Pandora's Tower is actually a rather interesting game. At the very least, the heroine's portrayal is a good deal more complex than the one-off plot twists seen in most of the games here.

Okay, but the thing is, Ico would've been either way worse, or a completely different game, if Yorda was an empowered individual.

Ico is at least a *little* icky.

Except with worse fans

I totally lost it at "please Tommy, let me... go..."

That was something that I kept thinking during this video- sure, these are bad, but I never thought of 99% of video games having anything more than a B-movie plot at best. Really, Bionic commando?

In fact, the "my partner has turned into a monster and I must kill him/her" trope is a long standing B horror movie trope, except in horror films more often than not it's a woman who kills her boyfriend/husband. Since the gaming market is still made up mostly by young men who generally don't like playing women characters the role is reversed.

congratulations on independently discovering the field of feminist literary studies i guess.

"there tropes exist elsewhere!" gee.

It's one of those situations like anonymous vs. westboro baptist church. There's an actual issue in there somewhere, but both sides are just so fucking hateable you just can't stand to be on either.

Is there a pronblem? Yes, though it's based on perception is many cases. Should it get better? I hope so, if for no other reason than to improve game writing. Will it get change any time soon? not likely, seeing as books, movies and cartoons all still use the trope liberally and unabashedly.

Did we need these barely insightful videos pointing out the most obvious shit imaginable? Meh. I don't hate them, though I still don't see how this adds up to the kickstarter total, now how it will. There are plenty of weekly shows with as much production values and decent amounts of research on youtube already and those are personally funded. I agree with enough of her opinion, disagree with a few point and am more concerned with the scam she pulled off on kickstarter.

Not meant as a reply

I like these videos, they show me ridiculous shit from ridiculous games I'll never play. I've played a few games with really really shitty themes in recent times (Far Cry 3), but generally nowadays you can at least find some decent titles (Journey, The Walking Dead, Portal 1 & 2).

But yeah, these tropes exist in every storytelling medium. In videogames they are more stupid because games are filled with more stupid. I don't really see what her point is, unless it's just pissing off game nerds then I'm ok with it.

How does she feel about Portal? After all, Chell is just a brain damaged orphaned mute who, apparently, has a thing for boy bands and ponies, because that's what girls like, boy bands and ponies. And the villain of the series is a strong, intelligent woman, or rather, former woman. Woman before she was brutally murdered (by men!) and shoved inside a robot.

Don't even get me started on how Chell was all helpless in Level 17 and needed a big strong Companion Cube MAN to get her through the puzzles!!!

To be fair, the vast majority of videogames ARE puerile and sexist. How would they not be? Seeing that the majority are made by puerile, sexist, socially awkward men for a market that is in great part made up of puerile, sexist, socially awkward baby-men and in great part of people who just want an experience that is rewarding from a gameplay perspective but don't give two shits about being told a story.

The main fallacy in her argument is that somehow game developers have an ethical responsibility to tell better stories because they don't "exist in a vacuum" and MUST take into account the society we live in and take liability for the stuff they portray.

While many children with no parental guidance are left alone to grow up with horrible media, it is not the media's responsibility to raise your stupid kids.

As an occasional consumer of them, I hope videogames evolve towards better storytelling (and I'll vote in that direction with my wallet by not buying shit like Devil May Cry 35), but I doubt her tautologies on age old tropes and how they are used in gaming will ever move beyond something that is "mildly entertaining".

Sarah Haskins (I know some people here hate her) with Target Women was more informative and more entertaining in displaying how advertising exploit female stereotypes to sell products.

I fucking loved and miss Sarah Haskins.

I think these videos present the material at a level of complexity appropriate to the people who actually need to be told this stuff. Of course, I'm not holding my breath for many of those people to respond with anything but flailing and e-spittle but that's OK too.

Also thirding Sarah Haskins. If it had been her doing this I'd have donated.

Exactly. Although, I think she's trying to engage people of that level and developers of shitty games into some serious discussion, whereas I think a better tactic would be to simply gradually ridicule them out of existence.

She flushes them out of their dens so people like us can ridicule them. It's a sy,biosis between people who take things too seriously and people who don't take them seriously enough, and I'm all for it.

Sarah Haskins and Charlie Brooker had the exact same schtick, but people hated her for being a woman.

