Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
I mean…. It’s cringy as fuck, but harmless.
Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to new research
Submitted 1 day ago by hisao@ani.social to games@lemmy.world
Comments
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I dunno if it’s just cause I’m older, but sex scenes in games and movies seem so unnecessary, what are they even there for? I was playing cyberpunk and nudity isnt a big deal but why were those sexually explicit ads necessary to the story?
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
I don’t know if you could have chosen a worse example. The sexual ads in cyberpunk are part of the worldbuilding and statement about society and capitalism. They absolutely are necessary to the story.
justastranger@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Something basic like the Mass Effect series helps sell the idea that you really did form a fully fledged relationship over the course of the game. As for Cyberpunk, the setting is literally designed to be dripping with sexuality. It’s not necessary for the story itself, but if you removed all the sex ads the setting simply wouldn’t reach the same level of “megacorporations maximizing psychological exploitation techniques”.
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
The paint is, sex and sexuality is rarely ever part of the narrative. Take it away and the story is still the same.
Numuruzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
I don’t know that necessity is a relevant bar for inclusion in games. There’s certainly a discussion to be had, and maybe that’s the point.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
now do a research on the effect of lolis (young sexualized girls) in japanese media and whether it has an effect. i wouldn’t be surprised if the outcomes were similar, yet lots of people still whine about it.
B312@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Pedo alert
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 12 minutes ago
perfect response to their argument.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
what i meant that people don’t always care about the facts (of whether it actually does harm) as can be seen by your
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
Isn’t this just the equivalent of the “shooter game discussion” that we had a few years ago?
I.e., some people argued that playing shooter games would make the people more inclined towards gun violence and we’d see more shootings IRL. but that didn’t happen, as we know a few years later.
it’s quite straightforward then to assume that sexualized video games don’t really lead to more sexualization IRL, i guess.
abir_v@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
The violence discussion comes and goes every couple years. It has since the 80s at least. It’s never had any ground in reality, it’s just fear of whatever media they don’t understand.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 5 hours ago
Well, they cause me harm, because I feel that the developers are trying a cheap trick to get me to play their games. And also, popping it open in some places is unacceptable.
Otherwise, there’s places for those types of games.
DigDoug@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
It’s almost like sex is a natural part of human existence and it being taboo really fucks up a lot of people.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
I read the following neat metaphor once: People are like sponges, and if you take away the juice from their lifes, they become thirsty and suck even more.
LunaChocken@programming.dev 3 hours ago
One hell of a comment but true
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
if someone is not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality, then the problem is much deeper than pearl-clutching religious fanatics insist on believing, and will NOT be solved by abolishing all the “bad” fiction
i would argue that religion itself plays a large part in developing these problematic attitudes from early childhood, especially towards sex
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 1 day ago
You mean constantly displaying sexuality as evil and interest in it as sinful leads to a unhealthy sexuality? Say it ain’t so
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
- set the rules in opposition to fundamental human (i.e., mammalian) instincts
1b. punishment is unimaginable suffering for eternity - everyone lives a guilt-ridden life full of shame
- leverage for control in every aspect of life (i.e., slave congregation)
- ???
- profit. a fucking lot
side effects of psychological damage, suicide, sociopathic tendencies, etc. don’t matter in the slightest to the people collecting your tithes and controlling your behavior-- so, rather the same as social media
- set the rules in opposition to fundamental human (i.e., mammalian) instincts
Nima@leminal.space 1 day ago
i think if less tolerance for religion became more commonplace, it might be better for mental health in general honestly.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
I think the issue is not “religion” because that’s hard to define. What do you count as a religion and what not? It’s kinda not clearly defined. I.e., you can “believe” in science, yet does the belief make it a religion?
I think what’s more the issue is the fact that people cling to nonsensical statements and are unwilling to look at things the way they are. I.e. a recurring theme of religion is that it absolves people from thinking, i.e. from making their own thoughts and relating those to reality. That is the thing that must be dealt with.
In other words, people must be taught to think and analyze the world around (and inside of) them. That is what leads to wellbeing and happyness.
octopus_ink@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
if someone is not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality, then the problem is much deeper than pearl-clutching religious fanatics insist on believing, and will NOT be solved by abolishing all the “bad” fiction
We’ve been trying to make this exact argument to the exact same group of people since the earliest days of D&D and I’m sure someone was having the same conversation about some other thing before that. 😠
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
They used to think novels were bad for women in the 18th and 19th centuries bc they worried they were too dumb to separate fact from fantasy
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 1 day ago
not able to distinguish between fiction (regardless of the medium) and reality
religious fanatics
The line is a circle
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah. It’s always been perplexing me that people who seem mentally okay in other ways can seem to think fiction and reality are basically the same thing.
