Duke Being Put To Pasture?
#301 Posted 03 April 2019 - 01:50 PM
The difference is that Duke Nukem is a piece of entertainment that according to you is misogynisticsexistracist, which you also apparently enjoy very much. You also seem to believe that this aspect of Duke should change, so I can conclude you also believe that no longer consuming misogynisticsexistracist entertainment is one way to "improve society". Your view has no consistency, but I've come to expect that from folks of your ilk.
This post has been edited by Radar: 03 April 2019 - 01:55 PM
#302 Posted 03 April 2019 - 02:18 PM
Radar, on 03 April 2019 - 01:50 PM, said:
Nope!
To quote a certain individual that the mere mention of their name would most likely cause you and your gatekeeping ilk to become very, very agitated, if not downright seething with rage: "it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects."
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 03 April 2019 - 02:25 PM
#303 Posted 03 April 2019 - 02:29 PM
This post has been edited by Radar: 03 April 2019 - 02:30 PM
#304 Posted 03 April 2019 - 02:50 PM
Ha, the lengths you go to in order to justify your gatekeeping of "a piece of entertainment", to use your own words...
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 03 April 2019 - 02:54 PM
#305 Posted 03 April 2019 - 04:41 PM
#306 Posted 04 April 2019 - 01:41 PM
Dacoolguy, on 02 April 2019 - 07:02 AM, said:
Actually even Half-Life 2 (which was released back in 2004) faces look better (more detailed) than in most of modern AAA games, including cinematic shit. Most of AAA games look too plastic nowadays. I'm not saying they would make it absolutely terrible looking, but I doubt it would be different from modern AAA games anyway.
This post has been edited by Sledgehammer: 04 April 2019 - 01:47 PM
#307 Posted 04 April 2019 - 04:09 PM
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 04 April 2019 - 04:15 PM
#308 Posted 04 April 2019 - 04:41 PM
#309 Posted 04 April 2019 - 04:43 PM
Sledgehammer, on 04 April 2019 - 01:41 PM, said:
Wow. Everyone in the PS4 opening cinematic looks remarkably worse than the PS3 models.
#310 Posted 04 April 2019 - 06:36 PM
MusicallyInspired, on 04 April 2019 - 04:43 PM, said:
Why do you care? Graphics don't matter!
#311 Posted 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 04:41 PM, said:
But as I pointed out in the other thread, those two characters are very much the same, the only difference being that we get to see a lot more of Duke Nukem in Duke Nukem Forever: at the end of the day, whether we are talking about DN3D or DNF, Duke Nukem only cares about women as long as he gets to have sex with them or at the very least get sexually titillated by them. That is an entirely misogynistic mindset. Heck, for all the crap you (rightfully) give DNF's Duke Nukem, at least in that game, he is shown eventually helping women (mostly in the Doctor Who Cloned Me DLC, mind you); unless you are playing Duke Nukem 64, DN3D's Duke Nukem just does not give a fuck about women as human beings. And no, muttering "Damn..." in a monotone voice as he shoots them dead does not qualify as caring; again, even DNF's Duke Nukem is better in that regard, as he has a genuine outburst upon seeing the Holsom Twins and other women get abducted, one that is far more intense than "Nobody steals our chicks... and lives" delivered yet again in a monotone voice. Of course, the game ruins that later on by having him scoff at their death, but that is a different story...
Alien Armaggedon also felt like an improvement, as you gave Duke Nukem a female sidekick whom he treats as his equal and does not just value her for her sexual availability. You also had the good sense of populating the world with more than just sex workers and strippers and that now not every man in Los Angeles works for the LAPD!
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 04:41 PM, said:
I am really not sure what you mean by "contemporary feminist standard"; if you mean one that matters to the present, then... I guess so?
I would think that any self-proclaimed feminist who does not share that standard is either terribly out of touch or just not a feminist to begin with.
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 04:41 PM, said:
That is not a reason to get really aggressive and start calling me names - or, in MusicallyInspired's case, repeatedly resort to gatekeeping and even gaslighting.