I love smokeout threads. They're like a pop quiz on whose opinions you should probably ignore.

ZING

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

lol

You know this video was a success when this is the best the local Threatened Masculinity Squad could come up with.

Sure thing, sweetheart.

Her views don't threaten my masculinity. I don't hold anything against her. If she's ever kidnapped by a dragon or an evil wizard I'd save her just like anyone else.

Oh, please. What dragon would want her?

Spike's an emasculated little boytoy who desperately craves the attention of powerful women, and thinks that feminizing himself is the right way to go about it. He'd be all over Anita, although knowing him and knowing her, their roles would soon switch, and you'd be left wondering, who kidnapped who?

Then he'd spend all his time on internet forums, white knighting her rants and proclaiming himself "a male feminist", while she sits on her ass back at the cave, cackling evilly as she paws through his hoard of gemstones.

Hey, women studies' grads have made money before her. Like, for example, someone has to write those women's studies textbooks. And then there are professors of women's studies. And, outside academia, there are a multitude of uses for a women's studies diploma. Like starting a fire in a fireplace if you have absolutely no other sheets of paper in the house.

Let's be fair here. Most college degrees earned in the last 30 years are worthless because most higher education in the last 30 years has been kind of worthless.

I can't speak to all media and how its used, but the "Women in Refrigerators" was specifically talking about how comics liked to kill off or depower women and do so for male angst. The violence itself isn't the problem that isn't liked, its that the focus isn't on the person that it actually happened to.

Oh, I know. My problem is that this isn't always clear, and very often the distinction gets blurred between whether we're supposed to be objecting to violence against women, or just to the use of violence against women as a motivating force for the male conflict-resolvers.

Here's how "Boondocks" treated this topic as applies to 24:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQvtPDz0YdU

What happened to him? Is he dead?

Women get murdered in real life a lot more often than boy wonders get trapped in bomb rigged warehouses in real life you know.

By the way, what ever happened to JHM? Last I heard he had some kind of "porn is poisoning my view of women" epiphany, but he's been pretty quiet since then.

Ah, but how many of those murdered women get stuffed in their boyfriend's fridge by a super villain intent on psyching the hero out? Only 5%, tops.

We've got to compare apples to apples if this thing is going to make any sense. I stand by the BWIBRWH Trope.

I think JHMF left after a few of his Boxxy love videos surfaced here. He got real pissed off, threatened to murder a few people, then just vanished.

Poor guy. I hope he's doing OK.

He knew the risk

He was a bit foolish to link to his own video channel and not expect someone to link to one of his more embarrassing videos.

I turned out to be the one who did the latter and after the shitstorm of absue he got from it I ended up feeling like a real asshole.

I think he's a bit confused and nutty over the whole boxxy thing but I still appreciated most of his participation here and think he's generally and empathic, thoughtful person. I ended up apologizing to him, although I feel it ended up being a rather cosmetic gesture as it didn't really make up for the character damage I caused.

I hope he comes back and hopefully, he won't get treated like shit. I suggested he change username.

I agree that it's a shame he got chased off (at least for the time being) but on the other hand, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I bet he'll be back in a few months.

I get the feeling that Anita is just interested in seeing more games that women like to play, but I don't know. i don't watch hervideos.

I have a lot of opinions about faggots using rape and violence as a rhetorical weapon against people on the internet (99.9999 per cent of these are women) , and calling 15 year old girls "camwhores" for posting on youtube. Some of this shit is inevitable, and most women stand up to it better than I would, but the issue is whether stupid, mean, conformist culture is to be equally tolerated everywhere in the communities of the future. I suppose the fact that I threatened to kill Adham Nu'man once makes me a hypocrite, but I apologized right away.

Ah, that wasn't a real death threat; don't sweat it.

Welcome back, hope you stick around.

yes

She really lost me at the end

Yeah the whole "you're a woman hating privileged misogynist" counter argument to any criticism of her kind of falls apart when it's an inoffensive girl doing it.

I'm curious to see how the self loathing white knights discredit that one.

Leaving the current context aside for a moment, you do realize it's completely possible (and not even that uncommon) for women to be misogynists, right?


Hell, in college one of my roommates' girlfriend wrote a paper called "quit whining, at least you still have an ear" arguing that women have never contributed anything of lasting value to the arts in Western society because their position of social privilege means they never have to really suffer and without suffering you can't create good art blah blah blah.