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
the owner class wants it that way. if you can get people to throw reason, facts, evidence, and everything else out the window in order to genuinely believe that 2+2=5, then you can tell them anything you want, and they will kill people over the matter. see: literally all of maga
HubertManne@piefed.social 1 day ago
Glad to see this opinion organically. I have been feeling like its moving more and more toward censure. I always thought japan pretty much had it right and then they took a step back. If its not real, its not real. I honestly don't care about any fictional stuff be it writing or painting.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You hear that, sexists? It’s all in you. Can’t blame the games.
Runaway@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I mean sexualized movies with skimpy ladies and jacked dudes, and smut books are not harmful broadly speaking, so I don’t really see why video games would be different.
Jakule17@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
They are causing harm, but not by being sexual. By posing unrealistic standards
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 36 minutes ago
It really depends on the character, IMO. Like Superman or Batman or Black Widow better be at least fit as hell, because their characters are fit as hell and are supposed to be much more capable than the average person.
Not that they should be super unrealistic, either. Like Christian Bale as Batman was totally fine. He doesn’t have to be a meathead or gymnast, and neither should Black Widow. Though, with that said, it would be cool for Hollywood to hire more actually fit women than every woman being a pretty twig… Black Widow and Batman probably should have gymnast level builds if they’re to truly be realistic for the physical feats they pull off.
elterly147@literature.cafe 2 hours ago
yes, sadly
wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org 5 hours ago
I’m not sure why this is being downvoted because setting unrealistic body standards is absolutely terrible for society
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 17 hours ago
I propose it’s not the fiction that’s posing unrealistic standards, but the people who can’t tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction, is by definition, unrealistic.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s almost like there’s another reason for censorship
jmsy@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
As a dude, I exclusively use female characters to get gifts in multi-player games
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Skimming their data tables (don’t have access to the journal outside of work), it feels like a really broad hodge pdge of semi-related studies (which the authors essentially admitted).
But it also kind of misses the point. The problem isn’t titties or dicks in video games. The problem is the culture around it and what it reinforces and it very much goes far beyond video games. Big jiggly titties? You are a mature game. Dick size slider so you can rock a magnum dong that needs a monster condom? You are progressive. What? Both of those are just more male gaze?
And all of that is normalized. You won’t see a significant change from the baseline because that IS the baseline.
You know what you almost never see (outside of those “problematic gay games that turn the kids into litter boxes”)? A sexy twink. We all made the same joke about Lies of Timothee Chalamet being one of the better souslikes of the past decade but it is also very telling that we mostly see our twinks in full stillsuits or twelve layers of Victorian clothing. Look, but have enough chastity belts that nobody needs to be worried about being able to touch. And the moment you have a woman who doesn’t have an hourglass figure? See: The Last Of Us 2.
Which is the issue. We have a cult of toxic misogyny that insists everything MUST be male gaze and the only acceptable nudity is big titty girls and guys who look like Ahnold. And any divergence from that is “ruining games” or “being woke” to the point that we don’t even GET those games outside of the rare case of a game nobody cared about becoming popular (I’ll always cite that Yasuke was a recurring character in Nioh long before people turned him into a culture war).
Its like saying that gas stoves cause no meaningful decrease in air quality but having every study take place in the home of a pack a day smoker.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Maybe we need more women working in game design. I don’t know the figures, but I’m guessing they are underrepresented. We probably need more diversity in games generally. It feels like this should be obvious to studios too - the more diverse your team, the more likely your game is to appeal to a diverse audience = a larger pool of customers.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
That was always my experience. You can force people to do hundreds of hours of sensitivity training and explain to them why making the acronym for their solver “K*KE” is inappropriate. But if you just focus on increasing the diversity of your hiring pool and ACTUALLY hiring the best and the brightest, so much of that solves itself because now there is someone to explain that China and Japan may have a lot of shared culture and history but are very much not the same country or why that word is totally a slur and so forth.
I don’t know the actual metrics per studio (and most that DO report it are heavily skewed because they put the administrative staff in with the creative to juice their numbers). But, mostly, every time I think about “popular gamedev” it just reeks of startup culture. The idea that if you were part of a successful team then you should lead your own and that this game was made by one auteur rather than a giant team and so forth.
And that has the exact same problems we see at so many startups as a whole. The person who was real good at coding is HORRIBLE at management and has no understanding of what HR is even for and so forth. Which leads to the kind of shit that was deeply frowned upon in a conference room at 3 am becoming corporate culture and leading to “cube crawls” and the institutional abuse at companies like Blizzard or Ubisoft.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Maybe we need more women working in game design.
eardrums immediately shattered by Gamergate reactionary media
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you have a way to make women study software engineering and other game dev related fields, please do share. I would love that.
