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Thread: Why is the SNES game "Wild Guns" never accused of "gender stereotypes"?

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    Default Why is the SNES game "Wild Guns" never accused of "gender stereotypes"?

    Hopefully this game is a bit more well-known now when it has been re-released for the PlayStation 4.

    Anyway, the last several years a lot of people have been very sensitive when it comes to so-called "gender stereotypes", like how men and women are assumed to look, act an dress in specific ways - you know what I am talking about.
    Well, in "Wild Guns" the two main characters Clint and Annie have fairly stereotypical character designs;
    Clint is a tough-looking muscular man with a stubble and blue cowboy clothes, and Annie is a slender woman in a pink dress - yes, you can change their colours in the character selection screen, but that's their default colours.
    Here is what they look like in the actual game:

    https://r.mprd.se/media/images/36295...1458992871.png

    It's exactly these kinds of character designs that are often labelled as "stereotypical", and although I personally don't have any problems with these kinds of things (as long as they don't try to portray any of the genders as "inferior", of course) I still think it's a bit interesting how nobody in today's over-sensitive society seems to be bothered by this.

    I would say that it's probably because Annie is actually a strong character with some attitude (instead of an overly helpless damsel-in-distress character).
    Actually I don't mind the "male hero saves the girl" types of plots either, as long as they are done right and treat both characters as equals.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 01-27-2017 at 01:36 PM.

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    Firstly, society isn't oversensitive (unless your name is Trump then you're too sensitive).

    Second, the game came out 22 years ago and was a cult classic (re: not many actually played it) so despite the fact that it was re-released there's your answer. Plenty of modern games stereotyping the smurf out of various genders and races so there's not much need to bring up a two decade old game no one actually remembered until recently.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
    Firstly, society isn't oversensitive (unless your name is Trump then you're too sensitive).

    Second, the game came out 22 years ago and was a cult classic (re: not many actually played it) so despite the fact that it was re-released there's your answer. Plenty of modern games stereotyping the smurf out of various genders and races so there's not much need to bring up a two decade old game no one actually remembered until recently.
    Well, I have seen people on television having debates about some Chinese chocolate brand that showed a smiling yellow face with small eyes on the wrapping because that was apparently assumed to be "offensive to Chinese people", so that's what I meant by "oversensitive".
    I also constantly see people describing games like "Punch-Out!!" and "Street Fighter 2" as being "stereotypical" and "offensive".

    As for the "nobody actually remembered" part, I was talking about those people who made actual reviews of the game and dissected every part of it, and not even those people so much as mentioned the character designs, they were just like "okay so you can pick between the characters Clint and Annie who are about to avenge the murder of Annie's father, alright-let's-start-the-game", more or less.
    But if people aren't as bothered by these things as I have always thought then that's good.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 01-27-2017 at 02:43 PM.

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    It was 1994. To say that things like gender and even racial equality weren't on the radar of most people in the industry, journalists included, is probably an understatement. Hell, it's 2017 and some people still won't even entertain the notion that the industry has problems with sexism and race.

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    Why is the SNES game "Wild Guns" never accused of "gender stereotypes"?
    A true scandal.


    there was a picture here

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1986 View Post
    I still think it's a bit interesting how nobody in today's over-sensitive society seems to be bothered by this.
    What's more oversensitive? Talking about the real issues of gender and racial equality that our world faces today in a straightforward and public manner or looking for every obscure instance of those issues manifesting themselves in the distant past and pointing out how no one is complaining about it?

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    Why is the 1993 film The 13th Warrior not accused of racial miscasting?
    Last edited by Laddy; 01-27-2017 at 06:21 PM.



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    Why does 12 Angry Men not include any women, or minorities?!?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Del Murder View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1986 View Post
    I still think it's a bit interesting how nobody in today's over-sensitive society seems to be bothered by this.
    What's more oversensitive? Talking about the real issues of gender and racial equality that our world faces today in a straightforward and public manner or looking for every obscure instance of those issues manifesting themselves in the distant past and pointing out how no one is complaining about it?
    Nah I'm not oversensitive about anything, I was just curious since normally a lot of people seem to react very strongly towards these kinds of things.
    These reactions are particularly common for "possibly racist" stuff, like how the character E. Honda in Street Fighter 2 is a racist character because he is a Japanese stereotype.

    Trying doing a quick search for "Street Fighter racist" on Google and you will get a lot of results of people discussing the "racism" in that game.
    This is one example of what I meant when I was talking about "oversensitive" reactions to games.
    I was pretty much expecting similar types of reactions to the "gender-stereotypical" characters in Wild Guns as well, but it's good if people are cool about those things nowadays.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 01-27-2017 at 10:58 PM.

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    Why would there be a reaction to Wild Guns nowadays when it was released two decades ago though?

    And there are plenty of racist stereotypes in Street Fighter without needing to go with E. Honda, aka: the racist Japanese stereotype created by Japanese developers making me not care about it very much. But the difference between Street Fighter and Wild Guns should be an obvious one: the former is a successful franchise that's been around for decades, has more than a dozen games to it's name, and is still getting somewhat regular releases and updates. The latter is a 23 year old SNES game most people have never heard of or care about, even with the re-release.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
    Second, the game came out 22 years ago
    There's your answer lol.People just didn't care too much about things like genders stereotypes back then

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    Quote Originally Posted by maybee View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
    Second, the game came out 22 years ago
    There's your answer lol.People just didn't care too much about things like genders stereotypes back then
    I am not talking about the fact that "Street Fighter 2" is more well-known, I am talking about the reactions (or lack of reactions) from the people who have actually played that game and "Wild Guns".
    A lot of people who play "Street Fighter 2" will at least acknowledge or joke about "racist characters" at some point, but people who play "Wild Guns" seem surprisingly tolerant about the "stereotypical genders" thing that people seem to find so sensitive nowadays.
    Some people even insist that all differences between men and women are exclusively "social constructions", and I guarantee that some of those people would react if they saw a tall muscular tough guy and a petite woman in a pink dress and flowers in her hair etc - at least in Sweden, where some feminists can be really sensitive when it comes to these things and start talking about how something like this "encourages gender ideals" etc, but maybe people are less uptight about this in America;
    I honestly don't know anyone in real life who has even heard of this game, so I don't know what reactions people would have over here.

    Anyway, while I am on the topic of "Wild Guns", I would like to point out that a few things that I have always missed in this game are "Lock" functions for the characters and the cursors, and also the ability to crouch.
    You could for example lock the cursor with the L button so that it stayed in place while you moved around, and you could lock the character by holding down the R button (and obviously, crouching would be done with the Down button).
    Yes, you stand still while you are firing a weapon, but sometimes you may want to move the cursor without having to waste ammo.
    Hopefully they will add these functions to some future re-release, that would be a big improvement to the controls.

    One argument that you might have to these controller functions is that you might accidentally crouch when you want to run - in that case you can simply make it so that crouching is only possible when you hold down the A button, which has no other purpose anyway, or even have the A button itself for crouching.
    Last edited by Peter1986; 01-30-2017 at 06:30 PM.

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    The more people play a game, the higher the chance of someone who cares playing the game and then arguing about it on the internet.

    If 1% of players care, you're gonna have 5000 people who care enough to post about it out of 5000000 players of a certain game. If only 50000 people know about the game, only 50 people will care enough to post online about it, so naturally you're gonna have a harder time finding those guys.

    With enough players, even the smallest percentage of "people who care" are going to seem like a smurfton of people if they all gather on the same online message boards, but they're still really just a small minority.
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