It's refreshing to see a video that at least pretends to provide a rational counter-argument, and she makes some good points, particularly that, at least in the examples she provides, the princesses are not just "prizes" but also represent order and stability. I liked that point a lot.

But it's a flawed defense. She asserts that Princesses Toadstool and Zelda are highly valued characters who are very important to their particular franchises, and that they "deserve" better than what they're reduced to at the hands of critics like Sarkeesian who "don't value their worth." Sarkeesian's criticism of the trope has nothing to do with how the damsels are "valued" either by other characters in their universe or by gamers; she is calling out the fact that their roles are so limited, stereotyped, and disempowered. If these characters are as compelling as KiteTales claims they are, then why aren't *they* the protagonists, at least once in a while? (And don't you dare mention that abomination Super Princess Peach.) Also, that whole point about MarioKart and Super Smash Bros. really weakens her argument: Peach is obviously there just as the token girl.

Then she does a complete 180 and says that it's all about capitalism and we shouldn't blame companies for giving people what they want, which booooo, what a cop-out to the status quo. Companies and their bottom lines does not mean that we shouldn't try to aim higher, or call out this crap when we see it.

"If these characters are as compelling as KiteTales claims they are, then why aren't *they* the protagonists, at least once in a while?"

do you know these characters? do you know how they behave and their usual role in the story? can you say it would make total sense for them to take another role? do you want them to take another role so they can be the empowered one, or do you want them to take another role because it really would be more suiting to their character that way? it's very sexist to say that they're in that role just because they are a girl. they are in that role because that's the role that suits those characters specifically.

"Also, that whole point about MarioKart and Super Smash Bros. really weakens her argument: Peach is obviously there just as the token girl."

this assumes that the developers of those games gave any shits about what gender the characters are (they didn't, because they are decidedly not sexist). here, i'll tell you what the developers really cared about: they wanted their games to have characters that people love in them. peach isn't there as the token girl, peach is there because people like princess peach. and people don't like her because she's a girl, they like her because she's princess peach.

sorry, but people who really enjoy video games aren't constantly dissecting them to find sexist tropes, they're playing them and loving them. it's easy to defeat sexism, you just don't constantly worry about who's what gender in the first place.

no it isn't you moron

"peach and zelda are empowered because they are princesses" no they aren't because they're rarely if ever shown to command any kind of power and certainly do not so do under player control. it's a meaningless title

"no it isn't you moron"

no what isn't?

""peach and zelda are empowered because they are princesses""

who are you quoting? because it isn't me. i didn't say anything about anybody being empowered, if you will kindly read my post.

"no they aren't because they're rarely if ever shown to command any kind of power..."

you haven't actually played any legend of zelda games have you? or maybe you did without reading completely or paying attention, kind of like you're doing right now.

"...and certainly do not so do under player control. it's a meaningless title"

peach and zelda are fictional characters in fictional worlds, and you're saying their title of "princess" is meaningless because they aren't the protagonist of the story. take another look at my post and then your post, and rebuild it from there please.

It's not entirely her fault; the entire field of sociology and cultural studies operates like that.

My personal favorite example of this was Carol Adams's "The Sexual Politics of Meat". She's a vegan, and one of those batshit postmodernist feminists. Anyway, in the book, she argued that meat eating and sexism were intricately linked. As evidence, she cherry picked a bunch of "sexy" food advertisements - like a voluptuous anthro pig-girl selling bacon - and Japanese guro porn. Because, you know, that's a real valid way of gauging broad cultural trends. Sexy pig adverts and cannibal hentai.

Which guro hentai did she use?

I have to know.

EvilHomer, you may just have encouraged Caminante to read Feminist theory.

Well played.

It's been awhile, but IIRC it was mostly stuff from Kiyomi's Nightmare Room (the rest of you may remember that site from poe-red). She didn't source any of it, but it was stuff you've probably seen before.

She didn't source any of it? She didn't have a bibliography or a 'works cited' section?

That is very unprofessional.

She had a bibliography, just not an imageriography. If you're really curious, you could try contacting her. She gave a guest lecture at my college once, complete with a slideshow of the aforementioned sexy meats and guro pics. Hathor the Cow Goddess came around with her, too. Yeah, THAT Hathor. Gives you a good idea of what you're in for.