But you can’t fix lack of women and generally diverse people skilled in game dev during hiring. We have seen the results of trying multiple times.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 1 day ago
You know what you almost never see (outside of those “problematic gay games that turn the kids into litter boxes”)? A sexy twink.
So you never played JRPGs ?
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
You mean the homeboys that are almost always wrapped in about forty buckles and, at best, exist as a viewpoint character for the harem of big titty anime girls?
But yeah. East Asian media tends to have fewer massively jacked protagonists. But it is still the fundamental male gaze. It is just that East Asian dudes tend to be less likely to spend dozens of hours a week working on glamour muscles.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
And any divergence from that is “ruining games” or “being woke” to the point that we don’t even GET those games outside of the rare case of a game nobody cared about becoming popular
I would argue the origin is sales. E.G. the publisher wants the sex appeal to sell, so that’s what they put in the game. Early ‘bro’ devs may be a part of this, but the directive from up top is the crux of it.
And that got so normalized, it became what gamers expect. And now they whine like toddlers when anyone tries to change it, but that just happens to be an existing problem conservative movements jumped on after the fact.
TL;DR the root cause is billionares.
Like aways.
sunflowercowboy@feddit.org 1 day ago
You speaking of the culture around is really important. That culture is part of the coomer and gooner problem which seems innocent and harmless/inoffensive to others but it is much more insidious. It essentially creates less of an actual reason to interact and a false sense of body expectations.
Essentially the otaku/neet problem japan is facing. People don’t know how to interact with the opposite gender and when they do, they do so with their sexual interest as the prominent reason. Most people innately reject this forwardness based on appearances and the rejected will not understand how it is their fault they got rejected. There is little to no decorum or respect.
It’s essentially a self feeding, lust-driven antisocial cycle that creates angry and dejected incels. It feeds into the other frustrations and creates a very spiteful and resentful person. I personally believe this is intentional after observing 4chan trends, as it creates easy people to manipulate. (Fappening grand invitation on Fox news, then the pepe dogwhistle to embolden those who are racist, while outraging those miscontrued - which eventually just is embraced)
Extreme emotions create easy to predict reactions, just point them at the person you want them to blame.
It’s not innately videos games or media, but creating an entire culture that completely surrounds them does. Lust is one of those material prisons that is naturally inclined as it gives you good feelings. The internet overall has allowed kids to get endulged into this culture without any real risk or entry cost, long before they are of adequate age to understand the intimacy of reality.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
So
Lust is one of those material prisons that is naturally inclined as it gives you good feelings.
This reads to me like a very heavily christian-biased thing. The christian bible says the original devil in the world took the shape of a snake (representing lust) that led eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and then they were kicked out of paradise.
What you’re forgetting is that lust is a part of the natural world that was already there before god existed. The christian bible says sth along the lines of “the world was created 6000 years ago” and what it really means is that humanity or the human spirit was created 6000 years ago with the rise of the first civilizations and empires.
But the natural world did already exist way before that (nature is billions of years old), and lust was a natural and essential part of that. It is not so much that lust is a “mistake of god’s creation” and kinda “sneaked in” or something, rather, god declared lust, which was already present, a sin, and by doing so, they tipped the natural balance of things. Maybe that is a thing to consider. It is not so much that lust is an invader and offender in the world, rather it is the human spirit that tipped the balance and therefore caused a millenia-old war against the serpent. And that has something to do with what you’re saying, even though you’re packing the arguments into very modern language.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I just want to make it abundantly clear I am not with this person.
Titillation is good. Masturbation is good. Sex is good (when between consenting parties).
The issue is not that there are tits and hints of dicks in games. The issue is that there can only be the kind that caters to a very specific male gaze and anything else unleashes a holy war.
Lust is one of those material prisons
Sweet fucking Eothas
missingno@fedia.io 1 day ago
Look at gacha games. There's an entire industry revolving around selling anime girls, and when you realize that's what the business model is, it's not surprising how toxic their fanbases have become. I've suspected that some of these devs are even deliberately trying to filter their audience to the most desperate gooners.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
I would think repression is worse for people but it’s neat.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Okay but what games are considered sexualised and how many people are actually playing them?
Cyberpunk certainly qualifies both. It’s got explicit sex, and it’s got a large player base. But while uncouth and perverse things happen, you can’t really be party to them. You tend to show up after. Maybe your choices might lead to some, but you’re not there for it. The only sex involving the player is generally wholesome. Except, you know, the ghost of Johnny Silverhand riding shotgun and not necessarily consenting to it (especially when you hook up with the cop).
Then there’s Skyrim. Bigger player base but no sex outside of mods. And there are plenty of mods, but if you look at the player count among people using those mods… it’s nowhere near the player count of Skyrim as a whole, or Cyberpunk, or even a lot of the other games. And from there it drops off sharply.
