I used to dislike Anita Sarkeesian, but...

[Rebel_Raven]

It didn't help that Lego shied away a lot from making feminine lego people in the main lego lines. It wasn't just the setting, but the players in the setting that helped drive lego city becoming a boys club home. You aknowlege that much.
I gotta ask, though, why the segregation? If girls are okay playing with the old style figures with yellow heads, and C shaped hands, (I know I was) why give girls something almost entirely different? Make feminine lego people more common. It's not like they haven't made awesome ones already like the LotR sets. Make the pastel worlds lego tries to put girls in compatible with lego city.
Again, why the dramatic split? It baffles me.
I mean it's nice they did some girl centric notions with lego sets, but they also segregated them away from lego city. I mean, It sounds weird, but wouldn't guys like some home appliances to mess around with? The color pallate doesn't have to be pink, and pastel, mind you.

I get what you are saying, in that like how most sets were still the same size, the female aimed ones were larger. As for why, that I don't know. I'd assume some way to compete with barbie, as the designs tended for the longer limbed look then the stumpy minifigs, and companies love to chase trends, but beyond that, I couldn't say.

I do think Lego ended up doing more harm than anything by trying to split guys from girls. Getting rid of universal appeal is going to bite Lego in the rear sooner or later.

If they just kept female representation up in the lego people, and didn't go from showing boys and girls playing with lego to segregatring the advertisement so much, I think they wouldn't have to worry about pandering to girls so much because they'd still be playing with the more universally appealing legos.

This I do agree with. Hell, if they made a knight of space or whatever series that used the larger figurines (and thus were compatable more so to the female pastel versions now), I think it would be good. I do remember that they did, at one time, have those larger figurines used for the advanced sets with the gears and hole-punched blocks. But not seen those in years.

To your last point, I do feel like it's not including women into gaming so much as saying "Here, now go play over there."
If they just tried to keep it universally appealing then they wouldn't have to worry so much.
Honestly, I think games were fairly inclusive in the past, but that went away until all but recently. I remember a time whre I don't think I really had to worry if I were getting a good game next year that had a woman as a protagonist.
I mean sure, every now and then women were kicked out of a game, but we still got a decent amount of games with female protagonists, I think.
Lara Croft/Tomb Raider games won tons of awards.
Aya Brea was well received as a character, yet she was dressed fairly normally.

The gaming industry forgot that it's kinda easy to be inclusive, I'd say. Make well written female characters that aren't dressed in a way that no sane woman would dress outside of cosplay, and put them in good, or atleast decent, playable games.
I honestly don't remember the gaming industry having so much trouble until they started going the way of pandering almost solely to guys either.
Maybe it's just me?

Actually, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head here. Inclusive shouldn't be hard. Even without a balanced distribution of male an female protagonists, just making games that are enjoyable to play should be enough most of the time. Even with games like Dragon's Crown, I would say would be alright so long as sane options were given (and the excessive nature of the cheesecake is seen as a stylistic self-parody). I suppose though that the industry behavior of aiming towards the male 18-35 demographic golden chalice has become the downfall in every other respect. For something people don't mention much anymore, besides nintendo, when is the last time you seen a triple A game designed for kids in general? sony and microsoft seem to hitch their wagon to the 18-35 core demographic entirely.

I think it was MovieBob who compared the games industry to the 90's comic industry, and one of the things of that era was the move away from getting new readers. I can help but look at the triple A industry as doing the same. The only reason it hasn't made them crash and burn is probably because nintendo gives no shits and makes those games and indie titles fill in the middle ground enough. Also CoD being run by 12 year olds probably does a lot to keep things aflot there too.

You know, I am gonna steal FriendlyFyr's idea of making a thread directed towards solutions for these sorts of things in a grand explaination sort of way. Maybe a big delve into the underlying reasons for half the bullshit in the first place would help us fix things.

Yeah, some guy aimed minifigs beyond The Hulk, and large monsters in LotR, that I know of, would probably do well in general. They're harder to build around as it requires more bricks, but I think people might be willing to take up the challenge.
I think one of Lego's compeditors already jumped onto that, creating larger figures.

Truth be told, I don't have a problem with Dragon's Crown in and of itself, even with the dense cheesecake, and occassional beefcake. Knowing what I know, I still look forward to getting the game. It does deserve to exist as a game as it is as part of the variety I want.
I just think Dragon Crown was in the wrong place at the wrong time as part of the larger problem of women generally only coming one way, and something of an epitome of how games get sold to people as far as sex sells goes.
Not just the sorceress, or amazon, but in the general depiction of women.