Anyway, if you're interested:

www.caroljadams.com/schedule.html

Yes zerdzer, we all know you'll cry when women express their views on things.

You'll cry LIKE A WOMAN.

that's right, if anybody thinks anything calling itself "feminism" is stupid, they're a misogynist. grade A logic there buddy. me disagreeing with anita has nothing to do with her gender or her ideology or anything. i am saying it is stupid.

as a person who actually plays video games, i am very disappointed in anybody who takes anita seriously. she doesn't actually play video games.

ico is a beautiful and romantic game. when i played it, i thought "these two characters are really cute" and i cared for their well being and felt happy when they overcame an obstacle together. if you play ico and you're constantly thinking "wow the way this female character is led around by this male character is so sexist!", then you are the one who is sexist. people like anita really need to just go away; she just inspires people to be sexist like this. it's disgusting.

I'm not saying you hate women because you didn't like the video. I'm saying you hate women because you hate women.

baseless assumptions are pretty worthless, so you can save us all the trouble and just stop posting if you don't have anything of substance to say.

what if you knew i was a girl? would you still say such a stupid thing? probably not. i'm done here.

Oh thank god

on ico: http://pu u.sh/34fq5/807e69538c.png

hopefully you people have actually played this game

Thank god these videos are here to get people mad over video games

That was not meant as a reply

I find it very difficult to believe you are a woman, zerdzer. Only a really shitty misogynist would accuse Anita Sarkeesian of not playing video games. You have to literally not apply your theory of mind to women in order to make an accusation like that. That alone pretty much makes it obvious you're a bigot.

What she's saying is pretty fucking true and obvious, you're just being a big crybaby. You can nitpick about a few things, but if your takeaway was that she was clutching her pearls about how sexist Ico was as she was playing it (I'm assuming it's not sexist in isolation, I didn't play it) then you don't understand what a fucking trope is or why it's important. Maybe you should figure that out before you decide to have an opinion on this video.

zerdzer plays a lot of video games and has very good taste in video games.

Sorry if I've missed any of these recently, zerdzer, as I've been travelling a bit.

"Only a really shitty misogynist would accuse Anita Sarkeesian of not playing video games." blue, do you think about the logic behind your statements? because that is one huge logical leap. i'm accusing anita of not playing video games, and this makes me a sexist? those are two completely unrelated things that have nothing to do with each other. i can see why you might think that way though, because everything bad i say about anita is because she's a woman and i'm just a misogynist, right? do you see how this is messed up?

and no, i don't believe anita plays video games. she SAMPLES them. she has a picture of herself next to a huge stack of xbox 360 video games. even if she had played 10 hours of each one of those games, that wouldn't clear her of being a casual gamer. if she instead took a picture of a small stack of video games that she played a lot, that would indicate she has certain tastes in video games, and that'd make her a lot more credible. i want to see anita playing video games. i want to see her make a let's play of a video game, and finish the whole thing while commenting on what she likes and dislikes the whole way through. i want to see anita love a video game. i want to play a video game with anita, or see other people playing with her. will she ever do these things? she probably won't, because she doesn't understand that people who love video games end up playing single titles for 1000+ hours, sometimes in isolation. anita doesn't love video games, she just wants to appear like she knows what she's talking about, and she messed up at that, too.

on a side note, you can respond to anything i say that isn't matching up to your opinion by just calling me a "misogynist". that's not how you make a point. you might as well call me a "nazi" too, because it's all just name calling, and it's a bad habit. nobody here is treating you like a child, so don't act like one.

not all of them are xbox 360 games. http://pu u.sh/34CuN/7ed77e3fed.jpg

point still stands. there's no way she finished all of those, and most of them aren't even good.

If I ever take anything on YouTube seriously I hope someone puts ME in a refrigerator.

I've enjoyed these videos despite their obvious, glaring flaws but I don't expect them to change many minds about anything.

"because everything bad i say about anita is because she's a woman and i'm just a misogynist"
Exactly

she basically scammed people out of that money.

that money went to a lifetime supply of hoop earings.

NOW it makes sense!

5 stars for nerds getting their lunchmoney stolen!

Idiots overloaded her coffers with spite charity.

