I used to dislike Anita Sarkeesian, but...

[CloudAtlas]

And I assume we will agree on one more thing: Her being, in your eyes, a poor defender of her cause is not the main reason why she receives so much flak and abuse - it is the cause itself.

In as much as the rush to back her was clearly nothing more than the Dulcinea Effect in full force... *eyeroll*

I'm not exactly sure what you are insinuating here, and frankly I don't want to know. But if you disagree with my statement above, if you believe that all those dickheads abusing her are actually closet feminists who're just unhappy about the way their issue is presented, then I have to assume you are out of your mind.

I have to assume that you're clearly out of your mind.

And really, let's not dismiss the possibility that people can disagree with her argument without disagreeing with the cause.

No one did that, so I don't see your point. Anyway, I need a mental health break, I'm outta here.

 

[white_wolf]

Seriously, how -hard- has the industry tried to delve into the niche? It's small because the attempts are generally kinda hard to see. We've gotta see a bigger effort to get it noticed, IMO.
How inviting has the industry been to women in less than trashy depictions?

I get the feeling you'd be surprised. Devs have been trying to appeal to women as gamers since the early days (Pac Man being perhaps the earliest attempt). And recent trends suggest that roughly 47-48% of gamers are women, so they're getting pretty decent at it, despite the popular preconception that women make up a minority. Were I to make a guess, I'd wager that perception may stem from the typical focus on FPS titles, which less women tend to play (Statistically women tend most towards more social, story driven (RPGs) or constructive (ala The Sims) games)

There is also the fact that women gamers will use male gamertags and if they have to check a sex box will choose male for their profile so when gaming companies like Bioware or Call of Duty say we have X% male player and X% female player the male numbers can be thrown off by the fact women are claiming male sex to avoid harassment. Not to mention these numbers also include online only players so if you aren't xbox or PSlive you don't exist. There maybe even more women in the mainstream gaming avenues then it is possible to gauge. The market also isn't making many games to appeal to women so far the industry likes to think men with breasts, barbie dressup, and Bratz are what girls want. The latter two I don't think even young girls love all that much and the former one women are saying they hate because she could've been replaced with a frog and nothing in the game would've changed from the male playthrough she's not special just a costume and voice change for the male lead it's not her story it's still his.

 

[Dante dynamite]

I definitely can't argue that the gaming industry is all kinds of messed up.
I agree having consistently 45% of women as a customer base won't fix things, but what I'm saying is that if those women realize the gaming indusrty is catering more to women, they'll feel better about recommending it to more women, and when more women see that it's true, they'll get on board. More women as customers, more money spent by women.
Still, even that might not fix anything. Just add more fuel to the fire that is the burning ship that is the gaming industry.
Hopefully business models the gaming industry uses can right itself.

I understand what you're saying about supporting indie developers but growing to where they can compete in the big leagues? That requires a really good game, or a steady supply of good ones. They need that reputation of making great games with what they have to get that sort of revenue.
The problem with finding a company that reliably markets to my interests is that my interests are kinda narrow in female protagionists. If I can't get those reliably, the company isn't for me.
Honestly there's only a few companies I can think of that appeal to me like that. Frankly, right now, I think it's just Bioware (though I still say gender selects are a bit of a cop-out) and Koei who regularly has their warriors series have compitent women.
'm prolly forgetting a company, or two, but meh.
I gotta wonder if there are indie developers who'll regularly feed my desire for female power trips? If not then I'm concerned about supporting them. If they just stop producing female protagonists, then I wasted my money on'em.

It's not that I hate guy protagonists, or won't play as them, mind you, it's just that I'm jaded that that I either play as them, or barely game.
Female protagonists in good games are pretty rare for me. A rare luxury that I prioritize. Yeah, I'm missing out on potentially good games, but I'm also missing out on the misery of unrelateable, and/or boring characters. Even if a female character is boring as crap, we at least have gender as a common ground.
Sure I can relate to some guys, but really the notion of me relating to every guy in every game? meh.
Relateability to the character helps immersion, of course.

