The Pizza gal seems very inappropriate

Not sure who you are responding to in the 'First off' part, but the previous post seems comprehensible and clear in intent.

But with regard to the point in 'Second', for a teenage boy it *does* tend to be pretty much equivalent, if you leave out obvious exceptions such as close relatives...

 

People already responded to this, but to add further weight:

If the player is a supermodel, whom Gary knows to be married to Dwayne Johnson... he feels no threat because he knows it is just NOT going to happen. If 90% of the world would refer to the player (as a female) as a beauty, but she lacks the precise features Karen has which makes Karen to be Gary's "type," then Gary simply is not attracted to her.

Just because you can interact with one attractive person whom you have no romantic intentions toward, or even HAD romantic intentions toward, and already acted on them and were rejected or had a relationship which fell apart.... doesn't mean that you will be Mr. Suave the moment the next attraction comes along. Heck, I can think of a couple "post marriage male" sitcoms in the past decade which play on exactly this: Main character was in a marriage for years, now back to dating he is socially awkward.

Most of the people arguing sexism in the game so far in the thread are being incredibly vague, not bringing dialogue from a single specific scene and saying "This is sexist right here, and this is why." So it says far more about that person than about the game, because it is their interpretation of a VERY limited body of text, which means primarily their own subtext filling.

Most people arguing sexism in the game in this thread go a step further, and are MALE players arguing that their FEMALE friends "just couldn't handle it." How do you not see your OWN sexism in that statement? You can handle it, but delicate flower gamer friends just couldn't possibly cope! I am sorry, but let her decide for herself. If you think she will enjoy the game, then you are a jerk for NOT introducing her to the game. Warn her about the dialogue if you simply must, but if you fear she will think poorly of you for dialogue in a game which you did not write... a game which you recommended to her for gameplay, not for story.... You do have some issues to work out unfortunately.

 

@xienwolf:

Given the data that this work of fiction offers us, which is more likely:
1) Player (for purposes of story) is assumed to be a supermodel married to Dwayne Johnson, or someone who is for some wacky but oddly enough, completely unmentioned reason is not of romantic interest to Gary, despite being an attractive lady
2) Player (for purposes of story) is assumed to be someone who would identify with Gary far more than Karen

I think that if you know and respect somebody, you tend to have a pretty good idea of what might offend them. This argument rests on the fact that the people who have objected couldn't possibly have any idea of the tolerance levels of their partners or female friends, which in itself is a bit offensive.

@Tess:

Great responses, and I understand where you're coming from. But out of curiosity, if you put yourself in the shoes of Karen's character, wouldn't the behavior of the "boys" seem a tad bit offensive? Karen is initially treated like some kind of unapproachable, mythical figure. The joke is that Gary would probably have a better idea of what to do with a real live unicorn than a real live girl, but I don't find that joke particularly flattering (either to male or female gamers.)

A sexist mindset (IMO) isn't just about thinking that girls are somehow inferior. It is about thinking that they are somehow, mentally, a completely different sort of creature than the human male, and we see a lot of that even in these relatively enlightened times. Gary, for example, lies to Karen about what they're doing down in the basement, because gosh how embarrassing would it be to tell a girl that you're gaming, she couldn't possibly get that, right? Those are the bits of story fluff that rub me the wrong way here.

@Kathayla:

There's a bit of a disconnect here, and you're missing the point. When I say "that's not how fiction works," what I'm trying to say is that all we have to work with is the information that the author gives us. If Gary was an intricately written character whose complex motives and feelings the author gave us insight to, your argument could potentially be valid. But he's not. He's an outdated stereotype with little meaning, a bit of load art that says slightly off putting things.

It's just not reasonable to assume that the most striking part of Gary's character that we actually get to see is atypical of his attitude, but that's the only defense of him I've seen so far: theoretical scenarios in which he has a good reason not to be attracted to a female Player.

 

@Ghelas: Given the data that this work of fiction offers us, I am completely comfortable saying "Not enough data" and stopping myself from making wild assumptions toward either end of the spectrum.

Responding to your question to Tess: Most women I know would find the bumbling of Gary to be cute. As pointed out already, no matter who he was with or what he was doing, at this stage in development it is quite natural to assume when approaching someone he doesn't know, but is attracted to, he will lie his pants off, and fool nobody.

These "Theoretical scenarios" of not being attracted to a female player are because people are trying to illustrate examples for you of "Sometimes a girl is completely attractive, but NOT an object of interest." I imagine many making the arguments have/had females in their gaming groups who never had relationships with anyone else in the group, because there was simply never that kind of interaction while gaming.

