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

DeVore

Wolfenstein: New World Order is a cracking game with some decent writing (ok ok, it has space moon Nazis but I can forgive that). It also has three (count them THREE) major characters who are female and one of whom is a wheelchair user. I actually forgot about them before because THATS NOT THE REASON THEY ARE IN THE GAME.

The writing is of sufficient quality that you just buy into their characters, their flaws, their strengths... they are believable in their world and very human. The leader of the resistance is the wheelchair bound lady but even then it manages to avoid the Professor X style condescension into "aren't all wheelchair users just lovely people and very clever like that Stephen Hawker fella". She also has one of the standout cutscenes I've seen in gaming, ever.

That, to me, is how you include "minorities"... by putting them in there for reasons OTHER than *just* their box-ticking properties.

Evac101

Results #2, #3 from a google search on tokenism in tv:

Opinion piece on it
TVTropes catalogue of examples

Doing a search on tokenism in games is dominated by female token characters in games, which we've already acknowledged I think, but I'm certain that if I were to dig deeper I could find some material regarding racial, religious or ethnic tokenism (aside from the trolls in WoW who just make me wince whenever I hear them).

Evac101

There was a recent TV show (name is escaping me) where the characters for the pilot were purposely written as gender and race neutral and then cast using the metric of 'who brings the most to the role and fits with the rest of the cast'. They then developed the story further based on the actors who had been cast and how that choice would influence the story going forward. This is what you want - where the character is the key, though obviously some back stories require certain genders or ethnicity.

Links234

DeVore wrote: »

That, to me, is how you include "minorities"... by putting them in there for reasons OTHER than *just* their box-ticking properties.

And that's exactly what people are asking for more of, nobody on any side of the debate want tokenism or as you so succinctly put it box ticking in their games.

But sometimes I come across this fear that any inclusion of women (or others) as characters is automatically just PC cowtowing or box ticking. Going back to Payday 2 again, they announced a while ago that they were adding a new playable character called Clover, and a few people seemed to go absolutely ape**** on the forums saying how dare Overkill ruin their game and make it becoming another politcally correct piece of crap, and how utterly unrealistic it was to have a female bank robber... Because according to them, no woman could ever rob a bank!

Retr0gamer

DeVore wrote: »

Wolfenstein: New World Order is a cracking game with some decent writing (ok ok, it has space moon Nazis but I can forgive that).

The writing in that game was a big surprise to me. There's a few moments in the game when it could have went full on torture porn, like a lot of games are doing these days trying to be edgy and blah, blah, blah Guantanemo etc. Instead it pulls the camera away or fades out knowing that not showing it his firstly in good taste and secondly far more effective than showing the gory detail. It might be a silly story about space nazi's but it's a very well written one.

DeVore

Slight aside, and slight spoiler:

This is the soundtrack from the cut scene where she (the resistance leader in the wheelchair is preparing to steel a bunch of helicopters from the Nazis... the speech she gives (at the start and at the end) is great but the soundtrack throughout the game is worth the price alone...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pOcu0HzxIA

Skullface McGubbin

anonyanony wrote: »

You have to remember he is the one behind Anita he co created tropes vs women he just uses Anita as a shield cause he saw a man could not bring these issues up cause they would rightly be laughed at ala Jack Thompson so he uses a woman to say everything he wants and you cannot be critical of a woman in today's society it seems.

If you follow his twitter he will post something horrible and then Anita will post something nearly the exact same. This was evident around that last school shooting in America

On the subject of Jonathan FullMcIntosh, this is his response to GTA being pulled from Target. Unsuprising really.

And on the topic of representation of women in games and why most main characters are white males, this comment puts it nicely.
When creating a white male character, you can to portray them as negatively as you like without fear of a backlash from influential voices in the games industry including (but not limited to) radical feminists, SJWs, white Knights etc. Creating female & minority characters however, is more risky. Portray them with not enough positive traits and you'll be faced with accusations of "MUH SOGGY KNEE" (misogyny) and other such buzzwords.

The removal of GTA5 from Target shows how much influence a vocal minority can have.

COYVB

/\/ollog wrote: »

You need to know your audience to make money, or is that not a goal?

It's not a consideration with this project

C14N

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Something I've been meaning to ask,

Is the depiction of women in video games, as described by Sarkeesian actually an issue? Why and what effects can it have?

