The big Phil Fish, Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian discussion thread

super_furry

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

i mentioned three seperate real examples and you are the one that focused on the sex. I also mentioned that we don't know what Zoey or the reviewers were up to but you took this to be a slight on her alone. It's very possible reviewers are the ones taking advantage of their position. You made it all about her, not me.

That's because this IS all about her. Look back over the past 50 pages of the thread. There's no-one here being falsely accused of handing out iPads for good reviews - reviews that never existed at all. The very fact that you mentioned sexual favours for reviews, again reviews that never existed, means that we simply can't be talking about anyone else.

kunst nugget

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

On a micro level, I can't trust early access reviews because it seems there is inevitably going to be some strings attached. Whether it's because the reviewers got exclusive access, free ipads or blowjobs there is just a complete lack of reliability in them.

On a macro level, people spend money on **** games based on biased reviews and this damages the market.

I never trusted early access interviews before this and not being a day one purchaser of games, I have always checked out other people's impression of the game before buying. It has made absolutely zero difference to me as a game consumer.

If you exercise a bit of caution, you can avoid spending money on crap games.

COYVB

Based on the coverage over the past little while, is it fair we surmise that any woman involved in gaming getting abuse online is getting the abuse because she's a woman? That it's all purely because of her gender, and if she was a man, she would have gotten no such abuse?

Does this mean Phil Fish or any of the countless men who put up with the same crap regularly have vaginas?

Or could it be that sexism really isn't a core reason for any of this?

A large vocal part of the gaming community are assholes. They're assholes to men and assholes to women. The gender of the person in their crosshairs is pretty much never the reason they're doling out abuse, for the most part it only dictates what flavour abuse they get.

Is the kind of abuse used for male gamers/developers/etc. equally sexist? Or does it only become sexist when the person isn't male?

Little CuChulainn

super_furry wrote: »

That's because this IS all about her. Look back over the past 50 pages of the thread. There's no-one here being falsely accused of handing out iPads for good reviews - reviews that never existed at all. The very fact that you mentioned sexual favours for reviews, again reviews that never existed, means that we simply can't be talking about anyone else.

The Zoe Quinn stuff was only the end example in a string of reviewer compromising issues, the straw that broke the camels back. The iPads were given out by Ubisoft at an event for Watch Dogs I believe. There was also the Xbox deal were reviewers got money per youtube view as long as they agreed to post positive content. There was the reviewer exclusivity deal for Bioshock Infinte before that.

kunst nugget wrote: »

I never trusted early access interviews before this and not being a day one purchaser of games, I have always checked out other people's impression of the game before buying. It has made absolutely zero difference to me as a game consumer.

If you exercise a bit of caution, you can avoid spending money on crap games.

The point is you should be able to trust them.

kunst nugget

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

The point is you should be able to trust them.

Why? I wouldn't trust them from any other part of the entertainment industry…

Little CuChulainn

kunst nugget wrote: »

Why? I wouldn't trust them from any other part of the entertainment industry…

That's hardly a reason to let them off.

kunst nugget

Little CuChulainn wrote: »

That's hardly a reason to let them off.

So, what should I do? I wasn't going to bother playing Depression Quest anyway and I don't read Kotaku.

Genghiz Cohen

kunst nugget wrote: »

So, what should I do? I wasn't going to bother playing Depression Quest anyway and I don't read Kotaku.

Do you read any of the other sites involved in the #GamerGate ordeal?

kunst nugget

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Do you read any of the other sites involved in the #GamerGate ordeal?

Generally, I might read the occasional article or review but usually I'll ask for the opinion of a game on here on some of the threads I follow. Tbh, I'll take any of the info on these sites with the same grain of salt I would have had before this all kicked off. All that ethics of journalism in relation to light entertainment websites is a load of phooey.

e_e

COYVB wrote: »

Based on the coverage over the past little while, is it fair we surmise that any woman involved in gaming getting abuse online is getting the abuse because she's a woman? That it's all purely because of her gender, and if she was a man, she would have gotten no such abuse?

Does this mean Phil Fish or any of the countless men who put up with the same crap regularly have vaginas?

Or could it be that sexism really isn't a core reason for any of this?

