Kickstarter Video Project Attracts Misogynist Horde

[lizabeth19]

Oh dear Lord. Maybe this thread should be renamed "Feminist commentator has opinion, internet has conniptions".

Seriously, I bet if I started a thread entitled "Maybe the feminists are right...", I would get a couple of hundred views in a matter of minutes.

 

[marche45]

http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2012.pdf here's the PDF.
Just Dance 3 is the second most sold game,who knew?

 

[Chemical Alia]

If she wanted discussions she could interview someone who makes those characters or is involved with game marketing or something.

It might surprise you how few of these people ever think about such things.

How do you want to fight the problem if you don't make an effort to understand the causes?

If you don't hear the marketers, the players who like those games (as myself), the other side, it becomes just a one sided speech where you tell a group of people to shut up. And nobody likes to be told to shut up, specially when it is said that they are the cause of misoginy or some other kind of evil.

I don't follow the point you're trying to make, based on what I said.

 

[samaugsch]

This is pretty much a scam. Asking for donations for a vlog? Man, people will try anything to get rich.

Anyway, this whole thing is an artificially constructed issue because video games are full of tropes, not just women specific. Its actually pretty sexist to ignore the ridiculous male tropes, but w/e.

The MAIN issue, however, is that it is impossible to create a good female character for a few reasons:
1. The things that define a woman are either considered sexist or have no possible application in gaming
2. A good female character is often ignored by the feminists because she's not "female" enough.
3. Look at # 2, then #1, and you'll see this closes out any possibility of females being happy with women in games.
4. As a result, developers focus on the male demographic, which :
A. Has consistent taste and purchase habits vastly outnumbering female gamers.
B. When games with strong women characters WERE released, they were ignored by BOTH communities. The industry has extended its hand a few times already, and each time they were utterly ignored. Its the fault of female gamers themselves and the white knights for not purchasing these games and PROVING that they sell.

I've seen numerous complaints about bad female characters, but ZERO tips on making good ones. It appears the videos by this lazy scammer female gamer will be no different; she'll destroy every female character seen thus far, and offer ZERO tips on making a good one.

Really? I've heard that Alyx from Half Life 2 was a decent female character.

 

[Grahav]

If she wanted discussions she could interview someone who makes those characters or is involved with game marketing or something.

It might surprise you how few of these people ever think about such things.

How do you want to fight the problem if you don't make an effort to understand the causes?

If you don't hear the marketers, the players who like those games (as myself), the other side, it becomes just a one sided speech where you tell a group of people to shut up. And nobody likes to be told to shut up, specially when it is said that they are the cause of misoginy or some other kind of evil.

I don't follow the point you're trying to make, based on what I said.

The point is that it seemed to me that you think that what the "misogynistic" game producers thoughts about the issue are either irrelevant or non-existent. If you don't know why they make such games, how do you want to convince them to stop making them or making "gender positive" games?

More, it weakens your position if the target of your discourse discovers that you consider them as just non-thinking idiots.

I've seen numerous complaints about bad female characters, but ZERO tips on making good ones.

Excellent point. It is easy to be destructive, but difficult to be creative.

An effort shold be made in this direction.

 

[Birdfalcon]

OBJECTION......the metroid franchise with the exepction of other M

 

[rbstewart7263]

But tell me: I'm a feminist. According to your rules I must be a "crazy." Find evidence of this: go!

Well, for one thing you cannot accept what I say, while a big missing link is any evidence on your part.

Which would be fairly hypocritical, because if I came in yelling fire and murder about supposed discrimination which you don't know to exist, you'd like me to at least show some indications of it actually happening before you jump on any bandwagons. I do the same and you cry I'm not interested in hearing it.

I'm not interested in hearing preconceived myths about supposed conspiracies to oppress women. I'll also tell you why: The reason for those is to dismiss any component of own choice and inevitability, just because that's uncomfortable for the author, and it has nothing to do with finding out what is true and correct. It's basically a form of religion.

I'm always open to hearing factual information, just don't blame me for not going along in some silly mythology without any proof.


On the topic of feminist mythology, do you know what's a fun topic to read about with feminists? Female rape fantasies. There's a pretty sharp divide in feminist and psychological litature, with the feminists obviously going for some fairy tale about a conspiracy of men have conditioned women to be used to rape and even fantasize about it, while the actual scientific literature weighs all sorts of explanations carefully.

For instance here:
http://www.clinica.divisionescolpsic.org/articulos-docs/Womens_Erotic_Rape.pdf

Note how they dismiss the feminist conspiracy theory. Review of said feminist book they refer to shows the empirical quality of it is questionable at best. It's bound together from baseless assumptions.

Also note how they dismiss the feminist claim that rape fantasies and actual rape are alike. They are in fact very different scenarios.


And the Huffington Post offers us a small insight into just how powerfull the politically correcy lynchmob of feminists has become towards any and all who reveal information they dislike. They bring this story about female rape fantasies, which is uncomfortable to feminists because it dismisses their 'rape culture' myth.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-raj-persaud/womens-sexual-fantasies_b_1511322.html?ref=uk

Note the first sentence: "A team of psychologists led by a woman has uncovered". Why would the HuffPost write that? The gender of the team's leader is irrelevant? Well, if it had been a man, there'd have been a feminist lynchmob to dismiss the story as a part of a male conspiracy to oppress women. It's gotten that ridiculous.

Thank you sir.

 

[Brian MacInnes]

Oops! Who ever was in charge of assembling this openly gynemasculinistic project's head montage haplessly included a Princess Peach illustration from no less than 'Super Princess Peach'. That would be the one in which she heroically advents to rescue the helpless Mario and Luigi from Bowser, decimating his army on the way. Also fearless tomb raider Lara Croft, among others.

