8 Things Anita Sarkeesian Wants To Change About Video Games

mope54 said:
You wrote this reply as if you don't realize the influence feminism and identity politics has had on mainstream pop culture over the past 40 years. It's as if you believe her commentary is some newfangled thing :confused:
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You nailed it.

The only thing new about her 101 level commentary is the reaction its getting from a subset of gamers. The reaction to decades of much more radical critique for movies, music, and books has been nothing this insane.

The way some people react to Anita is how I expect people in the Saudi Arabia reacting to women's right to drive or not wear a burqa. Its crazy.
 
I didnt read the whole thread. But i will leave this here.


Bayonetta.

:D
 
MostComfortable said:
In any case, she's clearly been playing games for a long time. Even if that wasn't the case, Neil Druckmann put it better than I have, which is that the patterns are clear and undeniable.
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No, no she clearly hasn't, and its obvious you're too entrenched in her agenda to admit that she as a person is a fraud.

"Its not exactly a fandom. I am not a fan of video games. I don't want to go around shooting people and chopping heads off, that's just gross."

Is mutually exclusive with:

"I love video games. I am a fan of games." and to subsequently list, per you, The Last Of Us, Dark Souls, Borderlands 2 and so forth as favorite games.

Its really insulting to my and other members intelligence to continue this pretense. I get it, you're a feminist with the same agenda as her, and its inconvenient if one of the most outspoken voices in your camp are a fraud.
 
MostComfortable said:
The way some people react to Anita is how I expect people in the Saudi Arabia reacting to women's right to drive or not wear a burqa. Its crazy.
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Because that's your narrative. That's what you so desperately want it to be, because you aren't willing to take two steps back, and realize that the person you are defending and that has offended everyone in the gaming community for her actions is, simply put, a lying self-serving professional victim, who figured out that just as Al Sharpton is able to get rich (you know he has a net worth of $5 million, thanks to payments from businesses like Comcast and drives a Rolls Royce Phantom, the most expensive production car in the world) by crapping all over race relations that she could do the same thing for the masses of blindly obedient drum beating feminazis.
 
Ducman69 said:
No, no she clearly hasn't, and its obvious you're too entrenched in her agenda to admit that she as a person is a fraud.

"Its not exactly a fandom. I am not a fan of video games. I don't want to go around shooting people and chopping heads off, that's just gross."

Is mutually exclusive with:

"I love video games. I am a fan of games." and to subsequently list, per you, The Last Of Us, Dark Souls, Borderlands 2 and so forth as favorite games.

Its really insulting to my and other members intelligence to continue this pretense. I get it, you're a feminist with the same agenda as her, and its inconvenient if one of the most outspoken voices in your camp are a fraud.
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The statements are only mutually exclusive once you ignore they were made about five years apart and that the meaning of "gamer" has changed within that time, as well. :rolleyes: In fact, part of her argument (along with others in the industry) is that "gamer" doesn't capture the audience of people playing games anymore, which should be a good thing to people but somehow isn't.

I wonder how many people bitching about her comments have actually watched the full presentation: https://vimeo.com/13216819

I'm not even sure why she bothers claiming that she's ever been a fan of video games...it's not relevant to her critique. That's merely a no true scotsman fallacy that people level against her--one of many among a slew of other logical errors.
 
I also think it's interesting how much you butchered her quote to make your point:

She actually says, "and also video games, I would love to play video games, but I don't want to go around shooting people and chopping heads off, that's just gross."

it's at 14:40 in the video I linked above for anyone curious about what she actually said in 2010 vs. what ducman claimed she said.
 
I just feel like Anita is a pile of shit.
She is a troll of epic skill, getting rich and famous on her bullshit nonsense.

For someone who preaches a healthy debate on feminism (aka "Penis hate"), she sure refuses to allow for any debate.

What blows my mind even more than the vomit that comes from her face-hole is the male feminist white-knights who threatened to kill thunderfoot for his youtube videos exposing her bullshit.



I don't wish violence on anyone, I'm just saying if she was on fire and I had a bucket of water....I can drink alot of water.
 