A large vocal part of the gaming community are assholes. They're assholes to men and assholes to women. The gender of the person in their crosshairs is pretty much never the reason they're doling out abuse, for the most part it only dictates what flavour abuse they get.

Is the kind of abuse used for male gamers/developers/etc. equally sexist? Or does it only become sexist when the person isn't male?

Are you really denying that there's a "this is out treehouse and now girls are allowed!!!" mentality to what is happening to Sarkeesian? It's so blindingly obvious to me that I can't see a man in their situation get anywhere near the same level of frankly ridiculous responses. Again when somebody is calling out misogyny and a tonne of the responses are "Shut the f**k up feminazi c***! Stay in the kitchen!" it does kind of prove their point does it not?

As for the "men get nasty comments too" argument one hardly cancels out the other. As well as this men getting insulted online rarely has anything to do with their gender.

johnny_ultimate

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I didn't watch all the video because it's guilty of the exact same things he is accusing thunderfoot of so I stopped about 10 minutes in, let me know if the last 20 minutes are really worth it.

Thanks for the in-depth response first of all, will respond to what I can Apologies for the wall of text to follow

As for the video, it is worth watching the rest, as he does offer some interesting readings of the whole Hitman Absolution sequence to counter and expand on the points raised by Sarkeesian and Thunderf00t alike. Mostly, though, just for the jawdropping clip of Hitman Sniper Challenge, which is a far more damning example than anything in Absolution. Here's a clip of it - the significations of watching a striptease through a (functional) sniper scope are pretty troubling!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZt3Cgx_8Ns

"Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during the play through. The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon. Because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representation of female sexuality."

She may have been talking about all games there, but she ran the hitman clip because it's the best looking example of what she wants to portray.

This section is indeed in the context of a more general point about how games work, and then segues not all that cleanly onto the specifically female character point. The argument's transition is awkward and unconvincing, but in the wider context of the argument she's making there is a point - even acknowledging that all the NPCs in Hitman (and other games) are there to be 'played with' and 'experimented with', there does tend to be significant variances in the way males and females are portrayed. Could you see, for example, the same sequence playing out in a male strip joint? It would actually be pretty startling considering how rare that type of imagery is in games - but male strippers aren't actually a rare presence in both other forms of media and IRL. In many games, though, it's only ever heavily sexualised females that exist for violent experimentation. There are male NPCs too, absolutely susceptible to the same level of player violence if they so choose - it's the type of representation that is different

She does a similar thing with Fallout, where you can pick up the body of a scantily clad women and move it around like a ragdoll. Ignoring the fact that you can do this with literally every non-essential character in the game and the game in no way encourages you to violently murder women, you will in fact be punished for it if you do it in the cities where the scantily clad women are found.

Two additional points here. 1) The reason she doesn't mention the male equivalent is because it's not part of her argument. She's not condoning violence against men by its exclusion, but more that it isn't relevant to the points she's making. She is merely looking at ways females specifically are represented in the games, and giving some examples. Just to clarfiy on that: a more 'universal' look at violence in games is something I for one would warmly welcome because there are definitely many gender-neutral issues at play, but I don't feel it's really within Sarkeesian's scope here given the specific tropes she's addressing. 2) Sarkeesian does point out that punishments exist, but they are more often than not extremely trivial. A minor drop in your reputation or a temporary 'wanted' status are one thing, but it would make a very different statement if there was a deeper consequence to your reactions. Something like the way you were permanently labelled a 'THIEF' in Link's Awakening if you steal an item - that's a very real and long-lasting punishment for the player, much more so than a minor score reduction.

Women are constantly represented as primarily for sex. Men may be sexual too but they can also be anything else. They’re not defined by or reduced to their sexuality and their sexuality is not thought of as something existing chiefly for the pleasure of others. Which means the fundamentally dominant position of men in our culture is not in anyway challenged or diminished by their rare male depiction as a sex worker."

Completely ignoring all the strong female characters out there and claiming that only women can be harmed by sexual stereotypes.

Just to clarify she hasn't ignored all the strong female characters, and has actually reserved one of the future videos to talk about them One thing worth remembering is that, as of yet, the series is incomplete - while certainly individual points are worthy of critique, we do sort of have to wait until the end to see what exactly has and has not been ignored. She has already referenced positive examples and subversions of tropes at the end of a couple of the videos, and it's something that will hopefully be expanded on before the series finishes.