There is something about the arguments you have made throughout this forum that bothers me a little. You are asking for big developers to take the risk of making a a game with a female protagonist let us presume it will do well due to their reputation and if it does succeed then it will have a good influence on the games industry but you then say that you won't support the company if they do not make a female protagonist that caters to your wants What if the female character doesn't conform to others wants? but you and others will still play a male character even though begrudgingly then wouldn't there be significantly less risk in sticking with a male character? Also that then goes into the fact that if they fuck up a male it won't get near as much flack as if they had fucked up a female protagonist. What if they just don't want to make a female character (even though the creator is male or female). The idea that the game must be triple A but is still targeting as you said a niche market does not make sense it just is crazy risky there is no grantee that it will do well in fact the odds look pretty dim.

I don't see why supporting the indie scene won't work gone home is a recent game that I have heard nothing but praise for it and its female lead and a lot of people are playing it. also why can't a just okay female protagonist get support I don't see why female protagonists have to overachieve.

I'm sorry if I am misinterpreting what you said but could you explain

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

And I assume we will agree on one more thing: Her being, in your eyes, a poor defender of her cause is not the main reason why she receives so much flak and abuse - it is the cause itself.

In as much as the rush to back her was clearly nothing more than the Dulcinea Effect in full force... *eyeroll*

(And before anyone jumps on me for that, the above statement is solely intended to make a point about assuming motive. I am NOT actually suggesting that that is the case)

More seriously, let's be honest here, this isn't an issue isolated to Sarkeesian or Feminism or even video games. It's LONG been established that the internet can be a vitriolic place sometimes and the flavor of that vitriol tends to reflect on whatever is being actively trolled at the time. When Jack Thompson was relevant it wasn't unusual to see people state the desire to kill him, when Cooper Lawrence lambasted Mass Effect - despite acknowledging that she had no experience with the game - her book got review bombed (With the most common comment accompanying it being along the lines of "I haven't read the book but I am qualified to talk about its content and say that it's horrible"), and then of course there's the whole "An Hero" fiasco, to name but a few examples. Now, is the abuse disgusting? Yes. But given precedence I don't think it's really safe to assume motive like that.

And really, let's not dismiss the possibility that people can disagree with her argument without disagreeing with the cause. While she's gained an incredible amount of name recognition from her Kickstarter, Tropes vs Women as a project predated that Kickstarter and had several entries from which people could guess at the content of the new project and...well suffice to say that they didn't speak particularly well towards her ability to fairly represent the subject[footnote]See for instance her Straw Feminist video which complained about a certain Powerpuff Girls character as a weak caricature of feminism...ignoring the fact that the character's revelation as a faux-feminist by actual feminist characters was actually integral to the episode, essentially removing the character's defining context[/footnote], and that kind of thing tends to be a bit of a berserk button for gamers (or really any kind of fandom) as a group.

Well said. It doesn't take a massive leap of the imagination to think that trolls might employ gendered insults to get a rise out of a web-personality who has made feminism her entire shtick. What else were they gonna make fun of?

, the Darkness guy saves his wife because he loves her.

If she hadn't taken that clip out of context or if she had played the game and explained the context you would know that "darkness guy's" name is "Jackie" and that it's not his "wife" and he doesn't "save her" but she get murdered and it breaks him completely because he needed her so much.

Yes a story where a man needs a woman to be a real person, that is absolutely sexist, but you will never see her giving you the real reason.
But of course nobody cares if your story is sexist against men so it's perfectly ok to lie to support your argument that the game is misogynistic.

.... Um... I think she had played the game actually by the way you describe it. She's opposed to women getting shafted into nothing more then plot device. "she get murdered and it breaks him completely because he needed her so much." sounds exactly like a plot device. You can replace 'she' and 'her' with it and it still makes just as much sense.
"It gets destroyed and it breaks him completely because he needed it so much."
It could be anything from his house to an heirloom, doesn't change anything. I really don't care if its even sexist or not, doesn't matter. When a whole person can be replaced with a trinket and nothing in the game changes, then that's a terrible, shallow story.

Also, in the last part of her 3rd video she does acknowledge that games are sexist towards men as well. She points out that in video games, the only way that guys can work through his emotions is to kill things. Again, really shallow story and 1 dimensional characters. She also suggest that one of the reasons why there's so much violence against women in video games is because violence is all the male characters know how to do apparently. So yes she defiantly points out the sexism towards men, its just not the topic of her discussion.

The loss of a trinket would make a terrible justification for the resulting murder-spree. Compare the death of a loved one(played the game, this was a reasonably powerful scene) in the Darkness to the theft of a blingy skull in that 50 cent game... it's not even close to being the same thing.

