Orb Candy, Diablo 3, and Sending a Message

So there was a bit of kerfuffle over at Rock Paper Shotgun over some hardball questioning on a topic that affects over half the human population in the world, namely, why both of the featured female characters in Heroes of the Storm so far are over-sexualized. One of them isn't even technically human, but has heels and is basically a nude woman anyway. You can read about it here, the stuff I'm talking about makes up the last few questions of the interview at which point their PR guy ushers the interviewee away in a hurry, probably because Blizzard isn't used to people asking them anything besides "So how awesome WILL your next game be?". So anyone who is tired of pandering "games journalism" that gives everything 8/10 should sit up and be happy a tough question was asked for once.

What we shouldn't be happy about is the response the questions got, namely, the game designer trying to weasel out of taking any responsibility for the message their game is sending. The big problem here is, you can't on one hand have people trying to say "games are art, take us seriously!" and then immediately turn around and say "Don't take our rampant sexism seriously, it is just a game!" when confronted about problematic elements in the medium. That is the part that applies here, with Path of Exile. I've made this post a few times now, and the usual peanut gallery rolls in with the usual canned responses. If you're about to tell me that either a) my girlfriend / significant other doesn't care b) you didn't notice it before c) Wraeclast is dark and nasty so that makes it ok, or d) lol ur puzzy whipped, just don't bother because I've heard it all before and don't really care.

No, this message is for the devs, and for people who care about others and the damage our mass media products do to women everywhere. Please, please remove the sex slaves from the player health and mana orbs. It was never necessary or even a remotely good idea. Everyone "Gets it" that Wraeclast is a cursed and horrible land without having one of the most vile and horrible actual real life atrocities plastered to our screen 24/7 while we play the game. Let us remember, just this year 3 women were found chained up in a house in Cleveland, Ohio, where they had been abused and raped for years. This is not a 3rd world problem, this an everywhere problem, and plastering up images of sex slaves on the player UI in your game is a problem. Trivializing human trafficking is seriously offensive and I have asked and asked for Chris Wilson or anybody to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

So, what does a responsible company do when they're called out on a major problem? Well if you're Riot Games, you start modifying your character designs. You replace chainmail bikinis with full body armor, for starters. Riot's game has a lot of work left in terms of fixing how they portray women and they still release problematic champion skins and art to this day, so I'm not trying to make them into saints, but I am pointing out they made a major change to their game in response to being called out on doing something really shitty with one of their characters. Another responsible reaction to being called out? Blizzard's formal response to the end of the interview I linked above. Just in case you're tired of following links, I'll quote the first lines for you:

"

Blizzard wrote:

In a recent interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, I responded poorly to a statement the interviewer made about over-sexualized character designs in games, and I want to apologize for that. This is a serious topic and I don’t want anyone to think that I, or anyone else at Blizzard, is insensitive about how we portray our characters.

So yeah, this is PoE, where we all hate Blizzard because Diablo 3 sucks, right? Well, with Diablo 3's new expansion they're basically going to copy all the best parts of Path of Exile and revert a lot of their core experience to something closer to Diablo 2 (no real money auction house, actual randomized levels). I am actually kind of excited for Loot 2.0 (less drops, but more relevant drops) and the other changes being made, such as the randomly generated quests that will create much more variety, and a new crafter that will let you re-roll item enchants (basically copying PoE's barter consumables functionality directly). What else are they doing right? Well, they allow any class to be played as a man or a woman, and have since launch. Also, they do not depict sex slaves in their UI. This is enough for me to consider buying Reaper of Souls and not looking back to Path of Exile again.

I'm sorry, for months now I've tried to get this issue taken seriously, and despite multiple assurances from Chris Wilson that "something was being done" all I can conclude is that Grinding Gear Games just doesn't actually care about making their game welcoming for people who aren't teenage boys. That is truly unfortunate because I saw so much potential in Path of Exile and the love that went into it. It is a tragedy that the creators had a target audience in mind and steadfastly cling to their "boys only" mentality in an evolving world where women and girls play games too.

edit: I should have guessed a lot of people who need education would show up and post despite me begging them not to. Start by googling "feminism", then "human trafficking", then maybe watch some "Tropes vs. Women" videos if you actually care about women and want to know why this is a big deal. If you can't even do that, proceed to post your drivel and be made fun of like all those before you. Hint: if you don't understand the issue, you aren't going to win an argument about it, so maybe don't try! Spend that energy getting informed about why this is a real problem, formulate a real question for me, and I'll be happy to help you along the path to enlightenment. After all, I am officially modern day Confucius according to a poster in this very thread!

I'm not even sure what's being suggested. Maybe post this in the circlejerk subforum?

"

Veta321 wrote:

I'm not even sure what's being suggested. Maybe post this in the circlejerk subforum?

Here let me spell it out for you very slowly:

PLEASE

REMOVE

THE

SEX

SLAVES

FROM

THE

UI

THANKS

So you have a problem with virtual sexism? How do you feel about virtual violence?

Partial nudity not acceptable, but smacking someone with giant axe is totaly cool. People are murdering each other in videogames, chopping their heads off, shooting etc... But show women breasts and everyone gets crazy.

What is wrong with you people?

Puritanism.

"

Veta321 wrote:

Puritanism.

I'm actually an atheist. Some day you will realize what a terrible person you are, and I hope that day is soon.

The responses to this post are so sad. People can't seem to understand that the use of naked slave women as an object of decoration contributes to the objectification of women.

In the essay "Politics of Reality" Marilyn Frye explains why do many people are unable to see the oppression that women face with this fantastic analogy of a birdcage:

"If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere ... It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment."

The orb candy is on its own just a single wire but it still is part of the cage. But we are lucky that this is an easy wire to cut if the devs wanted to.

[Removed by Admin]

"

mwbeardpride wrote:

But we are lucky that this is an easy wire to cut if the devs wanted to.

This right here is why I'm giving up. They could have dealt with this months ago, they could have acknowledged it was a mistake and changed it, even without an apology. They could have just left the rest of the UI alone and took the offensive element out, and had a perfectly functional game that didn't alienate half the world population immediately.

Instead they did nothing, which after repeated claims of "something will be done" seems to show how seriously they actually take this issue.