As for her point you quote, personally I agree with it. There are far, far more examples of female 'sex objects' in games than there are men. If the tables were turned it would definitely be equally worthy of scorn and criticism, but the balance at the moment is sadly completely lopsided. I'm sure we've all walked through many a strip club or encountered many a female prostitute in games - similar examples are much rarer when it comes to males. Not that the hyper-sexualised male doesn't exist in gaming, of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF-gqOeio2I

In the summary bit of the women as background video she describes how objectifying women in games causes women to have eating disorders and mental disorders such as depression. While in men it makes them view women as less intelligent and less competent. It makes all genders more tolerant of sexual harassment and rape. Without once backing up what she says with any sort of evidence.

I've always felt her attempts to reference existing research and real-world consequences has been a weak point throughout the series so far - I don't necessarily always disagree with the general statement, but she struggles to expand upon them thoroughly. She's gone for a strange compromise of occasional academic reference, and other times making statements without much context. TBH, I don't think a YouTube video is an efficient way of referencing academic texts and research, and Sarkeesian stumbles when trying to transition to that area - I think her arguments are much stronger when they're based on content analysis with illustrative clips.

"Unlike traditional media gaming offers players the unique opportunity to use and exploit female bodies themselves. This forces gamers to become complicit with developers in making sexual objectification a participatory activity."

Again, I don't think she's making too much of a stretch here. I personally have been forced to participate in sexual objectification in games on occasion. Something like Silent Scope where the lives system is based on looking at scantily clad women through a sniper scope (that again!!!) - the game becomes much more difficult without it, so yeah to a degree we are 'forced'. The intentions might be completely harmless, careless or light-hearted - in many cases, developers might have simply put it in without really thinking about it, or maybe even been forced to do so by publishers. But when examples like into a wider trend of cultural representation, they're worthy of critique, even when the motivations behind were not insidious. And I don't think that's a personal attack on the developers, more an attempt to encourage them to think more actively about these issues.

Finally, I think it's worth ending with this exchange between Spelunky Derek Yu and Sarkeesian. I think it's a good counter to the argument earlier in the thread that these videos haven't made any discernible impact, but Sarkeesian's response also illustrates her point that it's possible to be critical of a certain aspect of a game while still enjoying and appreciating it overall

COYVB

e_e wrote: »

men getting insulted online rarely has anything to do with their gender.

That's kind of my point. Assholes will be assholes to whoever is listening/reading/watching. I'm of the opinion that there's little in terms of sexism when it comes to abuse received by many (but not all, of course) women online. If they had balls and were in the same situation they'd still be getting abuse from assholes, but just a different flavour of abuse, because assholes will always be assholes.

COYVB

e_e wrote: »

Are you really denying that there's a "this is out treehouse and now girls are allowed!!!" mentality to what is happening to Sarkeesian?

For the most part, yes.

She got pretty much the same level of guff as Phil Fish

Timmyctc

COYVB wrote: »

That's kind of my point. Assholes will be assholes to whoever is listening/reading/watching. I'm of the opinion that there's little in terms of sexism when it comes to abuse received by many (but not all, of course) women online. If they had balls and were in the same situation they'd still be getting abuse from assholes, but just a different flavour of abuse, because assholes will always be assholes.

COYVB wrote: »

For the most part, yes.

She got pretty much the same level of guff as Phil Fish

Have to +1 this.

Somewhere in this thread someone linked to a tumblr or blog or some such site that basically was females screencapping Xbox Live or PSN messages they get from angry 12 year olds telling them "get back in the kitchen" etc etc calling them whores, sluts and the like. Specifically attacking them "for being a woman" . Some people point to this as evidence of a problem with the gaming community RE: Sexism. But like These guys attack EVERYONE and they will attack what little they know. More often than not I've been attacked for being Irish. Loads of "fenian ****" and 'paddy *insert expletive*' One guy thought I was Canadian the other week on Insurgency and attacked me loads for it.

