The core problem with Tropes vs Women in Video Games

[Guerilla]

You know, if people hadn't harassed, made threats, and attacked feminists/feminism, and instead criticized Anita in a reasonable way, people wouldn't have jumped to her defense like they did.

If it wasn't for all that, I may not even know that Anita even existed.

People "harass" bloggers on the internet all the time. InternetAristocrat when asked a couple of days ago said in a stream of his that he has received many threats and hate mail just like all bloggers do. As we know anonymity makes some people complete assholes.

Unlike Sarkeesian though who exploited some people's white knight syndrome he didn't use that to present himself as a martyr or gain personally from it.

 

[Fireaxe]

Given she self admittedly hasn't played many games -- including those she uses as examples, it's perfectly reasonable to state that

1. She doesn't have substantial experience in the medium as a player (imagine discussing film tropes having not watched films)

2. She is, deliberately or not, cherry picking.

Having her as the figurehead does not mean that she doesn't have a sizable team of experienced gamers helping her research and draw conclusions. Since she said that this was the way way TvW would play out back in the Kickstarter, it is not only bad form but entirely pointless to accuse her of not having enough "gaming cred". It is a decent attempt at not having to confront her arguments but rather get off the hook with an ad hominem though. Too bad you got called on it.

At best that "sizeable team" only came *after* she'd already decided what to talk about, and what point she was making.

So, basically, she still has zero credibility regardless of how many people she's brought on to help her find evidence to support a view -- because the view came *before* the evidence, and you "calling me on it" is a joke because the cart and horse are *still* massively in the wrong order.

 

[wizzy555]

It's very surprising how people discuss this so much but few get to this conclusion. You can't critique her criticisms in a meaningful way because the goal is not to critique games. The goal is to piggyback on popular items to inject feminist thought into the culture.

In the 90s feminist critics of every popular television show popped up in the press. It was the same thing then they don't care about being right they care about you listening to the ideas.

 

[Jake Martinez]

Given she self admittedly hasn't played many games -- including those she uses as examples, it's perfectly reasonable to state that

1. She doesn't have substantial experience in the medium as a player (imagine discussing film tropes having not watched films)

2. She is, deliberately or not, cherry picking.

Having her as the figurehead does not mean that she doesn't have a sizable team of experienced gamers helping her research and draw conclusions. Since she said that this was the way way TvW would play out back in the Kickstarter, it is not only bad form but entirely pointless to accuse her of not having enough "gaming cred". It is a decent attempt at not having to confront her arguments but rather get off the hook with an ad hominem though. Too bad you got called on it.

At best that "sizeable team" only came *after* she'd already decided what to talk about, and what point she was making.

So, basically, she still has zero credibility regardless of how many people she's brought on to help her find evidence to support a view -- because the view came *before* the evidence, and you "calling me on it" is a joke because the cart and horse are *still* massively in the wrong order.

The credibility factor isn't that big to me, although it does hurt her in some cases when she does some pretty blatant mischaracterizations, for example:

1) Decrying womens roles in Red Dead Redemption - A historical game that takes place in the old west. Ahem (What job do you want them to have when pretty much you had - Saloon Girl, Baby Maker and School Marm as society roles for women at the time?)
2) The entire Hitman Absolution/Strip Club stage - Too easy to pick apart her arguments. It's pretty much the only part of all her series where she didn't use stock footage, because it's impossible to find twitch footage of anyone doing the things she claims
3) Oddly focuses on things that you can do to women, while ignoring that you can also do them to men (or as a woman, instead of as a man).

Stuff like that doesn't help her case and it gives people who just want to invalidate everything she says easy ammunition.

Other than that, within her discipline and with the application of that particular brand of feminist theory, she's not too bad. Sorta average. Anyway, the real question fundamentally is if you believe in the reason WHY these critiques are valuable. She doesn't do a good job of explain how this is - likely because she is assuming that the audience already knows (which, if you're an average gamer, you're not going to really).

Really, I think she's pretty harmless. I think the game press is just enamored with her because it's like "Wow someone is treating this seriously!" plus there is probably a select group of writers who just want to clickbait people over her videos - In the mainstream media, feminist film critique is always good clickbait for everyone

 

[Goliath100]

I thought the core problem was that TvW plays like the big book of don'ts from the internet was the core problem, but to single one out: The core problem is that FF is highlighting problems with minimum focus of how fix them. I.e She is all about the don'ts of writing but have little to say about the dos .

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

At best that "sizeable team" only came *after* she'd already decided what to talk about, and what point she was making.

So, basically, she still has zero credibility regardless of how many people she's brought on to help her find evidence to support a view -- because the view came *before* the evidence, and you "calling me on it" is a joke because the cart and horse are *still* massively in the wrong order.

