextualize their discourse when speaking about nations other than where they live and are aware of how to frame criticism and analysis about international issues. Many Western women ARE aware of problems with “western feminism” and do their best to address it in themselves and their communities, be they academic, business, social or virtual.

Holy crapoly I got so far off topic I forgot to comment on the actual post!

As a woman who games I believe it is necessary to fight the rules that block people from ‘declaring’ their orientation for the tired wheeze that it will help prevent sexual predatory behavior or the even more repugnant “if you don’t say it or call people out on their bs you won’t get harassed”.

Which is why playing WoW or CoH for me sometimes feels more like a really stressful debate and less like relaxation and recreation. Having a core group of people known to you to game with is great, it allows fun to be, well, fun. However, it does not erase the racism, sexism and heterosexism of those communities. And yes, it does look like my shammie is wearing neon bondage gear.

I vote for a stick rule ban on flashheart.  I’m sick of the self-righteous, anti-feminist, condescending bullshit.  Who’s with me?

Yes Hooksinmyhead it’s Blackadder. I agree with you about the rules in computer games being an excuse, mostly I think an excuse for not taking a community seriously and attempting to manage its interactions. But this is not a community that Microsoft built - they’ve come very late to online communities and mostly this community already existed or built itself. So I can see why, in trying to cash in on the opportunities that community offers, they don’t want to try at this late stage to change it. But when Microsoft “facilitate” things they usually end up inserting their own ideals - witness the powerpointisation of business culture. And their way of inserting their own ideals will be through this mealy-mouthed “no responsibility taken” culture of the lowest common denominator.

I also agree with you about not all western liberal feminists being the same. But I haven’t seen a great deal of that on this thread and I think that the preeminence of war and interventionist liberalism, and the exclusion of national self determination movements from modern discourse, has marginalised those feminists (and non-feminists) who,  like me, think that western liberalism is not the only way to analyse foreign cultures. And look at the reaction that claim gets.

Once again, stick rule ban.  Dragging things off-topic to smear feminism for no good reason?  Trolling.

Ban.

Flashheart’s gone. 

Quite honestly, I couldn’t handle another four paragraphs of being lectured to how Wii Fit and various rhythm games made a generation of cultural product from a specific industry not exist, or how pointing out the ability of some Japanese companies to produce misogynistic, racist or homophobic material was not re-bombing Hiroshima.