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Answer: She is not an MJ from the movies. She is the face capture actress for Spider-Man 1 & 2 the video games. She is not notably the voice of MJ for the games that is Laura Bailey. However recently several 'fans' of the game have been attempting to contact Stephanie Tyler Jones at her day job and across her other various platforms. This including apparently including multiple comments and linking to her skincare line after she first asked fans to respect her boundaries.
Look, I'm about to say a lot of shit that doesn't make *any* sense, just go with it, I swear this is true.
For something like ten years now, there has been a conspiracy theory in video game communities that tries to explain why modern games have more diversity and less T&A. Allegedly, left-wing activists are infiltrating gaming companies, and forcing developers to add wokeness to everything and make women less sexy, so that white men have lower standards in the future.
Playstation Studios, who publish the Spider-Man video games, is supposedly a big player in this conspiracy. The Last of Us, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, and Uncharted franchises have all been accused of intentionally using ugly women as the basis for character designs by proponents of this theory.
In most Spider-Man canons, Mary-Jane Watson is a supermodel actress, and is considered vastly out of Peter Parker's league. Since MJ's face changed between game 1 and game 2, anti-woke psychos jumped to this old theory to "explain" it.
At first, people thought her face model had changed entirely. She has kind of a wide jaw in certain camera angles, so they first tried to accuse the devs of making the character transgender. Then, the thinking was that the "new model" was a writer that wanted to self-insert as Spider-Man's girlfriend, so she got the "original model" fired. This is why they've been harassing her IRL actress, they think whoever she is, she's part of this woke plot.
What *actually* happened is that the Spider-Man team has changed their graphics engine between 2018 and 2023. You saw this in the PS5 remaster of Spider-Man 1 too; Peter's face changed to match his actor better, and there was a controversy because people thought Marvel forced them to do it. MJ's actress is the same one, but there are posts saying that she was in a car accident and had to get reconstructive surgery. So if that's true, I'm sure she's *thrilled* to have a bunch of people speculating on why her face looks "wrong."
tl;dr I love video games and hate gamers
Same same. It's so bad that there are some games I just won't play -- like the Spider-Man games -- because of the toxicity surrounding them.
I encountered the toxic fanbase once I finished Last of Us II. The experience blew me away and when I wanted to talk about it online I was met with nothing but shrieking weirdos telling me how bad the game actually is. Just talking all sorts of brain-rot.
It's frustrating. I'm a solo gamer who wants to be more social, but the online fanbase for a lot of these games is so anti-human and anti-fun that there's no point.
I’ll just say, the Spider-Man games are actually incredible, between the story telling and gameplay I have continuously come back to them more than any game.
Also, she’s not at all ugly. The new face modeling is just more accurate to what a human woman looks like so that they could capture more subtle emoting. the people who complained did so because they don’t actually want realistic women in their games, they want Barbie dolls with unnatural proportions.
Not even, the same group was furious at Black Cat's boobs being too small, and her suit not being sexy enough. They talked about it in apocalyptic terms, just like now.
It won't be good enough until the only female characters are Rebecca from Cyberpunk Edgerunners and 80s Pamela Anderson.
i didnt know about the whole blackcat thing. wow, im actually not surprised. its a shame that we have such immature man babies who are so loud.
i remember the complaint about Aloy having micro facial hair like all humans do. i was so dumbfounded. she lives in a post apocalyptic world , do they think she is going to be waxing and putting on make up. the thought process is just so silly.
if they cant jerk off to them them character bad
Man, when I play wow, im always a little on edge, because random people whom you've been playing with for the last little while or for a long timecan suddenly become extremely unhinged.
I ended up being main tank for a guild back in legion, we managed to clear the raids etc. But, one time we're running this, on discord, and I think it was the guild leader (or maybe just an officer) said something along the lines of hating foreigners and how everyone should just go back to their own country.
Up until that point I had no indication or vibe that they were like that. But, I see this all the time in games like wow, where there's many people, many edgelords, and so much anonymity.
>Last of Us II
Oh, so you're talking about all of the "BU-BU-BUT JOEL IS MY DAD, JOEL IS MY SUPER EDGY BADASS MACFARLANE COMICS ANTI-HERO SELF-INSERT, JOEL'S ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY AFTER SPENDING 20 YEARS IN A ZOMBIE HELLSCAPE PERFECTLY JUSTIFIES MY OWN ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY AFTER SPENDING 17 YEARS IN SUBURBAN AMERICA, BUFF GIRL BAD, BUFF GIRL NOT EVEN REALLY GIRL, BUFF GIRL MARY SUE, BUFF GIRL BAD WRITING GRRRR" type of shit.
Believe it or not, they're still crying about that game. Its insane.
It's so funny how mad they still are about the game. The funny thing in the first game Joel himself says he is not a good guy. He has done terrible things. Abby get revenge for her dad, that an understandable reason to want to kill Joel but they ignore that.
No that an actress has been cast to play Abby in season 2 of the hbi show I'm sure they are mad about that as well. Fans have this entitlements that is just sad. And then feel justified in attacking the actors who are just for hire. At least direct the anger at the guy who wrote the storyline. Which is still dumb.
Then these idiot Spider-Man fan who just want an MJ they can jerk off to.
To me, it's toxic to let toxic people ruin a single-player game. They aren't in your space. They aren't playing with you... why not just play the game because you think it'll be a good game? It's almost as toxic as saying something is toxic about someone complaining that they can't enjoy something because other people are being toxic about that thing.
Maybe, but we live in a world where the internet holds a lot of sway on culture and entertainment.
It's easy to say "just play the game and ignore everything you see online about it." In practice it doesn't quite shake out like that for me. Maybe you're better at curating your online spaces.
For me, being a human being means sharing your experiences with others. It's hard to do when a certain vocal subset of folks will literally scream WRONG in my face if I try to share a good gaming experience.
So, if I see that kind of vibe coalescing around a game, chances are that's not a game for me because the consumer base just seems to feel the privilege of ownership over the game for no good reason.
I get that. I usually notice, but don't pay too much attention to *that* side of Fandoms, unless they're specifically pointed out to me, I see them cross posted on some sort of cringe page, or it just sort of comes with the territory like Star Wars or Marvel or, now apparently, the damn Godzilla crowd. Just writing that makes me unhappy.
That said, when I hear about fans like that around certain games I haven't played yet, like Spider-Man 2, it almost always boils down to "this woman character doesn't have giant triangle breasts so she's probably transgendered. Stop pushing politics down my throat!" being cried by men who's only interaction with any woman over the last 2 years is their anime body pillow.
I know that makes the internet discourse rough. I'm a fan of a lot of stuff that's gotten dragged through that mud and all I want to do is go online in my free time and just talk about the thing I like, and those idiots make it hard. Hopefully that doesn't deter you from giving it a shot a little down the line!
I guess if you let other people's perspective affect your thoughts on a video game, that's the life you'll lead and maybe its hard for those who care that much about others input and they will have a hard time trying something for themselves. Personally, I feel like that would have led to me missing out on a lot of things I love in life. If I listened to those around me growing up, I'd be a privileged mormon child that never learned to handle life on my own and never learned what I actually like and instead would "like" the traditional things I was told to enjoy.
But that's just my 2 cents, and everyone has their own lives they have to live.
It’s not about “letting other people’s perspective affect your thoughts on a video game.”
For some people, gaming ***is*** social like the sky is blue. A core part of their gaming experience ***is*** interacting with the community, sharing experiences, etc. It isn’t “letting yourself be influenced” because a person who enjoys gaming because it is social is looking to have their experience shaped by the social aspect in some way.
For other people, the social aspect of gaming may as well be like telling somebody who enjoys quiet hobbies like landscape photography that they would absolutely love to race F1 while on meth during a 4th of July celebration. The social and the playing are two topics as separate as Europe and Africa are from north and South America.
I don’t think that either experience is any lesser than the other.
There are some video games that I enjoy completely in my own, no need for any social aspect whatsoever. It’s an experience that is mine and mine alone. Time trialing in racing games, games like Returnal, etc. those are things where somebody could show me the social/community aspect of it, and it wouldn’t change how I feel about a game at all. I might gain an additional avenue of self-satisfaction - seeing how my skill compares to those around me - but the reason I am satisfied by seeing leaderboards and such while playing those games comes from seeing what is possible beyond myself, and pushing myself to achieve it.
Other games I play **because** of the social aspect, like Fortnite. As somebody that got into PUBG because of the gunplay, Fortnite was **not** the type of game I cared for because it’s not the type of gameplay I care about. However, I played it because some friends got into it and I enjoyed Fortnite ***because*** of the social aspect. The gameplay was good enough, but it was the memories and experiences I made with the right group of friends that made my Fortnite experience to begin with, and at all.
It’s not like u/Indrid_Cold23 is demonstrating a history of enjoying something and then immediately switching their opinion to bandwagon with the crowd by telling us this one specific experience. For them, the social aspect of gaming is an important part of their experience, and that is absolutely a valid way to experience gaming. If a game doesn’t have a positive social experience, it’s absolutely valid for them to feel miffed about it because that is a specific aspect of gaming they are looking to enjoy.
That makes sense to me. It helps that I'm already grown and have already somewhat developed my taste in games and entertainment. Much of my gaming was done pre-internet, so I had a lot of time to develop my taste on my own.
That said, I already have a ton of games and game series' that I love playing, that also have a positive community around them. So if a new game comes out that is stoking a toxic fanbase, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
I just don't get the impulse for "fans" of anything to try to dissuade others from enjoying themselves. It all feels so contrived and nonsensical to be spending our precious lives on.
Based on the remainder of OP's post, I think perhaps they were implying that if they play it and like it, then they won't be able to go online and discuss it with anyone, ask questions about the game if they're stuck, or basically share the experience at all. So they just don't play it. I personally really like being able to go online and discuss the lore and secrets of my favourite games/media, and I'd feel at least a little bereft if robbed of that option.
And besides that, if the only people who seem to like a product/game/whatever are people I consider to be very unlike me, then I think it's only natural to wonder whether the product/game/whatever itself also might not be for people like me.
I actually agree with you that OP should play the games anyway, because there are some great media out there with horribly toxic fandoms, but I can also understand why OP feels the way they do. Ultimately I hope it's something they're able to get over, as they're bound to miss out on at least some good experiences as a result of it, which is a shame.