 

[Therumancer]

The MAIN issue, however, is that it is impossible to create a good female character for a few reasons:
1. The things that define a woman are either considered sexist or have no possible application in gaming
2. A good female character is often ignored by the feminists because she's not "female" enough.
3. Look at # 2, then #1, and you'll see this closes out any possibility of females being happy with women in games.

Um... seriously? Please can you enlighten me on what 'defines a woman'.

Do you have some examples of your second point?

You tell me. What, exactly, makes a good FEMALE character? Oftentimes when examples are brought up, they're accused of being good characters but their gender might as well be male, or their accused of pandering to the male demographic.

As for specific examples, I don't remember since I don't play most of the games where the examples were from, also these threads were a while ago. I do remember Alyx Vance and Samus Aran were considered to be the same as fetish characters from the semi naked women with boob physics from soul caliber. Unfortunately those are the only two examples I remember. I think the protagonist of the longest journey was one of the handful of "good" female characters the community agreed upon.

Interestingly though what people think is good by feminist standards doesn't sell to either men or women. "The Longest Journey" was nowhere near the success of things like Metroid or Half-Life.

A point I keep making which people don't want to address since it pretty much shuts down every arguement is to look at what women create for themselves and aim at a female audience. You'll quickly notice that these "negative tropes" and some of the most criticized female characters are par for the course.

I'll also say that people keep tossing statistics around in this. Oddly you'll find this is a good example of how statistics are meaningless as you can find or modify statistics to say whatever you want. No matter what you think, someone probably created a statistic to "prove" what you want to believe at some point. You'll find that in arguements about women in games those taking a feminist approach of demanding industry change will either approach it from female gamers being "locked out" and pointing out how few of them there are, or saying that there are tons of female gamers, representing a substantial percentage of the market, who should be given more of a voice in what is created... depending on the needs of the moment. Is 30-50% of the gaming audience women, or is it only 4% as marked by someone's claim about sales?

In the end I maintain it's a non-issue, it exists only for people to try and get attention.

 

[SOCIALCONSTRUCT]

Generally speaking men are much better firefighters than women. Organic cultural perceptions are built around patterns that are generally true rather than exceptions. I prefer this organic viewpoint to PC tabula rasa nonsense.

 

[Hollyday]

A point I keep making which people don't want to address since it pretty much shuts down every arguement is to look at what women create for themselves and aim at a female audience. You'll quickly notice that these "negative tropes" and some of the most criticized female characters are par for the course.

I find it by far the most worrying point, and I'm willing to discuss it until the cows come home! Women are as much a part of the problem as men - by saying that I'm a feminist and that I want equal and balanced representation across all media for women, I'm by no means saying that it's men's fault that we don't have it now. You only have to look at fashion magazines which are written by and for women to know that we often do nothing to help ourselves. It's self-perpetuating: we grow up with stereotyped depictions of women in the media and so that's how we view ourselves. We then sell this back to the younger generation and the cycle goes on and on and on.... until people are educated about it. Enter Anita Sarkeesian...

You tell me. What, exactly, makes a good FEMALE character? Oftentimes when examples are brought up, they're accused of being good characters but their gender might as well be male, or their accused of pandering to the male demographic.

I still want to know what 'defines a woman' from your earlier post - don't back down now!

To me, a good female character is one that is made an integral part of the story and not decoration/a plot device (of course, there are many many male characters in stories who are only there for decoration/to be a plot device. My argument is that a disproportionately large number of female characters fall into this category)

 

[Chemical Alia]

If she wanted discussions she could interview someone who makes those characters or is involved with game marketing or something.

It might surprise you how few of these people ever think about such things.

How do you want to fight the problem if you don't make an effort to understand the causes?

If you don't hear the marketers, the players who like those games (as myself), the other side, it becomes just a one sided speech where you tell a group of people to shut up. And nobody likes to be told to shut up, specially when it is said that they are the cause of misoginy or some other kind of evil.

I don't follow the point you're trying to make, based on what I said.

The point is that it seemed to me that you think that what the "misogynistic" game producers thoughts about the issue are either irrelevant or non-existent. If you don't know why they make such games, how do you want to convince them to stop making them or making "gender positive" games?

More, it weakens your position if the target of your discourse discovers that you consider them as just non-thinking idiots.

Whoa, where the hell did all this come from? "Non-thinking idiots" and misogynists? These people are talented and amazing, and I talk with them all the time. That doesn't mean they don't sometimes fall into habits and forget to think outside of the box when it comes to variety in characters. It's a pretty narrow demographic among game developers, and it's easy to fall back to the default of what they personally think is "sweet" or "sexy", but it's not some evil conspiracy or even always done on purpose.

I've seen numerous complaints about bad female characters, but ZERO tips on making good ones.

Excellent point. It is easy to be destructive, but difficult to be creative.

An effort shold be made in this direction.

I explored this idea when I was still in school with a project I did. I looked at the design process for the TF2 cast and applied the same kind of decision making to model a couple playable female versions. I made the models downloadable to the general public, and the response I got on them has been overwhelmingly positive (even with my crappy first two ones, when I was still new to modeling.) I just finished up with the fourth one, and from the feedback I've gotten from the community, there's definitely an interest in having variety along with having straight up fan-service.

But making good female characters shouldn't be any different than making good characters of any kind. They deserve the same exploration, research and variety as any other thought-out character. Relying too hard tropes and derivative material makes for boring characters, male or female, and I think that's an area of game development that needs more creativity and broader backgrounds.