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 04 April 2019 - 06:53 PM
#312 Posted 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
In DN3D, all the women are either sex workers or alien captives. It's definitely a misogynistic world that he occupies. However, nothing about his reactions to the women are misogynistic. His interactions with sex workers are appropriate for how one interacts with sex workers. His interactions with alien captives are appropriate for how one should treat alien captives. We don't know how Duke treats women in normal situations, because those situations don't exist in the game. His attitudes towards women are largely unexplored.
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
DN3D is a simple game with simple interactions.The fact that he says "Damn..." when a female captive dies doesn't prove anything either way. It could be that he's disappointed at the loss of a potential sex object, or it could be that he's saddened by the loss of a human being that he considers his equal. Or something else entirely. The fact that he delivers his lines in a monotone voice is also irrelevant. All of these are instances of Duke acting in character, but it's a simple characterization with many blanks that are not filled in. You are filling a blank in with misogyny. I'm saying there's no reason to draw that conclusion.
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
As for how Duke treats Bombshell, I see no reason to suspect that he would have treated her any differently had she been a character in 1996. With regard to the other NPCs, that's true. The world of Duke in AA is a big less misogynistic than in DN3D (although it also contains more explicit sexual objectification in places). I think it's important though to recognize the distinction between the world being misogynistic and Duke as a character being misogynistic.
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
I would think that any self-proclaimed feminist who does not share that standard is either terribly out of touch or just not a feminist to begin with.
I was referring to Duke's behavior towards women in DN3D. He treats sex workers like sex workers, and he treats alien captives like alien captives. I do not believe that makes him a misogynist. Now, if he walked up to a civilian woman on the street who is clearly not working as a stripper etc., and he held up some dollars and said "Shake it, Baby!" then that would be very sexist! Ironically, AA probably portrays him as more sexist than vanilla DN3D in some instances, because out of sheer laziness I coded him to use the stripper interaction on some of the female NPCs who are sexy but not strippers.
#313 Posted 04 April 2019 - 08:01 PM
Duke Forever I've never played and don't really give a shit about, just enough to have skimmed through a few playthrough videos. But from what I've perceived, the developers pretty much tried turning Sheriff Woody into Buzz Lightyear which I think is a mistake. Duke 3D Duke was a fictional living timestamp of a particular era in the 90's that now belongs to the past, very much in the vein Sheriff Woody's imagery does. Buzz Lightyear is flashy modernity for the sake of flashy modernity; Duke Forever Duke kind of represents that, being a poor attempt at an 'update' as to better cater to a new generation of players who's obviously uninterested in a disconnected character, having way more modern imagery to relate to in other games to play. Where that strategy fails is that I don't think even the rowdiest teenagers nowadays still find sex and poo jokes funny (in video games at least as in real life it's probably going on all day, all day long), and where it sucks for people who appreciated Duke 3D for the social commentary it made for is that in the process, they completely dumbed down the character, its legacy and its potential current relevance.
I can definitely see why Duke Forever qualifying as misogynistic is justifiable, as early as the opening sequence. Just because it's now a scary word that gets thrown around too much and abused a lot doesn't mean it should be jettisoned altogether.
This post has been edited by ck3D: 04 April 2019 - 08:11 PM
#314 Posted 05 April 2019 - 01:31 AM
#315 Posted 05 April 2019 - 04:50 AM
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
Talk about gaslighting.
This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 05 April 2019 - 04:51 AM
#316 Posted 05 April 2019 - 06:05 AM
Sledgehammer, on 04 April 2019 - 01:41 PM, said:
Obviously because they weren't using sprites and voxels. Everyone knows that sprites and voxels are the best.
#317 Posted 05 April 2019 - 06:18 AM
johnnythewolf, on 04 April 2019 - 06:41 PM, said:
THe only thing you pointed out is that you aren't able to look past a surface in a very onedimensional way and are not able to recognize the nuances that make both totally different characters. But fear not ... other people have that problem too ... trust me, that's why we got Douche Nukem in the first place in 2011.
This post has been edited by fuegerstef: 05 April 2019 - 06:19 AM
#318 Posted 05 April 2019 - 06:24 AM
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 04:41 PM, said:
I think people forgot about the right term womanizer and that's who Duke Nukem is, a womanizer.