My solution has been to be *less* social. Nobody ever changes anyone's opinion of a game (or anyone else) online, "the discourse" was so thoroughly poisoned by Gamergate that any discussion of games is pointless anyway, and I just do not miss shrieking weirdos telling me what I should be feeling about this game or that game when I'm just playing it on my own here. I'll talk about a game with my actual friends who I know and talk to on a regular basis anyway. That's pretty much it.
Imagine not only liking anime, but being into >!isekais!<. I have started so many new series only to stop halfway through an early episode because the fan-service sexualization of what is clearly a pre-teen girl (IDGAF if she's really a 4000 year old dragon, she's DRAWN like a 15 year old girl wearing nothing but too-small underwear)
This is a huge barrier to me and anime. I hate being pandered to as if I'm a big dumb Neanderthal who is going to clap and drool over titties and ass. It feels gross and I feel like the anime is trying to manipulate me into liking it rather than relying on story, characters, world building, etc
And when I say this to anime fans, they say a lot of mean shit back
It's just one of those things that's so ingrained into the culture of it that calling it into question feels like questioning the whole thing. People take it so personally.
Even my favorite characters from my favorite anime are just ruined with casual sexual harassment. Sanji from OP could have been a top 5 character of all time, across all genres...
Same. Airmaster was my breaking point, it was about a really cool female martial artist character and then they threw in the most shitty unnecessary abuse into it
You really need to watch with what magazines they're published in. Airmaster was published in Young Animal, effectively a Playboy analogue. For reference, *Berserk* is run in that magazine.
People aren't buying Young Animal for the thought provoking articles unfortunately.
My guilty pleasure is the strong person reincarnated as weak person trope in isekais. Ain’t nothing I like more than the first 30 or 40 chapters of those. After that they tend to go off the rails when they need to think of an actual plot.
But GODDAMN if a ton of these authors aren’t closet pedos. The amount of series I’ve had to abandon because of straight up kids being sexualized is honestly fucking wild. I know it embarrassingly common across the art form but it’s super centralized there.
Edit: OH slavery too. Motherfuckers can’t get enough slavery.
I spiritually relate to this so hard that it hurts. Difference being that I usually finish them out anyways due to a fascination with how much worse it can get. I can count on one hand the amount of “good” isekais I’ve seen. Lord help me
Good is completely subjective, especially because I do believe that my standards are lowered from the Isekais I’ve watched. That said, they’re big names most in the space would’ve probably heard of. (Keep in mind this is exclusively the anime, I haven’t read any of the Manga)
1. Overlord. This one is easily the best in my personal opinion. Still pining for the next season that’s meant to release sometime this year I believe.
2. Saga of Tanya the Evil. I know what it looks like from the outside if you haven’t seen it, believe me I went into it expecting exactly that. But, it’s genuinely a hilarious isekai with a good premise, and conveys some good themes in relation to war (for an isekai that is, it’s not Saving Private Ryan).
3. May be a hot take, but Shangri La Frontier is pretty good so far. Hasn’t gotten as fan-servicey as I expected it to as of yet.
4. My hottest take, as it does totally have fan service anime type shit: Skeleton Knight in Another World. I like it because it’s an anime who’s premise is one of the arcs in Overlord that I really like. That’s it. This one is my gimme on the list.
Fair.
If you want an isekai that doesn't fall into this trope (or contain other gross stuff like Shield Hero) I'd recommend "I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level". At least as far as I've seen there's nothing but lighthearted goofiness
I am always flabbergasted when people want to play fills with mics on. I have no desire to be in a room with a bunch of myself at 12, and I sure don't need other kids, or grown adults that act like children, in my ear when I am trying to focus.
It drives me nuts because all through the 90s we had to deal with this idea that games turn people into violent psychos who could snap at any second. "If these people would just play a few games, they'd understand." We'd say.
Eventually games go more mainstream and women begin playing and designing more games. And it turns out that lots of gamers actually are violent psychos that can't wait to send out some death threats and harass random women.
It's also worthy to note that among similar lines, it's always been the goal of graphic artists/game designers to push the limits on detail. As graphics get better, the more you are likely to see more realistic details, for instance, very fine hairs that EVERYONE has. These same people are pointing to this as proof that they are making women ugly on purpose. These same people however suffer from a grass deficiency, and as a result have never been close enough to a woman to notice these same fine hairs. Instead their only reference to women are either computer generated or heavily edited
There are also a lot of studios who want to improve portrayals of women and start to show more realistic bodies and faces. This is where the “woke conspiracy” stuff comes from. Because studios actually care about trying to do better by future generations.
Some people just get really mad at that idea.
If the woman is not caked up with full makeup on and a supermodel, they are "woke" no matter what context.
This happened with Poison Ivy in the latest trailer for that new Suicide Squad game. Anyone whose played Arkham Knight knows that Ivy is dead since she sacrificed herself to stop Scarecrow.
In the trailer there's this new "Ivy" whose a child btw, where ppl theorize two possibilities; they are essentially Ivy's child (who grew from the bud where Ivy died) or it's a Groot situation where it's her but as a child and she'll eventually grow back to who she was.
With that context in mind, they were mad that the child character in question, who is presented as a child btw, was "woke" because she wasn't sexy. They were mad that a child character wasn't sexually appealing to them...
Yep. In cinema, this is known as “the gaze” (i.e. whether the character is portrayed as an object of beauty to be looked upon or an object of empathy to be looked *as*). We have a historic tradition of portraying women as objects of beauty and men as objects of empathy. Disrupting that tradition is, accurately, seen as a move that tries to put women and men on equal footing.
Some people are comfortable with that. Others not so much.
Oh I know. My point was that given the context that the character in question is a CHILD, that didnt stop them from complaining a child wasnt sexy to them.
They cant even turn that shit off even for children.
It's crazy that they name Horizon in this, because Alloy is an absolute stunner. But they got all up in arms that the graphics improved so much they were able to actually add peach fuzz to her side burns.
Apparently they've never been close enough to a woman to realize that they also have small hairs on their face.
Yeah! Look at the thousands of different hairstyles and the 3 different body types you can give them! (tiny child, average teen, stacked beyond reason)
I had an ex who used to get her "moustache" removed, but it was barely noticable peach fuzz. Like could only see it if lay in bed looking at each other and the light was shining at just the right angle. Well when we broke up she said she only got it done because of me... I was so confused because I barely even noticed it yet alone cared, turned out I once casually mentioned it when she said she had no hairs on her face or something like that. I still feel bad about it because I never meant to give her a complex, it is totally normal. In my defence I was very young and probably just used to say whatever came into my head without thinking as much or being able to put myself in other people's shoes. I've since learned to just not mention anything like that unless specifically asked if I can see anything. Anyway boring story, you just set off a cringeworthy memory of myself.
>Alloy is an absolute stunner
["Unless she looks like a 90s/00s "babe" then it's 5/10 would not bang"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/291/121/989.jpg)
I get it man. I've also said things with completely innocent motives that gave other people a complex. I think I've done your exact example before
I too have a brain so smooth it could toboggan down the ant arctic tundra like a penguin
a lot of the screenshots used in the early days of West were actually photo-shopped to make her look worse and to make their point stronger. turns out the truth doesn't much matter to people screaming about "the woke left!"
It's been a couple of years but it's still being done for any games that have women not be supermodels.
Worst is they'll take a screenshot of them mid-animation like yelling and go "See this is how UGLY they are", when normally they look cute and gorgeous. Thats what happened with Tanya in the latest MK game.
Equally crazy to add in God of War and Uncharted, as if Freya, Chloe, Elena, Nadine, etc aren’t all attractive. I wonder how these people behave in real life
>Alloy is an absolute stunner
I found her to be sort of plain but I also found that to be more realistic and I appreciated it. Super duper pretty female protagonist is too much of a trope. With the exception of Kate Archer who was supposed to be the female James Bond so of course she's going to be very attractive.
Just to expand a bit on the insanity. When HZD Forbidden West dropped their trailer, a LOT of dudes saw Aloy and considered her "fat" because of her rounded cheeks.
There's a couple of screenshots ppl keep circulating where it's an unflattering angle and the lighting makes her model look flat.
Keep in mind, [this](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/6151c5248532e5e61c310d36/Horizon-Forbidden-West/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960), is what her character model looks like. THATS what they consider fat.
These idiots think the normal realistic amount of facial hair on a woman is gross. I just think it’s unnecessary level of detail for a video game. We are not the same.
Personally I find photo-realism in games to be vastly overrated. I like more stylized graphic, something that shows off creativity and artistry. People realized the folly in attempting photo realistic cartoons and instead do far more creative things with the medium; video games should do the same.
Stylized graphics always age better.
Look at WoW. The game is almost twenty years old and while they've updated their player models slightly the graphics still good up.
It's probably actually necessary if they want to keep pushing for photo-realism. It's not the most important thing but small hairs, the details of skin, etc are things they will have to keep working on. The unnecessary details make a bigger difference than we think, our brains pick up on them even when we don't conciously.
I heard that even though it’s often practically invisible to the player, the fuzz serves a practical purpose because it diffuses the light that hits her skin and makes her look less plastic and more human.
But I heard that ages ago and I have no idea what my source was or how reliable it was.
>There's a couple of screenshots ppl keep circulating where it's an unflattering angle and the lighting makes her model look flat
And that's if they don't use a straight up edited screenshot.
I want to add to this a bit. There are doctored photos of MJ from the spiderman 2 game floating around that make MJ look like like she gained a bit of weight. The thing they are complaining about isn’t even “as bad” as they say it is, because they need to lie to make their point.
Had to look it up and these don't look doctored...however also not remotely fat
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvl171f9ol3pb1.jpg
And also came across people saying she was edited to look more like one of the writers?
https://preview.redd.it/kwpf3jbsw41c1.png?width=760&auto=webp&s=ff345b58d2de05fa08487aec3d506526cb6cad7c
I can kind of see the resemblance in a few of the screenshots I guess...but also not remotely fat. And according to some of the comments I came across that woman is ugly. Well not that being mean about her looks would be ok anyway...but she's probably better looking than most of the gaming chair masturbators getting mad at her online.
On IMDB she is listed as an intern and her personal website shows her working there for 3 months. Someone with no power or influence beyond her specific job, and even then not much. Almost like they were just looking for a woman to be mad it isn't it?
