Mook is a racist term for Chinese people, at least that's the only way I've ever heard it. It's also the name for a Kung fu dummy and basically in Chinese means something like "retard".
How are games like Metal Gear and Uncharted also not accurate for the time period? Maybe you're a better expert on the demographics of terrorist and paramilitary organizations, but from what I hear they're almost entirely composed of male soldiers. Every major military today continues to exclude or restrict female activity in front line engagements.
If you're looking to criticize, you're criticizing the wrong thing. Games are a representation of the societies on which they are based, and I would argue that games like Unreal Tournament, Command & Conquer, and every MMO ever made actually present a more favorable representation of women in combat than what reality actually presents.
" Mook is a racist term for Chinese people, at least that's the only way I've ever heard it. It's also the name for a Kung fu dummy and basically in Chinese means something like "retard". "
Borderlands had no normal female enemies but in the General Knoxx DLC the named female ninjas from the Crimson Lance were always accompanied by weaker unnamed female ninjas.
Seems a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation with gender.
The word mook attracted me to this thread. I didn't know what it meant, so I clicked.
No One Lives Forever 2 has exclusively female enemies for the first level or two of the game. It also has a female protagonist though, and I guess you're asking if there are many games that feature the uneasiness of a male protagonist gunning down women.
I also imagine you're talking about straight-up humans not mutants, otherwise games like Bioshock would be an obvious candidate.
@Brodehouse: Interesting. There are plenty of games where a female protagonist guns down dudes, but seemingly not the other way around. Double standards, damnit.
Edit: wait, you're right about the Codex. The characters in the game dispute it though. GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHT BIOWARE.
@Brodehouse: It is that PC quandary which makes it easier to just have all or mostly male enemies. Yes, there could be a 51% / 49% female to male ratio but if a developer truly wanted to go down that route and be representative of the real world then a higher proportion of mooks would be female and paid less then their male mook counterparts.
Ugh, that's what makes games great, bye bye realism. How dull you are.
" Mook is a racist term for Chinese people, at least that's the only way I've ever heard it. It's also the name for a Kung fu dummy and basically in Chinese means something like "retard". "
You're thinking of Gook. "
No I'm not, Gook is a vietnamese slur, adopted during that war and then applied to basically all asians. Mook has been a racist chinese term for quiet a while.
I did a little quick searching for the word "mook." Definitions on Urban Dictionary are varied, but the generally revolve around young, idiotic males. One of the definitions on Wikipedia refers to the mook jung, which in Chinese translates to "wooden dummy." This reference to a wooden practice dummy for martial arts seems to make it even more appropriate to the situation, but hardly racist. I didn't find anything that makes "mook" seem like a slur. Back to the OP's issue, I remember the female assassins from Half Life, the Amazon warriors and female martial artist boss in Strider, and Roxy and Poison from Final Fight (yes, I reject their sex change as canon.) It seems like when developers put female enemies in a game, it's usually to have an enemy that's faster and more acrobatic than the rest. So are women really more coordinated and agile than men, or why do game developers see them that way?
It seems like when developers put female enemies in a game, it's usually to have an enemy that's faster and more acrobatic than the rest. So are women really more coordinated and agile than men, or why do game developers see them that way? "
Because that's the easy way to handle differentiating statistics between characters in a game. The males are the big, slow bruisers and the girls are small and quick. It'd be a lot more difficult to justify placing females as the big and slow ones, and the exceptions to this rule are very few (King, Blue Mary, and Charlotte from SNK are all that immediately come to me).
Yeah I was wondering about this as well and made a thread about it a while back and I'd like to see some female goons or mooks or whatever once in a while. Maybe people are a bit sensitive about shooting females in the face, but for me, even though it's a little weird, if someone tries to shoot me, I'm totally gonna shoot them back.
" Mook is a racist term for Chinese people, at least that's the only way I've ever heard it. It's also the name for a Kung fu dummy and basically in Chinese means something like "retard". "
There was an article about this a while back on Kotaku. Apparently, it has nothing to do with sexism or "violence against women". It has everything to do with using resources both in the development of the game and the running of the game to have 2 separate character models with different move-set parameters, etc.
Games like Fallout and Mass Effect do a better job because it's worth it for them to make the effort when creating their world, story, etc. For most games, it's just worth it.
" @LiquidPrince: I think women are capable enough to join military/terrorist/criminal organizations and have a player character storm through their base, snapping necks the entire way. It really makes little difference during gameplay, because a target is a target. Also, if you're trying to paint me as a misogynist for killing a couple women in a game, let's talk about me being a mass murderer for the amount of dudes I've turned inside out. Thinking about Dragon Age, it features more capable women than most games, and yet almost all unnamed enemies are men. If we're taking it to heart, there's only one lady in Loghain's troops, Ser Cauthrien, and she's the highest ranking of them all. It's justified with the darkspawn, as they don't turn women into troops, they do something entirely worse. "
Well, how about you think about it logically. Sure, women can be just as able as men in joing the ranks of higher military, but realistically, how many are there. The ratio of male to female soldiers is heavily skewed towards male.
@Brodehouse: I'm not taking it too seriously. I'm just being logical about it and don't really realize why you think it matters to have more women being gunned down. Wouldn't that be just as bad, if not worse then gunning down men?
The typical usage of "mook" that I've seen is describing the hordes of generic gangsters that get shot up in John-Woo Hong-Kong Side-ways diving shoot'em up movies. Essentially, it's all those people who only show up in the movie so they can catch a bullet 1-2 seconds after they appear.
" @Brodehouse: Interesting. There are plenty of games where a female protagonist guns down dudes, but seemingly not the other way around. Double standards, damnit. "
That's ... not a double standard, though. That's one standard - that most enemies in games tend to be male regardless of the main character's gender. Because of genre (military stuff, most military people still are male) or developer 'couldn't be bothered to make a female model' laziness.
"
Technological and time limitations aside, I think what Brodehouse might be looking for is equal opportunity for enemies of both genders to be slaughtered. That is, if the developers had the time and the tools to make hordes of X-chromosome cannon fodder, would they?
In any life or death, Zombie Apocolapse, Galactic Imperilment, This-shit-just-got-real predicament, I would encourage all us males to do one thing: SAVE THE BEWBS FIRST! Many a Left for Dead game have myself and friends laid dead in order to make sure Zoey gets to the chopper first. Equip a shotgun, save the ovaries!
According to a link posted earlier, it has to do with extra resources needed to make a different skeleton and model for female characters. I think that makes sense, along with other reasons such as the general interests of shooting dudes than women.
Yeah - common misconception. Guns make anyone dangerous. Ever heard of AK-47 wielding somali childsoldiers? Yeah - I'm gonna shoot anyone shooting at me. No exceptions. Also - kickass women aren't uncommon. There are many women more able than me. If they'd come after me, I'd have to defend myself.
Women can be evil bitches. For example - women are statistically more likely to be racists. I'd have no problems shooting evil racist bitches in the head. I wonder why evil racist bitches aren't more common in videogames. That's right. Because we men love courtisans and whores and hookers. Even Jesus Christ took a whore over just any woman. So clearly most women in games are built for sex. We don't want to hate on women. Sorry. We just want to use you like a tool for sexual relief.
Been playing some more inFAMOUS recently. And yep... there's one female enemy. And she's a boss. I guess I always noticed this too, but it's kind of odd how little we all tend to think about it. That's a pretty funny little idea you posed for the guys at Naughty Dog, as well. I'm sure they thought of putting women enemies in Uncharted, but to actually sneak up and snap one of their necks would make Drake seem a lot darker. Hmmm...
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