Comments on: Quick hit: BioWare writer responds to my criticisms

By: Grywalny monomit « Altergranie

Grywalny monomit « Altergranie — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:53:36 +0000

[...] co prawda grzechem ideologicznego skrzywienia, ale niepozbawionej paru słusznych uwag) oraz odpowiedzi tego samego [...]

By: Avataritis – The Slowdown - http://www.slowdown.vg/

Avataritis – The Slowdown - http://www.slowdown.vg/ — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:41:23 +0000

[...] Now; the confusion of these two features of understanding human action, relatability and understability, stems from this misconception being both widely promulgated and accepted. For instance, in response to Raymond’s previously mentioned article, Mass Effect writer Patrick Weekes chooses to corroborate this perception: “We are unapologetically aiming for a wide audience — summer blockbuster, not art house movie. As a result, our men are usually going to be attractive or ugly-but-rugged, and our women are going to be attractive or distinguished. That’s what most people want.”7 [...]

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:55:08 +0000

“I would agree that they were generally presented as attractive, but then, so were most of the men…”

I hate it when people bring out that one. Note to everyone, everywhere: those abs of steel guys? In not just videogames, but comics and action movies and TV? They’re power fantasies. For men. Not women. Women, in general, are not into abs of steel. Saying that they’re both fantasies is meaningless, because the fact remains that it’s men as power fantasies for men, and women as sex fantasies for men. That’s not equality!

By: eleniel

eleniel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:44:07 +0000

weird D: I always check the spam queue anyway, but it would be cool if I didn’t have to.

If you want you can make yourself an author of the blog and then your comments will be automatically approved ;D

By: Site Administrator

Site Administrator — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:09:04 +0000

I got marked as spam… again. There wasn’t any easy way to deal with it (no “mark as not-spam” or whitelisting capabilities, it seems), though I ended up approving my comment while I was poking around.

I’m beginning to think that Akismet may have a penchant for marking Class A IP addresses as spam, since mine and the other comment still stuck in spam were Class A.

When I have a chance, I’ll do some poking around to see if there are any plugins that might help manage the spam queue better.

By: tekanji

tekanji — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:53:54 +0000

But I can’t help being a bit hurt at the suggestion that having a vast and varied universe might make up for the fact that most of the alien races don’t have females at the moment. It immediately positions women as inferior, an afterthought, something that can be added if there is time or money or memory enough. A nice feature but not necessary. And regardless of whether it could have been helped or not, it’s upsetting.

I’m not going to say too much on this subject because there’s bad blood between me and Weekes, but that is exactly the approach that BioWare seems to take with its games. It’s the standard approach that games take towards women and other non-privileged groups, but in BioWare’s case it especially feels like a slap in the face because of all the self-congratulating they do in their in-game universe re: equality.

By: eleniel

eleniel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:56:41 +0000

Yes. It’s a bit frustrating to have people (and Weekes didn’t necessarily do this, but a lot of people did) assume that because I didn’t write about an aspect of the game that I didn’t notice or forgot about it. For this article I focused on the two most problematic aspects of ME. I can’t write about EVERYTHING in one post!

By: eleniel

eleniel — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:54:33 +0000

Yes, you’re right. I think Mr. Weekes must have been referring to the different alien cultures, but even so, most of the information you get is through the Codex, which is neither compelling gameplay nor showing rather than telling.

By: TheGameCritique

TheGameCritique — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:47:03 +0000

Also from what I’ve heard, please correct me if I’m wrong, but the univeerrse outside the story missions didn’t sound that varied. In fact, most people say that the side quest planet are the same thing over and over with different skins.

By: Kateri

Kateri — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:41:01 +0000

It’s nice that he responded, but it’s a shame he went all defensive about the human women, when if he’d read what you actually wrote with a little more care, he’d know that you weren’t really criticising them, and in fact made some of the same points he did. x_x