I've heard guys on CoD attack other members of our team for being asians or blacks. I've been called a 'Rushing fag' for attacking objs and a 'camping fag' for defending objs on BF

I don't think any of the above have personal gripes with Women, Irishmen, Canadians, Blacks or Asians, people who rush objectives or people who hang back in any of their regular day lives or in games in general. I just think they are angry pathetic humans who like to act hard because they are largely anonymous and they weren't hugged as a child, also they generally get their asses handed to them on a silver platter so that probably sparks some of the rage.

When this abuse is aimed at guys its just 'flaming' or whatever. But a lot of the time when their abuse is tailor made for a woman its seen as a clear sexist problem with 'Gamers?' (Anyone who claims that the term 'gamer' is anything other than someone who plays games in any capacity is just wrong btw)

There's definitely an issue with Sexism in gaming and with Gamers in general but there's a much, much larger issue with assholes.

Clockwork Owl

While I’ll never understand this business of death threats and what-not, I do have serious concerns about Sarkeesian’s methodology and point of view.

Firstly, I find her definition of a 'feminist character' deeply patronising and reductive. Sarkeesian claims to want characters that are flawed and complicated, but the women she puts forward rarely seem to reflect that. Martha (Doctor Who) and Veronica Mars are allegedly stand-out feminist icons, both of whom I found patronising and smug in their ‘wittiness’. On the other hand, Trinity (The Matrix), Mattie (True Grit) and Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica) are dismissed as ‘simply acting like men’ - not feminist characters at all, but blokes with breasts attached. In Anita's own words, 'true' feminist characters should be ‘emotionally expressive, affectionate and co-operative’. Instead of using violence as a means to solve their issues (as, it is implied, is the standard for men), a 'true' feminist character must utilise intelligence, teamwork and empathy to resolve any and every crisis. As a woman who is not at all emotionally expressive, affectionate or co-operative, I take issue with this suggestion that there’s some compulsory ‘female’ checklist I’m not fulfilling. I don’t appreciate Anita Sarkeesian’s implication that I’m not being female correctly.

Similarly, it feels like there’s no pleasing her. In ‘Damsels in Distress: Part 3’, Sarkeesian criticises the trope for disempowering women to empower a male protagonist. She mentions ‘The Secret Of Monkey Island’ - a game in which the protagonist’s intelligent, calm and capable love interest is kidnapped and proceeds to rescue herself, only to have her ‘gallant knight’ interrupt and ruin her otherwise successful plan. This seems to be the exact opposite of the trope - a female character is empowered enough to escape and really has no need for the protagonist at all. However, Sarkeesian asserts that this is not a feminist subversion of this trope, and that the trope cannot be subverted unless the game’s protagonist is female. Several other games are criticised because of a perceived sexist trope in the game’s background despite containing complicated, powerful and influential female characters in the game’s foreground (Dishonored, Far Cry 3). Several arguments hinge on preferential treatment for female characters over men as opposed to true equality - for example, that all female characters must have fully-fledged plot arcs, aspirations and backgrounds, and that female characters must be immune from the gratuitous violence doled out against their male counterparts. Sarkeesian moves the goal posts further and further back and closer and closer together, until it barely seems worthwhile for devs to try and satisfy her.

Lastly, false equivalence runs rife in her videos: Sarkeesian presents one unambiguously sexist image or clip and then displays several others in quick succession, implying that they are all products of the same sexist trope and deserving of the same criticism. The most obvious example was her criticism of the ‘Beautifully Executed’ campaign for ‘Hitman: Blood Money’, in which female corpses are blatantly sexualised and displayed partially nude, unlike their fully-clothed male counterparts. As an extension of this criticism, she accuses ‘LA Noire’ of ‘using similar images’ and ‘displaying the sexualised dead bodies of murdered women’. Put the two side by side, however, and there’s not much similarity at all.

Hitman: Blood Money: http://i.imgur.com/rjcURWX.png - photographs of models posed provocatively, with much of their body on show… versus
LA Noire: http://i.imgur.com/lcvJ7X6.png - haunting and surreal illustrations with little flesh on show. The left image uses shapeless material to preserve the woman’s dignity.

