FEichinger said:
Rednog said:
John Funk said:
In June alone, the videogame industry has seen controversy flare over the "Tropes vs. Women in Videogames" Kickstarter [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117776-Hitman-Studio-Apologizes-For-Nun-Massacre] - with furor over booth babes and treatment of female journalists at E3 to boot.
I'm a bit curious as to why the escapist is defending Anita Sarkeesian so hard? You don't say describe the hitman trailer, or the Lara Croft thing, nor the booth babes or female journalists with a positive or negative context, but you throw in "disgusting reaction" just when mentioning Anita Sarkeesian's kickstarter. Why isn't it neutral like the other's why isn't it "the reaction to Anita Sarkeesian's...."? Or the reverse, the questionable Hitman trailer, the horrific treatment of Lara Croft, the mistreatment of female journalists?
Because the reaction was indeed disgusting.
Her videos are much needed.
Her methods are questionable.
But the reaction she received was
disgusting and - regardless of the preceeding provocation - proof of what she was referring to. Your police-analogy simply doesn't hold. Neither are random people on the Internet in any way authority, nor would the police
beat you up and break your ribcage - unless of course, it happens in the US. That, however, is the equivalent of this
massive flamewar against her.
Well that's what happens with unmoderated open comments board. Try reading some of the graffiti in a bus stop some time. No one is ever going to un-ironically write poetry on there. Once a place fills up with trash that is going to encourage more trash, that's what happens when she gets attention of 4chan (that she may have directly facilitated). And she didn't ignore the trolls, she blogged about them, giving them the attention and reaction they craved.
The worst part is how she has managed to deflect ALL criticism by focusing endlessly on this pathetic tolling, calling it harassment, and never addressing the genuine criticisms of this project. Like how She asked for $6000 dollars, when she got to $6000 did she stop accepting donations? No. It has now gone up to almost $160'000 and is still rising. She does not need that much money for this project that most people do for free and will make money on itself being watched over and over again.
This is an important subject that she started out with some extremely erroneous and facile starting points, mainly in categories that you could fit almost EVERY character into and the categories are USELESS.
Damsel in distress
Fighting fuck toy
Sexy side kick
Sexy villainess
Background decoration
These aren't stereotypes, these are inescapable dichotomies, non-playable character either fights for you (Sexy side kick), against you (Sexy villainess) or non-combatant important to the events (Damsel in distress) or not (Background decoration). No matter how well you write any female character she will be in one of these "stereotypes". This is not useful language to discuss sex and gender in video games.
Fighting fuck toy is just an incredibly rude term for a female protagonist.
You know what, ditch the 5 obvious categories, there is nothing special about them as they apply just as much to male or even robot characters and focus on the common theme between all of them: sex.
All she does is take well established roles you'd find any any storyboarding textbook and add "sexy" in there or some aspect of looking good. That seems to be what the hundreds of thousands of dollars are for, defining women into two categories in video games, whether they are sexy or not regardless of all other factors. Just judge them by their looks. And if they are sexy then they are stereotypes, and that is bad, without a proper definition of what a stereotype is or even why it is bad. But some spread...
"Misogynistic ideas of women"
I hope she realises that "Misogynist" means "hatred of women". Yes, hatred of women, like hate speech against women, like how the KKK incite hate with "rivers of blood" speeches against blacks, only misogyny is that hatred against women. Really. That's a bold claim. That is the equivalent of alleging endemic racism in games, you better immediately back that up with a good example. But none. It's almost as if she is completely misusing the term for a shallow and meaningless effect.
If she'd said that about the darkest depths of the internet, that would have been very true and immediately borne out. But no. She is talking about the established games industry, like games made by Valve, Activision and Ubisoft.
I really REALLY don't like the trolls, mostly for how they have made her bulletproof. There can be no genuine criticism of her without her simply going "oh those awful trolls again". I'm not trolling. She has had almost 2 months and a small fortune and nothing to show for it beyond a terribly flawed opening premise of the discussion and endless unnecessary focus on herself and this trolling nonsense.