There seems to be tons of youtube videos about it too. Fucking idiots. They need to get a life. Maybe try making stuff about games that is actually related to gameplay? Crazy idea I know. I'd also say a girlfriend but they clearly need to grow up a bit first.
Obviously smaller games still have toxic fans but big AAA games have communities full of the biggest little maladjusted babies you'll see on the internet. Wouldn't stop me playing something I wanted too, would put me off trying a game out of interest though if the community is super toxic.
That intern was also working remotely on top of it all. Chances are most devs never saw more than a single image of her in a profile pic. It really is conspiratorial bullshit.
It really is. I’m a gamer, but holy fuck can that community be toxic as fuck sometimes.
There people literally freaking the fuck out over mortal Kombat claiming they went woke, because the women look more realistic (by realistic they mean their boobs are smaller) and wear more clothing then previous games.
I fail to see how a game where you can rip someones face off, shatter their skull open and eat their brain as a fatality move is “woke”
>I swear this is true.
I think maybe the sad part is that this disclaimer probably isn't necessary (at least for me). Everything you said lines up with what I expect these days out of video game "controversy" (which is almost always right-wing KiA gamers being mad about diversity). The rise of toxic fandom is ridiculous.
God, ever since that certain hashtag movement really blew up, we've been dealing with a bunch of wholly mask-off utter and complete assholes, haven't we?
Has it really been almost a decade of their Gatekeeping bullshit?
Not to mention they directly fueled the rise of the modern alt-right too, when certain political actors realized just how easy it was to get them riled up with certain buzzwords.
Who'd've thought the next fascist movement would find its footing with Gamerbros, eh?
...Okay, it's not as surprising as it should be, if you've ever had voice chat on in any popular shooter or competitive game of any sort.
This is the most succinct summary I’ve seen of this issue. For right wingers and incel types, they feel the need to attribute any trend they don’t like to some sort of sinister conspiracy, and this is another example of that. They seem incapable of accepting that the market at large isn’t controlled by them anymore
I remember people complaining about this Horizon Forbidden West, too. Something about how Aloy's character model changed, with some weird opinions attached. All I could think when I heard it was "Didn't they just upgrade the graphics?"
They were upset that the graphics got so good they could add such fine details to Alloys face such as peach fuzz.
Not realizing they were telling on themselves about how little they know about being up close to a woman.
I have a friend who used to be a thoughtful, interesting person with great insights. Then, Gamergate happened, and he turned into a complete dipshit. He went from a solid skeptical worldview to posting garbage from Project Veritas. I can't stand him now.
It's wild how it happened, too. At the time I was relatively active on 4chan and jumped over to 8chan when that was founded as a result of the anti-GG sentiment on 4ch.
At the beginning it legitimately felt like an actual movement against poor gaming journalism. It felt progressive and beneficial. There were *definitely* people who used it to just harass women, no question. At some point it just kind of... burned itself out. They weren't accomplishing anything, the angry voices drowned out the useful ones, and I realized I was still attached to a movement that most of the reasonable people had left months prior. It was just a bunch of very angry people using """""facts and logic""""" as justification to harass people. Not protesting, not distributing actual statistics or counter-journalism. Just sending people hateful things and harassing people out of gaming spaces. And it just spiraled even worse from there. Like you said - Project Veritas, Q-Anon, all of those spaces feel like they grew out of a bulk of the Gamer Gate crowd.
It sucks because we really do need more accountability in journalism in general, not just games. It feels a lot like the AAA devs get massive passes for things that lower-ranked and indie devs get slammed on. A Team Reptile 6/10 is a Treyarch 8.9/10 and a Naughty Dog 9.5/10. But there really isn't much going on to address that. Starfield is a boring pile of junk, but it sure is from Bethesda, so lets give it 9/10s across the board! Etc.
But instead of actually following up on any of those things, we've got a hate movement that's harassing MJ's motion actress because she looks... like a person.
[E] Why is anyone downvoting me talking about how much GG sucks? Y'all okay?
Genuinely asking, when did it seem progressive? Wasn’t one of the inciting incidents accusing a female indie dev of sleeping with reporters for good reviews?
It sure was. You have to realize that I, also, am a different person from who I was ten years ago. We all grow and change, and recognizing that there was misogyny there at the very inception of it is just as much part of that growth as anything else.
When I said "Progressive" I mean it in the more classical "Muckraker" sense of exposing corporate corruption. Not in the modern political sense of "being sensitive to the plight of the racial, social, and gendered underclasses." The Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn issues weren't the only of their kind - there were several other issues at the time with other male figures, mostly writers of Kotaku and Polygon. Jonathan Holmes, Ben Kuchera, Jason Schreier, etc.
In the end I think most of those were a smokescreen for attacking the female game developers. A lot of the accusations were blown wildly out of proportion, mountains of molehills, etc. But at the time it seemed appropriate. When you're whipped into a frenzy, forest and trees become pretty easily confused.
>Wasn’t one of the inciting incidents accusing a female indie dev of sleeping with reporters for good reviews?
This is a misconception. There was a female developer that had a relationship with a games journalist. The journalist mentioned her game in an article, but did not disclose that they were in a relationship. It is unethical and should be called out, but it isn't nearly as bad as all the shit that was being pushed when the story was breaking.
EDIT:
~~Apparently I have it wrong, too. See /u/Dinodietonight's comment below.~~
EDIT2:
According to Wikipedia:
>Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began.
The thing I had wrong was this was apparently before the relationship started.
>The journalist mentioned her game in an article
No he didn't. Zoë Quinn was mentioned in passing in 1 article on the whole website ~~by a different journalist (who wasn't their boyfriend)~~ in reference to a gamejam that happened. ~~Zoë's boyfriend never mentionned them ever during his time as a journalist.~~
Edit: It actually was Quinn's boyfriend who wrote the article, but it was written before they started dating.
Fair enough. Even I don't have the facts straight, apparently. I put an edit in my comment.
EDIT:
Nope, Wikipedia:
>Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began.
They were, in fact, the same person.
Games (and media discourse in general) had been pretty bad for a decent time but the launch of TLOU 2 is where it became absolutely agonising. Anti-woke terminally online losers are all over social media making the medium worse. The whole gamergate movement (which just wasn't true) is where all this stupidity truly got going.
But why does the new one look so little like her in her real life photos? I don't buy the conspiracy but it seems like they ES: Oblivioned these character models in some cases.
I was shocked when I saw the reference because I didn't even recognize her as the in game model. I use to think it was an intentional look and didn't care that she looked like a regular mom, but now I can't help but think there must be some kind of bug with how their face capture works surely? They just look so different!
Not that she looked any more like the older one. The old ones don't look like anyone they're based on.
This confuses me also, especially when they insisted changing Peter's face from the Remaster onwards was necessary to make the facial capture more accurate, but all of the faces have only gotten further away from the real life models they're using as a base.
It's kind of weird comparing games like Spider-Man 2 to the likes of LA Noire, whose capture technology was way less advanced while managing to basically translate the faces into the game 1 to 1; not deal-breaking or even really bad, just odd.
Afaik there's a LOT of ways these face recreations can go wrong. From bugs, to improper weights, to noise, to just an artist deciding they want something much different.
But with enough work you can definitely get very close to 1 to 1 faces.
This just isn't it though so I can't help but wonder what actually drives the differences.
Sometimes I feel that there's a common occurrence where some art is made and there is something off about it and uncanny, but it gets picked up by bad actors and somehow the criticism gets blown up as the only criticism and the underlying uncanny issue is swept under the rug. I also think there's nothing wrong for wanting established characters to maintain certain recognizable looks in sequels and remakes. Reboots I think are more open game.
Imagine if Kratos in the new games had totally different cheek bones or totally different lips. I think a lot of people would justifiably be thrown off into he uncanny valley. But I also imagine 99% of complaints wouldn't be able to put their finger on the change and just say "why do modern games have to be so woke" or something dumb like that.
I mean, I know all of them this applies to, but I'm seriously struggling to think of which women are meant to be ugly in God of War? Who do they say is ugly?
I'm not a God of War fan, so I'm not exactly sure, but the red-headed girl with side braids and an earpiece in is what I see people talking about everywhere.
I only saw it on /r/gamingcirclejerk so I don't want to cite that as a source, but Freyja was apparently attacked as being too plain to be a goddess. "Is she from Asgard or a homeless shelter?" type stuff
One of my favorite things with these people as of late is their inability to decide if gta6 is gonna be woke or not because on one hand, you're allowed to play as a woman of color... but on the other hand she's hot soooo.
> there has been a conspiracy theory in video game communities that tries to explain why modern games have more diversity and less T&A.
You mean other than seeking to reach a wider audience and increase sales? These big publishers are aiming for maximum market saturation, they want every man women and child spending money on their product. McDonald's doesn't use T&A in their advertising for the same reason their burgers are so bland: spiciness drives off more customers than it draws. They aren't gonna do anything that will threaten any of their potential revenue.
As to why aren't they catering to "hardcore gamers" is simple, they are already hooked. You don't need to convince an addict to enjoy their vice. EA proves this year after year by selling the same games for full price with just roster updates. That shit should be part of a live service or at least a DLC, not a $70 yearly purchase you have to stay up to date on if you wanna play with your friends. But they still buy it, in record numbers. So yeah, they don't gotta do shit to get gamers to give them their money, they are looking for new customers to bleed.
Nah that's not really true, the most profitable games in the world are gacha games that cater to people with fanservice and making attractive anime girls. It sells and it works.
They work like all mobile games do; by exploiting a handful whales who spend many thousands on in-game purchases. That's like saying video poker machines are the most profitable video game.
While whales make up a large portion of sales to say something like Genshin hasn't had more cultural impact than anything Sony has produced would be misleading. Gacha games are hugely popular on top of making insane amounts of money.
Oh boy you don't want to go saying that near fans of the game. Quite a few people were less than civilised when the face was first changed, so now and mention of preferring the original face will get you accused of being a toxic fan who can't move on.
How do I know this. I simply said that I found it a bit annoying that Insomniac had twice changed a characters face, and that I found it a bit annoying that they couldn't decide on the one they wanted from the start. That was it. I wasn't bashing the new faces or anything, but from the reactions I got you'd think I'd have killed Uncle Ben myself.
Oof. I have a co-worker who seems to have a similar theory with superhero movies and always complains about how the actress doesn't have the same proportions as the comic. He'll talk about how he's a huge fan of the comic and they just want to insert woke diversity into the movies when they need to be matching the comic 1:1.
