Comment by slackstation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slackstation | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> One of the three or four core apps that will ship with Magic Leap’s headset “is a game, ‘Dr. G.,’ that has no female heroes or lead characters”. The one female character in the narrative, who isn’t in the game itself, “is a busty woman depicted on her knees grovelling at the heroes’ feet in admiration”.

So in 2017 it's a hostile work environment if there aren't female characters in the video game that the company is producing?

I know that not the whole suite but, it highlighted as part of it.

Are people at the Gillette going to sue because they make a whole line of razors that are pink? Are people going to sue at fashion companies because the clothes they make are too revealing or tight?

Are we going to bring subjective criticism of art into the courtroom not out it own merits to society but, judging it on the basis of how it makes one of the employees of the company feel?

I'm not saying that the whole suite it without merit. This one point was just especially egregious to me.

People harping on these single points like the one which bothers you prevents action from occurring and quickly muddies the water. These claims are meant to be taken as a whole. It is about the environment that the little small things create as a whole, not an individual event.

The problem is that all of the points as a whole don't really amount to anything particularly bad.

Like, sure they aren't good, but if you have skin so thin that a few immature remarks and the lack of a gender in a video game is damaging to your life, it's nobody's problem but your own.

It's not necessarily a hostile work environment because of the game, but that's used as a minor piece of supporting information in the lawsuit. Other sources say that Campbell tried, in her capacity as head of strategic marketing, to get the developers to modify the game without success.

It's also worth noting that this game is one of the four default games that shipped with the product. It would be one thing if it were a game that was produced by the company and offered for purchase, but the fact that it came with the headset lends more credence to the argument.

This would be more like, if Gillette claimed to be targeting both males and females, but every single pack of razors had a bunch of unisex ones, and also one that had a picture of a shirtless beefcake fanning a fully-clad woman on a chaise lounge. ...And 97% of the engineers were female. And most of the men they hired were in marketing/office administrator roles. And a lot of other things.

I'm also not saying one way or the other about the suit having merit (no idea if the statements were true, there's always another side of the story), but it's a little more than just "someone thought a piece of art was sexist."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com