Tea Monster, on 05 April 2019 - 06:05 AM, said:
Everyone but talentless people. Industry seriously lacks talent nowadays.
This post has been edited by Sledgehammer: 05 April 2019 - 06:27 AM
#319 Posted 05 April 2019 - 06:26 AM
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
I'm going to have to disagree with you on the Duke3D world being misogynistic. The only way this would be true is if the Duke3D world is specifically prejudiced against women, which I see no evidence of. I can assume the strippers in the bar are acting on their own free will, no one is being forced to strip (not that it makes sense for them to just be chilling around while an alien invasion is going on). And while the women are targeted and captured in the alien's green slime, I can assume that men in the invasion also suffered a similarly terrible fate. For example, the pig cops are mutated LAPD officers. The vast majority of police are male. I can also assume thousands of men have been killed offscreen. And there's also a theory that suggests the aliens capture the babes to be used as surrogates, which means the alien's goal is purely utilitarian in nature, not prejudiced.
#320 Posted 05 April 2019 - 08:28 AM
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
I think it should also be pointed out that, unlike in DNF, the "interactions" are entirely optional. Duke doesn't comment or do anything upon entering the strip club, or seeing captive women, nothing unless you make him.
You can kill the women, or you can try to "save" them. The aforementioned "damn" has to be so monotone and vague because the game can't tell the difference if you shot them willingly or accidentally; if you were compassionate, indifferent or indeed misogynic.
And honestly, that is a big reason why Duke shouldn't be elaborated much on as a character. Duke 3D gives the player a huge amount of freedom, and so should a sequel. That means Duke's character has to be "thin" and twodimensional, to leave room for the player to choose and react. If you try to make him "deeper" to satisfy narrative demands, you will unavoidably damage him as a "game pawn".
#321 Posted 05 April 2019 - 09:24 AM
#322 Posted 05 April 2019 - 10:22 AM
#323 Posted 05 April 2019 - 10:54 AM
Actually neither do I see this crap in Forever. I never had any thought related to this topic nor do I have now when it comes to Duke Nukem in general, never read that deep into Duke Nukem Forever overall, except maybe for that "aliens aren't enemies just because they're aliens" part which was quite amusing. The only thing which really caught my attention is that the writing was mediocre to say the least. The only "people" I heard from about this "too deep" theory were American journalists, but then I learned that they love to twist pretty much anything which is pretty much related to the fact that they love to project their bullshit onto others.
I know many people outside of this site who played the game and never had those silly assumptions. If they heard those theories they'd die from laughing.
This post has been edited by Sledgehammer: 05 April 2019 - 10:57 AM
#324 Posted 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
You cannot be neutral on a moving train; if you live in a misogynistic world and you do not do anything to challenge it, then you are at the very least complicit in maintaining it.
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
No. Duke Nukem shows absolutely no concern for their safety and well-being. The game itself does not even punish you for allowing them to get hurt so much as it spawns extra monsters to fight; since the game's entire gameplay revolves around fighting monsters, it actually feels more like an incentive to kill them!
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
Again, no. When you come across people in need of assistance, you try to help them; you do not just ignore them or shoot them dead because you think they are better off that way. If you want Duke Nukem to come across as caring about the alien captives, you have to show him doing so, like Duke Nukem 64 did by making them rescuable. It really does not reflect well on Duke Nukem's character that his slightly better attitude had to be the result of Nintendo's censorship.
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
We do get to see how both he and the game treat them in "extraordinary" situations, i.e. as objects. Therefore, there is no reason to believe Duke Nukem would treat them any better in normal situations.
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
Not an excuse. Nobody forced 3d Realms to put those NPCs there in the first place.
Trooper Dan, on 04 April 2019 - 07:51 PM, said:
I would argue that it is you who is filling the blanks with excuses to make the character come across as less shitty towards women. You might as well tell me that in your headcanon, Doomguy is actually a well-adjusted pacifist who shoot demons to free their souls so that they can escape Hell and go to Heaven!
