There's been a huge debate over a question asked by me on the main site: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/44103/how-are-women-portrayed-in-kings-bounty-armored-princess
It's been closed three times already. We should come to a resolution on this.
I don't think these questions are appropriate for the site, and it may take me more than a few paragraphs to explain why, but please hear me out.
The crux of my argument against these questions on our site is that they are meant to elicit discussion, even if you don't want them to, and in my opinion, it is appropriate that they should. We should question these portrayals, because it means we are questioning the accepted norms of media's portrayal and whether or not they are appropriate and fair. Because these questions elicit such discussions, I feel they are outside of the scope of this site.
Fair representation of all genders/sexual orientations/etc. is something that is pretty personally important to me, and I spend a great deal of time on various websites reading analyses, opinions and viewpoints of people who examine games from both heteronormative and non-heteronormative points of view, as well as involving myself in discussions with others on what we think of aforementioned games' portrayals of various groups.
I'm not mentioning my involvement in areas elsewhere to say "lol I r smrtr then u" or something. I'm saying this so you guys know that this is something that I do a lot of thinking and research about and that I'm not just pulling this all from thin air or something, and most of all, that this is important to me and I'm not just VTCing because of the inclusion of the box art or the joking tone of Gnome's one line or anything like that.
In regards to the argument that we can list objective descriptions in order to make the question and subsequent answers appropriate for the site, I disagree that this is an appropriate solution.
Even the answer by Oak, while well written, is not objective (Oak, I love ya man, please don't hate me for this, but you're the only one who has answered the question. Also note I'm not asking you to actually respond to any of the questions I ask about your description, I'm merely using them as an example).
Though it can of course be interpreted in many ways, I don't think women in this game are overly objectified
This is a subjective opinion, and people will have different interpretations of this. What does "overly objectified" mean to the answerer? Does that mean there's some objectification, and if so, to what extent? In what context? What one person may overlook as "harmless," another may find quite offensive.
This stems from the simple fact that we all enjoy various sorts of privilege. Because each person who tries to answer these questions comes from a different background with different circumstances and different life experiences, what they may interpret as harmless or harmful may be thought of as otherwise by another, and those conflicting opinions are not necessarily wrong. This is the very definition of subjective.
You play as a powerful, independent, fearless female protagonist; and the occasional advance by an NPC (which is pretty rare anyway) can be harshly rebuked by you using either wits or threats of violence. You can also get male squires serving you. Most other women in the game are also portrayed as independent and spirited individuals, though most NPCs are male.
This description is again subjective, and again, this is relative to whatever the answerer's point of view is from a privileged standpoint. When I read this description, I find myself wanting to ask questions about the protagonist's background, about her circumstances, about the writing of the game, and how well and fairly it treats the subject matter.
Why is she considered powerful? Is it because she earned it through her own accomplishments, or was she given power from someone else? Why is she considered independent? Is it because she's follows her own path and makes her own decisions or is because she's considered an Alpha Bitch? How is she fearless? Is it because she stands up to her enemies without quailing from a fight or because she murdered some person who abused her?
The interpretation of the character would be different based on which (or none!) of those reasons would be true, and that's because context is important when deciding whether or not the representation of women or men or homosexuals or Chinese or whomever is fair or not.
Objective lists removing context is not appropriate for these types of questions, and I would even argue harmful. We only need to look at our "classic" questions to see how ridiculous and/or misinterpreted some things can be when taken out of context. And even attempted objectivity can still come across as subjective.
Let's look at this situation from a game this year completely out of context from 3 angles.
The male movie star protagonist attempts to flirt with and hits on a female Marine several times, though she rejects him every time. After the final rejection, he grabs her in an attempt to keep her from walking away. She pushes him away and punches him. He then responds by punching and kicking her repeatedly until she's nearly dead. He apologizes and offers a hand to help her up, which she rejects.
A list of events as they occurred chronologically. Fairly objective, insofar as I can objectify the events as they happened.
The obnoxious man hits on the poor woman several times, even though she repeatedly rejects him. After becoming fed up with his endless advances, she tries to walk away but is manhandled by the brute. She responds as any sane woman would and punches him and tries to escape, but he then brutally abuses her, beating her to within an inch of her life before he finally relents. To add insult to injury, he tries to help her up.
