Flash Game Makes Players Beat Up "Tropes vs. Women" Creator

[Helmholtz Watson]

...what? Are people trying to prove her point or something?

That said, has she made any of the video's she promised to use money for yet?

 

[I.Muir]

Oh wow
That is the kind of stupid thing a 6th grader would make, an especially dark 6th grader too
Ive felt this kind of stupidity reach team fortress via a bunch of guys with mics being retarded and misogynistic against a woman who was just lapping up the attention and being equally retarded.

 

[Angryman101]

hot air

Nice unbiased report there, bud.
Tell me, escapist. Does being politically correct and trying to spare people's feelings come before personal expression? Nobody is ACTUALLY being harmed with this game-it's a dumb little smear piece. What IS harmful, however, are people demanding the censorship of creativity because it sends a negative message. That is harmful to fucking society, and seeing it here makes me sick.

 

[matrix3509]

Its shit like this (including certain poor excuses for human beings in this thread) that have convinced me to just give up being a gamer. I have a whole life ahead of me and I'd rather not be affiliated or lumped in with the kind of human garbage that made this game a reality.

Rampant sexism, pink slips, brutal work conditions, and relentless sophomoric machismo. I'm seriously disillusioned with the games industry.

 

[Knight Templar]

snip

I wrote up a whole point-by-point post but I think this part really gets to the heart of the matter.

The Amazing Atheist and Thunderf00t have both had worse trolling done to them. No news stories or violins playing on their behalf.

Because this is a gaming site, and those people are not really related to gaming. Like it or not this story being known is in the best interest of the public. It's newsworthy for gaming sites, whereas atheist YouTubers and their antics and harassment isn't, they may have mindless followers and attackers just as here, however that doesn't make it relevant to games.

If either of those people were connected to gaming in any meaningful way then I would agree there seems to be a double standard. Not that this shouldn't be news but that those others things should be. However your examples are from outside gaming, and that is where the "bad stuff happens so who cares" vibe is coming from. I don't see the political battle over asylum seekers coming to Australia reported in gaming news, and I don't expect to.

Why is this newsworthy? Because crap like this needs to be brought into the light and shown not to be ok. Far too many people accept this as being normal. Why are your examples not news? For the same reason my local paper isn't reporting on this, it isn't relevant to the scope of the newsroom.
[sub](apologies if this comes across as me speaking for any member of staff or any of my local paper contributors. This is my judgement of how they do operate, not any attempt to put words in their mouth or say that they should have a particular focus)[/sub]

 

[drisky]

I find it odd that the creator is 25, seems kind of old to be making something so petty. It certainly didn't accomplish anything.

 

[axlryder]

This does not deserve to be news. It's fucking Newgrounds. They have an entire section dedicated to beating the shit out of the digital likenesses of people. It's like getting shocked when members of /b/ starts spouting belligerent bigotry and tell people to kill themselves. What's more, it was a SINGLE person who submitted it. This wasn't a team of professionals. It was some pissed off individual who probably took ten minutes to make a shitty flash. What a needless, melodramatic, biased article.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Y'know, I remember when the "blammed" icon on Newgrounds was a Flash file that had been beat up.

So in a way, the fate of this 'game' is really, really, funny.

 

[Jynthor]

The internet is full of these kind of games, would anyone have cared if the game in question was about beating up some guy? Nope, that's the real sexism. Somehow it's still considered worse to hit a woman rather than a man despite the genders being equal.

And quite frankly, as many videos/articles show, she isn't the innocent princess people make her out to be.

 

[Frission]

/snip

There would a case in court. Under state criminal codes, which vary by state, it is an offense to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offense to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten to kill. An e-mail or letter is enough. I doubt it will go to court, but there is a leg to stand on despite your claims.

I don't think anyone should or will get into trouble, but this game isn't something worth defending.

Frankly censorship is horrible. It sometimes dumb down and may destroy the original message of a work. I find it hard to believe that those who defend this sincerely are against censor. This isn't about the movie "Brazil" or "Brave New World" being considered too negative. This is a badly made flash game. It's not hard to say it's shit.

Also about censorship. "Rule of Roses" was a somewhat good game that was censored. That is sad. Don't put it in the same category as this game. You're only giving a reason for censorship.

About overreactions. I think the burden is more on someone that can be bothered to make a whole game, than some people on an internet forum, no? You went into a forum about people complaining saying "stop complaining guys!"

 

[Paragon Fury]

Of course, the great irony here is that the vicious response is not only giving Sarkeesian's cause way more publicity than it would have otherwise gotten, but does more to illustrate the problem of misogyny in nerd/gamer culture way more than a video series ever could.

Because seriously, making a videogame about beating a woman in the face for daring to express the point of view that a male-dominated industry doesn't always treat women and female characters like it should, is kind of just making her point for her.

Said it better than I could.

Seriously, why the hell are people so pissed about her making a video series showing that women aren't portrayed in the best light in games?

Because this woman made more money than some of us do in a year of hard back-breaking work or two (or to the point, she made more money to diss the games than many of the people involved in making the game do) to do something that many of us could do for free with a spare weekend or two and cheap computer equipment.

Then add onto it that she is biased as fuck all, that the world gains nothing from her doing this and seems to be a generally unlikable person as a whole, and you get a lot of rage.