Give me a break, even if you somehow believe this nonsense in what the "definition of gamer" is since 2011 and today, its completely irrelevant since she explains that she doesn't play video games, isn't a fan of video games, and this video games like shooters are gross... while supposedly claiming games like Borderlands 2 are her favorite. You and I both know that she doesn't play video games then or now, because she's a fraud.

The obvious relevancy is that it makes it obvious that she just found a platform that penis-hating feminists would rally behind, and by making herself a figure-head could make fame and fortune.

Reminds me of a hilarious Bill Burr interview, in which he points out how women that don't even like football suddenly try to take it over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWhZ2XS08aQ :D
mope54 said:
I also think it's interesting how much you butchered her quote to make your point:

She actually says, "and also video games, I would love to play video games, but I don't want to go around shooting people and chopping heads off, that's just gross."

it's at 14:40 in the video I linked above for anyone curious about what she actually said in 2010 vs. what ducman claimed she said.
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I know you're just trolling, but you don't believe there is ANY incompatibility between the added statement:

"I would love to play video games"

Which clearly is an admission that SHE DOES NOT EVEN PLAY VIDEO GAMES, my entire point, and the followup blatant lie that she loves video games, and as mostcomfortable expanded that she later claims she's been a gamer since she was a little kid. No one in this discussion is dumb enough to not realize she's a fraud.
 
Don't like it, don't fucking buy it.

Why should you get to censor what someone else might enjoy because you don't agree with it? Games don't have to exist, how can you demand what should or shouldn't be in them? Go make your own or shut up. The reason all these alternative games don't exist already is because the demographic for them is microscopic compared to the people lining up to buy the new murder and misogyny simulator 2015. Publishers aren't around to make you feel good about yourself.
 
djc5166 said:
Don't like it, don't fucking buy it.
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That's just the thing, even if developers make ultra-blando politically correct SJW games, Anita and her supporters STILL wouldn't buy them, because they aren't even gamers. That's not the end goal and never has been.

What they are interested in is changing what society at large is allowed to play, to get games they don't like taken off store shelves, to infiltrate media to dictate that "good" games are the ones that promote their agenda and try and ostracize everyone that disagrees as being some low-life subhumans and turn what should be game reviews into tangents about feminism, and to make careers out of professional victim-hood to put food on the table.

Of course, it doesn't really matter because with professional victims like Anita and her supporters, you can't win and they will invent things to be pissy about. For example, Anita goes on a rant about Watchdogs taking snippets completely out of context, showing women put up on display and saying that women are just sex props. But the context is that your actual mission is to shut down a sex trafficking ring, and what can be more pro-women's rights than that noble cause? Then take Hitman for example, which she paints as a game in which you abuse and murder women and manipulate their bodies for sexual pleasure... but its nonsense as she used one part in a game where you are clearly meant to sneak by, killed strippers, and then drug them around which isn't the mission and in fact you get heavily penalized for since they are not your target. Or in Dying Light she says "Dying Light has a Damsel in Distress storyline. Dear game developers, it’s 2015 aren’t you embarrassed by this yet?!", but then you think about it and you're like WTF is she talking about? A bit of a spoiler alert but this "damsel in distress" literally saves you in the very opening scene of the game. YOU, a male, are rescued by her. It boggles the mind, and this is why people hate her because she so blatantly misleads people and lies in her videos.

Being religiously misleading when not outright blatantly lying for the sake of building her brand that she peddles to feminists and constantly attacking men and the gaming community after a while will get really annoying.
 
Ducman69 said:
Give me a break, even if you somehow believe this nonsense in what the "definition of gamer" is since 2011 and today, its completely irrelevant since she explains that she doesn't play video games, isn't a fan of video games, and this video games like shooters are gross... while supposedly claiming games like Borderlands 2 are her favorite. You and I both know that she doesn't play video games then or now, because she's a fraud.

The obvious relevancy is that it makes it obvious that she just found a platform that penis-hating feminists would rally behind, and by making herself a figure-head could make fame and fortune.