I emboldened a sentence that just doesn't make any sense to me. That's a leap, isn't it? Why assume that's a statement about the nature of men, rather than just a bi-product of what games do well... Namely space traversal and combat. Are these male characters supposed to resolve their emotional turmoil peacefully, or... something? That might be good if we're accepting the premise that all narrative-driven-media is simultaneously entertaining us and making social statements with everything it does (I don't accept this premise). But... it would make for boring games, wouldn't it? Play-fighting is fun...

Also, "there's so much violence against women in video-games"... where is it? Happy to be proven wrong about this, but I play a lot of games... and I don't see it. It's not so prevalent. It's for some reason more jarring to see a female character be brutalised, but it's not so prevalent... it's just not.

 

[runic knight]

Part of the reason I dislike her and call her toxic is because she does what every Bill o'Riley or Glenn Beck out there does. I call them toxic to the discussion on politics all the time because they add nothing to the discussion, they derail it near entirely by spewing unproven crap and hiding behind a victim status in order to keep it up and they refuse to address any valid complaints. With Beck and O'Rilely the victim status is the claim they are the voice of the common man, thus any complaint usually is replied with a "if you don't support the real Americans" sort of response from fans or defenders. They are toxic because they not only help create that atmosphere, but perpetuate it by burning bridges for discussion simply by continuing the way they do.
That is what Anita does in my eyes. It isn't just that she is a horribly boring reviewer with an ideological chip on her shoulder and a webcam, it is that she is causing harm to the very discussion itself by polarizing people who would otherwise be having those discussions even more then they should be and by distracting the conversation away from the topic and onto the internet personality herself.

Ok, I see where our opinions split here. I honestly dont see how she poisons the topic at all. So, she made some strange claims about some of the games you like so much, this is understandable, because she is not a scientist, but some activist, so shit happens. Even professors do some false claims time to time. And she doesnt really discuss about her work through the internet. This weighs a bit more grave, but as an internet person who got serious attacked in the past on a very low niveau, I can really understand that, too. Besides that, I just dont see what everybody has against her.
I really think she doesnt 'poisons' the discussion, but the topic poisons the sometimes really immature gamers community

I don't really think she has attacked any games I like to be honest. And even if she had, that is irrelevant to what makes her a toxic entity. When compared to the likes of Glenn Beck, part of that is because she is the face of an ideological campaign that is unyielding, and based in a destructive divisive nature. With Beck, it is an ultra conservative ideology that blames all evils on liberalism. With Anita, it is a feminism that blames problems on sexism. Because she is the spokeswoman on gaming and feminism as an issue (by being the most associated with that topic), her behavior and actions in dealing with criticisms as well as her claims and underhanded emotionally manipulating tactics often causes her to be the topic of discussion more then the actual topic of sexism and gaming when that topic is brought up.

And that topic itself is polarizing people, not just one internet activist.
I think Sarkeesian stands for many gamers for an attack on their own little refugee. That is understandable, but not excusable. Games are now, or will be, a very influental medium, and being that, it should be conform to certain rules like every other respectable medium out there should be.

Sarkeesian represents an attack on journalistic integrity first and foremost. In the same way Beck does on the topic of politics, the same way that it is not the topic or even the leaning on stances, but the behavior and debate tactics. Beyond even that, what you are essentially saying is that an artform has to abide by a moral standard. I fervently disagree there, and even if I can accept that the entertainment aspect should abide by certain principles, someone who uses emotional manipulation and faulty arguments, who steals other people's work and claims it as their own is the last place I would ever go to in order to hear it.

The topic of women and games is a polarizing one to begin with, and one that should take a wholestic approach to examining, understanding underlying causes for behaviors and responses and even have a conscious, open debate not just on how to deal with it, but on what parts we should even deal with in the first place.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.826144-Women-gaming-problems-solution-discussion-1?page=1\
This way my simple attempt, and after many paragraphs, I only managed to barely skim the surface of the why and how of getting more women to participate in gaming in general. I couldn't even get into how they are portrayed in games or how they are represented in developers or publishers because the damn first post was already to bloated with stuff in examining actual ideas relating to the underlying WHY of the current situation.