My own supermodel + Dwayne was hyperbole on a completely standard situation: Some new people join your gaming group, or you join a pre-existing one. Among the group happens to be a girl. You might actually be a bit flustered initially, but very soon the game starts and suddenly you are playing as a character, and you have all the confidence that character has. You proceed to spend a couple of hours interacting with this other girld, indirectly though it may be, and comfort HAPPENS. From that point in she is just another gamer.

Karen doesn't have this initial forced non-threatening interaction in her favor. She shows up to deliver pizza, a one on one encounter that is short lived by nature, and requires direct interaction. Further, it is at GARY'S house, putting him in a position of vulnerability from the beginning, and it is while he is engaging in a social activity widely percieved as a social liability (even today, but especially back in the 90s/80s). Hypothetical "girl in the group" is IN THE GAMING GROUP. You already know from the moment of first contact that she approves of the social activity. Yet another notch toward negating awkwardness.

 

@xien: I don't know, I feel like all of this stuff is just a handy way of side-stepping the question. (Not directing that at you personally by any means, just the general course the discussion has taken.) Honestly, would you be more intimidated by someone who you have a short, predictable interaction with, or someone who you have to be around and interact with on a regular basis?

Let's review the information we have:

Instances of Gary acting a bit ridiculous around a girl, most likely because she's a girl: 1 or more
Instances of Gary acting totally composed around a girl, treating said girl like an equal: 0 or more

It's not the biggest issue in the world, and if Gary is a bit sexist, he is not the malicious sort of sexist, so yay for that. But not everybody is going to be able to ignore the data above or call it inconclusive. OP made a really good point earlier in this thread as well, saying that if you substitute the little bit of "harmless" sexism in this game with, say, a comparable amount of racism, it wouldn't sit well with a lot of people. So imagine that for a minute if you will: Gary as someone who is "uninformed" and/or awkward around people with different color skin, Karen has different color skin so Gary reacts to her in an awkward manner. Even if it all gets sorted out and becomes very endearing towards the end, is it really appropriate, and is a game like this a good place to put it? Because it's essentially the same kind of discrimination: Gary has made inaccurate and unwelcome assumptions about Karen based on her physical characteristics alone.

 

I didn't realize there were more posts to this thread. I got notifications the first few times but not after that. I'm glad the conversation continued.

My general point has been covered by others, but I think the way Gary responds to us as the player seemed to indicate that we were male, not female. It is POSSIBLE that we are a female that he is comfortable around, but it didn't seem likely. I don't think that is some fascinating Rorschach test, I think that is how the situation was written.

However, I just got to the point where Karen steps in as the DM and I have a new bone to pick: her dice bag has a unicorn charm on it and her cards are in a pink box with a glittery skull sticker.

Again, this doesn't represent any of the female gamers I know, though I realize people like this do exist. It feels like there is a thread of continued dumb gender stereotypes in the game (Gary and now Karen). And I don't think it's funny. And I particularly notice it because the game design seems so wonderfully modern and smart otherwise.

I "gave up" earlier because I didn't find most of the responses from the community to be welcoming or thoughtful. They primarily sounded defensive. If anyone wants to discuss the representations of Karen (or Gary) in the game, great. If you just want to tell me that I should take a hike, please refrain from posting.

And I had a similarly snotty response to my other posting and card design. If you respond like a bunch of Melvins when someone dares to critique this game it's going to turn people off from it and the community.

 

Thanks, Ghelas. Yes, if the discomfort from Gary was about Karen's race I don't think the designers would have even considered spending 10-15 adventures letting him quiver about it and freak out about it. And I doubt a single commenter here would have defended it if they did write it that way.

I do think that some of this issue could be solved by having the turn with Karen happen sooner. It's possible to play for quite a few hours without seeing the other side of Karen.

Of course that still doesn't cover the pink unicorn junk that they piled on the Karen character. Oy.

 

Exhibit A. Thanks Snugglepotamus for representing the Melvin stereotype so well on this thread.

Hope the straw man argument is burning nicely and keeping you warm.

 

first you say you want females represented in games and then here you get one(karen), but then you again you cry sexism cause of her pink box(lol no pun intended). if it were not a girly card box then how would we know it is hers? what kind of card box should it be and keep in mind that we as an audience would still have to know its hers?

to me it just seems like your to hung up on finding the sexism in everything, not everything is all about sexism just for sexism sake. ive read all the posts and am dumbfounded as see that people have gotten so bad as to have to claim that a game like this is sexism. so just relax and enjoy the game for what it is, just a game!

