It is amazing what you find when you go actively seeking it. I mean, finding a sexist assholes on youtube is just completely backing the idea here. Much like Don Quixote finding his giants in the windmills. Fittingly, most youtube commentators have about as much purpose or effect as someone flailing their arms around uselessly...
Comments like this though
The trolls only managed to prove to everyone that sexism in gaming is indeed a huge problem.
get under my skin. No, the trolls only prove that youtube has trolls, a statement that was not needed or unknown. This is akin to saying the Westburo Baptist is proof that christianity has a problem with its racism, homophobia and misogyny as a whole. Blaming the whole for the vocal minority is just an annoying fallacy and seems almost like prodding.
Looking at youtube comments as evidence of anything will yield results. Honestly, you can find support for feminism, or against it, for religion, or against it, showing the depths of human hate and bile in one way or another, regardless of race, sexuality or gender. There are assholes for nearly EVERY cause. Sort of shows equality of all humans in how there are assholes regardless what ideal you stand behind. Percentage of composition will vary, admittedly.
Honestly, I think people would be better off calling the kick starter out for being a money grub under the guise of feminism. This topic has been done to death, and a one-sided, blatantly sexist view that uses it's own confirmation bias as evidence of it's relevance is beyond worthless. It is outright harmful to the discussion.
Is there issues in gaming relating to gender? Oh hell yes! Is this kickstarter doing a damn bit of good on the topic? Not a chance. One could point to aspects complained about in the video with a different lens and see different parallels. Smurfette and a possible biblical reference as her supposed purpose as being someone to tempt, a fairly common story telling trope there.
In a bit of irony, the kick starter seems to almost be trying to reinforce the stereotype about both gamers being misogynists or that of feminists blowing small shit out of proportion and losing sight of the big picture. It drags the debate back into a familiar, and beaten to death, parody of actual discussion, to the point of possibly feeding hate and causing any debate on the subject to be shelved as people who would be having those discussions have to pull the seething mass of assholes on both sides off one another while they foam at the mouth.
I do think people should protest the project, if they feel it comes off as sexist in it's own right, and seems to, as said before, drag the discussion back 20 years. There is some validity behind the idea. The mention of tropes used and as a result reinforcing ideals has merit. But that is NOT an issue about women alone and tackling the issue as such comes off as a little selective. Some would dare say sexist. Race, sexuality, religion, gender, all do pull from the grab bag of tropes, as video games as a general rule have less complicated stories, and thus draw from a smaller amount of common tropes. Simpler stories such as a lot of game plots (especially true of older franchises that will keep with story) will use similar character types and tropes as other games.
Right now there is a bit of a perfect storm of reasons why tropes are relied on in gaming. On one front, you have the history of games, where the simplest of simple stories are still reflected still, even long after mario first finished his quest for Paulina. In order to stay true to the fans, they tend to keep the story, and by result, the character tropes. Since those stories tended to be simplest, fairy tale like, they reflect the tropes of that sort of story, with women getting more traditional rules, or outright treated as prizes.
On the next front you have the developers. Since they are out for profit, and since they look to the past for profit, they tend to try to duplicate the past success. This results in the same tropes, or attempts at exploitation outright. Neither is kind to women, but neither is kind to storymaking in general.
Finally you have the most overlooked aspect, that videogames are still seen in a variety of ways. They ARE a story telling medium, but for so long they have not been seen as such. As a result, stories told can range the gambit from epic to utter shit, with the latter more common. As explained before, simplier stories result in more familiar tropes, and those tropes concerning women reflect their age. And indeed, a lot of the tropes ARE old. The sexy murder machine reflected in amazons, valkeries, etc. The damsel in distress a common theme in fairy tales and long before. These are products of the history of story telling itself, concentrating on them in gaming seems to be missing the forest for the trees. If someone adapts an old popular story with a damsel in distress trope, does that make it sexist? Does staying true to the story regardless it doesn't favorably portray a woman mean the game itself is sexist? Is it racist to make a movie true to a book that uses blatantly racist tropes? Is it made worse because the medium in which a story is told is interactive?
I think if this project wants to get into something really deep, if it wants to sink its teeth into something important and spur conversation and discussion, it should pick its target better. Discuss media and story telling in general. Discuss the lack of creativity in all media lately, the promotion of tropes of all variety, and trope history in storytelling as an artform in all incarnations. Look into how people go back into old literature, old fairy tales, even old legends for inspiration in games and how THAT influences games. Look into business practices that stagnate and avoid innovation and change. This is not a matter of genders nearly as much as it is the soul of games and the art itself. Concentrating on women in games, and seeming to both hint at so much and yet miss so much at the same time... it just seems like wasted potential on the topic in order to generate a competitiveness relating to the controversy of the topic itself. Why spend such time, why request such resources, when you are only covering a facet of this from an obviously biased point of a repeatedly rehashed topic when it can be so much more? So much there to cover and delve into and it just feels like she wants to skim the surface about how women fall into the same tropes, something no one really denies.
On a side note, how many dark, quiet, brooding heros and overly muscled strong military men have been pumped into games in the last several years? I'll take Jade from beyond good and evil over one of those any day.