Anita in turn abandons any sort of exploration or dialog on the topic and instead asserts her notions as the right answer, and uses underhanded emotional ploys to make attacking that harder because some people can't separate her claims from the manipulation. What she does is no different then any sort of conservative pundit, what she contributes is of the same worthlessness to games as theirs is to political discourse. Her continued presence (in using the tactics she uses)in the limelight derails and taints the actual discussion by making it less about the arguments and more about person who is making them, so much so that discussions about gaming and women often result in bickering about her rather then the topic itself. That is a toxic effect to a discussion on a topic if there ever was one.

 

[Erttheking]

What difference does it make in the end if they hate her because she's a woman daring to have an opinion, or if they hate her because she is probably intending to criticize sexist content?

And of course ignore, or even celebrate the fact that whole argument is built upon idea that males treat females like a lower spices because they are males. Just because you have valid point (lack of female protagonists and often quite bad female characters where there are some) doesn?t mean you can piggy back other, quite ideological claims on it. At least those are my qualms.

Oh, I forgot, questioning those claims is Misogyny, and debunking them is highest form of oppression known to human beings.

You know, I don't believe that all males treat women as lesser beings, but I know for a fact that there are plenty of men that do, not to mention even after all the time we have spent trying to get equal rights between the genders, we still have a long way to go.

Also, I think that second point is a mindset that really bugs me. You can't honestly say that there isn't any misogyny in the world, the sheer amount of hate directed at Anita can't all be because they disagree with her, the viciousness came before the videos even came out. Not to mention it kind of feels like you're playing the victim card while ironically criticizing Anita and her defenders for doing the same thing.

 

[DaMullet]

The loss of a trinket would make a terrible justification for the resulting murder-spree. Compare the death of a loved one(played the game, this was a reasonably powerful scene) in the Darkness to the theft of a blingy skull in that 50 cent game... it's not even close to being the same thing.

I emboldened a sentence that just doesn't make any sense to me. That's a leap, isn't it? Why assume that's a statement about the nature of men, rather than just a bi-product of what games do well... Namely space traversal and combat. Are these male characters supposed to resolve their emotional turmoil peacefully, or... something? That might be good if we're accepting the premise that all narrative-driven-media is simultaneously entertaining us and making social statements with everything it does (I don't accept this premise). But... it would make for boring games, wouldn't it? Play-fighting is fun...

Also, "there's so much violence against women in video-games"... where is it? Happy to be proven wrong about this, but I play a lot of games... and I don't see it. It's not so prevalent. It's for some reason more jarring to see a female character be brutalised, but it's not so prevalent... it's just not.

First off, I question the mental stability of anyone willing to go on a murder-spree so I wouldn't put it past them. Case and point; Charles Manson did his spree because of a beetles song. So someone with "THE DARKNESS" inside of them running off and killing people over a trinket makes perfect sense to me.

Hmm... lets see if we can come up with fun games that don't involve killing people 100% of the gameplay. Mass Effect, Fallout, Civilization, Day of the Tentacle, Thomas Was Alone, Minecraft, The Sims... hm... seems pretty easy to come up with a short list off the top of my head. I tried to play through Spec Ops the Line and Bio Shock Infinite and I got bored from the constant murdering. Both great games, but turned into a repetitive chore really quickly for me. Obviously there are some people out there, like me, that don't like to be constantly murdering someone's child like you do.

And lastly, since you can't see the problem you have kinda proved one of Anita's points right. Just like if you go back 100 years and see "Colored" signs for washrooms and drinking fountains; no one saw the problem then. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't something horribly wrong. There is a constant flow of victimized women in the media and it has become so common, that it has become ordinary. Your complete inability to see it, proves my point.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Is she taking an objective or logical approach in her advocacy?

-No? Then why should I care?
-Yes? Then why does she ignore or cherry pick criticism to her weaker or fallacious arguments, and why should I take her argument seriously when she shows no interest in refining her argument further?

People love to defend her lack of engagement with the audience citing the kind of hateful responses she receives (usually as a comment on the quality of youtube comments). Sorry but that's a strawman argument. Even if it's one out of a million, why should that one rational response be thrown away because of the chorus of stupidity that is the internet hate machine?

Advocates and those who try to inform, who try to push change must be prepared to handle the public, its idiocy included. It's arguably the most important challenge in being an advocate for, well, ANYTHING.

And if her videos are for the purpose of entertainment instead of information, now there's even less reason for me to take them seriously.