 

I'm interested in seeing women and girls represented positively in games and in a way which encompasses the breadth of who women and girls are. That they aren't all buxom wenches. Nor "hello kitty" girl-women.

The "it's just a game" remark had been mentioned in this thread before. It's really a pretty telling remark. If this were about racism I doubt you or anyone else would say that. But sexism is laughed at. That's a big part of the problem.

 

Racism gets laughed at quite often as well, though typically in places where it is meant to be, like Blazing Saddles.

Is it inappropriate to ever allow the hello-kitty girl-women to be represented? After all, that is a type of real person out there in the world. Should we also be upset that Gary and Melvin are not popular, and not outdoorsmen, and not athletic? Because those kinds of gamers exist. Should we be upset that Melvin is a control freak, an unfair GM stereotype?

There is a point where you have to draw the line and say "These people were not attempting to write a social commentary piece. These people are game designers, not English arts majors, Social scientists, Anthropologists, or Spin doctors."

Karen could have been written to be suave and sophisticated, self confident and comfortable with herself in every way. One would then wonder why she is employed in pizza delivery, and would further wonder why she bothers to spend any time at all with these children.

 

that would only be true if there is/were sexism in this game. however if whats here is sexism to you then i think you need to seriously rethink you morel compass cause all i hear is feminism on your part and not sexism on the games part

 

That's really letting the entire game industry off the hook completely. Would you say the same about movies or books or TV? That "hey, they're just making stuff that millions of people see or read, they're not social scientists"?

I think it matters if all of the gay characters on TV shows are murders or mentally unstable or pedophiles (as was often the case in the past). Whereas now we have gay characters who represent a wide swath of the human existence.

The game industry has an awful track record in how it represents female characters. I don't think Blue Manchu is the worst. Far, far, far from it. But seeing everything else about Card Hunter that they have designed with style and wit I would hope that they might be the kind of game designers that lead the way in representing female characters in less stereo-typed ways.

I own a small interactive company and we designed an iOS / Android game and we thought about the gender and racial stereotypes that are often represented and we didn't go in that direction. It isn't that hard to do. And I doubt that players really noticed one way or the other, but it was one impression out of the thousand they got that day and it all adds up.

 

And here we go again. Now I need to rethink my "moral compass".

Sounds like you don't understand what sexism is. Okay.

It is interesting, sad too, that this post has generated so many comments and so many of them have been aggressive and insulting. Its not just women who are treated so poorly in the geek/IT/game community, it's men who speak up about the way women are treated.

 

because its a game and only 2dimensional this needs to be exaggerated in order for the viewer to know and feel whats going on in the game. if for example Karens' pink card box was just plain orange then we as viewers of the game would have no clue that it was her box. IMO i don't see it as the game designers making bad representation of males or females, i see it as we the viewers making a big stink out something that really just isn't there. (don't get me wrong they may be a few bad apples, but you know what they say about that)

 

Personally, I am interested in women being portrayed positively, realistically, and authentically in the games that I play. From my perspective, the game does this excellently. Karen comes across as intelligent, likeable, and interested in card hunter in her own right (not because boys do it, not because her brother does it). She has her own motivations, her own interests and preferences. She is more interested in Card Hunter as a game which is fun, less interested in the nit-picky rules which by which Melvin lives. I personally don't see what is wrong with her having a "girly" dice bag, etc. She is a high schooler and. more importantly in my opinion, she is also her own character which is developed throughout. We only have a limited selection of characters to even discuss: realistically only Gary, Melvin, and Karen. Just as much as a woman shouldn't be expected be interested in pink things and unicorns, neither should it be a mark of conformity and disgrace.

Another point worthy of mention, most if not all of the character art in Card Hunter defies objectification. No bikini armors, no nipply armors, etc.

Overall, while I think the OP raises a valid concern, I ultimately don't think it is realized in Card Hunter. I think Karen is realistic and excellent. I wish the OP would show respect for this opinion.

 

Hello all, just giving my own opinion after reading through the posts.

Player's assumed gender:
If I recall well, there are times in Garry's & Melvin's speaches after Karen's appearance where they clearly state that "Card Hunter is not for girls".
Thus, for me it makes it obvious that the intended player's gender at the beginning is male. However, I never saw anything wrong with that statement, as it is well matching the whole storyline.
Also, the few times Garry is calling the player by his "name" is at the very beggining (where the gender consideration didn't occured yet) when introducing the first moves and at the end of the campaigns, when he cheers for us to win the Cardstock II ticket (and it doesn't matter there either because the all storyline got much more developped by then, and it doesn't makes any difference if the player is a male or female).

