Diablo III Annoyances

I've been playing Diablo III a lot since it was released in mid-May.  Loving the game-play; just what I need when I want to just slay a bunch of stuff.  But...

First thing I hate has to do with the followers.  You get a choice.  Either the templar, scoundrel, or enchantress.  The templar is so self-righteous, you wish that he existed so you could smack him.  The scoundrel is actually pretty funny.  But the enchantress!  Ug, I didn't think I could hate a video game character like this.  She's like... You know when you're a teen or young adult, and one of your best friends has a younger sibling who hero-worships you, and probably has a little crush on you too.  At first you might think it's kind of cute.  And then one day you spend an extended period of time around the kid, and you start to really hate them.  Add to this acting dumb because they think it's cute, and you have the enchantress.  I mean, somebody has to like this, otherwise there wouldn't be so many girls and women who manage to attract the opposite sex by acting dumb and feigning worship.  (Note: the enchantress does act this way towards both male and female characters.)

An example is the hero you play says something like, "I think we're close to the crown."  Enchantress: "You have the right of it.  As always."  The voice actor makes it clear that she's fawning over you.  She goes on at other times about how you're now her entire life, or acts all innocent about things that are said fairly clearly.

She even bothers me more than the attire they've put on the female heroes.  A couple of them start off wearing thigh-high stockings, and at least one continues to for the entire game.  The demon hunter, who is a kick-ass fighter and has attitude, wears spiky high heels.  Even though her adventures running after monsters have her travelling across marshes, desert sands, and snow.  These are fighters, not pretty side-kicks that sort of hang around to cheer someone on.  Does a warrior of any type want to make sure her stay-ups aren't slipping, or sink into the soft ground in a crucial moment?  And!  There's one female angel shown.  Like the other angels, she's faceless, and wears a big white robe (although hers shows a little leg).  She flies at all times you see her.  But she's also wearing high heels.

We're not all hormonal young men.  I don't look to video games to find an attractive person in my life, and even if I did, they don't have to pull out the stereotypical shortcuts to showing that a woman is sexy.

And the thing is, it's not just what the gaming company thinks people want.  Yes, the official forums aren't the majority of players, but it really makes me sick to see posts (with a fair amount of support) complaining that the female wizard's cleavage isn't big enough, or that the female barbarian should be taken down a few dress sizes.  (I've stopped reading the official general forums, because I want to throw up whenever I read most of the stuff posted there.)

I guess the point is that it disgusts me that there still exist boys and men of all age groups who think this kind of stuff is okay.  And probably women, too.

ST:TOR

I have friends playing TOR, and I heard some really good build-up for it.

But... this article in Forbes, and similar ones on other pages and publications.  It leaves me feeling really icky that there's an option of a slave with a shock collar around her neck, that she can be tortured and belittled, that rape is an available act for the bad guys, et cetera.  I know that the bad side is actually evil.  But, it's one thing to watch it in a movie or read about it and root against it.  It's another to role-play it in an immersive atmosphere.  Knowing that the kind of people who want night elves in WoW to take off their clothes and dance for them are able to actually really get into some nasty stuff.

In WoW, I know that people get really into the RP.  They get genuinely upset if someone they just know online isn't able to spend time with them.  They get pissed off royally if someone from the opposite faction kills their character.  They take it personally if another character emotes a /spit or something worse at them.  Some people really have problems separating the game from reality at times.

And these people can now brag in their equivalent of Trade chat about how they torture and rape.  Did we need another venue for woman-hate in new games coming out?  There's enough misogyny elsewhere.

I was thinking of giving TOR a shot, but on second thought, I don't want to financially support this bullshit.  It's sexist enough in WoW and other games.  I don't need to pay to take that even further.

"Pretty"

I really do wish that I could make everybody watch this, particularly if there's even a possibility that they might ever influence a young girl.  The last 30 seconds or so are the most powerful, but the rest is needed as the lead-up.

On the importance of language

Word choice can be very powerful.  One example is Sarah Bunting's absolutely amazing essay called A Four-Letter Word.  That four-letter word is "slut," and how it is used.  Read it, you won't regret it.

But just today, I came across a video How to Get More Women in Tech in Under a Minute (video below), by Caroline Drucker.  How in professional settings, allowing others to call us "girls," or even doing it ourselves, undermines us.  About how giving disclaimers so that we don't seem arrogant makes us look unqualified, makes us more of a "girl" than a "woman."

Really though, this doesn't apply only to tech.  Women should be called women in the workplace.  We're all adults, and need to be treated as adults.  In personal life, use what terms you will.

Ending this with one of my favourite quotes of all time.

"Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds."
- Karen Kijewski