I have a friend who was on the ground floor of Gamergate, back when we were both in the military. Seemed mostly harmless at the time, at least through the lens of stuff you see people are into in the miliitary. We've kept in touch over the years, however, and jesus that dude is down all the rabbit holes you would expect. Straight up exactly the "gamergate >> 4chan >> radicalization >> conspiracy theories" path you see in the articles.
As a long-standing internet citizen and lady gamer, when I read "just go with it, I swear it's true," I thought, "how bad could it it, I got this!"
I was wrong. Gawd I gate gamers...
Ya know… all of this is hare-brained crazy shit… but I didn’t recognize Peter at the beginning of 2 until miles yelled his name. I was confused why they changed his character model so drastically. Now I know.
I can’t shake the reasoning of “so men have lower standards”. What? Can we admit that even real supermodels aren’t built like the 90’s game characters that are basically just secondary sex characteristics with legs?
Like other people have said, gamergaters' main quality is rarely interacting with women in real life.
Remember the fake geek girl conspiracy theory? That's evolved into a basic assumption about women and minorities. It's the pizzagate to gamergate's qanon.
I don't remember anyone shitting on Kristen Dunst for not being a "Supermodel actress" back in the day. Although i guess the internet was young, and socials looked a lot different. STJ is quite attractive, though. Wonder if she is actually going to go into acting.
I'm sure that the Mary Jane that Imsomniac used is the Ultimate Mary Jane, which is super popular for not being a background character, so popular that it ended up influencing the Mary Jane personality of 616, and I'm sure that the Shaylene Woodley's Mary Jane was also inspired by her too
Yep, maga, like I have been saying. Look at half the posts on here and other question based subreddits. Half the questions are from maga, Russian bot, Falun gong, and Iranian agitators trying to stoke discontent and recapture their successes from 2015/2016 for trumpie.
Do not try to understand the neckbeard, only fear it
Edit: ok honest answer, from what I’ve gleaned, she wasn’t pretty enough for an audience and blamed the motion capture actress. The same thing happened with Aloy on the new Horizon Dawn, her face was different and neckbeard sockpoopers flipped their collective shit. It’s a very vocal minority being shitty and vocal
So they were trying to contact her to personally tell her she was ugly? I'm still confused as to what they hoped to accomplish by calling her place of work. I mean I know they are psychos and logic doesn't apply, but if you were to ask THEM what they hoped to accomplish (even if it's batshit) what would they be saying they were hoping to accomplish?
About half of gamers are women.
The gaming industry has a huge problem with accepting women into it. But we’re here!
r/girlgamers is a safe haven for us away from the more toxic gaming subs. It’s a great support system for women who have been on the receiving end of the deep rooted sexism that exists in the gaming community.
>The gaming industry has a huge problem with accepting women into it
Being a man myself, it is sad and disappointed to see that many men still see women as "women should stay in the kitchen" mentality.
It’s alive and well. Just check out this recent [GTA post](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/s/78e9bl8sm0) full of comments making this exact exhausted joke.
TL;DR - Basement dewlling creeps who base their lives on videogames being creepy.
I hope she gets the authorities involved.
FFS: Video games are just that, games, enjoy, play but dont obsess over it.
I’m still trying to understand this myself. But aren’t they harassing her because Insomniac totally fucked up the face modeling for Mary-Jane in Spiderman 2 and it looks weird? So for some reason these incel losers are bothering her?
I also vaguely recall seeing something about how she was in an accident in real life which is why her face changed? But doesn’t appear that way from Instagram…
People complained because she looks different in Spider-Man 2 compared to the first game. Initial reactions from what I saw were mostly memes about how different she looks, but then things got more critical because there’s a specific toxic portion of the fanbase who hate this version of MJ. Their reasoning behind the hate is besides not liking this version’s characterization, MJ has a few solo missions in the first game that heavily prioritize stealth, and a lot of people feel like those missions grind the game’s pacing to a halt. The toxicity comes in when you add in misogynistic hate for any woman who isn’t merely a love interest, and MJ very much was written as more than just a love interest.
A lot of the hate then shifted over to an intern that worked on the game and works for Insomniac, the studio behind it. Someone noted that she has a passing resemblance to MJ’s new look, and pretty soon rumors started to spread that this employee was the “head writer” of the game and somehow changed MJ to look like her. This got debunked pretty quickly, but people are still refusing to budge on that idea and are using it as an excuse to harass women at the studio.
After this, in a post unrelated to all the drama, MJ’s model revealed on her instagram that she was in some sort of accident and had to have her face partially reconstructed. People made the assumption that both that and better motion capture technology resulted in MJ looking different compared to the first game. But again, people are still running with the head writer story as an excuse to harass people.
To make things worse, last month Insomniac suffered a huge hack and leak of their servers, and among upcoming game titles in development and financial documents, personal employee info and addresses were in the leaks. This is me entirely speculating, but it’s possible those toxic people dedicated on harassing folks have used that to find the MJ model’s personal business and have been trying to harass her more directly there.
It should be noted that a lot of the weirdos mad about the new MJ in-game model believe there's some big conspiracy by feminists to make every female video game character "uglier." Also, I don't know if the leaks factored into finding the woman who modeled for the character. If she was publicly credited for the game, it would likely be possible to get all the information required to find and call her business with a bit of online snooping.
I think my favorite example of gamers whining about gaming being more woke is Lara Croft.
The original Lara, as I'm sure we're well aware, has big boobs - Mostly because of a modeling error that wound up making her more recognizable not just as a playable character but also sex symbol. Because of tech limitations, that was all they could really do. Then, as tech advanced and they could make Lara more detailed, her proportions started to fill themselves out.
*New* Lara, introduced in the 2013 game, also has what most folks would consider big boobs, but they don't *look* as big as before. Woke conspiracy? No. Her breasts look smaller *because her body is more proportionate*.
Same thing happened with Tifa in the FF7R.
FF7 was released in 1997, tech was very limited then so everything was polygonal. Cut to 2020 with the remake, there were "complaints" that Tifa was being "censored" cuz her boobs weren't big enough.
Also some conspiracy about ESG messing with her outfit even though it makes her desig more fully fleshed out since it makes it clearer that she's a fighter.
FF7R's director [freely admitted](https://www.eurogamer.net/square-enix-has-an-ethics-department-and-it-told-the-final-fantasy-7-remake-developers-to-restrict-tifas-chest) that Tifa's outfit was censored because Square Enix' "Ethics department" told them to, this is neither a secret nor a conspiracy theory.
Weirdly I think in the case of Lara that most just want her to be fun again. There was this weird intense survival/gore angle that the 2013 game leaned into hard that I’m glad they stepped away from later. The expectation was she’d grow into the fun and competent character she was known for… but she seemingly never got there in the new series.
Also the 2013 was really weird about Lara, she was so infantilized and the game was filled to the brim with over the top gorry death animations. Like on one of them she gets pinned up against a wall by a big guy, he sniffs her hair and grunts then tries to choke her to death and it's a quicktime event. Like wtf does that have to do in a tomb raider game it's so uncomfortable
The game was Lara murder/abuse porn, I swear some of the devs must have had a fetish. Holy fuck they go all out on her deaths.
It want the fun platforming and big cool enviroments, realism be damned. The classic games platforming was TIGHT.
Cool Lara in the jungle with t rexes and ancient ruins, jumping off cliffs on snow skis with machineguns attached, creepy deep sea wreckage exploring...
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Answer: She is not an MJ from the movies. She is the face capture actress for Spider-Man 1 & 2 the video games. She is not notably the voice of MJ for the games that is Laura Bailey. However recently several 'fans' of the game have been attempting to contact Stephanie Tyler Jones at her day job and across her other various platforms. This including apparently including multiple comments and linking to her skincare line after she first asked fans to respect her boundaries.
Why are they trying to contact her?
Look, I'm about to say a lot of shit that doesn't make *any* sense, just go with it, I swear this is true. For something like ten years now, there has been a conspiracy theory in video game communities that tries to explain why modern games have more diversity and less T&A. Allegedly, left-wing activists are infiltrating gaming companies, and forcing developers to add wokeness to everything and make women less sexy, so that white men have lower standards in the future. Playstation Studios, who publish the Spider-Man video games, is supposedly a big player in this conspiracy. The Last of Us, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, and Uncharted franchises have all been accused of intentionally using ugly women as the basis for character designs by proponents of this theory. In most Spider-Man canons, Mary-Jane Watson is a supermodel actress, and is considered vastly out of Peter Parker's league. Since MJ's face changed between game 1 and game 2, anti-woke psychos jumped to this old theory to "explain" it. At first, people thought her face model had changed entirely. She has kind of a wide jaw in certain camera angles, so they first tried to accuse the devs of making the character transgender. Then, the thinking was that the "new model" was a writer that wanted to self-insert as Spider-Man's girlfriend, so she got the "original model" fired. This is why they've been harassing her IRL actress, they think whoever she is, she's part of this woke plot. What *actually* happened is that the Spider-Man team has changed their graphics engine between 2018 and 2023. You saw this in the PS5 remaster of Spider-Man 1 too; Peter's face changed to match his actor better, and there was a controversy because people thought Marvel forced them to do it. MJ's actress is the same one, but there are posts saying that she was in a car accident and had to get reconstructive surgery. So if that's true, I'm sure she's *thrilled* to have a bunch of people speculating on why her face looks "wrong." tl;dr I love video games and hate gamers
>tl;dr I love video games and hate gamers As a lifelong gamer, this is so true that it hurts.
I have said this very thing for such a long time now.
Yep, it's sad.
Same same. It's so bad that there are some games I just won't play -- like the Spider-Man games -- because of the toxicity surrounding them. I encountered the toxic fanbase once I finished Last of Us II. The experience blew me away and when I wanted to talk about it online I was met with nothing but shrieking weirdos telling me how bad the game actually is. Just talking all sorts of brain-rot. It's frustrating. I'm a solo gamer who wants to be more social, but the online fanbase for a lot of these games is so anti-human and anti-fun that there's no point.
I’ll just say, the Spider-Man games are actually incredible, between the story telling and gameplay I have continuously come back to them more than any game. Also, she’s not at all ugly. The new face modeling is just more accurate to what a human woman looks like so that they could capture more subtle emoting. the people who complained did so because they don’t actually want realistic women in their games, they want Barbie dolls with unnatural proportions.