 

[Thoric485]

There's tons of games where you can beat men in the face for expressing a viewpoint different than your own. Nobody gives a shit about that, and they shouldn't.

As far as I'm aware the female psyche is just as strong as a male's and not in need of special protection.

 

[somonels]

That's it, I am making it my personal mission to wipe out the entire fucking Hominid family.

Start with the closest.

Aah, he wonderous web Flash has brought us. Good riddance. And to all those who specialized in it - suckers.

 

[Sirron Kcuch]

I'm dissappointed with you, Internet.

 

[Vault101]

HERP! DERP! I belive that she is being exist and disagre with her veiws

SO LETS BEAT THE ***** UP BECAUSE ITS OK NOW!!

you know what? fuck thease people...fuck them with a rusty pipe, I don't care this is stupid

 

[Colour Scientist]

The worst thing about this is that I'm not at all surprised.

Maybe we should take up professional football instead of gaming? I hear they have less of a problem with this kind of stuff.

 

[crazypsyko666]

Can we not use 'makes players X' in the context of games? I thought the argument we always have is that we can decide not to with a game. =/

 

[Treblaine]

Well when is never? Is a year too long? 13 years? She could always say "this is such a big project" and like fusion power stations, it'll always be "just around the corner". She is bound to no timetable, no deadlines, nothing.

Yes, where is her financial transparency. Not necessarily needed on a $6000 project but now she has a small fortune. There are people who REALLY need that kind of money for much more important things, how do we know she isn't blowing it all on goofballs and cigarettes?

And of course, money cannot buy quality. Though it might be a self serving rationalisation circle jerk of her preaching to the choir about how women ever being seen sexually is bad and never ever EVER giving a rational and solid explanation WHY this is in itself bad. But maybe that's what almost 7000 people paid almost $160'000 to hear.

Well Treblaine, like I said I'm not going to be active in trying to stop her project at all. In fact, I'm pretty confident most dissenters aren't. Do note that when I say dissenter I mean a person who is actually going at this with reason and simply disagrees with the project and not bother with projects like the flash animation that this story is about. Honestly I think forums should just have some dump section now where you can just post all your stupid crap where you just want to attack the person directly in one category and then have another section where the actual criticism can be read. People are taking crap way to personally now.

Honestly, if you didn't donate to her cause then don't worry about it. That is what we should take away from the project. Cause she is not beholden to us from a fiscal standpoint. We can freely disagree with her and the work she has done and going to do but I wouldn't go out making forum posts trying to make hard and fast deadlines to signify some sort of failure. The more ya worry about that stuff the more it distracts you from the why you disagree with her. In short, it would make ya look petty.

But like I said everything from the quality to the fiscal transparency is not our problem. There is only one person who has that problem and that is Anita. Doners can certainly if there is enough of them to request for some transparency but that is up to them to be organized, not from some person who wants to be an asshole and shit on any project they don't like.

EDIT: In short, disagree, voice your disagreement, and move on.

Criticism of her project and reasoning are not "stupid crap where you just want to attack the person directly"

There are two quite separate issues:
(1) her poor critical analysis of sex and gender in media in general (which has been discussed before) and
(2) unaccountable handling of a large amount of public money.

It's important that after taking such a large sum of money she take responsibility, she should do this for her donors, you cannot "shoot the messenger" by how I did or did not donate, that is irrelevant, arguments stand on their own merit not who makes them. What is wrong with the argument that people who accept such funding from the public should be transparent on using public finances, she should have some sort of timetable for delivering. I think a lot of people donated on trust, hoping she'd do these things without specific enumeration of these points.

 

[Treblaine]

Not to mention she seemed to think spamming 4chan with the link to her kickstarter was a good idea.

Whoever posted those (might have been her project, might not) 4chan has been deleting any page discussing her as fast as they appear. Yes, the most anarchic and "anything-goes" website on the internet is censoring itself to spare her feelings.

She better play tribute to them for this, rather than denigrate 4chan for not completely shutting down ALL comments which would be the only way to prevent any mention of her. She could at least look at the reasoned criticisms against her rather than cherry picking and drawing attention to the attention craving trolls who deliberately concoct the most inflammatory comments. Do it yourself straw-manning.

PS: it would be interesting if 4chan could prove where those posts originated from by analysis and cross referencing the IP addresses. I understand wikipedia does such things to expose when - for example - they catch the IP address of a senator's office editing their their political opponent or their own page to favour their cause.

PPS: I wonder if she will ever accept any responsibility for how trollish she has been, stirring up controversy and angst with such accusations. Sure, it may not be vitriolic, but it accuses not just sexism (unfairness) but misogyny (hatred) with such spurious basis. She knows how vulnerable video games are to state censorship and how much ammunitions she is giving them for an unjustified ban.

 

[Treblaine]

I'm dissappointed with you, Internet.

The internet didn't do this. One guy did.

What "the internet" did was all chant together in chorus "dude, shut the fuck up" and label him a troll. This is not ignoring a big issue, this is marginalising a pathetic little man, he is made a big issue BY drawing attention to him

1 BILLION people are connected to the internet. Behold, the 1 in a Billion chance.

It is utterly disingenuous to call this representative of everyone on the internet when nearly everyone on the internet says that it is wrong.


"this is why we cannot have nice things"

is the justification of censorship.