Personally: I can agree with her on the point that there needs to be more games that don't play the Damsel trope if only for the sake of creative variety (over reliance on something that's easy to sell is stifling), but beyond that I don't really have a use for her as an advocate because again, the valid points she makes are undermined by other logical weaknesses and her unwillingness to address them.

 

[Asita]

And I assume we will agree on one more thing: Her being, in your eyes, a poor defender of her cause is not the main reason why she receives so much flak and abuse - it is the cause itself.

In as much as the rush to back her was clearly nothing more than the Dulcinea Effect in full force... *eyeroll*

I'm not exactly sure what you are insinuating here, and frankly I don't want to know.

Well that's not a healthy attitude now, is it? :/

Let me clarify all the same: As I edited into the post (I'm guessing after you opened the page), I invoked the Dulcinea Effect[footnote]A corollary to the Damsel in Distress describing the trend of people (overwhelmingly male in fiction, at least) to rush to the defense of a woman the second they hear that she's in trouble, risking his life to protect her even if that is the first they've heard of her.[/footnote] facetiously to make a point about assuming motive. Condescending nature of such assumptions aside for a moment, the assumptions both tend to be laughably easy to fall back on as an explanation due to how well either fits the narrative in question ("Sarkeesian wouldn't get this kind of flack if she wasn't a woman, therefore sexism" vs. "Sarkeesian wouldn't get this kind of support if she wasn't a woman, therefore sexism"), but the truth is rarely so simple. Suffice to say that assuming bad faith in an argument tends more to be a result of preconceptions than reality. Pro-Lifers aren't typically misogynists, Pro-Choicers aren't usually hedonists, Atheists can't usually be described as 'raging at the heavens', neither Conservatives or Liberals [in the States] tend to be actively Anti-American, and your typical Internet 'Tough Guy' tends to be all bark, no bite and VERY Politically Incorrect as far as typed out rage goes.

But if you disagree with my statement above, if you believe that all those dickheads abusing her are actually closet feminists who're just unhappy about the way their issue is presented, then I have to assume you are out of your mind.

I have to assume that you're clearly out of your mind.

Closet feminists? No. I simply don't think it's safe to assume misogyny much like I don't assume that the people who expressed the desire to attack Jack Thompson are actually murderous psychopaths in real life. As I said before, the internet has a tendency to lash out like this and that greater trend makes discerning motive a tricky proposition at best, especially when alternate interpretations can be made based on commonalities with prior hate waves (for instance, a strong tendency for hate waves to pop up after a perceived slight against video games)

And really, let's not dismiss the possibility that people can disagree with her argument without disagreeing with the cause.

No one did that, so I don't see your point. Anyway, I need a mental health break, I'm outta here.

I was using hyperbole, forgive me. I probably could have better worded that as "let's not downplay the idea...etc". Anyways, ciao then.

 

[carnex]

You know, I don't believe that all males treat women as lesser beings, but I know for a fact that there are plenty of men that do, not to mention even after all the time we have spent trying to get equal rights between the genders, we still have a long way to go.

There are men who mistreat women. However that does not equal mistreatement of female gender as sistemic problem or inequality of genders. To claim that you would need to prove that it's something happening in large percentage of human interactions (not even majority, but like 20% of cases) and that society treats those action as normal, or at least acceptable behavior. Neither statement would stand up to any critical analysis.

Also, I think that second point is a mindset that really bugs me. You can't honestly say that there isn't any misogyny in the world, the sheer amount of hate directed at Anita can't all be because they disagree with her, the viciousness came before the videos even came out. Not to mention it kind of feels like you're playing the victim card while ironically criticizing Anita and her defenders for doing the same thing.

Again, read the first part of the answer.

On threats. This is internet. I really feel lucky when I can find person that says "I agree to disagree", something I find as common as water in real life. Relative anonymity makes people free to say crazy shit because they think there will be no consequences. Everyone gets threats. I got my life and limb threatened numerous times over such bullshit like need to really study and have harsher grading in schools, over defending people who incidentally, without any possibility of knowledge what otherwise normal and law abiding behavior, either seriously maimed or killed people, over going against feminism etc. My reaction, almost every time, was to invite person to meet me and carry out their threat. And those threats were not what 99% of "threats" are like "someone should shut that ***** up" or "go back to the kitchen". Those were that 1% in style of "I'll come with some friends to teach you some manners old-school style" or directly mentioning to beat, mail, kill me in different ways. Only two took the invitation. Neither showed up (both times I invited them where I would be otherwise, I'm not stupid enough to waste my time waiting for them). So Anita is not an exception, rather the general rule. Internet is often stinking pile of shit. To have reasonable discussion, you ignore those and move on with people who actally debate. There are quite a few ways of dioing that.