Reminds me of a hilarious Bill Burr interview, in which he points out how women that don't even like football suddenly try to take it over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWhZ2XS08aQ :D

I know you're just trolling, but you don't believe there is ANY incompatibility between the added statement:

"I would love to play video games"

Which clearly is an admission that SHE DOES NOT EVEN PLAY VIDEO GAMES, my entire point, and the followup blatant lie that she loves video games, and as mostcomfortable expanded that she later claims she's been a gamer since she was a little kid. No one in this discussion is dumb enough to not realize she's a fraud.
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It's pretty obvious that she means she doesn't like AAA mainstream titles because they don't appeal to her.

It's baffling how you aren't capable of distinguishing between someone saying that she used to love Nintendo games as a kid and now doesn't appreciate the shooters that oversaturate the market.

No less surprising that you doubled down on the No True Scotsman fallacy.
 
mope54 said:
It's pretty obvious that she means she doesn't like AAA mainstream titles because they don't appeal to her.

It's baffling how you aren't capable of distinguishing between someone saying that she used to love Nintendo games as a kid and now doesn't appreciate the shooters that oversaturate the market.
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She didn't say "AAA titles" or "shooters" though, she said "video games". There are plenty of video games out there that don't involve shooting people and ripping off their heads, which she finds so gross. And it's possible that she was just being hyperbolic, and doesn't actually think that video game = shooter, but saying those things does give the appearance that she's not being objective.
 
gamz247 said:
She didn't say "AAA titles" or "shooters" though, she said "video games". There are plenty of video games out there that don't involve shooting people and ripping off their heads, which she finds so gross. And it's possible that she was just being hyperbolic, and doesn't actually think that video game = shooter, but saying those things does give the appearance that she's not being objective.
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it's also possible that within the 45 minute video (which I linked) she actually describes what she's talking about and what she takes issue with...if you bother to watch it or assuming you even care what she actually said or meant. not quite sure why you would be so adamant to tell the woman what she meant with her own words :rolleyes:
 
gamz247 said:
saying those things does give the appearance that she's not being objective.
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lol, I didn't even catch this the first time I read your post

what do you mean appearance she's not being objective?
why would you even think she should be objective?
her *opinion* about something is, by definition, not objective!

maybe if she was a reporter making a statement about some item of interest to the public
but a student presenting to her classmates about a topic she finds interesting? how do you guys come up with these kinds of beliefs? if you picked it up from someone like ducman or one of those youtube personalities he keeps linking, you really need to assess the people you take information from uncritically.
 
MostComfortable said:
Oh, I totally understand the problems in the film business. The thing is that there is still more diversity in movies and TV, which is really sad because right now its still not enough. The top grossing films of the last few years, the Hunger Games series, features a strong woman and actresses are still underpaid compared to their male counterparts, and more films are still led by males. Its stupid.

The important point here is that much more rigorous critical and feminist analysis has been going on with movies for decades. Nobody freaks out, nobody gives death threats, nothing.

Someone applies very basic, moderate Feminism 101 to games and nerds go INSANE.

The biggest problem I have is that the response to Anita's critique is totally disproportionate. You never see people freaking out like this over movies, music, books, and they've been getting much more for a very long time. No death threats, no doxxing, no online harassment, none of that.

The size and toxicity of the reaction is what I don't understand. The side effect is that Gamergate and MRAs have managed to get her way more attention than if they'd just kept their mouths shut.
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Has it always been true about the film industry, though? It's not really fair to compare a media industry that only emerged as an economic powerhouse in the early 2000's to one that has been going strong for over 100 years, in it's current state.
 
arr4ws said:
I didnt read the whole thread. But i will leave this here.


Bayonetta.

:D
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It's funny you bring it up. Feminist have a struggle over this game. Some think of it as a positive thing, and others (Anita and her ilk) think the complete opposite. It's quite funny.