Karen's personnality:
Karen's personnality (and that of the other protegonists as well) have to be regarded as a whole, not only from introduction to the storyline.
As people mentionned, we (and Garry too for that matter) discover throughout playing the campaign that she has a multy-facet personnality with her kindness toward the player & characters, her wish to grow stronger at mastering the game, her struggle after she got quikked out of her job for choosing to play rather than work, and her personalised deck box.
All of that, whether we appreciate or not, is not different that anybody else: she has her own personnality, and it shares aspects of others peoples personnalities too. That what makes a story character interesting (and she is, interesting).

Sexisme:
Following my opinion above, I don't really see where is the sexisme in this game.
I, for instance, was more struck by Garry's comment when he said: "My mom bought Alien Space something Module for me, but of course it is not compatible with Card hunter system. This is how little she cares".
At that point I actually talked to my screen and said: "You realised that she bought it because she cares about you...".
And that's when it struck me: the social interaction between the 4 characters is very well matching what could happen in real life, with all the ignorance, kindness, anger, fear, ... and I think it is great.

On the other hand, when Django Hawkins says that he is hesitant to recommand Card Hunter to his female friends because he thinks the content might offend them, that is a sexist attitude in my opinion (Django, not saying you are a sexit, just saying that I see this specific reaction of yours as beeing sexist).
Indeed, sexisme start from the postulate that the other gender is not able to do, think, react, ... in the same way that our own gender does, and we should spare them the trouble. Karen's treatment in the Card Hunter storyline isn't sexism at all, it's just a character in a story, and a good one moreover.

And the fact Mom is the stronger Multiplayer AI should pretty much sell the deal .


Thank you for reading.
Have fun.

 

Django - I don't mean to attack you here, and I've thought about this same issue a bunch too, but I'm wondering where you see specific examples of sexism in the dialogue with Karen? You may have mentioned this before, sorry if I missed it, but I don't think its fair to say there's sexism here without giving at least one specific example.
On another note, I don't think it's fair to hold the devs to a higher standard of writing on their female characters than on their male characters. It doesn't seem to me that Karen is any more shallow of a character than either Gary or Melvin. I also don't think its fair to say "this game doesn't adequately represent all of *insert group of people here*. It would require an incredible amount of characters to do that. So far in the game there are really only three characters, and so there is a forced imbalance in the representation of groups.
When I first saw her card box and dice bag I thought "ew." And I'm sure many women out there would think the same thing. On the other hand, I'm sure there are many out there who would love a card box/dice bag like that. These items aren't inherently sexist as far as I can tell, they just represent a bit of a stereotype. But Gary and Melvin are also stereotypes. I have trouble seeing any unfair treatment to Karen in the writing because she is female.
I'd love to hear where you think the unfair treatment due to her gender is.

 

Loops - I've only been through 2 adventures where Karen is the DM and I have no problems with her dialogue. That hasn't been the issue for me. I only have two objections:

1) That the implication from the beginning is that the player is male. A male friend of Gary's hiding down in the basement playing D&D while a girl/woman (not really sure what Karen's age is) rings the doorbell upstairs. I've been in situations like that when I was in high school, so I'm not saying it is unrealistic, just that it puts that Card Hunter player who is female in an odd situation and I wish there were a better way to handle that.

To all the male players who say "Big deal! Get over it! Who cares?!", imagine if 99.5% of all games were told from an assumption that you were female. It isn't the end of the world, but it would bug you. And in the larger context of the world where there is so much inequality around gender it is one more example of women not being treated equally. In other words, you'd have to imagine that 99.5% of all game were set up with the assumption they were the other gender than you AND that males had been treated and are treated as females are. It's a big leap of empathy, but I think it's possible for anyone to appreciate why that is a concern.

2) That Karen's card box and dice bag are so stereotypically decorated. I was probably even more put off by it because people on this thread had said "just wait, it gets better!", so when I saw that I was rather disappointed. I'm not a huge Magic player, but I've been to a few tournaments at my local card shop over the years and I've played with and against female players and I've never seen that. I'm sure it exists, but it feels like lazy design that goes for the a low stereotype and really contrasts with the intelligence in the rest of the game.

Sounds like Karen continues to be an interesting character, which is great. Those aren't where my suggestions are aimed.

 

I genuinely don't understand your point. Someone earlier had written the same thing.

If I see or read something sexist, racist or gay-bashing, I will usually not recommend it to my friends. How is that sexist, racist or gay-bashing?

They may or may not be offended, but that's really besides the point. I'm offended. I don't like it and I want to see that kind of practice stop.

I think this is a common misperception out there: that you have to be of the group being discriminated against in order to be justified in taking a stand against the discrimination. You don't.