Finally, I haven?t played victim card, CloudAtlas did (I'm sorry I accuse you erttheking instead, I lost the track of who I was answering to. Really sorry). I mentioned that it's generally considered unacceptable to question feminist ideology. However if I did, and I'm not stranger to that, I would mention, unlike feminists do, some hard data from the western world like
93-98% workplace deaths are males.
Vast inequalities in family courts
Vast inequality in sentencing for criminal activities
Vast inequality in healthcare system
Inequality in education
Inequality in reproductive rights
Unequal treatment in cases of and sheltering from domestic abuse (well, not inequality, denying possibility that men is target of a woman)
etc

Then I would go towards proving falsehoods of feminist claims of constructs (they don?t even deserve title of theory) like Patriarchy and Rape Culture

Finally I would end up with pointing out how men, in majority of cases blame feminists as small subset of wider group that benefits from those inequalities, for them since it's their activities that resulted in policies being implemented. Feminists, however, blame whole gender for actions of a small subset (in case of criminal activities of any kind) or for even smaller subset benefiting from being in power.

But this is way too serious discussion to have here, on a thread that fights over inequalities of gendered sprites.

 

[Bashfluff]

If you come into a community and say, "Hello, this is sexist, and you need to change it. I need money to get into a position where I can influence developers into changing how they design games," and what you're trying to change not only lacks sexism, but also consists of basic plot devices and the inclusion of sexuality as the result of the target audience, damn straight you will get backlash. I'm glad that happens. I don't like radical feminists trying to make games less interesting by insisting that there are problems when no problems exist, and uses research that is lifted from other people without credit or taken out of context to suit their own narrative. I think that's pretty gross.

Strength (both physical and mental) is one; another is resilience, coolness under pressure, rationality, and perseverance. You might notice that these are often common traits of protagonists in games, from Solid Snake, to Donkey Kong, to Master Chief. This is because in our patriarchal world, these traits are shown to be the most effective to both survival, and success.

You'll also notice that traits associated with femininity, including being emotionally open, vulnerability, caring, or cooperative, are rarely shown to be useful in game scenarios, even though they can add depth to a character.
This is what Anita is talking about when she says the Damsel in Distress is harmful, because it normalizes the notion that a female can't escape their captors, mostly because to escape would call for masculine skills that she does not have, or even if she does have them (Sheik from Ocarina of time), is still prevented from doing so by the confines of the narrative.

...what's the issue? Yes, being emotionally open and vulnerable isn't going to earn you a get out of evil lair free card. Does that surprise anyone at this point? That's not sexism. This is common sense. More than that, those male traits you have listed aren't male traits. They aren't traits that are found in men at a higher rate than they are found in women, they're traits found in capable protagonists.

Different genders have different traits appear at different frequencies. Men tend to have certain traits. Females tend to have certain traits. I'm sure if we wanted to take the time, we could make two lists to show which traits show up more for which gender. Rationality, resilience, intelligence, perseverance, and strength are not included on either list. They're traits that are not connected to gender.

Even more troubling is the sexualization of females in games in ways that serve the player (fan service, skimpy outfits, press X to bone attractive character A) and don't suggest that females can have their own concept of sexuality. I don't believe this is intentional, but I do believe that we write it off as normal when it is really a construction that favors male viewers, and inadvertently belittles female players.

You know what? If you feel belittled when someone puts a hot girl in a video game to appeal to the audience of that game--young male teens--that's as insecure as it gets. It does favor male viewers, yes! Many things in this community do. It's because gaming was a male dominated arena until the last five to ten years or so, so I think it's okay when companies notice that and change their games accordingly. If you know what people you're selling your product to will like, put those things that they like in your game if it fits. That's just common sense.

What baffles me is that women come in and say, "But all of this isn't aimed towards me! I don't like the things that are aimed towards you! Stop making games like that!"

You don't come into a community that you never were a part of in any real sense for most of its adolescence and then command it to change and fit your standards, even if it messes up many of the things that the existing community enjoys. That's selfish and it's petty. You don't crash the party because you don't like how it's going after you just arrived.