Not being the biggest comic fan, I only recently learn SJWs affected the comic industry and supposedly set it far back back in the day. While I think some gamers are overly zealous and such, but I'm glad the reaction to this as it is after learning that. If it didn't we might be screwed even more.
 
mope54 said:
it's also possible that within the 45 minute video (which I linked) she actually describes what she's talking about and what she takes issue with...if you bother to watch it or assuming you even care what she actually said or meant. not quite sure why you would be so adamant to tell the woman what she meant with her own words :rolleyes:
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"... I would love to play video games, but I don't want to go around shooting people and ripping off their heads." Did she not know that there are plenty of other video games where you don't do these things, or did she know and just not want to acknowledge them, because they didn't fit in whatever narrative she's trying to construct?

mope54 said:
what do you mean appearance she's not being objective?
why would you even think she should be objective?
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Because how else are you going to identify and sympathize with her position unless you're just as misinformed? I mean, if I said something like, "I would love to play sports, but I don't want to go around tackling people and ripping their helmets off," would you think that's a reasonable opinion about sports? It could be an off-the-cuff remark like this seems to have been, but then if I were to start trying to change the culture of sports, like Anita is with video games, would you really take me seriously when you know I've said things like that earlier statement? When you're trying to change an industry, making statements that aren't founded in logic won't get you very far.
 
MostComfortable said:
Watch the entire video, its very interesting. In Druckmann's words, his early story drafts were "incredibly misogynistic". In the original story the infection only affected females, so you spend the entire game blasting apart zombie women.
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I don't think that story would have been misogynistic. People would be calling it that, sure, but I'd just view it as another take on the zombie thing. And as a writer, he's got the freedom to do whatever he wants. From the sounds of it though, his latter story ended up being way better so props to him. I just don't like how everyone throws around misogyny so quickly now.

MostComfortable said:
Writing the story around characters like Ellie is the exact opposite of backwards. The story should the product of what the characters do. As he said in his speech, it is honest storytelling.
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For sure. And even when it comes to Barbie or Tinkerbell, a good writer can make a good story. I was impressed with a couple of kid moves recently written about these characters.

MostComfortable said:
I completely agree. The thing is that a lot of what Anita is talking about happens to overlap with good writing, in that it discourages cookie-cutter laziness in game writing. And let's face it, most game writing and characterization is garbage. We should be demanding higher quality, not the status quo.

The thing is that we haven't reached anything close to equality, given that just over half the population of the planet is female and that a large-and-growing percentage of gamers are female. Focusing on equality means more representation outside of white straight male characters. When that gap has been closed then I think we can start talking about dialing back discussion on representation.
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I just think if she was being honest about wanting to win this fight, if you want to call it that, then she'd drop the feminist stuff. If she approached it with more even-handed arguments focusing on good writing, the removal of all over-used tropes (male and female alike), greater diversity for all characters, etc. then she'd have much better reception and a better chance at winning everyone over and making positive changes.

Which is why I don't really believe she cares. She seems more like a capitalist trying to drum up controversy rather than someone who really desires to see what she's saying come to fruition.
 
To tag onto what i was just saying in my last paragraph:

MostComfortable said:
The biggest problem I have is that the response to Anita's critique is totally disproportionate. You never see people freaking out like this over movies, music, books, and they've been getting much more for a very long time. No death threats, no doxxing, no online harassment, none of that.

The size and toxicity of the reaction is what I don't understand. The side effect is that Gamergate and MRAs have managed to get her way more attention than if they'd just kept their mouths shut.
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It's because of the way she's gone about it. She's not trying to win over people of the opposite camp. She's trying to create controversy because it pays. If you start calling people misogynistic, then you're going to get people lashing back. Not saying lashing back is the right thing to do, I'm just calling it how I see it.
 
Ducman69 said:
That's just the thing, even if developers make ultra-blando politically correct SJW games, Anita and her supporters STILL wouldn't buy them, because they aren't even gamers. That's not the end goal and never has been.

What they are interested in is changing what society at large is allowed to play, to get games they don't like taken off store shelves, to infiltrate media to dictate that "good" games are the ones that promote their agenda and try and ostracize everyone that disagrees as being some low-life subhumans and turn what should be game reviews into tangents about feminism, and to make careers out of professional victim-hood to put food on the table.