Duke Nukem is a fictional character; as such, whatever he does outside of the game's diegesis is irrelevant. If the developers decided that his only interactions with women in Duke Nukem 3D would be to tip mindless sex workers and be able to get away with killing captives, then it is entirely fair to perceive those as the extent of the character's relationship with women. No amount of fanfiction on the player's behalf is going to change that - unless of course the developers adopt it, which they do not - and you should not be shaming me into going through the same mental gymnastics as you did.
ck3D, on 04 April 2019 - 08:01 PM, said:
It is kind of troubling when you think about it. If anything, the sheer joy Duke Nukem expresses whenever he does so reinforces my claim that Duke Nukem only values women for their sexual availability; otherwise, you would think he would be pissed whenever he kills a Pigcop.
What a Duke Nukem game could use is the ability to revert Pigcops back to their human form. For example, it could be a special weapon akin of Alien Armaggedon's Babifier that, upon its successful use, would cause Duke Nukem to make food-related jokes (e.g. "I guess you really were what you eat!") and maybe even make him rethink his consumption of pork (e.g. "Huh, I'm never going to be able to eat another pork sausage after this!").
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 05 April 2019 - 12:58 PM
#325 Posted 05 April 2019 - 12:52 PM
Sledgehammer, on 05 April 2019 - 09:24 AM, said:
It could be, but obviously not necessarily so. It's play – Duke isn't real, the women aren't real, their dying or living isn't real – playing around with fictional death doesn't make you a murder and playing around with fictional "misogyny" doesn't make you a misogynist. Though if you hold misogynist views you could – to some extent – play those out in Duke 3D.
(There are some really fucked up mods for D3D – which I've played, of course – that imply some people got that sort of kick out of it.)
But none of this makes Duke, or the Duke games, misogynist.
The game would also allow you to play out some kind of, for instance, "anti-treehugger" plant-hating ideology by destroying much of the vegetation in the game. Or break all the toilets and plumbing. It allows you to do a lot of things that aren't central to or even part of its core identity.
If Duke Forever would have come out on time it would have had male NPCs and non-stripper female NPCs, and you most likely could have killed them all. It wouldn't have been because the game, Duke, or its developers were misanthropes.
#326 Posted 05 April 2019 - 01:15 PM
necroslut, on 05 April 2019 - 08:28 AM, said:
I do not know, MachineGames' Wolfenstein games gave BJ plenty of freedom, yet also fleshed him out as a character.
necroslut, on 05 April 2019 - 12:52 PM, said:
Actually, it kind of does, if the most philogynistic thing you can do in a Duke Nukem game is not kill the women.
Again, if the only interactions Duke is allowed to have with women is to either treat them as sex objects or to kill them, then it is entirely fair to perceive the game and the character as misogynistic. Moreover, I do not think it is even a good idea to allow the player to enact their violent fantasies against sex workers in the first place, as it trivialises the real-life epidemic of violence against sex workers, who due to the nature of their work cannot even turn to law enforcement for help. It is no surprise that the latters have been behind calls to boycott the Grand Theft Auto series among other things.
This post has been edited by johnnythewolf: 05 April 2019 - 01:34 PM
#327 Posted 05 April 2019 - 02:01 PM
That said, it would be nice if America learned to differentiate reality from fiction. Maybe then people would try to fix things in real life, the most notable in my opinion is child trafficking or exploitation in general, that includes sex obviously. But hey! Let's talk about how video games are bad and let's ignore child prostitution or other problems. What have you done to stop this in real life? I can tell with not a single doubt that you did absolutely nothing and will do nothing. But yeah, it's really much easier to criticize fiction instead of fixing things in real life.
And in the end people have to rely on themselves, while you or people like you pointlessly criticize irrelevant crap like fiction and desperately trying to fix it or what ever your goal is. There was some Slavic man whose children were stolen recently by Sweden "child protectors" with no reason so he had to escape with them to Poland, all by himself, his daughters actually love him and didn't want to be set apart from him. In fact they even tried to silence those children in court, but thankfully Poland support family values so the father won and his daughters are with him.
Cases like these are nothing new and happen quite often, the worst thing is that there is even more: slave trafficking, rape, murder, etc, yet every each of those pretentious vocal people do absolutely nothing.