It's an issue in that it's just lazy and limits our industry. When all the big budget games are being made with the specific demographic of 13-25 year old males, we lose a lot of creativity.

Aside from that, I'm going to throw out an unpopular opinion and say that games (along with TV, movies, books etc) do influence the way you think and your perception of the world. "Hey man, I sunk 60 hours into GTA 4 and still haven't killed a single hooker!" yeah but that's just creating a false dilemma. Just because you didn't react in the most extreme way possible doesn't mean it did nothing. If you spent that much time with something, it influenced you in some way and even if it doesn't cause you to do something, it will still make you think a bit differently, even subconsciously.

This does not mean I think games should be censored or banned at all or that game devs need to "think of the children" but I do think we need to realise that they still affect us in some way. People who say video games have no effect on them sound to me like people who say ads have no effect on them.

anonyanony wrote: »

It was lower then the average granted it was not as big of a hit as the bayanetta 2 review polygon did but still was unwarranted, if they knew going in they would have issues with the game they should have excused themselves let others review instead.

What you're saying is basically that any dissenters should just pipe down and not let any bad things or outside opinions come in.

anonyanony wrote: »

Then remove scores altogether, a score should be objective, if you don't want that do the review without a score and let reader decide if they have the same opinions as the reviewer, one of the main reason I like total biscuit is he does not give a score he let you decide on what he says.

Just read it and don't look at the score. They have to give a score, it's editorial policy, they can't just give some games a number and not give it to others.

anonyanony wrote: »

One gave a reduced score due to the gameplay and mechanics, the other due to their own moral bias. You know if there was no score on the gta review I would not care, putting a score on it means the moral bias needs to removed score it on the game.

Actually, go back and watch Gerstmann's review. A huge part of his problem with it was morality because he hated the characters for being so "ugly" (which is similar to what the Escapists's infamous GTA 5 review said). He spends the first half of the video review on this subject, even bringing up that the game has too much strong language. But maybe he should have left those qualms aside because that was just his morality and he should have known the characters wouldn't be nice going in right?

anonyanony wrote: »

The problem is metacritic, when scores are so important to bonus and dev's not getting fired the metacritic so is so important, if a group of reviewers bring in bias nothing to do with the game and lower the score there is a chance the dev's might loose their jobs.

Yeah, just imagine how many people went on the dole because GTA 5 was tied as the fifth highest rated game of all time instead of the second highest like GTA 4, I bet that Gamestop reviewer would feel terrible if they found out :rolleyes:

It's not the critics' responsibilities to facilitate bulls**t industry practices. The guys who made all of those 70-rated games nobody cares about probably worked very hard too. Should we up the scores for them in case they get fired? If this is such a big issue, take it up with Metacritic who are the real perpetrators with their stupid, overly-precise aggregation.

anonyanony wrote: »

Now to counter this they might censor themselves and change it even though they don't want to.

Oh no, they'd have to write their games better. The horror. That's not what criticism is supposed to do, it's just supposed to tell the creators that the thing they made is perfect and should never be improved or questioned.

anonyanony wrote: »

The 60fps bias is an objective one but still a bias he has but points out it's there TB does not let moral objectives taint the videos he does.

But wait, what if I or a large group don't care at all about a game not having 60fps playback? He's going and trashing a game for something that isn't objectively important!

This is the problem with the idea of those non-existent "objective reviews". They're only "objective" to the people who care about the things they talk about. A lot of game reviews bring up re-playability as a factor and will criticise games for being too short. To me, that seems so irrelevant to whether I want to play it or not that I think judging it based on that is unfair. But TS, the whole world doesn't revolve around what I want.

Potatoeman wrote: »

There has been a few articles on the topic. Im not trying to say that is what this one is about. It just seems like there is pressure on them to do it so they will shoehorn in something to try and please people. Its like the multi racial casts that are only there for diversity and have no character or depth.

I can't say that sounds even slightly worse than an homogenous cast with no depth of character. It sounds like you're implying that it's a zero sum game of whether you can have good writers or people who know how to adjust the skin tone to "brown". Can you cite any games that fall victim to this?

I'll cite some that really don't. Mass Effect had a multi-racial crew, it didn't negatively impact the dialogue or writing at all. Same goes for the folks in The Walking Dead games where you have several black characters, many female characters and an Iranian. The Last of Us had two black characters and a gay character in its cast. I can't imagine it being any less guilty of tokenism if it had just made those characters straight and white. I can come up with more that do this thing of just making some characters different and not being any worse for it.

