In essence you confuse matriarchy with feminism when nobody on the latter side, in this case, is arguing the former. Her argument is, and she has said this "women are human beings and should be treated as such" which unless they turned out to be aliens is a phrase that cannot be dogma due to overwhelming evidence. It's not a complete role reversal, it's not female empowerment whether it's appropriate or not, and it's not at the expense of men. You seem to be stuck in the assumption that a word will always have one literal definition despite the meaning its users intend to impart to it, which is the key reason why your arguments turn to fallacy.wetnap said:
You follow up by insisting some stories can't be gamified citing specific authors when really the bare minimum requirement being asked for is a story with at least one non-stereotypical female character with significant relevance to the plot. To suggest such a game is impossible is patently false. This doesn't mean a story in which females have no negative qualities, or in which they conform to no tropes, only a game in which their characters are written with the same care as the male ones.
And you're right, in some games, none of the characters are particularly deep, but their relevance to the plot is noticeably variable. To go by the Mario example, the only recurring female character in the series is a helpless damsel in distress in every single game. Of which there have been a LOT. Even though she's characterized about the same as Mario, her role in the story is only as a reward for the player - she could be replaced by a really expensive pipe wrench and still have as much bearing on the plot.
Not only is Nintendo consistently getting away with INCREDIBLY lazy writing, there's no reason why such a game couldn't have a coherent story at this point, or even have Peach rescue Mario (wouldn't it make more sense for Bowser to capture him anyway?) a la Cotton Alley in Super Meat Boy. Maybe alternate playable characters other than Luigi or something - it really requires no creativity whatsoever at this point. The fact that established tropes have become tradition to the franchise after this point makes the entire series' writing a complete joke, and it's one of the iconic franchises of gaming that carries with it the reputation of our medium. Putting more effort into the writing wouldn't diminish existing gameplay and could easily generate new gameplay opportunities (see again, Super Meat Boy) through expanded context.
Basically, the fact females can be described by standard tropes is irrelevant to those tropes' quality and in all likelihood such tropes will continue to exist, and can even be done well. However an over-reliance on the specific tropes that portray women in a negative light is indicative of a cultural trend, because that's what stories are - the expression of cultural ideals and values through the metaphor of fiction. By promoting media literacy and understanding when and where these tropes are or aren't appropriate, Anita hopes to shift their usage, and hence cultural acceptance away from sexist norms. This can only result in expanding the market for video games and generally making things nicer for everyone. This is unarguably a good thing if only because it can get writers thinking harder before taking your advice and throwing out a half-baked story idea because hey, "if they wanted story they could read a book, right?".
Despite being male I actually do give a damn if the stories I play through suck or not, and I do find it offensive to see pandering female stereotypes thrown at me in the assumption that I'm shallow and easily satisfied by the laziness of others. There would be no ethical dilemma to me asking for money to make a video series about how publishers essentially think everyone's as mysogynistic as they are - if people want to support it and make sure it's done with the care they think it deserves, that's their prerogative. That's the point of kickstarter - people can and do pay what they think the project's worth.
Now, whether or not that made me a whiny loser is up for debate, but contrary to what you seem to believe, and your example, intended market and actual market are not the same thing. Intention and marketing in general is at best a guess made on necessarily flawed information, it's who actually gets the thing that matters. Tropes marketed at my demographic might not necessarily be the ones I want marketed at me, and tropes marketed at other demographics might be. The fact a single trope is not in and of itself a complete package does not seem to have occurred to you - I might buy something for the tropes I like even if it's saddled with ones I don't. Ultimately, I can still like video games that include poor female characters and consider myself a feminist, nobody's criticizing the fact that I say, play Mass Effect 2 which has Miranda in it by saying Miranda is a terrible character. Hell, I say that often enough.
If you're that insecure that you think people complaining about tropes within the stuff you like (remember, a trope is a story's building block, nothing more) is equivalent to them running some sort of conspiracy to ban your chosen forms of enjoyment, then you're exactly the reason we need to promote media literacy and by extension this series.