Other examples are available, including the oft-mentioned ‘Hitman: Absolution’ argument. The following are a few I gathered from my relatively mainstream taste in media:

• The branding of Jasmine Jolene (Bioshock) as ‘background decoration’ - a female character without history or personality, intended only to titillate a straight male player.
• The inclusion of Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica) in the ‘Mystical Pregnancy’ trope - in which a female character is impregnated by some supernatural force, gives birth to a demon/alien/magical baby and is not in any way affected by this ordeal. Starbuck is deeply affected by her forced pregnancy and it plays a substantial part in the show's storyline.
• Mystique (X-Men) and Caprica Six (Battlestar Galactica) both being simplified into the ‘Evil Demon Seductress’ trope, reducing their only strength to their sexuality.
• Niki Sanders (Heroes) is depicted as a Woman In A Refrigerator - the trope in which men die heroically while women are killed in ways that seem tragic, pointless and ultimately pathetic. Considering Niki dies in an explosion after rescuing Monica from a burning building, this is objectively untrue.

This leads to a criticism of Sarkeesian that her supporters often claim is irrelevant, but which displays itself in these examples of false equivalence. We can assume that Sarkeesian is lying or manipulating footage to support her own points but, more likely, she simply has not played these games or watched these shows to the extent that she understands their wider storyline. It has been argued that Sarkeesian does not need to be a gamer to critique games and that her detractors are settling for a ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy to discredit this so-called ‘outsider’. Realistically though, Sarkeesian’s lack of knowledge about her own examples implies a lackadaisical approach to her research, raises questions about her trustworthiness and weakens the position from which her arguments are made.

johnny_ultimate

Thanks for that Clockwork Owl, easily one of the best articulated and intelligent critiques of Sarkeesian's work I've read. I find it hard to disagree with any of your particular points, although I would raise minor arguments with two little bits:

Clockwork Owl wrote: »

Similarly, it feels like there’s no pleasing her. In ‘Damsels in Distress: Part 3’, Sarkeesian criticises the trope for disempowering women to empower a male protagonist. She mentions ‘The Secret Of Monkey Island’ - a game in which the protagonist’s intelligent, calm and capable love interest is kidnapped and proceeds to rescue herself, only to have her ‘gallant knight’ interrupt and ruin her otherwise successful plan. This seems to be the exact opposite of the trope - a female character is empowered enough to escape and really has no need for the protagonist at all. However, Sarkeesian asserts that this is not a feminist subversion of this trope, and that the trope cannot be subverted unless the game’s protagonist is female.

Having watched that section back, I would say she's actually positive about The Secret of Monkey Island's (and Braid's) twisting of the trope, and says she'd like to see more of that sort of thing. I think her only argument is that for a complete subversion, or a total reversal, the story would be seen through an active, well-developed anti-damsel's perspective. We're probably just picking up different inflections here (and weirdly the transition to the Monkey Island bit actually seems to set up a negative commentary that never arrives).

Several other games are criticised because of a perceived sexist trope in the game’s background despite containing complicated, powerful and influential female characters in the game’s foreground (Dishonored, Far Cry 3).

I do think it is fair to point out representational concerns in the background, even if excellent work is being done in the foreground - especially in the context of exploring women as 'background objects'. Once again, I feel a lot of this is resting on the final video in the series, to see the parameters she sets for the 'positive' characters, and how willing she is to identify well-developed and smartly written characters in games, especially ones she's already highlighted as featuring the tropes she explores.

One thing I agree completely with you on is the need for 'strong' female characters to fit snugly into set criteria. A well-developed and fascinating female character can be, for example, a horrible, mean, cruel, lazy, selfish person - take Charlize Theron's Mavis in Young Adult as a particularly vivid case study. Demanding every type of female character fulfill certain personality traits (usually positive) is a narrow-minded approach - one could even suggest a trope all of its own. Interesting characters are almost always flawed and troubled - even basic likeability is far from a key factor. It's something all games should bear in mind, as they're far too often full of one-dimensional heroes and villains. Good writing is rarely that black & white.

hatrickpatrick

I'm intending to make a wider thread about this on AH or Politics Cafe (not just relating to games but to all forms of entertainment media) but I thought I'd ask here first, since I've been thinking about this for a long time but GamerGate has spurred me to start actually discussing it:

First let me preface this by saying that i'm an activist for all kinds of things and I have the utmost respect for activists around the world and across the political spectrum. Even those whose views I strongly disagree with, I still admire for the fact that they are willing to take decisive action to further those views as opposed to simply calling Joe Duffy (within reason of course).