Closest thing I can think of in terms of AAA arttempts to go after kids would be the Lego series in general, and the Harry Potter games.

Way I see it, the major downfall is not so much the 18-35 demographic you mention, but it's the 18-35 guy gamer demographic. And it's pretty apparent it can't keep the industry afloat anymore with the gaming industry being whittled down to 25 major developers from 125 a while ago, layoffs becoming more abundant (or at least being reported on more), and other hints of a failing industry. A more general appeal is going to be needed.
CoD, unintentionally(?) being glommed on to by pre-teen boys, and occassional girls are likely to have been the key to it's success, yeah. And maybe the fanbase will only get larger with Ghosts letting you play as a woman in multiplayer. Heck, I'm more interested in CoD now than I've ever been thanks to that.
Like I said, it's not hard to make a person feel more welcome. Especially when they generally haven't been. I.E. in modern military shooters that are modern releases.

 

[Seydaman]

I don't dislike the fact she has ideas.

I dislike the fact she closes off any chance of anyone debating the issues with her ideas.

If she were a scientist, she'd refuse to have her research peer reviewed.

Oh come on, that's bullshit and you know it. When, in a world that you live in, have YouTube comments ever EVER had any kind of discussion? We are debating the issues with her ideas right here, I doubt she is so stupid to think "No one will ever make a forum post on this!". That's a cop out answer and you're playing the part of the fool to make it look reasonable. Fuck, just critize the actual idea not "I can't post YouTube comments on it! UNACCEPTABLE!"

OT: Okay, I get her points, but I have trouble mustering a real care about the whole thing, I'm not in a position to influence game development nor do I plan to enter such a position, along with some other personal problems that make it really hard to care. I feel like she would better present her point at one of the very popular game conferences where developers could hear her, and not just youtube videos which can easily be forgotten. Also she is a boring speaker, needs less "I made TV tropes the video" because I learn the same if not more by just going to TV tropes.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I don't dislike the fact she has ideas.

I dislike the fact she closes off any chance of anyone debating the issues with her ideas.

If she were a scientist, she'd refuse to have her research peer reviewed.

Oh come on, that's bullshit and you know it. When, in a world that you live in, have YouTube comments ever EVER had any kind of discussion? We are debating the issues with her ideas right here, I doubt she is so stupid to think "No one will ever make a forum post on this!". That's a cop out answer and you're playing the part of the fool to make it look reasonable. Fuck, just critize the actual idea not "I can't post YouTube comments on it! UNACCEPTABLE!"

OT: Okay, I get her points, but I have trouble mustering a real care about the whole thing, I'm not in a position to influence game development nor do I plan to enter such a position, along with some other personal problems that make it really hard to care. I feel like she would better present her point at one of the very popular game conferences where developers could hear her, and not just youtube videos which can easily be forgotten. Also she is a boring speaker, needs less "I made TV tropes the video" because I learn the same if not more by just going to TV tropes.

Point out the part where I mention Youtube.

Go on, I'll wait, then you can apologise for jumping down my throat.

 

[Smeatza]

I've read at least 5 of these threads. I felt as if going through another was more of a waste of my time than gathering more information on the discussion.

Well considering all the legitimate criticism you missed, you felt wrong.

Regardless as to how you may perceive the industry, there IS a sexism issue.

Well I can do that:
Regardless of how you may perceive the industry, there ISN'T a sexism issue.
See, but you can't just assert things without any evidence and expect everybody to believe you.
People like myself end up scratching our heads. I look at my game collection and wonder, "If this sexism is so rampant, how did I manage to avoid it 9 out of ten times before I even knew about it?"
There are issues of all kinds of discrimination in all industries. But sensationalism and dishonesty never helps.

There really isn't a place for debate.

Well this thread is about Anita Sarkeesian and according to her she wants to start an "open and honest" debate about sexism in video gaming.

The fact that people still think that women are a huge minority in the industry (when they actually comprise almost half) is proof of that alone.

Well it's more complicated than you make out. Yes the gender balance of overall gamers is pretty much 50/50. But I don't think it is for genres and platforms.