Now you are just moving the goalposts. Your point was that Sarkeesian doesn't know enough about games to make an assertive statement about them, now it suddenly is that she's too biased that not even a team of knowledgeable people helping her is enough. Besides, you can't prove the point came before the research, so that's basically down to yet another ad hominem against Sarkeesian and not a criticism of her work.

 

[Guerilla]

At best that "sizeable team" only came *after* she'd already decided what to talk about, and what point she was making.

So, basically, she still has zero credibility regardless of how many people she's brought on to help her find evidence to support a view -- because the view came *before* the evidence, and you "calling me on it" is a joke because the cart and horse are *still* massively in the wrong order.

Now you are just moving the goalposts. Your point was that Sarkeesian doesn't know enough about games to make an assertive statement about them, now it suddenly is that she's too biased that not even a team of knowledgeable people helping her is enough. Besides, you can't prove the point came before the research, so that's basically down to yet another ad hominem against Sarkeesian and not a criticism of her work.

He's not moving the goalposts, the goalpost has been there all the time. Someone who didn't know pretty much anything about games decided that games are sexist and under that assumption she hired a bunch of people to prove it. These people of course are doing their job so they spin the truth the best they can to reach the conclusion that has already been decided. It's exactly what I said in my first post:

The problem is very simple. Feminist pseudoanalysis and pseudoscience always have the conclusions before even analyzing or experimenting. They experiment/analyze something in order to reach the conclusion they want to, they don't reach conclusions after experimenting/analyzing. This is how they're currently ruining social sciences too.

If I try hard enough and twist and spin innocent tidbits about games I'll find misandry in every damn videogame on the planet. What, the princess in Mario always ends up safe while the hateful developer keeps killing without mercy all the male protagonists? This is obviously a result of the violent culture that exists against men in society and the videogame community. Damn you Miyamoto!

 

[remnant_phoenix]

So the woman is not so much a person as she is background dressing.

And this is not insulting how?

No, everyone and everything is background dressing in a game. Men, women, bushes, trees, houses, dwarves, spaceships, make-believe worlds, entire galaxies. Everything. The mechanics of the game turn everything into mere pieces of information about the current state of the playfield. Information the player uses to advance towards his or her intended goal. Only a lunatic thinks the giant crab he killed in World of Warcraft is in any way real. This is why Tropes is such a dead end when it comes to games criticism. The actual experience of playing a video game has little to do with the details she focuses on. How can something so divorced from the reality of how people actually interact with the game world be anything other than of modest interest. Tropes isn't terrible, it's just not very insightful.

You're presuming that all players, or even the majority of players, care for interacting with the challenge/mechanics of a game to the exclusion of the context.

For myself and many other gamers, the context is of utmost importance, rivaling or even surpassing the mechanics of play.

So yeah, I understand the overall points you're trying to make in this thread, but I'm afraid they only apply to players who approach games with the perspective that you do.

 

[Guerilla]

So the woman is not so much a person as she is background dressing.

And this is not insulting how?

No, everyone and everything is background dressing in a game. Men, women, bushes, trees, houses, dwarves, spaceships, make-believe worlds, entire galaxies. Everything. The mechanics of the game turn everything into mere pieces of information about the current state of the playfield. Information the player uses to advance towards his or her intended goal. Only a lunatic thinks the giant crab he killed in World of Warcraft is in any way real. This is why Tropes is such a dead end when it comes to games criticism. The actual experience of playing a video game has little to do with the details she focuses on. How can something so divorced from the reality of how people actually interact with the game world be anything other than of modest interest. Tropes isn't terrible, it's just not very insightful.

You're presuming that all players, or even the majority of players, care for interacting with the challenge/mechanics of a game to the exclusion of the context.

For myself and many other gamers, the context is of utmost importance, rivaling or even surpassing the mechanics of play.

So yeah, I understand the overall points you're trying to make in this thread, but I'm afraid they only apply to players who approach games with the perspective that you do.

And what's the context here? That "men, women, bushes, trees, houses, dwarves, spaceships, make-believe worlds, entire galaxies" are all being oppressed because they're not the main character in the game but just non playing units used by the developer to create a world where the gamer can play?

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

He's not moving the goalposts, the goalpost has been there all the time. Someone who didn't know pretty much anything about games decided that games are sexist and under that assumption she hired a bunch of people to prove it. These people of course are doing their job so they spin the truth the best they can to reach the conclusion that has already been decided. It's exactly what I said in my firs

So, where's the proof that she began with the assumption of sexism? Without that you are just making assumptions and throwing ad hominems, both of which only serve to keep you from having to actually address Sarkeesian's points.