You know what they should do? Make their own games! I'm all for encouraging people to make games that they think they can find an audience for when they aren't satisfied with the current offerings on the market. I think that leads to games with heart and with a passion that leads, if nothing else, to originality. When designers are passionate about showing us something we haven't seen before, I get pumped. When you try to shame people for liking the things that they do and when you try to influence designers to stop putting those things in games, that's where we part ways.

 

[TAGM]

You know, I don't believe that all males treat women as lesser beings, but I know for a fact that there are plenty of men that do, not to mention even after all the time we have spent trying to get equal rights between the genders, we still have a long way to go.

Honest question: How many men are "plenty"? How do you discern a vocal minority from something more ingrained in the culture?

Also, I think that second point is a mindset that really bugs me. You can't honestly say that there isn't any misogyny in the world, the sheer amount of hate directed at Anita can't all be because they disagree with her, the viciousness came before the videos even came out. Not to mention it kind of feels like you're playing the victim card while ironically criticizing Anita and her defenders for doing the same thing.

Ok, fine, I agree that the sheer amount of hate directed at Anita can't all be because of disagreement.

But, by the same token, you must admit that the sheer amount of (at least somewhat) well-based criticism against her actions and videos can't all be because of misogamy and dickishness. Or, at the very least, that it's as unlikely as there being no misogyny whatsoever.

 

[carnex]

People here are constantly arguing about whether it's good or bad that females are used as excuse for action. Now, I have my opinions on it like value of female life and limb compared to males and reasons for using excuse over rational reason. But I would like to point out here something else.

How about dropping the whole "hero from the get-go"? Tomb raider used survival/escape as excuse for example (too bad they screwed up Lara as character almost beyond repair) but even that is overused. I want to see more creative approaches. I would like to get games finally recognized as artistic medium but to do that we must provide the reasons and sticking to same thing over and over again will not do. Indie scene is actually doing some work on that front and I simply love that. What we, as consumers, must do is support those and thus show that those are crucial part of what we love.

How about game built around renovating the house? Cross it with wild imagination and things can go crazy. You can use it as simple arcade experience, or as deep psychoanalysis of main character as he/she spurs up memories long passed.

We need more games like
http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness
games that recognize unique properties of first interactive artistic medium and use it to its full force and capabilities, not relaying on being praised for copying other mediums. There are others, even big budget ones. "Spec Ops: The Line" comes to mind, or "Papers, Please". When we realize full potential that medium presents, most of arguing will finally be realized as superficial and pointless.

 

[Kittyhawk]

I feel you. I get a lot of what Anita is saying too and she makes some valid points. The problem is that some will absorb what she's saying and after too much will see her saying little else.

I'm sure many gamers would like to know more about her, what games she plays etc. Unfortunately, the net vamps have already descended on her with threats and such, just for her FF videos. So we may never find out. Got to hand it to her, though, she certainly does her homework. I'd like to see her playing games though, so we can get a better feel of who she is and what she likes to play. Talking/musing about games is cool, but playing them is much better. So yeah, more vids of her actually playing games and critiquing enjoying them, because academia is cool but a bit high brow for some of a lower simpler mindset.

And if you want to change the world of games for the better, you've got to brave the slings and arrows and get out there. Do interviews, panels at cons etc and get your point across more, and play some games too.

 

[carnex]

I feel you. I get a lot of what Anita is saying too and she makes some valid points. The problem is that some will absorb what she's saying and after too much will see her saying little else.

I'm sure many gamers would like to know more about her, what games she plays etc. Unfortunately, the net vamps have already descended on her with threats and such, just for her FF videos. So we may never find out. Got to hand it to her, though, she certainly does her homework. I'd like to see her playing games though, so we can get a better feel of who she is and what she likes to play. Talking/musing about games is cool, but playing them is much better. So yeah, more vids of her actually playing games and critiquing enjoying them, because academia is cool but a bit high brow for some of a lower simpler mindset.

And if you want to change the world of games for the better, you've got to brave the slings and arrows and get out there. Do interviews, panels at cons etc and get your point across more, and play some games too.

You can't realy say she does her homework, at least not according to ammount of mistakes pointed out. At the very least, it seems that she rushes fact checking of propsed arguments.

But as I said, when we realize there is more to this medium accusations are going to go away and diversity sink in. That is if developers manage it before censorship kicks in.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I dislike Anita's videos because she takes valid points and extrapolates them to absurdity. This goes for all her videos, not just the recent ones.