The fact that people can't see why people would take offense to characters like Dragon's Crown's Sorceress, or can't see the difference of exploitation between the sorceress and her male counterparts, is proof.

Again, you're writing off a very lengthy, very deep debate as a done deal.

I don't want to have a discussion on whether or not sexism in the industry is an issue, because it IS. What I want to talk about is how to fix the problematic elements of the industry.

Hey I'm more than happy to discuss how to fix the problematic elements (although I doubt I'd have much insight), but I'm not going to do it on sensationalist, dishonest terms.

 

[carnex]

I'm not sure what your distinction between sexism and negative representations of women. I'm not being facetious, I'm actually not sure what you mean.

I found this: http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf

It's a 2012 study of video gamer demographics

I never said anything about negative. Nor did I intentionally implied it. I don't see anything wrong, as in damaging or intentionally bad towards someone, with over-exaggerated or overly sexual appeal of character, male or female. Males are more visual and we enjoy that (well, as long as it's not stupidly unrealistic as in Dragons Crown, i don't understand people who find Amazon and Sorceress appealing and I love large breasts) and that should never be seen as bad. Nobody is screaming like a banshee over millions of Mr.Perfects in weekly romance novels (equivalent for women). If a woman doesn?t like those representations since she feels it damages her image and makes unrealistic expectations, I don't like those same things in romance novels. But difference is, I accept their freedom of preference and author's freedom of expression. My agreement, or disagreement with those is inconsequential.

Maybe I should put it this way. You wanted equality. Well, that can bite as well as it can purr. You just have to go with the blows. Men do. Men always did, even when mosly other men threw them.

As of research. Really, no data what so ever. No gender separated studies of anything to understand how our biological and social standings influence on gaming habits, choice of games, and financial priority of gaming. There are some vague ones like one from 2012 http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/ which gives us usual picture of girls like social, boys violent games, but again nothing in depth.

Funnily enough, captcha is reading "face the music"

 

[Aramis Night]

Here is a lot of arguments, some anecdotal evidence, some historical. Almost all good but it would make this post too long so here's the link
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.826049-I-used-to-dislike-Anita-Sarkeesian-but?page=7#20054321

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post. Lots of evidence where men robbed women of their accomplishments in science. and female sultans. And that is all tip of the iceberg. But, lets put some things into perspective.

While I agree women were stripped of their social power through the history it was in exchange for lacking responsibility, and safety from harm. Not a choice they made consciously but something that trickled over from times when that was only reasonable position. And women were right for fighting that. And they won.

What you describe is power abuse (except for female sultans. Like any other ruler taht didn't shake feathers somewhere, they were ignored. If they went for a bit of conquering with significant results, or shaken up the hierarchy, you can bet we would her of them). Men were in power and they used that power to give them self partially undeserved credits. More often than from women, they would steal from assistants or students for example. Difference is, since women were in much lower numbers in scientific comunity, it actually hurts much more. Every minority feels this to this day

But, as I said, women won their power. They can vote, own and kick to the curb. Only problem is that, through history, men had the power and responsibility for actions of those not in power under them (women and children). Now women have power but are reluctant to take responsibility as well. And who can blame them, men would do the same if they could. In old days, even if women had no power outside family and friends unless they, as individuals, fought for them (well there always was shaming), they had no responsibility outside those communities either. Now, the curve is all messed up. It should be that as one goes up, other goes equally up too.
Also, you didn't mention this, but I must bring up. Males and females are different. Biologically and psychologically (this is argued to no end but no real counter argument has yet been shown). There for we can?t really be filling the same roles. Men can't be mothers (for now) and women can't be fathers (although we are bloody close to that). Men have much stronger muscular and bone structure but burn more fuel, while women are more fragile but can survive longer without fuel. Men are fighters, women are survivors. That is not to say we are not equal, just not the same. With that in mind, i must say gender roles are not bad per se. They can be used to do great damage, but so can a beautiful poem.

Not to say that women should be without power, or locked out of any positions they desire. Just to say that we all have baggage to drag behind us. I would say that, in some ways, women got screwed over with childbearing. It's a wonderful but immensely painful thing. Most of all, its interruptive of everything. If you have a career and want a family, you are going to be overshot by competition. It sucks, but never the less; it's a fact of life. And it's never going to be a nice solution for that problem. You are going to sacrifice something. just like a man always sacrificed products of his labor in order to attain a safe and happy family.