A version of the events heavily slanted to favor the female Marine's perspective. Uses weasel words to slant the reader's opinion against the male protagonist.
The handsome guy attempts to befriend a woman, though he's surprised to find his wit and charm not working. Not wanting to lose his chance, he tries to get the frigid girl's attention by grabbing her arm, when she then flips out and punches him. He defends himself appropriately, but shows his chivalry by offering to help her up after he knocks her down, an offer she coldly refuses.
Another version of the events, this time heavily slanted to favor the male movie star's perspective. Again, weasel words are used to slant the reader's opinion.
If any of these descriptions showed up on the site, I imagine most would try to edit them to adhere to the first example in the name of objectivity. However, you still have to deal with the subjectivity of the editor in question's POV. Which words would they change? Which wouldn't they? How would we solve disputes in editing that one person may find offensive, but the other would think is no big deal?
It shouldn't.
Objectively, the above situation sounds kind of... well, awful, and many people may say that they would not want to play that protagonist. But those of us who played the latest Mortal Kombat (myself included) found ourselves in that situation in the 4th fight in the storyline campaign, Johnny Cage vs. Sonya Blade. I think it's fair to say that a lot of people didn't really bat an eye at the situation because, well, it's Mortal Kombat. Should we feel more uncomfortable with this? Is it okay to describe this situation objectively and without context?
I experienced some internal conflict playing some games that were very popular this year (including that one) because of questionable representation in them, bringing up questions of whether or not it's okay to enjoy something with such representation, where the line may lie in levels of "acceptable" thresholds of poor representation, etc.
But does this matter to the site? No. Despite what others argue to the contrary, I don't feel that this is a simple question. In our FAQ it states:
Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.
There are entire books dedicated to the fair representation of various groups of people in media. There are entire websites dedicated to this kind of analysis of video games and asking questions about the why's this or that, and I think that boiling down a game's various portrayals to objective snippets A - does injustice to the game and B - does injustice to an issue that has many levels of nuanced layers.
We are a Q&A site. We solve problems like "I'm stuck on this boss" or "I'm looking for the most efficient way to do X, how can I do that?" Answering questions like this is not within our scope and nor should it be.
You said in a comment on the question:
I'm not asking if the game is offensive, or sexist. I'm asking for information about how it is presented. How I interpret that information IS subjective, and my own business. It's not part of my question.
If that's the case, why do you include the box art and mention how it caught your eye (and imply that it was due to the sexuality), etc.? Background information about why you're asking the question is one thing, but you go out of your way to distract attention from the objective part of the question and provoke the two-extreme response you're getting. That's just not helpful and I don't think the question in its current state is anything but Not Constructive. (And I'll note here that as of 3 hours ago, the objective part was simply not present.)
As for an improved version of the question: Personally I still dislike it because it applies to every game (or at least every game with a humanoid/anthropomorphic character) and is extremely basic. I don't want the site cluttered with these when YouTube already has gameplay videos.
This is off topic for violating the most basic rule of the FAQ.
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.
As asked, your question is not based on an actual problem. It is you just wondering whether this game would be too sexual or not. But! It can be rephrased into a practical problem! The core of that question would be something like this:
Would I like this game?
Well, we can't answer that for you. That's Bad Subjective™, and we close those as not constructive.
So take your pick. Off topic or not constructive. Either way, it shouldn't be open.
woman and ratings definitely doesn't help your case in this matter. As it is, the former presence of those 'joke' tags has skewed what may have been intended as a meaningful question into off-topic territory. I agree with Strix - the question should stay closed.
I think it's a legitimate question, and is very similar in spirit to the existing and highly-upvoted Is Skyrim kid friendly? question.
In short, you're asking for more information about a game, information which may not be easily available; in this specific example, a gameplay video can quickly show you how the game looks, but it cannot (for example) reveal whether the content of dialogs - of which there are many in the game - is sexist or not.
Now, I find the basis on which you are asking it to be rather weak, primarily because tons of video games from the very dawn of this medium have been featuring scantly-clad women on their cover, even way before we had any sort of quasi-photorealistic graphics. Nevertheless I consider this a legitimate question; one I will be happy to answer if it were open, seeing as I completed this long game 3 times :)