Here's my issue. Is anyone else getting sick to death of the trend over the last couple of years for activists, particularly (sorry to say this, but it has to be said) those of the general social justice umbrella, to essentially lambast entertainment media which sticks to the principle of being purely for fun and refuses to take positions or further agendas, politically speaking?

Take the whole Tropes Vs Women thing - I'm not objecting to her right to free speech, but does it annoy anyone else that she wants video games to bend to a political ideology and make it all about "the message you're sending" "the ideology you're encouraging" and "the culture you're helping to support" as opposed to simply playing games because they're FUN and not giving a rat's ass about politics in any way, shape or form?

Why does every single media have to be turned into a battleground for political issues? It's my opinion that games should just be games and that people should write whatever storylines come to mind without having to consider what kind of reaction they're going to get from political agendas and those who support those agendas. For instance, no one is suggesting that the player's behavior in GTA is appropriate for reality but the point of games is that they're not reality.

If I could offer a musical analogy, Taylor Swift is regularly attacked for her lyrics focusing on relationships and heartbreak because "you're encouraging young girls to be dependent" or whatever, Twilight has been a victim of the same.
Whatever happened to art for the sake of art and not for the sake of education / indoctrination / agenda pushing / politics / brainwashing / whatever?

Generic Dreadhead

Clockwork Owl wrote: »

She mentions ‘The Secret Of Monkey Island’ - a game in which the protagonist’s intelligent, calm and capable love interest is kidnapped and proceeds to rescue herself, only to have her ‘gallant knight’ interrupt and ruin her otherwise successful plan. This seems to be the exact opposite of the trope - a female character is empowered enough to escape and really has no need for the protagonist at all. However, Sarkeesian asserts that this is not a feminist subversion of this trope, and that the trope cannot be subverted unless the game’s protagonist is female.

Oh it's all very convenient for it "not to count" with it's not in keeping with her rhetoric. Thats the staple of her videos. She finds tonnes of examples to back up her point, mentions one or two that go against the grain and then dismisses them for reasons she decides to convolute

Generic Dreadhead

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Whatever happened to art for the sake of art and not for the sake of education / indoctrination / agenda pushing / politics / brainwashing / whatever?

Social Media happened.... in a big way. We're all keyboard-warrior neck-bearding journalists now if all outlets are too be believed. It's like the whole world is just one giant Letter to the Editor now.

hatrickpatrick

Cormac... wrote: »

Social Media happened.... in a big way. We're all keyboard-warrior neck-bearding journalists now if all outlets are too be believed. It's like the whole world is just one giant Letter to the Editor now.

Sure, but many many things are said on social media without being given a second thought by the mainstream press. Why do the SJ "everything is politics" crowd seem to have such a massive influence?

Again don't get me wrong, I admire activism, but I'm starting to get a bit pissed off in the "it's a feckin' game, they should be able to write a storyline in which a princess is rescued without being accused of some kind of vast sexist conspiracy, or a story in which a black character is a villain without being accused of racism" etc kind of way. Let games be games.

kunst nugget

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Whatever happened to art for the sake of art and not for the sake of education / indoctrination / agenda pushing / politics / brainwashing / whatever?

GTA, Taylor Swift and Twilight are hardly art for art's sake. They are created for mass market appeal and so I don't see anything wrong with debating what these say about us in a wider societal context. That doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a whole lot of guff written about them and some pretty silly hysteria being whipped by social media like the universities banning Blurred Lines or the Cancel Colbert controversy but that doesn't mean there isn't room for reasoned debate.

Potatoeman

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Sure, but many many things are said on social media without being given a second thought by the mainstream press. Why do the SJ "everything is politics" crowd seem to have such a massive influence?

Again don't get me wrong, I admire activism, but I'm starting to get a bit pissed off in the "it's a feckin' game, they should be able to write a storyline in which a princess is rescued without being accused of some kind of vast sexist conspiracy, or a story in which a black character is a villain without being accused of racism" etc kind of way. Let games be games.