Damn well put. I completely agree with all of this^. To further illustrate the point about rights=/=responsibility, look no further than the work of Ernest Belfort Bax: The legal subjection of men(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Legal_Subjection_of_Men) which outlined the divide concisely at a little over 100 yrs ago of how men where held to great responsibility and liability over the behavior of women rather than hold women accountable for their own actions despite increases in rights at the time. A habit that has changed very little in western societies in the last century despite the rise of feminism over the same time period as evidenced by sentencing disparities for the same crimes(based on gender of perpetrator) which shows an equal gap to the largest sentencing disparities based on race.

Rather than always looking at who has it the best in society and assuming women get the short end of the stick, why do we not look at the bottom of our society and realize that things are not so equal their either? If men are so privileged, why are do men make up the vast majority of the homeless?

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Sure, they can cash in, but why ignore a largely untapped market? [...] I mean, can you really go through the past 10 years of gaming and find one fairly well known game where the woman wasn't dressed provocatively for each year as a playable character?

Well, you've mentioned yourself in the last few pages indie and smaller-developers are on-whole much friendlier to women than triple-A developers. That niche market is already being tapped by them, which leaves the question of why triple-A developers aren't more amenable to women which is where your allegation of a Hobson's choice seems to derive. That's a very fair question to ask, as many (most, even) triple-A developers flatly aren't.

I'm in agreement with another poster it boils down to opportunity cost: developing a more egalitarian game with broad appeal comes at the cost of developing bro shit, and when the latter also happens to require less creativity and talent to write and design the choice is pretty obvious. Triple-A developers operate via profit motive: each and every design choice is made to maximize the net margin. In the end, the only real way to correct this is to apply market forces to the problem, and patronize woman-friendly companies while refusing to patronize woman-unfriendly companies. Women are a growing demographic in gaming, and there certainly is a market for female-friendly games -- the only way that market is going to be developed is for gamers, male and female, to spend their money critically.

When triple-A developers clue in that releasing bro shit hurts their profit margins, they'll make female-friendlier games. As things are, they make the bro shit, women gamers buy it anyways knowing it's bro shit and that they're the "only" games available, and the developer and publisher find themselves in a win-win scenario.

Oh, believe me, indie games do -not- make up for the lack of non-indie developers catering to women. Women are gamers, too. We want larger scale, mature minded games. Few indie games are going to offer that, and even fewer go anywhere beyond PC. I'm not saying you're saying that, but I'm airing that out now.
That said, I think the lack of effort on the console front is highly detrimental. A preferrence to consoles isn't limited to women, but women do like consoles. I know I like the reliability, and simplicity of a console over PC.
Considering how few indie games get any sort of publicity, and even fewer actually aren't failures, it doesn't do a whole lot to actually help the situation. In fact having to go indie makes it worse in some respects as, well, you have to go indie. There's not much choice outside of that.
Why aren't larger companies giving a damn, and in turn why should the female demographic give a damn in return?

Honestly, I think the market's becoming a little oversaturated with the dudebro aimed games. It -needs- games that aren't to handle the people that want something different, and those people exist across genders. We needs more Overstrike, and less Fuse.
A company doesn't have to entirely go woman friendly as far as the products go. It can make some women friendly game entries, and more of the status quo. Sony, for instance, could make it's God of War series, and maybe pick up the rights to Heavenly Sword, and make both, for instance.
Rockstar could maybe refine the friendship system of GTA IV, and make a female protagonist (Or a gender select), and make a sandbox game that allows for violence, and a more social scene with NPCs, and a more flexible way to play in general. Then again GTA V's multiplayer seems to be going that route already. Paired up with a seemingly pretty dude-bro story mode in GTA V it seems like a more fair mix. On one hand, there's inclusion, on the otherhand, there's dudebro, both in one package.
CoD's inclusion of women in multiplayer could be quite the edge they need to get ahead considering they aren't limited to one console, and as so many people chase CoD money, they'll likely try it, too.

Basically companies can have their cake, and eat it, too. I think they had before. They might be catching on that they can, again.