So… what sexualised video games?
FishFace@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Sexualisation is not the same as sexual content. Widowmaker in Overwatch is a sexualised character, because she is portrayed as sexually attractive, seductive and generally in such a way as to have her viewed as a sexual being. There are other characters who are not sexualised.
frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
I’d also say the way sex is portrayed throughout Cyberpunk 2077 is important to the setting. Sex is everywhere, but none of it is particularly fulfilling. That the PC can find a healthy sexual relationship at all almost seems like a one in a million chance in Night City. Capitalism pushes forms of sexuality that can be monetized. Capitalism can get you laid, but it can’t get you happiness.
(I totally get the criticisms that the game is a mediocre experience. It is, but it’s not without value, either.)
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Wouldn’t it be awesome if people cared about research and facts.
Conservatives want to take all our games away, they have hated video games for decades, they made it clear for years that they want to see games censored the same way as movies and television. They have pushed many major media platforms into censorship already, and are just getting started.
But what if I just pirate and use VPN’s? You tech-savvy kiddos might ask, getting a small thrill from feeling like anti-establishment pirates.
Well never fear, they have plans for that too! Do you all really think Palantir and associated social monitoring programs are just going to make drones to try to spy on what American citizens are masturbating to? Nope! Palantir is a broad-spectrum monitoring company, and they will have AI scanning the contents of your hard-drive and reporting your browsing and downloading habits to all kinds of agencies and institutions who would loooooove to have more “product” to sell to our for-profit prison industry!
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 hours ago
Wouldn’t it be awesome if people cared about research and facts.
Conservatives do care about research and facts, as long as these facts say exactly what they want to hear. (/s)
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Conservatives want to take all our games away, they have hated video games for decades, they made it clear for years that they want to see games censored the same way as movies and television.
Wasn’t the OG 80s era censorship campaign coming from Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman?
Didn’t we get this whole '10s era Christian Conservative “We just want to debate! We just want our free speech on College Campus and The Internet!” campaign?
It seems as though censorship of <insert bad thing> is mostly just a wedge issue to put your partisan group on the side of the current popular media trend. In the '80s, it was saying you were Opposed To Satan during the Satanic Panic. In the 90s, it was saying you were Opposed to Gangster Rap and Saggy Pants and Drugs. In the '00s, we were in an ideological war against Islam. In the '10s, we were in an ideological war against Big Government Socialism Taking Over Our Lives. In the '20s its been the War on Woke Foreigners.
Do you all really think Palantir and associated social monitoring programs are just going to make drones to try to spy on what American citizens are masturbating to? Nope! Palantir is a broad-spectrum monitoring company, and they will have various manner of AI bots scanning the contents of your hard-drive and reporting your browsing and downloading habits to all kinds of agencies and institutions who would loooooove to have more “product” to sell to our for-profit prison industry!
That’s one theory.
Another is that we’re trying to put together an industrial scale compromat operation, such that any given individual can be smeared and alienated from the public at-large if they oppose the current regime.
I’m sure advertising can function as a side hustle. But we’ve been drifting away from any kind of real consumer economy for nearly a decade. Everything is “how quickly can the government and its business interests cycle money between one another to replicate economic growth”? You don’t really need end-users if all you’re making is an AI-driven marketplace.
november@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Wasn't the OG 80s era censorship campaign coming from Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman?
It's cute that you think Democrats aren't conservative.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Ive been worried a bit about that compromat situation. My Internet history alone makes me easily politically assassinatable if I ever try and take up politics.
Dont worry, nothing illegal, but it’d be enough. This guy got took out by an ill timed stealth photograph of him eating a sandwich. I’d be toast.
devolution@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Coming from From Software comes:
Christian Ring.
Final boss: Jesus of the supply side order.
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I was beating my meat to Natalya’s (Goldeneye 64) cone-shaped tits at age 10. It may have been arguably better for me than jerking off to droves of actual tits.
…Not that I wasn’t doing that also…
Katana314@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Much as I’d predict support for that conclusion, I feel like there’s room to doubt the survey process used - as has often been the case for studies on gamer behavior.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Sure. But there is only so much effort countering this baseless fear mongering deserves, and this study may already more than that.
The fear mongering doesn’t end. Violent movies cause violent behavior. Not hey don’t. Violent movies cause violent behavior. No they don’t, actually research show gamers are less aggressive. Now it’s sexualized games that cause issues. And every time, they don’t even really care about the research anyway.
hisao@ani.social 1 day ago
This is meta-analysis.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Something, something, can’t prove a negative… While valuable research, it doesn’t prove no harm is done. It can only provide evidrnce that the harm they tested for didn’t appear to happen. That is a kind of important difference.
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
How dare you! You can’t throw facts at puritanical arguments; that’s illegal.