Of course, it doesn't really matter because with professional victims like Anita and her supporters, you can't win and they will invent things to be pissy about. For example, Anita goes on a rant about Watchdogs taking snippets completely out of context, showing women put up on display and saying that women are just sex props. But the context is that your actual mission is to shut down a sex trafficking ring, and what can be more pro-women's rights than that noble cause? Then take Hitman for example, which she paints as a game in which you abuse and murder women and manipulate their bodies for sexual pleasure... but its nonsense as she used one part in a game where you are clearly meant to sneak by, killed strippers, and then drug them around which isn't the mission and in fact you get heavily penalized for since they are not your target. Or in Dying Light she says "Dying Light has a Damsel in Distress storyline. Dear game developers, it’s 2015 aren’t you embarrassed by this yet?!", but then you think about it and you're like WTF is she talking about? A bit of a spoiler alert but this "damsel in distress" literally saves you in the very opening scene of the game. YOU, a male, are rescued by her. It boggles the mind, and this is why people hate her because she so blatantly misleads people and lies in her videos.

Being religiously misleading when not outright blatantly lying for the sake of building her brand that she peddles to feminists and constantly attacking men and the gaming community after a while will get really annoying.
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I've seen some of her videos and thought the same. I just don't know why anyone cares about what she, or anyone (save some review sites, although that is now being thrown into question too) says about particular video games. Let people make what they want, let people play what they want.

You don't see me starting up a youtube channel and demanding Lifetime stop showing movies that depict the male character as the abuser/rapist etc.. And, no one would give two shits if I did.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
(seriously, 69? adulthood much? :D)
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Hey now, just because you're an adult doesn't mean you have to suddenly become Amish in the bedroom. Although most of us don't want the NSA spying on us in there so Uncle's opinion on such things might be radically different than the rest of us.
 
chockomonkey said:
I don't think that story would have been misogynistic. People would be calling it that, sure, but I'd just view it as another take on the zombie thing. And as a writer, he's got the freedom to do whatever he wants. From the sounds of it though, his latter story ended up being way better so props to him. I just don't like how everyone throws around misogyny so quickly now.

...

I just think if she was being honest about wanting to win this fight, if you want to call it that, then she'd drop the feminist stuff. If she approached it with more even-handed arguments focusing on good writing, the removal of all over-used tropes (male and female alike), greater diversity for all characters, etc. then she'd have much better reception and a better chance at winning everyone over and making positive changes.

Which is why I don't really believe she cares. She seems more like a capitalist trying to drum up controversy rather than someone who really desires to see what she's saying come to fruition.
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Even Druckmann admitted that his original story would have been "really misogynistic", and its hard not to see why. Either way, taking Anita and all this other stuff into account demonstrably gave us a better game.

I don't think she's being disingenuous either. Again, just over half the population is female, an ever-increasing percentage of gamers are women as the medium has become mainstream, and I think its reasonable that her and others say that even though they enjoy games, that giving more thought in regards to sexist tropes and stereotypes is not a bad thing. If it wasn't her then it was going to be someone else. We reached a tipping point long ago given how massive games are in the culture now. Its niche status from the 80s died long ago.

I think you and I at least agree that her list happens to align with better writing. Avoiding lazy tropes and stereotypes, aside from taking other people's feelings into consideration, has the side effect of producing better stories. Increased diversity leads to stories that wouldn't otherwise be possible. That's how it works in film, music, and books.

And again, this isn't to say that there is no room for roided dudebros or sexy women. Of course there is! It just gets boring when that's the majority, and fortunately developers know this. That and "social justice" are reasons why diversity in characters and stories have been increasing. Too much of the same shit is boring.
 
Personal anecdote: A friend and I were talking about games he could play with his 6 year old daughter. I suggested Lego Marvel, a really fun game that an adult and a kid could have a good time with. He said "nah, she's a DC girl, doesn't like Marvel". I joked that its because he's a DC fanboy (he even has a Superman tattoo).

Nope, its because the only girl in the Marvel universe is Black Widow, a woman with pretty much the worst super power ever (a gun, woop).

A six year old isn't thinking about gender issues or whatever. Media is a mirror, and we want someone that we can relate to when we're playing around with it. Girls loved Princess Leia when I was a kid. She was a badass! Its completely reasonable that a little girl would want to play a game with Wonder Woman in it.