Well, I've already implimented, more or less the notion of supporting only women friendly companies, and so has my SO. We're both pretty jaded over being excluded as a gender from games. I'm just not sure how large of an effect this sort of thing is going to have, even if we aren't alone. It's unlikely to overtake the current market, or cause a large enough impact on it's own.
In the end, being more inclusive is something the gaming industry is going to want to have to do regardless of anything. When they do that is a mystery, and we can only really urge them on to that goal. Hopefully, the way things point, they're going to that goal willingly, and will reach it within the decade... but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...Nobody is screaming like a banshee over millions of Mr.Perfects in weekly romance novels (equivalent for women). If a woman doesn?t like those representations since she feels it damages her image and makes unrealistic expectations, I don't like those same things in romance novels...

That's because nobody ever writes or reads romance novels, ever. They just kind of magically appear and disappear on bookstore shelves, and in women's bedrooms. They're like car keys and loose change, they have a mind of their own and appear wherever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want. Men probably write, buy, and hide them in women's possessions to humiliate and emasculate them, and impress upon them patriarchal notions of sexuality.

Especially the ones written by and for women, that fetishize violence against women, as if anyone would ever write about that, or get off on the fantasy. Just doesn't happen, sorry.

 

[Seydaman]

I don't dislike the fact she has ideas.

I dislike the fact she closes off any chance of anyone debating the issues with her ideas.

If she were a scientist, she'd refuse to have her research peer reviewed.

Oh come on, that's bullshit and you know it. When, in a world that you live in, have YouTube comments ever EVER had any kind of discussion? We are debating the issues with her ideas right here, I doubt she is so stupid to think "No one will ever make a forum post on this!". That's a cop out answer and you're playing the part of the fool to make it look reasonable. Fuck, just critize the actual idea not "I can't post YouTube comments on it! UNACCEPTABLE!"

OT: Okay, I get her points, but I have trouble mustering a real care about the whole thing, I'm not in a position to influence game development nor do I plan to enter such a position, along with some other personal problems that make it really hard to care. I feel like she would better present her point at one of the very popular game conferences where developers could hear her, and not just youtube videos which can easily be forgotten. Also she is a boring speaker, needs less "I made TV tropes the video" because I learn the same if not more by just going to TV tropes.

Point out the part where I mention Youtube.

Go on, I'll wait, then you can apologize for jumping down my throat.

Shit. Sorry I overreacted.

 

[carnex]

Honestly, I think the market's becoming a little oversaturated with the dudebro aimed games. It -needs- games that aren't to handle the people that want something different, and those people exist across genders. We needs more Overstrike, and less Fuse.

Game publishers are looking at reasearch tables when deciding which games to publish. And, if they look at this http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/, you are in luck since it shows much greater acceptance of violent games among female gamers, then what previous inquiries did.

 

[Scott Rothman]

The fact you think this study shows what you think it does is quite telling. Those numbers say nothing about money spent, time spent and most importantly which type of games they play. If you actually would have made more thorough research you would have come across studies showing that (I have linked the studies in quite a few topics in the past so i'm not really in the mood to look them up yet again):
A: Women spend much less time and money on games on average than men
B: They are liking different things in games than men (eg: they prefer the social aspect, less favorable towards violence and competition, etc.)

This makes it easy to conclude that yes women are just a small piece of the cake in the violent VG industry.

You're dismissing a study I presented on your own opinions (not saying they're incorrect) and presenting 'facts' of your own without any sources.

Yes, women typically spend less money than males do. Is that really so surprising in a market that has and continues to this day market almost exclusively to straight males?

 

[BrainWalker]

There are many things I don't understand about Anita Sarkeesian hate. I actually understand misanthropic manchildren wanting to rape her into silence because half of them are trolls and the other half are neanderthals, and I understand people being tired of talking about sexism because they have the luxury of having that Y chromosome that makes sexim a non-issue for them.

Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate criticisms, and they were even brought up as soon as the seventh post in this very thread. But the one thing I absolutely do not understand: How on Earth does disabling YouTube comments show that she's completely uninterested in serious discussion of her work? One of the inalienable truths about the Internet that everyone knows is that YouTube comments are fucking awful. Nobody ever takes YouTube comments seriously. YouTube comments don't even take YouTube comments seriously. You know what nobody has ever said? "I had a meaningful and thoughtful conversation with a random person on YouTube and it really opened my eyes to an alternative point of view." So why is it when it comes to Anita Sarkeesian that people are suddenly taking YouTube commentary seriously?

 

[Scott Rothman]

Regardless as to how you may perceive the industry, there IS a sexism issue.