No, actually, the scam was the folks who did the anti-Anita kickstarter who said they were going to prove how men were actually the poor, poor victims of tropes in games and then ACTUALLY made off with the money...

http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/13224/article/the-mystery- and-fraud-of-tropes-vs-men-in-videogames/

It's awesome how the "scam" and "spite charity" accusations apply so much more accurately to that Misandry in Games thing.

The anti-Anita kickstarter being the far dumber of the 2 doesn't mean her kickstarter wasn't really dumb to begin with. I'm guessing most kickstarters are just projects people would have happily done for free 5 years ago.

I never said it automatically makes her kickstarter smarter, I just pointed out that the MRA-esque segment of the gamer crowd who decided to be all gross about her apparently DID scam people and then the people who backed didn't really seem to care about being scammed, which kinda says a lot about them, really.

That said, anyone who actually has a problem with her soliciting donations via kickstarter for her project is functionally retarded.

how did she scam people? she created a kickstarter asking people for money so she could create videos examining women in videogames. people voluntarily gave her money and she is providing what she promised. it really shows how worthless and whiny internet males are and how much they spaz out when feminism is mentioned

She's winning by making you give a fuck.

Nah I'd say you're right.

I dunno, Anita's stuff always comes across as coming with the thesis before doing research then cherry picking the research to match the thesis. Her presentation takes the wikipedia article recital approach instead of making any kind of connect the dots or leaps of understanding that an insightful critic would make.

And what kind of person actually refers to themselves as a "pop culture critic" ?

On top of that, if she is a pop culture critic, aren't there more pressing matters to be discussed? Even from a Feminist perspective, why not call attention to the lack of female directors, or female minority leads, or which shows and books are doing a good job of representing women, or projects are in production that are being lead by females? Her biggest failing, is that she never really points anyone in the right direction, she just says "this is wrong" and finds another topic to say that about. I sincerely do not condone gamers reactions to her, but I can't defend someone who isn't offering anything more than a critique. Anyone can have an opinion of something, but a critic at the lowest tier knows how to fix what they don't like.

"She's targeting a hobby of an extremely large swath of people, whom are all quite individuated from one another, and correlating the hobby as being directly responsible for why women are consistently oppressed in culture."

You seem to be saying your hobby is too fragile and precious to bear feminist criticism. How dare she misinterpret the brilliant mind behind the sexy cheerleader zombie game!

Don't get me wrong Killer 7's a masterpiece, but Suda's not a god. He does deserve to get called out for the misogyny in his gaems.

Her videos are high-minded, thinly-veiled moral masturbation labeled as criticism. I don't think someone like her is capable of giving valid criticism because she can't see past her own shallow perceptions.

You misunderstand Sudan, when I mention hobby and individuals, I'm trying to emphasize the difference between a soccer fan and a football hooligan.

Her criticism isn't reflective of being a benign look at the hobby itself, as she correlates it directly to the people who play it, which is funny because most of the games she mentions not only aren't played, but aren't even where real bad stuff happens like cyberbullying in COD or otherwise. I'm not saying that games are above feminist criticism, I'm just saying that she's terrible at it, and that if she's going to take on gaming from that perspective, she should either become a game journalist, join one of the many groups in gaming that are already trying to do something about these issues, or do anything instead of goading the public into believing that she's an authority on gaming culture when she seems to know next to nothing about it in general.

Hell, if she really wanted to do something relevant, she should start analyzing sports and correlation between the behaviors in the games, and how that carries into culture. Not only has that really not been touched upon by a feminist yet (as far as I know), but it has a lot more invasive and prevalent effect on our daily lives imo. Speaking to the topics of what you could call patriarchy at this point.

And you're right, Suda is but one part of the holy trinity, being Jesus. Rounded out by the father, Alan Moore, and the holy spirit of Guillermo Del Toro, he's just doing god's work :)

No I get it, I've got my gripes to Suda too, as NMH2 (which is the only American grasshopper game I haven't completed) had that awful scene with Nathan and those two girls with fro's, on top of possessing a way more emphasized sexuality as opposed to just Travis being a nerdy dork. I thought he jumped the shark with that one, but I realize that it's all purposeful, not unlike Tarantino directing Samuel L Jackson. Most of his games are built to reflect the fact that game design and narrative hasn't grown out of the 80's action film yet, it's like a meta critique/deconstruction of gaming and culture tropes each time actually, and not only do I find it extremely entertaining, but it's worth paying attention to as well.

Also yes, Killer7 is fucking art.

