I have nothing against bikini clad females, but for me they don’t really figure into a game about doing 150MPH across a field in a Lamborghini. Hence this thread, as i was interested in more opinions. Although the largely male population of these boards were always going to be biased one way i think. This is what i meant. Girls tend to get put off when they see drooling males obsessing over female body parts.
I’m not for one second saying that’s the FOrza userbase, but with Horizon being more casual, it will draw more of that crowd. Who will most likely also go on to cause havoc online with their ‘mad car skillz ™’.
I’ve not seen anything that suggests this game is overly salacious, and i’m not suggesting that was the intent either. However, with more companies appealing to the broadest group, via the lowest common denominators, things start to slide. Sales figures for the xbox one haven’t built up enough of a user base for devs to take chances. But once you go down a certain road, it’s harder to change lanes.
Some people I think have taken my post as a puritanical view, which is not the intent. I was just curious as to how people within out community view certain issues. I’m not always impressed by us as a group to be honest, and that’s when you need to have a look around and see what’s going on. I am genuinely concerned about the ‘laddishness’ of gaming. I have many female gamer friends, but there is rarely a game goes by that some jerk pulls out the old ‘online charm offensive’, which rapidly just becomes offensive.
As a community we can improve things like that, by not promoting that kind of viewpoint. Which is why i posted about the bikini thing in the first place. I mean there would just as likely be guys in speedos, but i’ve not seen mention of that? Do you think that’s because that’s a more acceptable sight in a game, or it’s just not included?
Obviously we don’t really know what’s included until we play the game, but it was still something i thought worthy of discussion. We hardly ever discuss anything on here that doesn’t involve lack of tracks this, or tuning C class that. But there are bigger issues which do encroach upon our hobby, just as our hobby has real effects outside in the real world.
Like any other gaming community, the Forza community has plenty of adolescent players who enjoy most of their days drooling over scantily clad women and/or men (depending on personal preferences) any way they can find them, whether it is in video games, magazines, movies, or occasionally even in real life. There’s no way to avoid this. All we can do is to try to keep up our respect for each other even when these adolescent players make fools out of themselves by acting all stupid and immature.
As for the more mature people in our community, I doubt that they care much for how the characters in the games are dressed. As Horizon takes place on the Riviera and surroundings, it shouldn’t be surprising that some people in the game are wearing swimsuits. Also, cars and girls in skimpy clothing seem to go hand in hand, even though I’m not sure where that has its origin; until this is no longer part of the racing culture, I don’t see how it would disappear from racing games.
As for the players–mostly guys, I assume–that say things before thinking, I really hope that they are just trying to be something they’re not, and that they have more respect for people than they appear to have.
Sweedish, this is my point really i suppose. It’s not the bikini clad women, or the guys who look at them. It’s the inherent lack of respect that seems to go hand in hand with that. The attitude of cars are nice to look at, women are nice to look at. They are therefore both just objects placed for our pleasure. The difference being that a car IS an object, a women IS NOT an object. Like i said, I have nothing against it, if it’s appropriate, but these days, especially in online gaming, there is a lot of disrespectful behaviour, and very sexist and racist attitudes, and adding scantily clad women only fuels these morons opinions that women are just objects to be used as they see fit.
Again i’m not saying this is anything like what is happening in Horizon, but there are people out there, who just use examples such as this to fuel their opinions and even justify them. It’s that kind of thinking that we need to make sure we don’t promote. The Forza community that visits the forums regularly is very different from the mass of Forza players who just play the game. Most of the people here on the forums are respectful, thoughtful and helpful. The guys you run into online who just play the game and never come here are often obnoxious, spiteful, and all kinds of *ist. Racist, sexist etc.
There are plenty of good guys too, i’ve made some great friends through Forza, but i’ve had my run ins with controller chimps too. Anything we can be aware of as a community and try to change for the benefit of all players is surely a good thing?