Well I can do that:
Regardless of how you may perceive the industry, there ISN'T a sexism issue.
See, but you can't just assert things without any evidence and expect everybody to believe you.
People like myself end up scratching our heads. I look at my game collection and wonder, "If this sexism is so rampant, how did I manage to avoid it 9 out of ten times before I even knew about it?"

It's not so easy to see discrimination and prejudices when you're not the one they're directed towards.

 

[DaWaffledude]

... Then you took an arrow in the knee.

I'll go sit in the corner now.

(Honestly, I think the woman gets way more hate than she deserves)

 

[carnex]

Regardless as to how you may perceive the industry, there IS a sexism issue.

Well I can do that:
Regardless of how you may perceive the industry, there ISN'T a sexism issue.
See, but you can't just assert things without any evidence and expect everybody to believe you.
People like myself end up scratching our heads. I look at my game collection and wonder, "If this sexism is so rampant, how did I manage to avoid it 9 out of ten times before I even knew about it?"

It's not so easy to see discrimination and prejudices when you're not the one they're directed towards.

I was hoping noone would go there. That's a conversation breaker.

and I forgot to add one thing. Women should really go and own their own sexuality without using it to infer bad things about others. I have barelly covered tits in my face, every day, at my work, and I maintain computers in large company. If they own it so well in real life, why are they so quimish about video game?

 

[Scott Rothman]

I'm not sure what your distinction between sexism and negative representations of women. I'm not being facetious, I'm actually not sure what you mean.

I found this: http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf

It's a 2012 study of video gamer demographics

I never said anything about negative. Nor did I intentionally implied it. I don't see anything wrong, as in damaging or intentionally bad towards someone, with over-exaggerated or overly sexual appeal of character, male or female. Males are more visual and we enjoy that (well, as long as it's not stupidly unrealistic as in Dragons Crown, i don't understand people who find Amazon and Sorceress appealing and I love large breasts) and that should never be seen as bad. Nobody is screaming like a banshee over millions of Mr.Perfects in weekly romance novels (equivalent for women). If a woman doesn?t like those representations since she feels it damages her image and makes unrealistic expectations, I don't like those same things in romance novels. But difference is, I accept their freedom of preference and author's freedom of expression. My agreement, or disagreement with those is inconsequential.

Maybe I should put it this way. You wanted equality. Well, that can bite as well as it can purr. You just have to go with the blows. Men do. Men always did, even when mosly other men threw them.

As of research. Really, no data what so ever. No gender separated studies of anything to understand how our biological and social standings influence on gaming habits, choice of games, and financial priority of gaming. There are some vague ones like one from 2012 http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-males-prefer-violence-while-females-prefer-social/ which gives us usual picture of girls like social, boys violent games, but again nothing in depth.

Funnily enough, captcha is reading "face the music"

Presenting males with unreasonable expectations is one thing. Turning women into objects is another. Are you actually offended by the portrayal of men in said romance novels? Or are you just presenting that so you can try to undermine women's displeasure with the portrayal in video games?

And the topic of romance novels isn't really relevant here. We're talking about sexism in video games, not sexism in media. Just because there might be something that could be deemed as offensive to males in other forms of media, doesn't suddenly make all criticisms of sexism in video games irrelevant or unfounded.

There is also not a history of oppression towards males as there is females. Males have been 'dominant' since the beginning of time, putting women into second class citizen positions. There isn't that history with men.

 

[Scott Rothman]

Regardless as to how you may perceive the industry, there IS a sexism issue.

Well I can do that:
Regardless of how you may perceive the industry, there ISN'T a sexism issue.
See, but you can't just assert things without any evidence and expect everybody to believe you.
People like myself end up scratching our heads. I look at my game collection and wonder, "If this sexism is so rampant, how did I manage to avoid it 9 out of ten times before I even knew about it?"

It's not so easy to see discrimination and prejudices when you're not the one they're directed towards.

I was hoping noone would go there. That's a conversation breaker.

and I forgot to add one thing. Women should really go and own their own sexuality without using it to infer bad things about others. I have barelly covered tits in my face, every day, at my work, and I maintain computers in large company. If they own it so well in real life, why are they so quimish about video game?

What I said about discrimination is true. Look at white people's opinions of the LAPD and police brutality before and after the Rodney King beating.

As for the second part, women aren't the one creating these characters. It's men creating female characters for men. And I'm not against sexual female characters. Games like Dragon Age did a fantastic job of having 'sexy' women who are pretty open about their sexual exploits. But it's handled in a way that they are still people with personalities, as opposed to being nothing but walking fuckbots.