Accommodating more than half the population by increasing diversity in media really shouldn't be a big issue. At all. It isn't coming at the expense of what's already popular, that stuff makes way too much money to ever go away.

It blows my mind that some people are so offended by this. How is this even remotely controversial?
 
I missed this.

chockomonkey said:
She's trying to create controversy because it pays. If you start calling people misogynistic, then you're going to get people lashing back. Not saying lashing back is the right thing to do, I'm just calling it how I see it.
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She's gone out of her way to never call players misogynists. That is a strawman that simply isn't true.

She's also said at the start of her videos that its perfectly normal to enjoy a medium and still recognize that it has things that are offensive to others (see my example re: rap music I love that I know is sexist and homophobic).

Pointing out tropes and stereotypes in media ("repeating patterns" as Druckmann put it) is completely different than pointing the finger at the players themselves. Its something she has gone out of her way to make clear.

Cheers
 
MostComfortable said:
I missed this.

She's gone out of her way to never call players misogynists. That is a strawman that simply isn't true.

She's also said at the start of her videos that its perfectly normal to enjoy a medium and still recognize that it has things that are offensive to others (see my example re: rap music I love that I know is sexist and homophobic).

Pointing out tropes and stereotypes in media ("repeating patterns" as Druckmann put it) is completely different than pointing the finger at the players themselves. Its something she has gone out of her way to make clear.

Cheers
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She DOESN'T enjoy the medium, and you know that. She's flat out said she doesn't enjoy video games and she's not a fan, well, until she lied and reversed her position because it was convenient on camera after critics pointed out that not only does she repeatedly lie, but that she's a fraud feigning interest in "fixing" a hobby she doesn't even enjoy.

I must assume you also missed my post about specific examples of how she lies and misrepresents games time and time again as her consistent MO, and fail to understand how intentionally lying for her agenda would piss people off. You don't think that Michael Moore has gotten flack for when he's been busted lying? Does that really "blow your mind"? She's also used every feminist buzzword in the book from "extreme misogyny", "gendered slurs", "sexual harassment", "sexual violence", "victim blaming", etc.
MostComfortable said:
Personal anecdote: A friend and I were talking about games he could play with his 6 year old daughter. I suggested Lego Marvel, a really fun game that an adult and a kid could have a good time with. He said "nah, she's a DC girl, doesn't like Marvel". I joked that its because he's a DC fanboy (he even has a Superman tattoo).
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Lets use Feminist logic here for a moment and think about what you're saying. Women and men are equal and gender doesn't matter. But she can't play a game with a male hero in it? So we should have separate but equal. Girls should play games with girls in it, and boys should play games with boys in it. And what if your friend was talking about movies he could watch with his 6 year old son? He wanted to watch The Hunger Games. A movie in which the main character is a heroine... before you know it, he'll have self-esteem issues and start asking Daddy why he can't have breasts.

Worse yet, imagine if she starts listening to music that is performed by BLACKS and MEXICANS. Jesus Christ, when will it end! As a white girl, it would ruin her self-esteem, and she needs white role models, which should NOT be too much to ask.

BTW, not that you care, but there are 641 Marvel women to choose from:
http://marvel.com/universe/Category:Women

But stop for a second and use your own logic. Comic books with superheros, which generally involve violence as a key aspect of every magazine, have attracted boys. If girls need girls to look up to and read about, then surely boys need boys to look up to and read about. If 95 out of 100 comic readers are males, shouldn't we see 95 out of 100 comic characters being male?

See, because IMO media is a mirror, and we want someone that we can relate to when we're playing around with it. Oops, just realized I plagiarized you there a little bit.
 
I think the thread is dead at this point, but just the final nail in the coffin regarding your feminist champion, for those that insist that she is a gamer and not a scam artist:

http://victorsopinion.blogspot.be/2013/07/anitas-sources.html

She was paid $160K to play a bunch of video games and critique them and provide DVDs to the backers, which she has yet to do. She still hasn't gotten close to finishing, and the few parts she did, it was obvious she never even played the games through. What made it obvious were the blatant misleading comments by her out of context as were already mentioned in a previous post, but if you want something less objective then look at this website that proves that SHE STOLE GAME FOOTAGE from youtuber's "let's play" videos... rather than, say, actually playing the game and using her own footage, which for $160K and years late videos, you think she's have the time and money to do:

http://victorsopinion.blogspot.be/2013/07/anitas-sources.html

Anyone that pointed this out on her channel was summarily deleted and banned, and if you're wondering why she has comments and ratings turned off, in the first video that she didn't do this she received 99% dislikes amounting to over 30K thumbs down on her video, and the comment section full of top rated comments pointing out how misleading her criticisms are.
 
