[Adilegian]

[SuperWes]

I agree that "it's predictable and laden with tropes embedded in a continuity of representations." That's not what I'm arguing against. I also agree that the choices are uninteresting. I'm not playing the game because I want to be wowed by Lara's origin story. I'm playing it because it's a very well done blockbuster game that feels a bit like Resident Evil 4 mixed with Uncharted and has light metrovania elements.

I think games a lot of times make the easy choices because interesting, unique choices force the devs to take time to explain themselves instead of just presenting something that the player immediately "gets". I don't think this is inherently a bad thing. Going the other way leads to Metal Gear.

There's a quote from that article Takashi pointed to that says, "the best cinematic storytelling in a game happens during the gameplay itself. The most powerful moments in a game are the moments we're playing ourselves; that's what we remember." To really embody this, developers need to focus on the type of storytelling that happens in a game. The emotional arc they want the player to feel is the empowerment of Lara. They do this by presenting a normal girl that has to go through a lot of stuff to toughen up. She has to learn to hunt, she has to be pushed hard enough to kill someone. That's certainly a trope. It's certainly easy (hell, it's the same arc as Far Cry 3), but it's also relatable, and it's being done because it feeds back into the game.

My main issue is that I feel like many of the arguments presented here are also lazy. I have the impression that they're built from layer and layer of manipulative anti-hype that spawned from some unfortunately cut promotional material and a developer that misspoke. They're extrapolating the scenes they've been shown into an image of the game that I don't think is representative of the full thing, and I feel safe in saying that because very few people who have played the game have walked away feeling like their preconceptions were justified.

For example, there's been a lot of talk about Lara's death animations. In the context of the game those death animations don't feel like they have anything to do with Lara, they feel like you as the player are being punished for making a mistake. I find that they're more effective because they're extreme (by contrast, when you fall from cliff it looks awful and you feel like the game messed up). From the perspective of this thread though, you're given the impression that the player is supposed to feel aroused by a girl being impaled by giant cocks. It doesn't match up with the experience.

I have seen some good stuff in this thread. I don't tend to comment on it because I tend to get drawn in by stuff that's completely counter to my understanding/experience, not stuff that's interesting to think about. thestage has some interesting stuff on the previous page that backs up other people's arguments without going to the extreme.

-Wes
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[diplo]

[Ronnoc]

Ultimately, the worst thing about this game is probably just how unappealing it is. It's like a parody of gritty reboots. Everything is gray and boring. As much as the graphics get phrased, uh, they're great on a technical level but the art design is quite awful (and everyone else's character model is pretty awful.) Tomb Raider games have historically been brightly colored, and the Uncharted games (as much as I don't like them) are bright and happy too. This game is just grim (and not fun grim).
It doesn't do anything different or well enough to be notable, and man they make you sit through a lot of long and bad cutscenes.


Game sux

[Rud31]

Yo guys your debate is cool and all but this game has pretty much none of the violence against women everything would lead you to believe it does. Lara does a lot of doubting her abilities and then the player (you) make her shut up and killed 50 dudes and scale mountains and stab wolves. Then she's sad about shooting a deer in the head when you tried to shoot it in the heart (you know, where you are supposed to shoot to kill a deer).

Also eventually your are toppling giant trees with your bare hands.

She becomes super-human guys.

Finally all the enemies call themselves My Brothers (all the enemies are male). I had a laugh or two at that.
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[Moogs]

It just occurred to me how stupid it is to have raindrops splatter against the screen. A lot of games do it, yeah, but why?

[GrimmSweeper]

IMMERSION! Because all players are the camera-[wo]men filming the lives of the protagonist.

[Moogs]

I can't use bonfires to light my torch what kind of stupid fucking shit is that?

[Moogs]

Or just any fire in general. Like I just blew his room to hell and there's fire everywhere but I can't light my torch with it!

There's a side objective where you burn down propaganda posters with your torch (or a thrown lantern) but when the room exploded the poster didn't burn.

yay games

edit: it's creepy the way Lara reloads her gun. her head continues her normal idle animation while her arms do this whole separate reload sequence. it's like she's possessed.

double edit: god why can't she open any doors without prying them open with the climbing axe?