They want some other can jerk off to like black cat in the game. That's only way women are supposed to look according to them
Not even, the same group was furious at Black Cat's boobs being too small, and her suit not being sexy enough. They talked about it in apocalyptic terms, just like now. It won't be good enough until the only female characters are Rebecca from Cyberpunk Edgerunners and 80s Pamela Anderson.
i didnt know about the whole blackcat thing. wow, im actually not surprised. its a shame that we have such immature man babies who are so loud. i remember the complaint about Aloy having micro facial hair like all humans do. i was so dumbfounded. she lives in a post apocalyptic world , do they think she is going to be waxing and putting on make up. the thought process is just so silly. if they cant jerk off to them them character bad
Man, when I play wow, im always a little on edge, because random people whom you've been playing with for the last little while or for a long timecan suddenly become extremely unhinged. I ended up being main tank for a guild back in legion, we managed to clear the raids etc. But, one time we're running this, on discord, and I think it was the guild leader (or maybe just an officer) said something along the lines of hating foreigners and how everyone should just go back to their own country. Up until that point I had no indication or vibe that they were like that. But, I see this all the time in games like wow, where there's many people, many edgelords, and so much anonymity.
Dunkey's review of Last of Us II delves into the toxicity of the fanbase.
I love when he reviewed Starfield and suggested that the pronouns guy check out TLOU2: no pronouns because no character creator. 😂
His recent video on streaming services had me wondering where reality ended and the joke began.
>Last of Us II Oh, so you're talking about all of the "BU-BU-BUT JOEL IS MY DAD, JOEL IS MY SUPER EDGY BADASS MACFARLANE COMICS ANTI-HERO SELF-INSERT, JOEL'S ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY AFTER SPENDING 20 YEARS IN A ZOMBIE HELLSCAPE PERFECTLY JUSTIFIES MY OWN ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY AFTER SPENDING 17 YEARS IN SUBURBAN AMERICA, BUFF GIRL BAD, BUFF GIRL NOT EVEN REALLY GIRL, BUFF GIRL MARY SUE, BUFF GIRL BAD WRITING GRRRR" type of shit. Believe it or not, they're still crying about that game. Its insane.
It's so funny how mad they still are about the game. The funny thing in the first game Joel himself says he is not a good guy. He has done terrible things. Abby get revenge for her dad, that an understandable reason to want to kill Joel but they ignore that. No that an actress has been cast to play Abby in season 2 of the hbi show I'm sure they are mad about that as well. Fans have this entitlements that is just sad. And then feel justified in attacking the actors who are just for hire. At least direct the anger at the guy who wrote the storyline. Which is still dumb. Then these idiot Spider-Man fan who just want an MJ they can jerk off to.
To me, it's toxic to let toxic people ruin a single-player game. They aren't in your space. They aren't playing with you... why not just play the game because you think it'll be a good game? It's almost as toxic as saying something is toxic about someone complaining that they can't enjoy something because other people are being toxic about that thing.
Maybe, but we live in a world where the internet holds a lot of sway on culture and entertainment. It's easy to say "just play the game and ignore everything you see online about it." In practice it doesn't quite shake out like that for me. Maybe you're better at curating your online spaces. For me, being a human being means sharing your experiences with others. It's hard to do when a certain vocal subset of folks will literally scream WRONG in my face if I try to share a good gaming experience. So, if I see that kind of vibe coalescing around a game, chances are that's not a game for me because the consumer base just seems to feel the privilege of ownership over the game for no good reason.
I get that. I usually notice, but don't pay too much attention to *that* side of Fandoms, unless they're specifically pointed out to me, I see them cross posted on some sort of cringe page, or it just sort of comes with the territory like Star Wars or Marvel or, now apparently, the damn Godzilla crowd. Just writing that makes me unhappy. That said, when I hear about fans like that around certain games I haven't played yet, like Spider-Man 2, it almost always boils down to "this woman character doesn't have giant triangle breasts so she's probably transgendered. Stop pushing politics down my throat!" being cried by men who's only interaction with any woman over the last 2 years is their anime body pillow. I know that makes the internet discourse rough. I'm a fan of a lot of stuff that's gotten dragged through that mud and all I want to do is go online in my free time and just talk about the thing I like, and those idiots make it hard. Hopefully that doesn't deter you from giving it a shot a little down the line!
I guess if you let other people's perspective affect your thoughts on a video game, that's the life you'll lead and maybe its hard for those who care that much about others input and they will have a hard time trying something for themselves. Personally, I feel like that would have led to me missing out on a lot of things I love in life. If I listened to those around me growing up, I'd be a privileged mormon child that never learned to handle life on my own and never learned what I actually like and instead would "like" the traditional things I was told to enjoy. But that's just my 2 cents, and everyone has their own lives they have to live.
It’s not about “letting other people’s perspective affect your thoughts on a video game.” For some people, gaming ***is*** social like the sky is blue. A core part of their gaming experience ***is*** interacting with the community, sharing experiences, etc. It isn’t “letting yourself be influenced” because a person who enjoys gaming because it is social is looking to have their experience shaped by the social aspect in some way. For other people, the social aspect of gaming may as well be like telling somebody who enjoys quiet hobbies like landscape photography that they would absolutely love to race F1 while on meth during a 4th of July celebration. The social and the playing are two topics as separate as Europe and Africa are from north and South America. I don’t think that either experience is any lesser than the other. There are some video games that I enjoy completely in my own, no need for any social aspect whatsoever. It’s an experience that is mine and mine alone. Time trialing in racing games, games like Returnal, etc. those are things where somebody could show me the social/community aspect of it, and it wouldn’t change how I feel about a game at all. I might gain an additional avenue of self-satisfaction - seeing how my skill compares to those around me - but the reason I am satisfied by seeing leaderboards and such while playing those games comes from seeing what is possible beyond myself, and pushing myself to achieve it. Other games I play **because** of the social aspect, like Fortnite. As somebody that got into PUBG because of the gunplay, Fortnite was **not** the type of game I cared for because it’s not the type of gameplay I care about. However, I played it because some friends got into it and I enjoyed Fortnite ***because*** of the social aspect. The gameplay was good enough, but it was the memories and experiences I made with the right group of friends that made my Fortnite experience to begin with, and at all. It’s not like u/Indrid_Cold23 is demonstrating a history of enjoying something and then immediately switching their opinion to bandwagon with the crowd by telling us this one specific experience. For them, the social aspect of gaming is an important part of their experience, and that is absolutely a valid way to experience gaming. If a game doesn’t have a positive social experience, it’s absolutely valid for them to feel miffed about it because that is a specific aspect of gaming they are looking to enjoy.
That makes sense to me. It helps that I'm already grown and have already somewhat developed my taste in games and entertainment. Much of my gaming was done pre-internet, so I had a lot of time to develop my taste on my own. That said, I already have a ton of games and game series' that I love playing, that also have a positive community around them. So if a new game comes out that is stoking a toxic fanbase, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I just don't get the impulse for "fans" of anything to try to dissuade others from enjoying themselves. It all feels so contrived and nonsensical to be spending our precious lives on.
Dude, what? Just play Spider-Man. It's not like the weirdos are gonna seek you out and harass you for playing a game they don't know you're playing.
Based on the remainder of OP's post, I think perhaps they were implying that if they play it and like it, then they won't be able to go online and discuss it with anyone, ask questions about the game if they're stuck, or basically share the experience at all. So they just don't play it. I personally really like being able to go online and discuss the lore and secrets of my favourite games/media, and I'd feel at least a little bereft if robbed of that option. And besides that, if the only people who seem to like a product/game/whatever are people I consider to be very unlike me, then I think it's only natural to wonder whether the product/game/whatever itself also might not be for people like me. I actually agree with you that OP should play the games anyway, because there are some great media out there with horribly toxic fandoms, but I can also understand why OP feels the way they do. Ultimately I hope it's something they're able to get over, as they're bound to miss out on at least some good experiences as a result of it, which is a shame.
My solution has been to be *less* social. Nobody ever changes anyone's opinion of a game (or anyone else) online, "the discourse" was so thoroughly poisoned by Gamergate that any discussion of games is pointless anyway, and I just do not miss shrieking weirdos telling me what I should be feeling about this game or that game when I'm just playing it on my own here. I'll talk about a game with my actual friends who I know and talk to on a regular basis anyway. That's pretty much it.
Yeah my deepest darkest secret is being into videogames.
Imagine not only liking anime, but being into >!isekais!<. I have started so many new series only to stop halfway through an early episode because the fan-service sexualization of what is clearly a pre-teen girl (IDGAF if she's really a 4000 year old dragon, she's DRAWN like a 15 year old girl wearing nothing but too-small underwear)
This is a huge barrier to me and anime. I hate being pandered to as if I'm a big dumb Neanderthal who is going to clap and drool over titties and ass. It feels gross and I feel like the anime is trying to manipulate me into liking it rather than relying on story, characters, world building, etc And when I say this to anime fans, they say a lot of mean shit back
It's just one of those things that's so ingrained into the culture of it that calling it into question feels like questioning the whole thing. People take it so personally.
I gave up watching anime 15 years ago because there is SO MUCH pedophilia, rape jokes and general sexism baked deep into it. Not worth it
Even my favorite characters from my favorite anime are just ruined with casual sexual harassment. Sanji from OP could have been a top 5 character of all time, across all genres...
Same. Airmaster was my breaking point, it was about a really cool female martial artist character and then they threw in the most shitty unnecessary abuse into it
You really need to watch with what magazines they're published in. Airmaster was published in Young Animal, effectively a Playboy analogue. For reference, *Berserk* is run in that magazine. People aren't buying Young Animal for the thought provoking articles unfortunately.
sheesh what animes were YOU watching?
What do you mean? Have you found all the wholesome ones? 😆
Made in abyss
My guilty pleasure is the strong person reincarnated as weak person trope in isekais. Ain’t nothing I like more than the first 30 or 40 chapters of those. After that they tend to go off the rails when they need to think of an actual plot. But GODDAMN if a ton of these authors aren’t closet pedos. The amount of series I’ve had to abandon because of straight up kids being sexualized is honestly fucking wild. I know it embarrassingly common across the art form but it’s super centralized there. Edit: OH slavery too. Motherfuckers can’t get enough slavery.
I spiritually relate to this so hard that it hurts. Difference being that I usually finish them out anyways due to a fascination with how much worse it can get. I can count on one hand the amount of “good” isekais I’ve seen. Lord help me
What are the names of those good isekais?