"Hell, if she really wanted to do something relevant, she should start analyzing sports and correlation between the behaviors in the games, and how that carries into culture ... it has a lot more invasive and prevalent effect on our daily lives imo."

Ugh, seriously? You do realize that this is a classic derailment tactic that idiots use against women-related issues all the time right? "Hey, why are you whining you only make 3/4 of what a man in the same position makes? Young girls are being murdered in honor killings in Pakistan RIGHT NOW and you're not doing anything about it!"

Yes, there are bigger problems in the world. Because of Sarkeesian's videos (which, for better or worse, have touched a nerve), people are discussing the issue of sexism in the game industry. It's okay, we can deal with multiple problems at once.

Okay Jane, bad additional content there, I'll avoid using as much in the future. Does the rest of argument hold up though?

I'll admit, the focus on the issue has reached a wider audience since last year, but gaming/nerd culture has been dealing with this on it's own for quite some time now, and more effectively. The trope in her last video was coined by comics writer Gail Simone many years ago, who became the head of Vertigo comics during the time of series like Y: The Last Man, who's influence has opened the industry a great deal more to women since. Rhianna Pratchett, who I cited above for her #reasontobe, has helped to stimulate not only general interest in working in gaming, but has helped to defeat these tropes by creating interesting female characters like Nariko in Heavenly Sword, Faith from Mirror's Edge, and most recently the latest incarnation of Tomb Raider.

Sarkeesian is working off of already well researched topics, and adding no additional content to the conversation, apart from having a megaphone and talking at people who have no idea what to be upset at. She got a huge sum of money and a massive amount of publicity to do these videos, so I expect to see some worthwhile research done, and I honestly can't see that from what I've been shown. I guess whenever she decides to change topics, we'll see how well she does as a critic. Overall you guys are right though, this is starting a massive conversation about something that needs to be addressed, and I'm grateful that it is, but I just prefer to be able to cheer on the people that do it, and not frown upon them for being unscrupulous.

Egads I've never talked this much on this site ever, I need to go back into lurk so I'm not making such an ass of myself :D

Oh right, I'm actually watching the thing as I type now >_

I don't agree entirely because I'm not sure why so many people insist that she is an "outsider" to gaming and outsiders have no right to critique its products. What does one have to do to prove one is part of that community, exactly? It ironically proves her point: that these games are alienating and unwelcoming to women.

But I get what you mean, and I have no doubt that this topics are well-worn in the gaming industry itself, but I think that people make a mistake when they think Sarkeesian's audience IS the gaming industry. It's not: her target is young people. There's a reason her approach can often come off as overly simplistic, and why she identifies broad tropes to the detriment of context: she's trying to give a vocabulary to an unsophisticated group of people who otherwise wouldn't have it so that they can identify them on their own. Her "straw feminist" trope, for instance, has caught on like wildfire because it so perfectly identified a pernicious TV-trope that might have gone unnoticed by anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass in an ivory-tower academy.

Is she the ideal speaker for dealing with this issue? Not really. I get that people find her overly strident sometimes, and she does over-simplify thing in order to give her points more "punch." (Her complaint about sci-fi shows turning pregnancy into a horrorshow, for instance, elides over the fact that a lot those plots accommodated the actress's RL pregnancies so that they could keep working). But maybe the conversation needed someone as contentious as her to expose the astonishingly misogynistic underbelly of the industry she's addressing. Because in all honesty, as a woman the mob hate-rage against her has been shit-my-pants terrifying.

moron stumbles across field of critical studies, gets butthurt, doesn't watch video, writes 10 thousand words about it, has autism

Okay, I think I know what you're referring to when you say that I'm casting her as an outsider, but I'm not rejecting her presence, I'm saying that she doesn't know what she's talking about. Typically when a person engages a community, they share an interest with that community, and though you can't make a judgement whether or not the typical person has genuine interest, she makes her stance known by essentially poorly reviewing these games. If she had played them, I know for a fact that she wouldn't have included several on her list. Granted, after watching the video, I can say she provided some valid examples for her narrative, but again, she's got about 30 games there from a span of maybe 10 years give or take. Lots of games have come out between here and there, and I could pick many more that do the opposite of what she's saying, if you give me a little time. She's not an outsider because she's a woman, or because she's critiquing. She's an outsider because she has a cherry picked argument against a community of people, for things they aren't necessarily even involved in, or associated with. Other people have done the same for other mediums such as rap music, and were met with the same type of backlash, not saying that it makes it okay to be cruel to someone else, but it's a consistent pattern with people and their affinity toward media.