 

[thebakedpotato]

Aww yeah another one of these threads! Wooohoo!

Honestly what pisses me off about the whole ordeal is that the energy behind it all is misdirected. If both parties approached a different, solvable, remarkable issue like say... curing AIDS; with as much energy, and vitriol as they do debating and arguing and taunting and threatening and soapboxing... That shit would have been cured.

Now I know how the pope must feel about masturbation

To be fair, I think the gender issues in gaming is an easier battle to win vs Aids.

If gender issues in games stopped being an issue, people could move on to other things. Maybe racial variety in games? I'd like to see that take flight. I think it needs to be addressed, but I'm a one battle at a time kind of person.

If the small problems would just go away, we'd have nothing but the larger problems to focus on.
Buuut the small problems, like gender issues in videogames, aren't going away any time soon, few people are in a hurry to fix them, and some people are actually fighting to keep them in.
The battle wages so long as there's something to fight over.

Threads like these are full of reasons why people are hung up on combating the status quo of gaming.

I think you're chasing what you perceive to be easy targets while ignoring the problem as a whole.
Changing video games won't affect the gender inequality in society. However changing society will affect the gender inequality in games.

The feel that I've gotten from Anita's latest video in particular isn't that she wants broad social change, but to have a single media industry display her backward ideal of gender equality.

 

[carnex]

Presenting males with unreasonable expectations is one thing. Turning women into objects is another. Are you actually offended by the portrayal of men in said romance novels? Or are you just presenting that so you can try to undermine women's displeasure with the portrayal in video games?

And the topic of romance novels isn't really relevant here. We're talking about sexism in video games, not sexism in media. Just because there might be something that could be deemed as offensive to males in other forms of media, doesn't suddenly make all criticisms of sexism in video games irrelevant or unfounded.

And Mr.Perfect, man reduced to exactly what woman wnats isn't objefication by that definition? I don't really see the difference. And, no. There are basically no specifically for female Mr.Perfects in video games, I agree. And I can only guess why that is and can't support it with evidence so i will keep my opinions for myself for the time being. Never the less, it shows that both genders enjoy distilled versions of gender they are attracted to. It's just that we are attracted to different things. As covered it here

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.826049-I-used-to-dislike-Anita-Sarkeesian-but?page=6#20053425

There is also not a history of oppression towards males as there is females. Males have been 'dominant' since the beginning of time, putting women into second class citizen positions. There isn't that history with men.

And that i covered here,

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.826049.20054644

from middle ages on. If you want to go before that, to the basis why it turned out so bitter towards women i said few things about that here.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.826049.20053261

I'm sorry if I seem hostile, but during long debates on whatever I develped this steamroller aproach and it's really bloody hard to avoid it now.

P.S.
"You are can't see that I'm right" is always a converation breaker. Try to explain how and why he is wrong in your opinion. Theese are all opinions backed (or not) by facts and researches.

 

[Hazy]

Aw yeah, I get a chance to post these again. Cameron really did a fantastic job on these videos.

Fantastic my ass. His video criticizing her academic work was a colossal piece of shit.

First, the lit review and methodology being approximately half the actual content of academic writing, let alone a thesis and especially in the humanities or social sciences, is pretty typical. So is the findings and analysis being a comparatively small portion of the writing. That goes back to the concepts of academic honesty and academic culture in general, which I won't discuss here, but that's the norm and frankly I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case.

Second, the writer wants their Flesch-Kincaid grade level as low, and the F-K ease index as high, as possible without compromising the integrity of their work or their argument. Even if the intended audience is peers in one's discipline or even peers in one's area of expertise, the writer wants their audience's mental resources dedicated to critical analysis rather than simply trying to read their work; moreover, the writer cannot guarantee their audience is even of their discipline or area of expertise, in which case the writing itself would be exclusionary and therefore be held against them.

Really? I think the videos exposed her "teacher vs classroom" charade she puts on quite well (disabling comments, only responding when the topic is to her benefit, etc.)

I don't see the writer's (I'm assuming you're referring to Investig8ive himself) manipulation (or lack thereof) of the F-K grade spectrum to be a worthwhile topic of scrutiny. The whole purpose of these videos (nay, any videos where transference of information is present) is being able to convey information to the viewer as simply as possible.