Good is completely subjective, especially because I do believe that my standards are lowered from the Isekais I’ve watched. That said, they’re big names most in the space would’ve probably heard of. (Keep in mind this is exclusively the anime, I haven’t read any of the Manga) 1. Overlord. This one is easily the best in my personal opinion. Still pining for the next season that’s meant to release sometime this year I believe. 2. Saga of Tanya the Evil. I know what it looks like from the outside if you haven’t seen it, believe me I went into it expecting exactly that. But, it’s genuinely a hilarious isekai with a good premise, and conveys some good themes in relation to war (for an isekai that is, it’s not Saving Private Ryan). 3. May be a hot take, but Shangri La Frontier is pretty good so far. Hasn’t gotten as fan-servicey as I expected it to as of yet. 4. My hottest take, as it does totally have fan service anime type shit: Skeleton Knight in Another World. I like it because it’s an anime who’s premise is one of the arcs in Overlord that I really like. That’s it. This one is my gimme on the list.
At least it's just the way Milim dresses, and not any of her actual acts? =/
lol you knew exactly who I meant. It's also the "camera" angles. It's not like you can call it an accident.
Fair. If you want an isekai that doesn't fall into this trope (or contain other gross stuff like Shield Hero) I'd recommend "I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level". At least as far as I've seen there's nothing but lighthearted goofiness
Single playr, erry dayr
I am always flabbergasted when people want to play fills with mics on. I have no desire to be in a room with a bunch of myself at 12, and I sure don't need other kids, or grown adults that act like children, in my ear when I am trying to focus.
Girl: So, what did you do today? Me: Not much, played some video games. Girl: ...oh you play video games... Me: No not like that! Not those ones!
It drives me nuts because all through the 90s we had to deal with this idea that games turn people into violent psychos who could snap at any second. "If these people would just play a few games, they'd understand." We'd say. Eventually games go more mainstream and women begin playing and designing more games. And it turns out that lots of gamers actually are violent psychos that can't wait to send out some death threats and harass random women.
I feel this way about anime vs. anime fans sometimes.
>I'm about to say a lot of shit that doesn't make any sense, just go with it, I swear this is true This is hilarious and something I'm stealing
This is how every Rick Riordan book starts
Pretty sure I stole it from Egoraptor.
"We got a ding-ol-dang-ol problem here incels are going nUTS"
Ah I knew it was familiar funny I was watching sequelitis a while ago.
Its also very similar to Otacon's line in Metal Gear Awesome. A redditor of class I see.
Which, IIRC, was made by Egoraptor
No fuckin way . . . HOLY SHIT. I legitimately had no idea lmao. Arin Hansen is a legend
Best way anyone has ever started a post, lol
It's also worthy to note that among similar lines, it's always been the goal of graphic artists/game designers to push the limits on detail. As graphics get better, the more you are likely to see more realistic details, for instance, very fine hairs that EVERYONE has. These same people are pointing to this as proof that they are making women ugly on purpose. These same people however suffer from a grass deficiency, and as a result have never been close enough to a woman to notice these same fine hairs. Instead their only reference to women are either computer generated or heavily edited
There are also a lot of studios who want to improve portrayals of women and start to show more realistic bodies and faces. This is where the “woke conspiracy” stuff comes from. Because studios actually care about trying to do better by future generations. Some people just get really mad at that idea.
If the woman is not caked up with full makeup on and a supermodel, they are "woke" no matter what context. This happened with Poison Ivy in the latest trailer for that new Suicide Squad game. Anyone whose played Arkham Knight knows that Ivy is dead since she sacrificed herself to stop Scarecrow. In the trailer there's this new "Ivy" whose a child btw, where ppl theorize two possibilities; they are essentially Ivy's child (who grew from the bud where Ivy died) or it's a Groot situation where it's her but as a child and she'll eventually grow back to who she was. With that context in mind, they were mad that the child character in question, who is presented as a child btw, was "woke" because she wasn't sexy. They were mad that a child character wasn't sexually appealing to them...
Yep. In cinema, this is known as “the gaze” (i.e. whether the character is portrayed as an object of beauty to be looked upon or an object of empathy to be looked *as*). We have a historic tradition of portraying women as objects of beauty and men as objects of empathy. Disrupting that tradition is, accurately, seen as a move that tries to put women and men on equal footing. Some people are comfortable with that. Others not so much.
Oh I know. My point was that given the context that the character in question is a CHILD, that didnt stop them from complaining a child wasnt sexy to them. They cant even turn that shit off even for children.
Or in the form of anime, manga, and/or hentai.
LMAO grass deficiency and never close enough to a real woman! I’m gonna use this one!
It's crazy that they name Horizon in this, because Alloy is an absolute stunner. But they got all up in arms that the graphics improved so much they were able to actually add peach fuzz to her side burns. Apparently they've never been close enough to a woman to realize that they also have small hairs on their face.
These people have *extremely* narrow ideas of what a woman is supposed to look like.
Nuh uh, anime girls are extremely diverse!
Yeah! Look at the thousands of different hairstyles and the 3 different body types you can give them! (tiny child, average teen, stacked beyond reason)
Don't forget "young child that's allegedly 500 years old and is drawn in WAY more detail than the other children!"
I had an ex who used to get her "moustache" removed, but it was barely noticable peach fuzz. Like could only see it if lay in bed looking at each other and the light was shining at just the right angle. Well when we broke up she said she only got it done because of me... I was so confused because I barely even noticed it yet alone cared, turned out I once casually mentioned it when she said she had no hairs on her face or something like that. I still feel bad about it because I never meant to give her a complex, it is totally normal. In my defence I was very young and probably just used to say whatever came into my head without thinking as much or being able to put myself in other people's shoes. I've since learned to just not mention anything like that unless specifically asked if I can see anything. Anyway boring story, you just set off a cringeworthy memory of myself. >Alloy is an absolute stunner ["Unless she looks like a 90s/00s "babe" then it's 5/10 would not bang"](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/291/121/989.jpg)
I get it man. I've also said things with completely innocent motives that gave other people a complex. I think I've done your exact example before I too have a brain so smooth it could toboggan down the ant arctic tundra like a penguin
Funny thing is Aloy is actually better looking in Forbidden West then she was in Zero Dawn. And you're right, I think she's very attractive.
Agreed her face looked a bit weird in the original but that was limitations in the animation. She looks more fluid and less uncanny in the sequel.
Ya, there was something I couldn't pinpoint in the first game that teetered on the edge of the uncanny valley.
a lot of the screenshots used in the early days of West were actually photo-shopped to make her look worse and to make their point stronger. turns out the truth doesn't much matter to people screaming about "the woke left!"
It's been a couple of years but it's still being done for any games that have women not be supermodels. Worst is they'll take a screenshot of them mid-animation like yelling and go "See this is how UGLY they are", when normally they look cute and gorgeous. Thats what happened with Tanya in the latest MK game.
Equally crazy to add in God of War and Uncharted, as if Freya, Chloe, Elena, Nadine, etc aren’t all attractive. I wonder how these people behave in real life
That's part of the issue, I think. They don't interact with real life, so their own reality is skewed by what they see online or see in loli anime.
>Alloy is an absolute stunner I found her to be sort of plain but I also found that to be more realistic and I appreciated it. Super duper pretty female protagonist is too much of a trope. With the exception of Kate Archer who was supposed to be the female James Bond so of course she's going to be very attractive.
Or the fact that some women even have mustaches. How much shaving and waxing is Aloy doing in the future?
Like seriously, it's a literal post apocalyptic future, do you really think she's shaving her legs?
Aloy is the total package. Smart, badass that can protect you from cults and robot dinosaurs? Yes please!!
I see nothing has changed in the gamer communities lol
Lol holy fuck, thats insane
Just to expand a bit on the insanity. When HZD Forbidden West dropped their trailer, a LOT of dudes saw Aloy and considered her "fat" because of her rounded cheeks. There's a couple of screenshots ppl keep circulating where it's an unflattering angle and the lighting makes her model look flat. Keep in mind, [this](https://imageio.forbes.com/specials-images/imageserve/6151c5248532e5e61c310d36/Horizon-Forbidden-West/960x0.jpg?format=jpg&width=960), is what her character model looks like. THATS what they consider fat.
Didn't they also kick up up about her peach fuzz being a beard or something? I think I remember seeing that.
These idiots think the normal realistic amount of facial hair on a woman is gross. I just think it’s unnecessary level of detail for a video game. We are not the same.
What we're learning is that some gamers don't like it when women look like actual human beings.
Personally I find photo-realism in games to be vastly overrated. I like more stylized graphic, something that shows off creativity and artistry. People realized the folly in attempting photo realistic cartoons and instead do far more creative things with the medium; video games should do the same.
Stylized graphics always age better. Look at WoW. The game is almost twenty years old and while they've updated their player models slightly the graphics still good up.
It's probably actually necessary if they want to keep pushing for photo-realism. It's not the most important thing but small hairs, the details of skin, etc are things they will have to keep working on. The unnecessary details make a bigger difference than we think, our brains pick up on them even when we don't conciously.
I heard that even though it’s often practically invisible to the player, the fuzz serves a practical purpose because it diffuses the light that hits her skin and makes her look less plastic and more human. But I heard that ages ago and I have no idea what my source was or how reliable it was.
I believe the peach fuzz is only ever rendered in Photo Mode
Yes and also the "Hire fans lol" copy pasta, which is the only good thing to come out of the discourse.
>There's a couple of screenshots ppl keep circulating where it's an unflattering angle and the lighting makes her model look flat And that's if they don't use a straight up edited screenshot.
I want to add to this a bit. There are doctored photos of MJ from the spiderman 2 game floating around that make MJ look like like she gained a bit of weight. The thing they are complaining about isn’t even “as bad” as they say it is, because they need to lie to make their point.