Skullface McGubbin wrote: »

When creating a white male character, you can to portray them as negatively as you like without fear of a backlash from influential voices in the games industry including (but not limited to) radical feminists, SJWs, white Knights etc. Creating female & minority characters however, is more risky. Portray them with not enough positive traits and you'll be faced with accusations of "MUH SOGGY KNEE" (misogyny) and other such buzzwords. .

I call BS on this. If the characters are well done you can portray them how you want. It's clichéd and sloppy portrayals that get the flack or ones that are uncomfortably one-way racially, like a game where almost all allies are white and enemies are black. Not that we'd really know since so few games have even tried this. I have seen far more people mocking the idea of "omg how Street Fighter is so sexist because you can punch Chun Li" or whatever related to various fighting games than people actually complaining about the fact that you can punch Chun Li.

You can look at a show like The Wire where most of the "bad guys" are black but it doesn't get accused of being racist because they're well-written and somewhat sympathetic, as well as the fact that a lot of the "good guys" are black too.

e_e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIen9PTJtM

Spot on video.

Guyanachronism

e_e wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIen9PTJtM

Spot on video.

That's actually a really good, comprehensive video. Saarkeisan herself could learn a few things from that.

Still it's part of this really strange development, that YouTube has now become US style talk radio.

Potatoeman

kunst nugget wrote: »

Examples, apart from kid's shows, would be great. Should I get annoyed if one of the characters in a game happens to be black or a woman because there only doing it to tick off boxes to appease the lefties?

I cant think of an example off he top of my head.

anonyanony

www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=V8Dc7fnGPcA

Seems like Anita thinks women are **** at video games and needs women only controls cause they are inferior to men.

Here the petition if you want ME2 to be anywhere near as polished control wise as ME or you are not sexist and think women are just as able as men to use a controller

www[dot]change[dot]org/p/ea-games-remove-anita-sarkeesian-from-mirror-s-edge-2-game-development?expired_session=true

Replace [dot] with an actual .

wes

anonyanony wrote: »

www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=V8Dc7fnGPcA

Seems like Anita thinks women are **** at video games and needs women only controls cause they are inferior to men.

Here the petition if you want ME2 to be anywhere near as polished control wise as ME or you are not sexist and think women are just as able as men to use a controller

www[dot]change[dot]org/p/ea-games-remove-anita-sarkeesian-from-mirror-s-edge-2-game-development?expired_session=true

Replace [dot] with an actual .

Surely, it would make more sense to not bother buying the game, if her input results in it being garbage. If it really bothers people, then a petition is pointless, don't buy the game and make sure that EA knows why. Personally, if the game is good, I will still get it, and if its crap, I won't bother with it.

Also, where did she suggest a seperate Women only control mode? An easy control mode isn't the worst idea, and game like Bayonetta have it, but if she really did suggest a Womens only control mode, then well............ I would expect a massive **** storm.

mewso

e_e wrote: »

Spot on video.

Good video except... His counter on the series of articles about the "gamer" being dead was a bit dodgy. It still seems to me an amazing coincidence all these similar articles came along on this subject of the gamer identity. His argument that newspapers would all have similar headlines if they were reporting on something that had happened doesn't wash with me. Had there been a press conference the day before where someone declared that gamers were dead?

He also plays a clip from the guy that compared Anita Sarkesian to Rosa Park so he gets a negative for that one too.

For the most part though it was a well put together video with well reasoned arguements although I think Thunderfoot is too easy a target these days. Hes lost the plot.

Shiminay

I didn't think the first Mirrors Edge (ME means Mass Effect to me, how could EA have 2 major franchises with the same initials, is this Anita Sarkeesian's fault too?) controls were in any way polished at all.

That guy just seems like the stereotypical reason the rest of the world hates Americans.

Where did she say there needs to be separate controls? Is there a source for this? What was the context of this statement?

kunst nugget

anonyanony wrote: »

www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=V8Dc7fnGPcA

Seems like Anita thinks women are **** at video games and needs women only controls cause they are inferior to men.