 

[wizzy555]

He's not moving the goalposts, the goalpost has been there all the time. Someone who didn't know pretty much anything about games decided that games are sexist and under that assumption she hired a bunch of people to prove it. These people of course are doing their job so they spin the truth the best they can to reach the conclusion that has already been decided. It's exactly what I said in my firs

So, where's the proof that she began with the assumption of sexism? Without that you are just making assumptions and throwing ad hominems, both of which only serve to keep you from having to actually address Sarkeesian's points.

One example that is very worrying to me. In her thesis she has a table of positive and negative traits that are portrayed in the current media landscape for both sexes.

She leaves the negative masculine box blank. Meaning she does not believe any trait is currently represented as negative when found in a man. In fact "violence" is put on the positive box, so when someone violent punches a defenceless person - that must be a positive thing. She never looks for men being portrayed negatively because in her world view the current landscape doesn't mean it negatively.

 

[Breakdown]

Anita sets out her aims and the planned focus of her videos on Kickstarter, presumably before she conducted research as she states the Kickstarter funds were going to be partly used for research.

 

[Guerilla]

He's not moving the goalposts, the goalpost has been there all the time. Someone who didn't know pretty much anything about games decided that games are sexist and under that assumption she hired a bunch of people to prove it. These people of course are doing their job so they spin the truth the best they can to reach the conclusion that has already been decided. It's exactly what I said in my firs

So, where's the proof that she began with the assumption of sexism? Without that you are just making assumptions and throwing ad hominems, both of which only serve to keep you from having to actually address Sarkeesian's points.

There you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI&hd=1

She had already decided that videogames are sexist even though she didn't know shit about them. She had to "learn" to make a crappy montage whining about them.

 

[Guerilla]

One example that is very worrying to me. In her thesis she has a table of positive and negative traits that are portrayed in the current media landscape for both sexes.

She leaves the negative masculine box blank. Meaning she does not believe any trait is currently represented as negative when found in a man. In fact "violence" is put on the positive box, so when someone violent punches a defenceless person - that must be a positive thing. She never looks for men being portrayed negatively because in her world view the current landscape doesn't mean it negatively.

Bingo. Videogames are full of megalomaniac phychos who are always males yet females are either the hero, the good samaritan, the peaceful villager and so on. And she has somehow spinned this into a positive for males. Her complete and utter bias makes it impossible for any reasonable person to take her seriously.

 

[And Man]

The core problem with Tropes vs Women in Video Games is that everyone thinks it's a huge deal. It's just a person criticizing video games. Anita Sarkeesian isn't the feminist monarch, and she's neither an evil witch bent on taking away all video games forever nor the goddess that will save the industry from the patriarchy. She's a person that criticizes video games, and one that shouldn't have near as much publicity or attention as she does. People criticize everything, and there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of other people doing and saying the same things as Sarkeesian, and no one gives a rat's ass about them. The only reason she has so much attention is because of the whole harassment debacle when she was starting her Kickstarter.

 

[Six Ways]

I'd have to play the game to determine that. Then again when I play a game there's only one thing I judge it by. 'Did I have fun?', which is really the only criteria any game should be judged on. It's an entertainment medium, remember?

What?

Are you serious?

So, the only criteria anything classed as entertainment should be judged on is 'Did I enjoy it'?

Film? TV? Radio? Literature? Plays?

Really?

I mean... I'm serious, I'm really struggling to believe you honestly think that.

 

[RA92]

I think the core reason for the series' lack of very much genuine insight has to do with Anitia Sarkeesian's seeming lack of interest in video games in and of themselves. Since she doesn't appear to play video games for pure enjoyment...

That's such a presumptuous and vague critique that it's actually worse than the 'out-of-context' evidences she brings forth. You really are in no position to dictate in what context she should enjoy games.

Anyway, her major issue is her delivery. Dry as a nun's tit. A rocket-launcher-wielding, spandex-clad nun's tit.

 

[Fireaxe]

At best that "sizeable team" only came *after* she'd already decided what to talk about, and what point she was making.

So, basically, she still has zero credibility regardless of how many people she's brought on to help her find evidence to support a view -- because the view came *before* the evidence, and you "calling me on it" is a joke because the cart and horse are *still* massively in the wrong order.

Now you are just moving the goalposts. Your point was that Sarkeesian doesn't know enough about games to make an assertive statement about them, now it suddenly is that she's too biased that not even a team of knowledgeable people helping her is enough. Besides, you can't prove the point came before the research, so that's basically down to yet another ad hominem against Sarkeesian and not a criticism of her work.

Actually, the goalposts as I set them remain exactly where I set them in my first post in this topic (which wasn't the first one you replied to). It read as follows.

"The core problem with Sarkeesian is that she has a conclusion and cherry picks evidence from a medium she has no experience in to justify her conclusion. This is literally the polar opposite of how one should come to a conclusion."