This post has been edited by Sledgehammer: 05 April 2019 - 02:18 PM
#328 Posted 05 April 2019 - 02:02 PM
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 01:15 PM, said:
No, not even close. To even bring up that as an argument proves you just don't get it, and that it is unlikely you will. A hypothetical "MachineGames Duke", even if it would be enjoyable on its own, would be a complete failure as a Duke sequel. Objectively.
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...the same argument used to claim Half-Life supported killing security guards. It is a shooter – that's the extent of how you can interact with almost anything in the game. You shoot or you don't. Not doing something is not the same as doing something. Giving you the choice to not do something is not the same as encouraging you doing so.
You do get punished, albeit not very severly, for killing the women, even if by accident. If they wanted to reward it they would spawn ammo or health or reveal a secret area or level, and they don't. They simply give you the ability to kill or destroy pretty much anything.
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It might be fair to ask the question, but not definitely to perceive. I could give you "objectifying", but not misogynistic. But "objectification" in games is a really tricky matter as games are not books, games are not movies and games are not real life. Games doesn't really have characters the way books of movies do – it has game pawns with a face painted on them. In a sense, putting images of people in games is always objectifying, but by deciding that problematic you end up with something like the old islamic ban against "picturing God's creation", only abstract games would be non-problematic.
But you're not even really given the option to treat them as sex objects. You don't get to rape women stuck in walls – although they totally should do that for the next Duke game.
But really, the whole stripper bit is a silly bit of unexpected interactivity, almost an easter egg, not dissimilar to the interactive feces in DNF (no further comparison). It's not a statement on women, their worth or what role they should have in society; because it is not a statement, political or otherwise.
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Your opinion, like I think the use of the term "sex worker" is problematic, stated as fact. It could also be claimed that GTA brought attention to that kind of violence. None of this is obvious one way or the other.
This post has been edited by necroslut: 05 April 2019 - 02:21 PM
#329 Posted 05 April 2019 - 02:11 PM
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
He's fighting the alien invasion and killing the aliens who are doing bad things to women and people in general! Anyway, it's a simple shooting game, what do you expect him to do, stop and give a speech about equal rights?
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
Why should the game punish you? It seems that you have lost track of what we are arguing about. I never said that a player could not act in a misogynistic way and decide to kill women in the game. I'm only arguing that Duke in DN3D is not necessarily misogynistic -- nothing about the story or his default interactions should lead one to that conclusion. It leaves room for interpretation, in other words. I can understand why someone would suspect him, though.
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
This is a very strange complaint, because it's obvious that DN3D has a dark tone and in that game there is nothing Duke can do to help them. When they say "kill me" this is a reference to Aliens where the infested humans cannot be saved. The clear implication is that the captured babes are beyond help (at least, given Duke's lack of medical facilities/knowledge). Killing them in that case may in fact be the right thing to do, although the player is not forced to. The Nintendo version is a happier, lighter game because of the added feature, but that has no bearing on whether the original is misogynistic.
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
I honestly don't know what you are referring to here. Everything in that simple game is a fucking object of some sort. It's a simple shooter from 1996. I was only pointing out that he never gets an opportunity to interact with a woman who is not a sex worker or hopeless captive, so we don't get to see how he acts around women in normal situations.
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
It's a fantasy world. You shouldn't assume that it's a reflection of how the developers want the world to be.
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
No, I'm saying that he is open to interpretation as to his attitudes towards women in DN3D. He might be an OK guy, he might be a douche. Then DNF answers that question and makes him out to be a douche.
johnnythewolf, on 05 April 2019 - 12:31 PM, said:
This isn't about fanfiction or mental gymnastics. It's a very simple point. Maybe an analogy will help. Suppose the game starred a woman, and the only human males were male strippers/prostitutes and impregnated male captives. And let's say she acts towards them just as Duke does. Would it be fair for me to conclude that she hates men? No, it would not. It just so happens that she's a horny woman who appreciates the attention of the male strippers, and who can't do anything to help the impregnated men. You see, there is no mental gymnastics required. Is it possible that she hates men? Certainly. Is that implied by the game? No.
#330 Posted 05 April 2019 - 02:20 PM
Trooper Dan, on 05 April 2019 - 02:11 PM, said:
I think its safe to assume 3D Realms did not desire the real world to be invaded by hostile aliens.