[evnvnv]

is the punch line in this game that Lara is somehow an avatar of amaterasu and has been killing her worshippers without knowing?
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[Moogs]

the first guy in the opening cave that keeps trying to grab you, he yells out "LET ME HELP YOU!" before you kick him in the face and he gets crushed by a cavern wall.

so hm...

[option]

Team Fortress 2 unlockable with Steam purchase

"Croft's Crest (for all classes) - "This badge lets your enemies know you're as brave as a shivering, weeping, blood-stained 17-year-old British girl""

[Moogs]

oh now i can make fire whenever i want.

nevermind.

[Rud31]

[Rud31]

Okay now the game is doing that "picking her up and beating her down" thing and it is gross.
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[Rud31]

This game fails ludologically. Anything important is regulated to a cutscene. If you just watched the cutscenes you would get 80% of the experience.
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[Moogs]

How many times do they hang Lara from something?

[Rud31]

the enemies or the game?

Twice she has been hung from something. It is pretty much the exact same scene. Almost like they had two ideas for the concept and went "let's use both."

Everything she touches falls apart so she's constantly hanging on for dear life.
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[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[Moogs]

I wrote this quick thing and one guy is already annoyed about it.

i'm annoyed because i wrote the word "game" far too many times

[Rokkan]

p.s.: Metroid Other M was written by Sakamoto. Team Ninja had no influence on the story, shocking as it is.

I can't talk about the game (Tomb Raider) itself, I haven't seen much from it. I can only speak of what the developers of the game have told the media again and again about this game and it's gross. They keep using the same words to describe the game: "protect Lara", "weak", etc. It's a pretty fucking obvious male gaze dominating it, and I think those super-detailed and varied forms of gruesome "death" ties into it. I don't know how much she is sexualized in the game, but violence against women in media is usually extremely shitty because they sexualize it and it's super gross. In this game's case they might have designed the deaths to be upsetting and gruesome on purpose to tie in the whole "protect" motif, which is NOT what you see in, say, Far Cry 3, that has the same setting but a male protagonist in it (power fantasy & stuff). So yes it seems sexist and shitty.

Also since this thread is called "male gaze" and the opening post did not promise the discussion of the thread exclusivity to Tomb Raider, i think we could also discuss about the Anita Sarkeesian video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

are there any good examples of violence against men being sexualized?

[Moogs]

It's implied that one of your male friends in Far Cry 3 is sodomized.

I got nothing else.

[Tulpa]

All the "comedy" of the gears of war games and some of bullet storm is about sexualized violence about men
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[Toups]

[armed police catrider]

iunno toups it sounds like you're saying she's better off being a martyr, which is kind of unfortunate :(

[Adilegian]

[Adilegian]

[Rokkan]

Yeah, completely and totally agree with that tumblr post. Especially the part in which it calls out the amazing atheist as a misogynist piece of shit.

Disabling comments was the best thing she could've done. Allowing hate speech to spread in the comments like fire not only gives no space to actual discussion and would make some people afraid to talk, but also gives the video a much worse look than what it actually is & allows people to form their opinions before actually listening to what she has to say. Like that post said, debate and discussion and idea sharing of this topic is being made, and a lot, just not on that space.

Another thing that she could've done (and did in a few of her other videos) is to allow comments, but only those she'd approve. But then people would be crying about "censorship" & stuff much more than they already are. Disabling all comments is a way better move.

Also I love how now that the video is out and she proved herself to know what she's talking about, all criticism going towards her is basically "SHE'S PUTTING ALL THAT KICKSTARTER MONEY ON HER POCKET" (no she isn't, and she even COULD because the project only asked for 6k and she got more than 10x more than what she needed, but she's not even doing that, she's putting most, if not all of it, into the production of the videos) and the "DISABLING COMMENTS IS CENSORSHIP" (which isn't).

I felt like she tried to pander too much to the people that hate her with the video. Like, it feels like she was trying a lot to win them over, with stating that she enjoys the medium a lot, "proving" that she knows a lot about gaming and isn't some sort of "EVIL FEMINIST MONSTER THAT WANTS TO DESTROY ALL THE VIDCONS THAT WE LOVE SO MUCH", which I hate that she needs to do this, because even if she -didn't- actually enjoy videogames and wasn't an avid gamer, that shouldn't take any power away from her arguments. But I guess that doing this works a lot, it definitely feels like most of the feedback is positive, even if it is grudgingly positive (comments like "yeah shes right BUT ITS NOT THE VIDCONS' FAULT" and "ok thats fair but MEN SUFFER A LOT THO" are pretty common), I just hate that she needs to do this.