MostComfortable said:
Even Druckmann admitted that his original story would have been "really misogynistic", and its hard not to see why.
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IMO, there's nothing inherently misogynistic about killing a bunch of women zombies if that's the story he's spinning. I had to look up the definition again just to be sure:

"dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women."

Again, I just feel that'd be part of the story and there's no correlation to be made between a woman zombie virus and having dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women.

MostComfortable said:
I don't think she's being disingenuous either. Again, just over half the population is female, an ever-increasing percentage of gamers are women as the medium has become mainstream, and I think its reasonable that her and others say that even though they enjoy games, that giving more thought in regards to sexist tropes and stereotypes is not a bad thing. If it wasn't her then it was going to be someone else. We reached a tipping point long ago given how massive games are in the culture now. Its niche status from the 80s died long ago.

I think you and I at least agree that her list happens to align with better writing. Avoiding lazy tropes and stereotypes, aside from taking other people's feelings into consideration, has the side effect of producing better stories. Increased diversity leads to stories that wouldn't otherwise be possible. That's how it works in film, music, and books.
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Indeed we agree on these things being a good thing. However, she doesn't say these things. She makes ridiculous one-sided assertions by taking gameplay out of context!

She shouldn't need someone like you as a translator to strip all the neo-feminist stuff out of it and make a sensible point.. She could just say shit like you are from the get-go. Which is why I still believe she's intentionally being disingenuous for profit. Or, maybe she is just batshit crazy lol
MostComfortable said:
It blows my mind that some people are so offended by this. How is this even remotely controversial?
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As I said above, it's because she doesn't talk about things in a reasonable manner like you are here. She goes off the handle with one-sided feminist nonsense. Like i said before, if she really wanted things to change for the better for all games, then she'd drop the nonsense and talk about these things with true equality at the forefront.

MostComfortable said:
I missed this.



She's gone out of her way to never call players misogynists. That is a strawman that simply isn't true.

She's also said at the start of her videos that its perfectly normal to enjoy a medium and still recognize that it has things that are offensive to others (see my example re: rap music I love that I know is sexist and homophobic).

Pointing out tropes and stereotypes in media ("repeating patterns" as Druckmann put it) is completely different than pointing the finger at the players themselves. Its something she has gone out of her way to make clear.

Cheers
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Oh welp, I missed that.
 
If she wants that kind of character diversity in a game, then she needs to play The Sims and just stfu.
 
chockomonkey said:
She goes off the handle with one-sided feminist nonsense. Like i said before, if she really wanted things to change for the better for all games, then she'd drop the nonsense and talk about these things with true equality at the forefront.
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All we really need is for her and her supporters to simply stop yapping, and wave their wallets around.

There are so many games on the market these days, especially with all the indie developers, that there is simply no genre that is left untouched. Period. You think of it, I bet you there's been a game made like it. Think about it, from Flower to Katamari Damaci to Mr Mosquito to Little Big Planet, its all out there. And no market will tolerate a vacuum... period. If there is a huge demand for "feminist approved games", that genre will grow to fill that demand. Its how the market works.

If you're like Anita and think that games that involve shooting people suck and "are gross", that's GREAT! Don't buy them. Instead, buy a ton of non-shooter games you do like, or if you have to do a kickstarter, do it to develop a game YOU think is great!

Trust me, bullshit walks and money talks.