While I see what you're saying, I don't think I agree. Most young people play video games, and they aren't in anyway lacking critical thinking skills. The majority of games Anita cites here are moderately well reviewed, low sale games, and I would say that there would have to be forethought for the consumers in question to determine that they don't want to engage such narratives. It's my opinion, but I think that she's talking to an older demographic, one that doesn't have the time to sit down with games to understand them, and another which has come to her defense over what they've observed from the outside. Simplification of details isn't a bad thing, but a person has to have a firm grasp on that material, in order to communicate to others a base of the finer points contained within. Her simplification engineers the same problem we see in our schools, as it overreaches, becoming something that thought isn't required for, making the subject appear more toxic than it is. Then again, if she simplified correctly, her video series would likely be ignored in favor of the over arching problem which you already touched on, which is the behavior of the gaming community itself.

From what I'm able to observe, people aren't concerned with the content of her videos in the first place. Gamers don't want to be portrayed as sexist zealots, and the mainstream (can't come up with a better term sorry) wants to do something about them. I'm not going to defend the gamer community, because even though I'm a part of it via hobby, I can't control what people think, nor stop them from acting in ways that I consider harmful. What I will tell you is that I'm a poc, and though I've only been called a racial epithet once in my life, I couldn't tell you how many times I've encountered such words playing games online. It used to shock me how ready certain people were to just be verbally abusive, even more jarring when I would become the point of ire, but I've come to understand that if I want to continue enjoying online gaming, that it's something which comes with the territory. Just like I can't control the other aspects of being a gamer, I have to accept that I can't make a racist not play Anarchy Reigns, or League of Legends, or any other number of games I like. Do I think it's fair I have to encounter hate messages, even though these people don't even know I'm a minority? No. Considering that I'm not the only person who plays games and thinks like myself, it doesn't stop me from doing what I like to do. Misogynists watch films, read books, and listen to music too, but we can't make them stop doing that unless people take them on directly. I get it, Anita thinks she's found the hive and needs to kill it with fire, but just like she talks about other media influencing people unconsciously, her media is doing the same thing to the detriment of a person like myself, for as far as I can tell, no greater goal. I don't like the kids who threaten rape, or act antagonistically anymore than you do, but if Anita wants to do something to change gaming itself, she should work with gamers in positive initiatives which people can join, and be a part of. She could create an indie game contest to develop something that portrays women more positively, or partner with a developer to get gamers to design something with them, or join with the other groups that are already working towards such goals. Sitting back, judging, and creating new villains for other people to pursue through a bias lens, isn't going to do too much though. Gaming, like the internet, and life, is free space. Even though we share spaces with people who are backward, doesn't mean that we have to respond in the same fashion they subscribe to, a la, hating away hate. The only way our culture has ever changed is through positive reinforcement and inclusion, and how we're dealing with gaming right now, is just a microcosm of what will proceed in the future in other avenues of society. We can construct something else here, but that'll take more than just picking a side to stand on.

...okay just looking at that last line, didn't mean to turn this into a snowflake knight afterschool special, but I just thought it might have been necessary to illustrate the point.

There's an impressive number of clips in these videos. If she's never played a lot of these games before (which she probably hasn't) and if she's doing all the research itself, I imagine that would have to take a while.

Given the gigantic windfall the kickstarter provided, though, you'd think she could just hire a few other people to do the research for her.

Sooo, she should be analyzing tropes in video games that aren't sexist instead?

Hahaha, curious username choice.

The trope meme is the new meme meme.

Rape is empowering.

Woops, meant to be a reply to Caminante's rape threat comment below.

The spot I put it in makes that comment sound really creepy.

Thanks to TV Tropes I have a conditioned gut reaction against anyone who uses it.

This troper thinks that's an example of "Periphery Hatedom". Contrast "Love Tropes".

p.s. nabiki tendo rulez!!!!!! follow this link to c my homestuck fanfiction: glarglebarglecocks.net

Those rape threats were the best thing that ever happened to her career.