[Rokkan]

[Swimmy]

I think hinting at homosexuality in Gears of War is funny not because homosexuality is funny but because it's really super obvious but many of the people who play don't see it and are just enjoying being big macho dude bros.

Edit: It's like this joke.
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[armed police catrider]

[evnvnv]

Ok, this is probably going to come out sounding kind of idiotic, but bear with me:

I've been following this thread for awhile, and a number of things have kind of made me wonder: Is it always inappropriate and crass to make or consume media that presents violence as a sexual metaphor, or vice versa? I mean, I know Alien is typically very popular around these parts, but of course that whole movie is about violent sex. Of course, it's not too hard to make an argument that this is presented in a way that seems like a more thoughtful approach to the subject, i.e. one of the things that is good about it is the fact that it makes the viewer consider the association between sex and violence that is present in other ways in other media. It's like a commentary on the subject, rather than just pure exploitation, or something? But I also remember reading that Ridley Scott made Ripley a woman just to add some sex appeal to the story, or something. We've talked around the issue that the creator's intent doesn't necessarily have a bearing on whether or not something is offensive--but can that door go both ways?

What I'm getting at is I feel like Tomb Raider has taken at least part of its inspiration from revenge/woman in peril exploitation movies that were popular in the 70's/80's and are becoming popular again now. Of course it's a problematic genre for a bunch of reasons, but I don't think it's at all impossible to interpret most examples of that type of story on some kind of rumination about the very issues that keep coming up around here, rather than just a purely pornographic exercise. I mean, movies like I Spit on Your Grave or on the other hand Straw Dogs are definitely pretty reprehensible if you're just looking at the 'images' that they put on screen, but there are alsp deeper layers of interpretation that kind of put the imagery in a new light.

I don't think it's at all likely that Tomb Raider is capable of sustaining that kind of reading, but it's definitely not the sort of thing that you could evaluate based only on a few videos of its worst moments or some ham-handed PR conversations. Either way, it's hard to deny that the game doesn't draw from this particular spring of influence (for me it's revealed most clearly just in the graphic design of the game's logo--it looks a lot like a '70s exploitation movie poster, or rather a poster for a'10s remake of a '70s exploitation movie--a weird genre that I think is just as difficult for me to have an opinion on as this game).

I think the final word on the game is just going to be that it is pretty mediocre and lazy. But, speaking theoretically, would it be possible to do in a video game the sort of thing that Quentin Tarantino has done in his recent movies? What I mean is a game that basically pairs very serious, stressful scenes of suspense and violence towards the protagonist with cartoonish, cathartic violence from the protagonist to her enemies. This is basically what Tomb Raider is, right? I mean, you go through all of these crazy rape scenarios from both the people and the environment, but on the other hand the game itself is basically a murder fest. It's not really about protecting Lara--it's a story of her transformation into a walking death machine? I don't know.
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Adilegian]

[armed police catrider]

[Moogs]

[Toups]

[Toups]

and yeah you could read that post as me criticizing her for closing off comments, though that's not how I meant it. I don't think there's anything wrong with her decision, except for losing the possible benefit of making asses out of the people who comment. but let's face it, if you comment on youtube videos at all, you already look like an ass. and I don't think it would have been worth dealing with the hate speech. that shit sucks to be on the wrong side of.
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[Adilegian]

[end of the world]

__

[Adilegian]

I'm curious if the island that Lara murders is exclusively/primarily male. That is part of the problem as well. Designating women as somehow innately more precious is one way to reinforce status quo as well. I was actually pleased to see the later RE games include a more even balance of men and women among the murderous/murdered hordes.

My wife, who's a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games, is often put off by the lack of women in those games. The answer that usually comes back is "it's not historically accurate to put women in the game in those capacities so it makes it more believable." These attestations of what is and is not historical in a medieval fantasy setting, of course, do not come from medievalists but from gamers whose ideas about medieval society come from... wait for it... medieval fantasy games featuring predominantly male demographics.

Nerds talkin like they know about things medieval.
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