Here the petition if you want ME2 to be anywhere near as polished control wise as ME or you are not sexist and think women are just as able as men to use a controller

www[dot]change[dot]org/p/ea-games-remove-anita-sarkeesian-from-mirror-s-edge-2-game-development?expired_session=true

Replace [dot] with an actual .

This was being talked about over 2 years ago but I can't seem to find any credible source on it.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/TheKodu/the-sarkeesian-the-dice-and-the-mirror--235992.phtml

I nearly flung the controller through a closed window when I got stuck on a run up the wall section and I don't even have a vagina. I did master it in the end but I think it was because I got in touch with my feelings before trying it one last time.

Grumpypants

****ing YouTube videos, between watching that creepy 90's guy's God awful rebuttal to tunderfoot where he stares at an imaginary video and tuts disapprovingly and that moron with his anti mirrors edge rant I feel a little dumber for having watched both of them and that's dangerous territory as I don't have much room to spare.

Genghiz Cohen

Someone posted that Sarkeesian petition on PCMR and got downvoted to hell. There is still hope for the world.

Skullface McGubbin

C14N wrote: »

It's an issue in that it's just lazy and limits our industry. When all the big budget games are being made with the specific demographic of 13-25 year old males, we lose a lot of creativity.

Aside from that, I'm going to throw out an unpopular opinion and say that games (along with TV, movies, books etc) do influence the way you think and your perception of the world. "Hey man, I sunk 60 hours into GTA 4 and still haven't killed a single hooker!" yeah but that's just creating a false dilemma. Just because you didn't react in the most extreme way possible doesn't mean it did nothing. If you spent that much time with something, it influenced you in some way and even if it doesn't cause you to do something, it will still make you think a bit differently, even subconsciously.

This does not mean I think games should be censored or banned at all or that game devs need to "think of the children" but I do think we need to realise that they still affect us in some way. People who say video games have no effect on them sound to me like people who say ads have no effect on them.

If a sane well adjusted individual starts playing the likes of GTA, Manhunt, Hitman etc. and is still a sane well adjusted individual after playing these games, then it's not a problem. It all depends on the individual.
Can games affect us? Yes but when it's not in a significantly detrimental way then it's not an issue. Mentally/emotionally disturbed people have existed long before video games.

C14N wrote: »

I call BS on this. If the characters are well done you can portray them how you want. It's clichéd and sloppy portrayals that get the flack or ones that are uncomfortably one-way racially, like a game where almost all allies are white and enemies are black. Not that we'd really know since so few games have even tried this. I have seen far more people mocking the idea of "omg how Street Fighter is so sexist because you can punch Chun Li" or whatever related to various fighting games than people actually complaining about the fact that you can punch Chun Li.

You can look at a show like The Wire where most of the "bad guys" are black but it doesn't get accused of being racist because they're well-written and somewhat sympathetic, as well as the fact that a lot of the "good guys" are black too.

"well done" is a matter opinion. Cliched, sloppy portrayals of males don't get the same amount of sexism accusations as cliched portrayals of females do. I don't know of any "Tropes vs Men" type of video series out there.
Plus, I didn't mention anything about female characters getting punched in Fighting games so I don't know where you're getting that from.

Resident Evil 5 was faced with accusations of racism (from a vocal minority but an existing minority nonetheless) when the trailer came out. The game was set in Africa yet some people were suprised that most of the zombies were black. http://gamepolitics.com/2007/08/01/african-womens-blog-critical-of-resident-evil-5-trailer#.VIcM9TGsW8A

And then there's Hitman Absolution. The fact that there was more outrage over the assassins dressed as S&M faux-Nuns than 47's regular acts of murder is ridiculous but it happened. http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/06/07/io-apologetic-over-hitman-trailer-controversy

And Sarkeesian's underhanded misrepresentation of the game (discussed many pages back in this thread and elsewhere) to exaggerate elements remotely resembling sexism to suit one's agenda does no one any favours.

The time people spend bitching about games that are not 'progressive' enough for their liking could be spent promoting the ones that are. You do it by showing people the positive non sexist elements of gaming and the industry. You don't do it by prematurely declaring gamers and their culture "dead".

kunst nugget

Skullface McGubbin wrote: »

And then there's Hitman Absolution. The fact that there was more outrage over the assassins dressed as S&M faux-Nuns than 47's regular acts of murder is ridiculous but it happened. http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/06/07/io-apologetic-over-hitman-trailer-controversy

And Sarkeesian's underhanded misrepresentation of the game (discussed many pages back in this thread and elsewhere) to exaggerate elements remotely resembling sexism to suit one's agenda does no one any favours.