For all she says in her videos, there's only about 5 minutes of meaty "actually discussing things". You can get a better gist of what she's saying by watching rebuttal videos by the likes of Thunderfoot.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

The loss of a trinket would make a terrible justification for the resulting murder-spree. Compare the death of a loved one(played the game, this was a reasonably powerful scene) in the Darkness to the theft of a blingy skull in that 50 cent game... it's not even close to being the same thing.

I emboldened a sentence that just doesn't make any sense to me. That's a leap, isn't it? Why assume that's a statement about the nature of men, rather than just a bi-product of what games do well... Namely space traversal and combat. Are these male characters supposed to resolve their emotional turmoil peacefully, or... something? That might be good if we're accepting the premise that all narrative-driven-media is simultaneously entertaining us and making social statements with everything it does (I don't accept this premise). But... it would make for boring games, wouldn't it? Play-fighting is fun...

Also, "there's so much violence against women in video-games"... where is it? Happy to be proven wrong about this, but I play a lot of games... and I don't see it. It's not so prevalent. It's for some reason more jarring to see a female character be brutalised, but it's not so prevalent... it's just not.

First off, I question the mental stability of anyone willing to go on a murder-spree so I wouldn't put it past them. Case and point; Charles Manson did his spree because of a beetles song. So someone with "THE DARKNESS" inside of them running off and killing people over a trinket makes perfect sense to me.

Hmm... lets see if we can come up with fun games that don't involve killing people 100% of the gameplay. Mass Effect, Fallout, Civilization, Day of the Tentacle, Thomas Was Alone, Minecraft, The Sims... hm... seems pretty easy to come up with a short list off the top of my head. I tried to play through Spec Ops the Line and Bio Shock Infinite and I got bored from the constant murdering. Both great games, but turned into a repetitive chore really quickly for me. Obviously there are some people out there, like me, that don't like to be constantly murdering someone's child like you do.

And lastly, since you can't see the problem you have kinda proved one of Anita's points right. Just like if you go back 100 years and see "Colored" signs for washrooms and drinking fountains; no one saw the problem then. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't something horribly wrong. There is a constant flow of victimized women in the media and it has become so common, that it has become ordinary. Your complete inability to see it, proves my point.

You're missing something obvious there. You could make the Darkness a game based on the mourning of a missing trinket, but there's no way you'd have any sympathy for Jackie. In a Charles Manson video-game I would be seriously doubting the protagonists motivations the whole way. A measure of sympathy for the controlled character is a good thing, the death of a loved one is as universal of an emotionally charged event as you could find, they chose it for good reason.

I don't know what you're trying to prove. Sure, there are games that don't only revolve around killing(though I do find it funny that 3 of your 6 or 7 examples feature it heavily), it doesn't at all negate the fun of play-violence. That was a very weak attempt at character-assassination, I don't kill peoples children... I initiate the rearranging of polygons on my screen, red is heavily featured... someone should lock me away.

"And lastly"...

I can't help but feel this is too nebulous to be meaningful(though again, your example makes me laugh). I agree with your point about hindsight though(not in your details). I have a feeling we're going to look back on this anti-masculinity bent that we've been on for a while now and wonder what the fuck we were thinking.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

snip

snip

You're missing something obvious there. You could make the Darkness a game based on the mourning of a missing trinket, but there's no way you'd have any sympathy for Jackie. In a Charles Manson video-game I would be seriously doubting the protagonists motivations the whole way. A measure of sympathy for the controlled character is a good thing, the death of a loved one is as universal of an emotionally charged event as you could find, they chose it for good reason.

Yeah, a video game where the character kills a bunch of people just to get a trinket would never work! Because we've forgotten that the Uncharted series (and really, any Indiana Jones-style game) exists!

Ha!

Do you play it to be sympathetic towards Drake though? I've said before that I don't think the Uncharted series has good story, and that I have no real sympathy for Drake's actions(I actually did for Jackie, and largely because of the scene we were talking about). It's still a fun ride, I'm not knocking the series...

I find the notion that you could easily swap out Jackie's girlfriend for a trinket to be utter nonsense, that's what I'm saying. It's not the same thing, it doesn't have the same punch. Still, I should probably be thankful that you're not suggesting that I get off on murdering people's children and what not. So... thanks for that.