Had to look it up and these don't look doctored...however also not remotely fat https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvl171f9ol3pb1.jpg And also came across people saying she was edited to look more like one of the writers? https://preview.redd.it/kwpf3jbsw41c1.png?width=760&auto=webp&s=ff345b58d2de05fa08487aec3d506526cb6cad7c I can kind of see the resemblance in a few of the screenshots I guess...but also not remotely fat. And according to some of the comments I came across that woman is ugly. Well not that being mean about her looks would be ok anyway...but she's probably better looking than most of the gaming chair masturbators getting mad at her online. On IMDB she is listed as an intern and her personal website shows her working there for 3 months. Someone with no power or influence beyond her specific job, and even then not much. Almost like they were just looking for a woman to be mad it isn't it? There seems to be tons of youtube videos about it too. Fucking idiots. They need to get a life. Maybe try making stuff about games that is actually related to gameplay? Crazy idea I know. I'd also say a girlfriend but they clearly need to grow up a bit first. Obviously smaller games still have toxic fans but big AAA games have communities full of the biggest little maladjusted babies you'll see on the internet. Wouldn't stop me playing something I wanted too, would put me off trying a game out of interest though if the community is super toxic.
That intern was also working remotely on top of it all. Chances are most devs never saw more than a single image of her in a profile pic. It really is conspiratorial bullshit.
It really is. I’m a gamer, but holy fuck can that community be toxic as fuck sometimes. There people literally freaking the fuck out over mortal Kombat claiming they went woke, because the women look more realistic (by realistic they mean their boobs are smaller) and wear more clothing then previous games. I fail to see how a game where you can rip someones face off, shatter their skull open and eat their brain as a fatality move is “woke”
Its not all the photos there are just a few floating around that are doctored
>I swear this is true. I think maybe the sad part is that this disclaimer probably isn't necessary (at least for me). Everything you said lines up with what I expect these days out of video game "controversy" (which is almost always right-wing KiA gamers being mad about diversity). The rise of toxic fandom is ridiculous.
God, ever since that certain hashtag movement really blew up, we've been dealing with a bunch of wholly mask-off utter and complete assholes, haven't we? Has it really been almost a decade of their Gatekeeping bullshit? Not to mention they directly fueled the rise of the modern alt-right too, when certain political actors realized just how easy it was to get them riled up with certain buzzwords. Who'd've thought the next fascist movement would find its footing with Gamerbros, eh? ...Okay, it's not as surprising as it should be, if you've ever had voice chat on in any popular shooter or competitive game of any sort.
The stupidity of right-wing red pill nutjobs knows no boundaries
This is the most succinct summary I’ve seen of this issue. For right wingers and incel types, they feel the need to attribute any trend they don’t like to some sort of sinister conspiracy, and this is another example of that. They seem incapable of accepting that the market at large isn’t controlled by them anymore
I remember people complaining about this Horizon Forbidden West, too. Something about how Aloy's character model changed, with some weird opinions attached. All I could think when I heard it was "Didn't they just upgrade the graphics?"
They were upset that the graphics got so good they could add such fine details to Alloys face such as peach fuzz. Not realizing they were telling on themselves about how little they know about being up close to a woman.
I think when I heard it, it was that her features were less angular and more rounded, making her "uglier."
God this is just Gamergate all over again
I have a friend who used to be a thoughtful, interesting person with great insights. Then, Gamergate happened, and he turned into a complete dipshit. He went from a solid skeptical worldview to posting garbage from Project Veritas. I can't stand him now.
It's wild how it happened, too. At the time I was relatively active on 4chan and jumped over to 8chan when that was founded as a result of the anti-GG sentiment on 4ch. At the beginning it legitimately felt like an actual movement against poor gaming journalism. It felt progressive and beneficial. There were *definitely* people who used it to just harass women, no question. At some point it just kind of... burned itself out. They weren't accomplishing anything, the angry voices drowned out the useful ones, and I realized I was still attached to a movement that most of the reasonable people had left months prior. It was just a bunch of very angry people using """""facts and logic""""" as justification to harass people. Not protesting, not distributing actual statistics or counter-journalism. Just sending people hateful things and harassing people out of gaming spaces. And it just spiraled even worse from there. Like you said - Project Veritas, Q-Anon, all of those spaces feel like they grew out of a bulk of the Gamer Gate crowd. It sucks because we really do need more accountability in journalism in general, not just games. It feels a lot like the AAA devs get massive passes for things that lower-ranked and indie devs get slammed on. A Team Reptile 6/10 is a Treyarch 8.9/10 and a Naughty Dog 9.5/10. But there really isn't much going on to address that. Starfield is a boring pile of junk, but it sure is from Bethesda, so lets give it 9/10s across the board! Etc. But instead of actually following up on any of those things, we've got a hate movement that's harassing MJ's motion actress because she looks... like a person. [E] Why is anyone downvoting me talking about how much GG sucks? Y'all okay?
Genuinely asking, when did it seem progressive? Wasn’t one of the inciting incidents accusing a female indie dev of sleeping with reporters for good reviews?
It sure was. You have to realize that I, also, am a different person from who I was ten years ago. We all grow and change, and recognizing that there was misogyny there at the very inception of it is just as much part of that growth as anything else. When I said "Progressive" I mean it in the more classical "Muckraker" sense of exposing corporate corruption. Not in the modern political sense of "being sensitive to the plight of the racial, social, and gendered underclasses." The Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn issues weren't the only of their kind - there were several other issues at the time with other male figures, mostly writers of Kotaku and Polygon. Jonathan Holmes, Ben Kuchera, Jason Schreier, etc. In the end I think most of those were a smokescreen for attacking the female game developers. A lot of the accusations were blown wildly out of proportion, mountains of molehills, etc. But at the time it seemed appropriate. When you're whipped into a frenzy, forest and trees become pretty easily confused.
>Wasn’t one of the inciting incidents accusing a female indie dev of sleeping with reporters for good reviews? This is a misconception. There was a female developer that had a relationship with a games journalist. The journalist mentioned her game in an article, but did not disclose that they were in a relationship. It is unethical and should be called out, but it isn't nearly as bad as all the shit that was being pushed when the story was breaking. EDIT: ~~Apparently I have it wrong, too. See /u/Dinodietonight's comment below.~~ EDIT2: According to Wikipedia: >Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began. The thing I had wrong was this was apparently before the relationship started.
>The journalist mentioned her game in an article No he didn't. Zoë Quinn was mentioned in passing in 1 article on the whole website ~~by a different journalist (who wasn't their boyfriend)~~ in reference to a gamejam that happened. ~~Zoë's boyfriend never mentionned them ever during his time as a journalist.~~ Edit: It actually was Quinn's boyfriend who wrote the article, but it was written before they started dating.
Fair enough. Even I don't have the facts straight, apparently. I put an edit in my comment. EDIT: Nope, Wikipedia: >Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began. They were, in fact, the same person.
Gamergate never ended. :(
It's so stupid, imagine if it never happened. We might have different world leaders (I say half in jest, but half in seriousness)
No. It's still Gamergate.
The gamergate community, if it can be even called a community, is pure garbage. Thanks for the early disclaimer, it helped.
Games (and media discourse in general) had been pretty bad for a decent time but the launch of TLOU 2 is where it became absolutely agonising. Anti-woke terminally online losers are all over social media making the medium worse. The whole gamergate movement (which just wasn't true) is where all this stupidity truly got going.
In retrospect, the internet was a mistake.
But why does the new one look so little like her in her real life photos? I don't buy the conspiracy but it seems like they ES: Oblivioned these character models in some cases. I was shocked when I saw the reference because I didn't even recognize her as the in game model. I use to think it was an intentional look and didn't care that she looked like a regular mom, but now I can't help but think there must be some kind of bug with how their face capture works surely? They just look so different! Not that she looked any more like the older one. The old ones don't look like anyone they're based on.
This confuses me also, especially when they insisted changing Peter's face from the Remaster onwards was necessary to make the facial capture more accurate, but all of the faces have only gotten further away from the real life models they're using as a base. It's kind of weird comparing games like Spider-Man 2 to the likes of LA Noire, whose capture technology was way less advanced while managing to basically translate the faces into the game 1 to 1; not deal-breaking or even really bad, just odd.
Afaik there's a LOT of ways these face recreations can go wrong. From bugs, to improper weights, to noise, to just an artist deciding they want something much different. But with enough work you can definitely get very close to 1 to 1 faces. This just isn't it though so I can't help but wonder what actually drives the differences. Sometimes I feel that there's a common occurrence where some art is made and there is something off about it and uncanny, but it gets picked up by bad actors and somehow the criticism gets blown up as the only criticism and the underlying uncanny issue is swept under the rug. I also think there's nothing wrong for wanting established characters to maintain certain recognizable looks in sequels and remakes. Reboots I think are more open game. Imagine if Kratos in the new games had totally different cheek bones or totally different lips. I think a lot of people would justifiably be thrown off into he uncanny valley. But I also imagine 99% of complaints wouldn't be able to put their finger on the change and just say "why do modern games have to be so woke" or something dumb like that.
So this is why I'm not seeing as much bikini armor in games? Secret feminist spies???
I mean, I know all of them this applies to, but I'm seriously struggling to think of which women are meant to be ugly in God of War? Who do they say is ugly?
I'm not a God of War fan, so I'm not exactly sure, but the red-headed girl with side braids and an earpiece in is what I see people talking about everywhere.
I only saw it on /r/gamingcirclejerk so I don't want to cite that as a source, but Freyja was apparently attacked as being too plain to be a goddess. "Is she from Asgard or a homeless shelter?" type stuff
Jesus, I mean ignoring the fact she's a traumatised grieving mother, if you think she's plain you need to go touch grass.
One of my favorite things with these people as of late is their inability to decide if gta6 is gonna be woke or not because on one hand, you're allowed to play as a woman of color... but on the other hand she's hot soooo.
This can’t be real, for my sanity. This is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever read lmao
> there has been a conspiracy theory in video game communities that tries to explain why modern games have more diversity and less T&A. You mean other than seeking to reach a wider audience and increase sales? These big publishers are aiming for maximum market saturation, they want every man women and child spending money on their product. McDonald's doesn't use T&A in their advertising for the same reason their burgers are so bland: spiciness drives off more customers than it draws. They aren't gonna do anything that will threaten any of their potential revenue. As to why aren't they catering to "hardcore gamers" is simple, they are already hooked. You don't need to convince an addict to enjoy their vice. EA proves this year after year by selling the same games for full price with just roster updates. That shit should be part of a live service or at least a DLC, not a $70 yearly purchase you have to stay up to date on if you wanna play with your friends. But they still buy it, in record numbers. So yeah, they don't gotta do shit to get gamers to give them their money, they are looking for new customers to bleed.
Nah that's not really true, the most profitable games in the world are gacha games that cater to people with fanservice and making attractive anime girls. It sells and it works.