Has anyone else noticed these SJW's are all coin operated?

Generic Dreadhead

Well it's good to know the Indo is on the case:

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/games/gamers/more-women-now-play-video-games-than-men-30593969.html

:pac:

Grumpypants

COYVB

Grumpypants wrote: »

That pretty much sums up the bulk of my view on it perfectly

Timmyctc

Grumpypants wrote: »

good video.

Sonics2k

Grumpypants wrote: »

Jaysus, that was brilliant.

Potatoeman

Grumpypants wrote: »

vid

'Hipsters with degrees in cultural studies' I had a good chuckle at this.

johnny_ultimate

Erm... can we not accuse that video of the exact same things Sarkeesian's videos have been accused of? :pac:

Christina Hoff Sommers has an agenda - she identifies with a specific 'second wave' sort of feminism, that favours a more traditional, binary gender divide ('boys will be boys'), she has a long history of speaking out against other feminist critics, and here she is producing a video for a major conservative think tank (although she's a registered democrat). 'Agendas' all over the gaff, tbf (incidentally, I don't think having a specific ideological preference is an 'agenda' worthy of instant dismissal, but since Sarkeesian is constantly accused of it...)

She doesn't play games, or at least says she hasn't played one since 1980. How does that put her in a position to accurately comment on the tropes and content of the games themselves? Fair play to her - she has read and quotes research (although also disregards some of it for reasons I'm not quite sure of), and she's right to do so. But I don't think she's in a position to directly comment or reach conclusions on the content of the games themselves without carrying out some primary research of her own.

"Male gamers, as a group, do evince a strong a preference for games with male heroes and sexy women. Could that be because they are—male?" But here we're ignoring the fact that gender is a complex things, and men and women vary wildly in their preferences. We're into the realm of generalisations, and while these generalisations to have some basis in reality (of course many males find women attractive and can identify with other males), they're also the result of incredibly complex social and biological dynamics. The world is indeed growing ever more inclusive and culturally complex - and that means dividing culture into separate and clear-cut 'male' and 'female' categories is no longer as simplistic as it was once perceived to be, especially when so many males and females completely 'reject' the gender-centric media offered to them. Many males - of which I am one - would welcome a more diverse range of perspectives in games, and are frustrated with common tropes such as the 'gruff male action hero' (more because they are ****ing boring than anything else). The 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus' is just as limited a perspective as extreme feminism when it comes to cultural criticism, and is an over-simplification of the huge range of differences and preferences we see in individuals of all genders.

"There are casual game players—and there are hard-core gamers for whom highly complex, competitive video games are a primary life passion" - again, simplistic divisions that ignore the fact that there is now a dizzying diversity of players. It's nowhere near as easy as the Angry Birds players and the Call of Duty players - a quick survey of the participants in this thread would easily highlight that. We've diversified well beyond the 'hardcore and casual' divide.

She has only gotten interested in gaming culture in the last few weeks (I assume since the whole GamerGate controversy broke), and only as an observer. This compares to someone like Leigh Alexander who has been actively engaged for decades. There's only a limited amount of data and personal experience she could have gathered in that limited timescale - very much the same way Sarkeesian is often criticised for only recently having started playing games more.

She cherrypicks, while criticising others of doing the same thing (for the record, I think all arguments are based on what has been dismissed as 'cherrypicking' - identifying and exploring the right material for the argument). In her section on the 'death of gamer identity' articles, she singles out one paragraph while failing to acknowledge that many of the strongest articles on the subject actually had a far deeper argument about the way the gaming community is splintering away from a long dominant paradigm, and encompassing more perspectives and interests.

As for the name-calling, well, that speaks for itself - a tactic that weakens any argument.

(She also has some absolutely worthwhile points, incidentally, and I agree with her completely that the evidence has failed to identify a link between gaming violence and real-life violence.)

Retr0gamer

Well it's a hell of a lot better and says a lot more than Anita has managed in her videos. It seems to deal with the effects of sexism in games rather than just pointing out examples and equating them to fancy academic buzzwords. She also references to research in the area or similar areas and just uses simple logic in other areas whereas Anita sometimes is desperately trying to back up her assumptions by misrepresenting the material she is working with.