Likewise, if there are a lot of people that DO enjoy power-trip alpha male violent fantasies where they get to imagine themselves as a Schwarzenegger size die-hard juggernaut that dominates everyone and gets all the babes, respect that there is a market for that too. But if I'm right, they don't want to game, they just want what they perceive as that "evil white CIS male video game culture" to DIE, because they've been stuck so long at college in a positive feedback loop where they've preached to each other ad nauseaum that "white CIS male scum" are the root of all the world's problems, and they've come to do their part to take down the patriarchy... and then never think about video games again! ;)
 
Ducman69 said:
But if I'm right, they don't want to game, they just want what they perceive as that "evil white CIS male video game culture" to DIE, because they've been stuck so long at college in a positive feedback loop where they've preached to each other ad nauseaum that "white CIS male scum" are the root of all the world's problems, and they've come to do their part to take down the patriarchy... and then never think about video games again! ;)
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You're not right...couldn't be further from being right, in fact. Anita and others are simply speaking out to make their presence known to game developers that there is a market that will buy games that don't fit the mold they've been locked into for the past ten years.
 
mope54 said:
You're not right...couldn't be further from being right, in fact. Anita and others are simply speaking out to make their presence known to game developers that there is a market that will buy games that don't fit the mold they've been locked into for the past ten years.
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So you believe there are NO games out on the market in the last 20 years that get the feminist stamp of approval?

What is misogynistic about Alien Isolation, Flower, Portal, Braid, The Sims, Metroid Prime, Fez, Mirror's Edge, Gone Home, Child of Light, Journey, Animal Crossing, Little Big Planet, Civilization, Armadillo Run, Unmechanical, Never Alone, Plants vs Zombies, Trauma Center, Transistor, Legend of Kora, Alice Madness Returns, Valkyria Chronicles, Guitar Hero, Dreamfall, Need for Speed, Flight Simulator X, Final Fantasy, Super Mario Galaxy, World of Goo, SSX, Wii Tennis, Spyro, Spore, and countless others I can't think of at the moment. If over half of gamers are female, as feminists tell us, then the market should be dominated by games that cater to this market. And if female game developers will produce the same work at 77 cents on the dollar, then there should be no way for a business with primarily male developers to even be cost competitive. The problem is that we know this is all nonsense, and female gamers comprise a small part of the market.

Face facts, there are a lot of games that cater towards a heterosexual male gamer base because *gasp* there are a lot of heterosexual male gamers and that's where the money is, and feminists want to dictate what they find acceptable for those men to play.
 
chockomonkey said:
It's because of the way she's gone about it. She's not trying to win over people of the opposite camp. She's trying to create controversy because it pays. If you start calling people misogynistic, then you're going to get people lashing back. Not saying lashing back is the right thing to do, I'm just calling it how I see it.
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And again, she isn't calling people misogynistic, she's listing sexist tropes and patterns. The videos never point the finger at the consumer, and at the head of them says that enjoying media that you also know is offensive to others/minorities is perfectly fine and normal.

Its simple and actually very moderate 101 level stuff. The criticism you see other mediums get, those actually get some criticism from actual extremists and "misandrists" that GG loves to strawman into this discussion.

She shouldn't need someone like you as a translator to strip all the neo-feminist stuff out of it and make a sensible point.. She could just say shit like you are from the get-go.
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I would say that what I've seen from her videos are about as reasonable as you're saying my posts are. They're pretty cut and dry. Example and repeat of very basic, simple, and hard-to-dispute examples. Like Druckmann said, its the patterns and repetition where things start to add up and the point is made.

I think this sums it up pretty well: http://www.zenofdesign.com/i-watch-anita-sarkeesian-so-you-dont-have-to-but-you-should/

Check it out if you can, its pretty good. Cheers
 
Ducman69 said:
Lets use Feminist logic here for a moment and think about what you're saying. Women and men are equal and gender doesn't matter. But she can't play a game with a male hero in it? So we should have separate but equal. Girls should play games with girls in it, and boys should play games with boys in it.
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Like I said, media is a mirror, and we want someone that we can relate to when we're playing around with it. This goes for movies, books, music, anything.

To claim that wanting more female representation/avatars in games is reverse-sexism is beyond ridiculous, especially since a large percentage of gamers are now females. Are you really saying that women aren't worthy of having characters that they can relate to, because sexism?

Don't be stupid.
 
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