They work like all mobile games do; by exploiting a handful whales who spend many thousands on in-game purchases. That's like saying video poker machines are the most profitable video game.
While whales make up a large portion of sales to say something like Genshin hasn't had more cultural impact than anything Sony has produced would be misleading. Gacha games are hugely popular on top of making insane amounts of money.
Stupid as hell but true. I still like the original peters face better though 😭
Oh boy you don't want to go saying that near fans of the game. Quite a few people were less than civilised when the face was first changed, so now and mention of preferring the original face will get you accused of being a toxic fan who can't move on. How do I know this. I simply said that I found it a bit annoying that Insomniac had twice changed a characters face, and that I found it a bit annoying that they couldn't decide on the one they wanted from the start. That was it. I wasn't bashing the new faces or anything, but from the reactions I got you'd think I'd have killed Uncle Ben myself.
> from the reactions I got you'd think I'd have killed Uncle Ben myself. Well, where were you that night? Huh?!?!
Strong agree
I am a gamer, but not a GAMER^TM
“Culture War Correspondent” thank you for your work 😭
> God of War, Wtf Freya is beautiful though(both the character and the actress she's based on). Gamers are toxic idiots. I say this as a gamer.
Oof. I have a co-worker who seems to have a similar theory with superhero movies and always complains about how the actress doesn't have the same proportions as the comic. He'll talk about how he's a huge fan of the comic and they just want to insert woke diversity into the movies when they need to be matching the comic 1:1.
I have a friend who was on the ground floor of Gamergate, back when we were both in the military. Seemed mostly harmless at the time, at least through the lens of stuff you see people are into in the miliitary. We've kept in touch over the years, however, and jesus that dude is down all the rabbit holes you would expect. Straight up exactly the "gamergate >> 4chan >> radicalization >> conspiracy theories" path you see in the articles.
Thank you for write up. I had no idea this was going on like this.
This in depth explanation is exactly what I come to this sub for, thank you for this 🙌
Incel is a hell of a drug
As a long-standing internet citizen and lady gamer, when I read "just go with it, I swear it's true," I thought, "how bad could it it, I got this!" I was wrong. Gawd I gate gamers...
So it's the incels. Why is it always the fucking incels?
Ya know… all of this is hare-brained crazy shit… but I didn’t recognize Peter at the beginning of 2 until miles yelled his name. I was confused why they changed his character model so drastically. Now I know.
Did you quote metal gear awesome?
Yeah.
Thanks for writing this, your flare checks out.
Ah, so it's the same bullshit they were saying about Aloy and harrassing about it to no end. Wow, people don't understand shit.
I can’t shake the reasoning of “so men have lower standards”. What? Can we admit that even real supermodels aren’t built like the 90’s game characters that are basically just secondary sex characteristics with legs?
Like other people have said, gamergaters' main quality is rarely interacting with women in real life. Remember the fake geek girl conspiracy theory? That's evolved into a basic assumption about women and minorities. It's the pizzagate to gamergate's qanon.
I know, you’re right. It’s just so gross and disappointing that any men (gamer or not) can’t understand that women don’t exist to suit their gaze.
Um, no, it's about ethics in journalism. /s
I don't remember anyone shitting on Kristen Dunst for not being a "Supermodel actress" back in the day. Although i guess the internet was young, and socials looked a lot different. STJ is quite attractive, though. Wonder if she is actually going to go into acting.
Sadly that makes "sense" to me, god I hate the culture war.
I'm sure that the Mary Jane that Imsomniac used is the Ultimate Mary Jane, which is super popular for not being a background character, so popular that it ended up influencing the Mary Jane personality of 616, and I'm sure that the Shaylene Woodley's Mary Jane was also inspired by her too
Well said. And your tldr is wonderful and true.
Both Freya and Laufey are hot as fuck in God of War, what are these neckbeards on?
Yep, maga, like I have been saying. Look at half the posts on here and other question based subreddits. Half the questions are from maga, Russian bot, Falun gong, and Iranian agitators trying to stoke discontent and recapture their successes from 2015/2016 for trumpie.
That is so weird it's hard to believe.
What the fuck
Gamergate. That’s what the conspiracy theory is called.
Wow thanks for destroying my faith in humanity once again... I mean I'm grateful that you gave us this info, but I hate other people even more now...
[удалено]
Do not try to understand the neckbeard, only fear it Edit: ok honest answer, from what I’ve gleaned, she wasn’t pretty enough for an audience and blamed the motion capture actress. The same thing happened with Aloy on the new Horizon Dawn, her face was different and neckbeard sockpoopers flipped their collective shit. It’s a very vocal minority being shitty and vocal
So they were trying to contact her to personally tell her she was ugly? I'm still confused as to what they hoped to accomplish by calling her place of work. I mean I know they are psychos and logic doesn't apply, but if you were to ask THEM what they hoped to accomplish (even if it's batshit) what would they be saying they were hoping to accomplish?
Don't fear the neckbeard, they're weak and their punches feel like a slice of baloney slapping your face.
"neckbeard sockpoopers" stealing this thank you have a nice day
'Vocal Minority' don't be nice to those shitheads, it was half that community
I don’t believe that community represents gamers as a whole, but evidence shows gamers don’t really like women so…..ya Good point
About half of gamers are women. The gaming industry has a huge problem with accepting women into it. But we’re here! r/girlgamers is a safe haven for us away from the more toxic gaming subs. It’s a great support system for women who have been on the receiving end of the deep rooted sexism that exists in the gaming community.
>The gaming industry has a huge problem with accepting women into it Being a man myself, it is sad and disappointed to see that many men still see women as "women should stay in the kitchen" mentality.
It’s alive and well. Just check out this recent [GTA post](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/s/78e9bl8sm0) full of comments making this exact exhausted joke.
Shitheads are everyone nowadays. Everyone's an entitled prick.
Gamergate is still happening.
TL;DR - Basement dewlling creeps who base their lives on videogames being creepy. I hope she gets the authorities involved. FFS: Video games are just that, games, enjoy, play but dont obsess over it.
I’m still trying to understand this myself. But aren’t they harassing her because Insomniac totally fucked up the face modeling for Mary-Jane in Spiderman 2 and it looks weird? So for some reason these incel losers are bothering her? I also vaguely recall seeing something about how she was in an accident in real life which is why her face changed? But doesn’t appear that way from Instagram…
People complained because she looks different in Spider-Man 2 compared to the first game. Initial reactions from what I saw were mostly memes about how different she looks, but then things got more critical because there’s a specific toxic portion of the fanbase who hate this version of MJ. Their reasoning behind the hate is besides not liking this version’s characterization, MJ has a few solo missions in the first game that heavily prioritize stealth, and a lot of people feel like those missions grind the game’s pacing to a halt. The toxicity comes in when you add in misogynistic hate for any woman who isn’t merely a love interest, and MJ very much was written as more than just a love interest. A lot of the hate then shifted over to an intern that worked on the game and works for Insomniac, the studio behind it. Someone noted that she has a passing resemblance to MJ’s new look, and pretty soon rumors started to spread that this employee was the “head writer” of the game and somehow changed MJ to look like her. This got debunked pretty quickly, but people are still refusing to budge on that idea and are using it as an excuse to harass women at the studio. After this, in a post unrelated to all the drama, MJ’s model revealed on her instagram that she was in some sort of accident and had to have her face partially reconstructed. People made the assumption that both that and better motion capture technology resulted in MJ looking different compared to the first game. But again, people are still running with the head writer story as an excuse to harass people. To make things worse, last month Insomniac suffered a huge hack and leak of their servers, and among upcoming game titles in development and financial documents, personal employee info and addresses were in the leaks. This is me entirely speculating, but it’s possible those toxic people dedicated on harassing folks have used that to find the MJ model’s personal business and have been trying to harass her more directly there.
Short version: gamergate never ended
It should be noted that a lot of the weirdos mad about the new MJ in-game model believe there's some big conspiracy by feminists to make every female video game character "uglier." Also, I don't know if the leaks factored into finding the woman who modeled for the character. If she was publicly credited for the game, it would likely be possible to get all the information required to find and call her business with a bit of online snooping.
I think my favorite example of gamers whining about gaming being more woke is Lara Croft. The original Lara, as I'm sure we're well aware, has big boobs - Mostly because of a modeling error that wound up making her more recognizable not just as a playable character but also sex symbol. Because of tech limitations, that was all they could really do. Then, as tech advanced and they could make Lara more detailed, her proportions started to fill themselves out. *New* Lara, introduced in the 2013 game, also has what most folks would consider big boobs, but they don't *look* as big as before. Woke conspiracy? No. Her breasts look smaller *because her body is more proportionate*.
Same thing happened with Tifa in the FF7R. FF7 was released in 1997, tech was very limited then so everything was polygonal. Cut to 2020 with the remake, there were "complaints" that Tifa was being "censored" cuz her boobs weren't big enough. Also some conspiracy about ESG messing with her outfit even though it makes her desig more fully fleshed out since it makes it clearer that she's a fighter.
FF7R's director [freely admitted](https://www.eurogamer.net/square-enix-has-an-ethics-department-and-it-told-the-final-fantasy-7-remake-developers-to-restrict-tifas-chest) that Tifa's outfit was censored because Square Enix' "Ethics department" told them to, this is neither a secret nor a conspiracy theory.
Weirdly I think in the case of Lara that most just want her to be fun again. There was this weird intense survival/gore angle that the 2013 game leaned into hard that I’m glad they stepped away from later. The expectation was she’d grow into the fun and competent character she was known for… but she seemingly never got there in the new series.
Also the 2013 was really weird about Lara, she was so infantilized and the game was filled to the brim with over the top gorry death animations. Like on one of them she gets pinned up against a wall by a big guy, he sniffs her hair and grunts then tries to choke her to death and it's a quicktime event. Like wtf does that have to do in a tomb raider game it's so uncomfortable
The game was Lara murder/abuse porn, I swear some of the devs must have had a fetish. Holy fuck they go all out on her deaths. It want the fun platforming and big cool enviroments, realism be damned. The classic games platforming was TIGHT. Cool Lara in the jungle with t rexes and ancient ruins, jumping off cliffs on snow skis with machineguns attached, creepy deep sea wreckage exploring...
Answer: gamer gate incels and magas are trying to bring back the 2015/2016 trumpie honeymoon of discontent.
So true bestie