I played the game without knowing anything about it and I found the Saints thing really juvenile. They were like enemies designed by Benny Hill. Maybe as a teenager they might have been great for the **** bank but they are terminally goofy to me as an adult. Not something that drove me to outrage but definitely highlighted how hackneyed and lazy the game was in places.

Links234

wes wrote: »

Also, where did she suggest a seperate Women only control mode?

She never said this, apparently it's just some fake nonsense folks have repeated enough that it just stuck.

wes

Links234 wrote: »

She never said this, apparently it's just some fake nonsense folks have repeated enough that it just stuck.

Ah yeah, taught as much, as otherwise, links would have been provided.

kunst nugget

Links234 wrote: »

She never said this, apparently it's just some fake nonsense folks have repeated enough that it just stuck.

But, but, but FEMINAZIS!!!

Links234

wes wrote: »

links would have been provided.

But I'm right here

anonyanony

Links234 wrote: »

But I'm right here

www[dot]techraptor[dot]net/content/game-awards-judge-reveals-bias-bayonetta-2

In a year when most games where **** bayonetta 2 was a very high point but these people with there biases stopped it having any chance of it winning cause the MC was a sexy woman.

I think it goes to show that the only public vote was won by total biscuit and the amount salt it created by these people on twitter

Genghiz Cohen

anonyanony wrote: »

www[dot]techraptor[dot]net/content/game-awards-judge-reveals-bias-bayonetta-2

In a year when most games where **** bayonetta 2 was a very high point but these people with there biases stopped it having any chance of it winning cause the MC was a sexy woman.

I think it goes to show that the only public vote was won by total biscuit and the amount salt it created by these people on twitter

Why don't you just post regular links?

anonyanony

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Why don't you just post regular links?

Not allowed to yet

wes

anonyanony wrote: »

www[dot]techraptor[dot]net/content/game-awards-judge-reveals-bias-bayonetta-2

In a year when most games where **** bayonetta 2 was a very high point but these people with there biases stopped it having any chance of it winning cause the MC was a sexy woman.

I think it goes to show that the only public vote was won by total biscuit and the amount salt it created by these people on twitter

Meh, the sort of person who claims they will quit over something so trivial, are full of it, and rarely follow through. Also, who care about award shows, there crap, and best to be ignored.

kunst nugget

anonyanony wrote: »

www[dot]techraptor[dot]net/content/game-awards-judge-reveals-bias-bayonetta-2

In a year when most games where **** bayonetta 2 was a very high point but these people with there biases stopped it having any chance of it winning cause the MC was a sexy woman.

I think it goes to show that the only public vote was won by total biscuit and the amount salt it created by these people on twitter

GAME CRITIC IN STRONG OPINION ABOUT GAME SHOCKER!!!
What happened next will make you stop licking the sugar off your Frosties…

The tweet doesn't say why he disliked Bayonetta 2 but this is his review of the first Bayonetta. He makes reference to the sexiness of the character but only really in how goofy he found it. I'm guessing if 2 was more of the same for him, it was never going to be a contender for game of the year for him.

Bayonetta” is the most flamboyant video-game heroine in a long, long time. Leggy, bespectacled and clad in a skintight black catsuit, she struts across the screen like a model stalking the runway. That model, however, is more campy than sexy, more RuPaul than Gisele.

Her starring vehicle, “Bayonetta” (Sega, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $54.99), is just as ridiculous. It’s a mess, frankly, with about a half-dozen issues that would normally make me shut down a game in exasperation. But it’s so cheeky in its desire to break through the barriers of good taste and common sense that it’s rather endearing…

The overall look is bound to divide gamers. Some will revel in the baroque splendor, while others will find it garish. The same goes for the hammy sexuality of the main character, which I found more abrasive than alluring.

“Bayonetta” feels like a game that would have blown me away 15 years ago. (It even pays tribute to Sega arcade classics like “Space Harrier” and “Hang-On.”) While it introduces an exotic new vision, it doesn’t give us anything to do except fight, and its strictly linear story prevents you from exploring its distinctive universe. It’s high on style, but less than satisfying. Two stars out of four.

Full review here.