And sometimes I doubt the ability of Caminante to not be a creepy nerd

I wish there was some way to save this Caminante quote for posterity, like the way police keep evidence in Ziploc bags

I'm sure he's trying to imply something idiotic, but in terms of the facts, he's right.

Back in 1861, someone in the north described those who fired on Sumter as "the greatest practical abolitionists this country has known". It's true in a very real sense, but it doesn't make them liberating heroes.

In the 21st century, racists and misogynists have become obsessed with "equality", a concept which they apply with a compulsive and relentless literalness that borders on asperger's. Racists think it's racist that blacks can use the word Nigger with each other, and whites can't use the word with blacks. Now, black people calling each other niggers is not very classy, IMO, but context is a thing.

Like the N word, threatening a woman with rape is something that's been used to intimidate and degrade, and the internet has made it much more common. Threatening a man with rape is not classy. Threatening a woman with rape is deeply offensive, and it's usually directed at women who want to have a voice. It doesn't matter how credible the threat is. That's how much of a taboo there ought to be against this sort of thing.

NSFW
http://www.mediafire.com/view/ww82l9mfvotjbt1/136918576935.png

http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/5ff7/b8vni1eyrooprrufg.jpg

Unless she's advocating government censorship, it's called criticism. As a genral principle, criticism of women in refrigerators is as a valid as women in refigerators. If you're acting like rape threats are valid and feminist criticism is invalid (and some guys really do that) you're not only a horrible human being, you are among the greatest practical feminists our nation has produced.


I don't think I'll be returning permanently. Catie turned me on to MLP, and you don't come back from something like that.

http://youtu.be/ArvcpJJZkAs

Critical analysis in general doesn't have a very good track record when it comes to parsing satire or irony.

She reminds me of that woman critic who was on a show with Patrice O'Neal (I think it's called "Patrice explains humor" or something on youtube). She had made such a career out of "outrage" that it had become just an assembly line manufactured product to her: fine piece of media with superficially offensive trait, tout it up in all the circuits.

Anita started this back in her academic days. Her job was to crank out papers that made her thesis look correct so she just slapped on any surface sexism she could find in TV shows; it's all about filling those pages and not disproving your own thesis. Then she won the lottery and stumbled on this cash cow. Just another continuation of cutting each example short as soon as it "proves" her point; no need to dig past the surface at that point as it can only weaken her stance.

Just like the woman critic didn't get the actual meaning behind Patrice's "angry pirate" routine before cranking out another outrage product (basically, anyone who has ever laughed at a donkey punch joke is a violent woman beater), Anita only looks as far as she needs to prove herself right.

I mean, how else could anyone think Ico as malicious? What well adjusted person who actually played the game walked away with any impression other than "two kids need each other and work together to get out of a bad situation"?

I agree, we all know the bionic commando remake was dogshit.

Yeah, that was awful.

There aren't enough stars in the sky for that.

That's what struck me as weird about the Tomb Raider reboot. It didn't break away from that eye candy body type at yet everyone was hailing it as progressive. Because she's covered in blood and filth? Because we see her scream and cry in pain a lot?

Whereas most games present an action game upfront with the T&A as eye candy distractions, Tomb Raider seemed like an excuse to parade around really disturbing fetishes.

NO YOU ARE WRONG BECAUSE

1. [manboy thesis on videogames]

2. [joke about women's studies]

I assume that budget mostly went to paying for food and rent while she spent months playing Through the games as a full time job. I mean, it doesn't take much money to write a novel because all you need is laptop and a chair, right?

I've never read a novel in my entire life. How should I know what it takes to write one?

My point is that just because production costs are low doesn't mean a person's time is free if they have to actually, you know, provide for their basic necessities for living. 00 isn't that much to ask for her time and effort. Just because people have been convinced that their time and effort isn't worth money if it's expended on something that happens on line doesn't mean that's actually the case.

Fair point. Still, as others have pointed out, this kind of thing will gradually lead younger people to demand more from videogames, and that in and of itself constitutes education for a certain segment of the internet.

It may not do much for you and me (besides showing us some embarrassingly hilarious videogame clips) and I think this kind of thing could be much much better. But I am glad it exists.

More what, though?

Tipper Gore may raise some valid points about the moral and social irresponsibility of video games and rock music, but do we really want to see people demand more of the stuff *she'd* like to see?

This.

I wonder why people don't write 6000 word essays on "why this cow is such a beauty?"