8 Things Anita Sarkeesian Wants To Change About Video Games

Poik said:
Pretty much everything has been said already. I mean she wants to get rid of sexy Barbie dolls in video games but says nothing about how every guy is nearly every game is ripped.
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The ripped dude and the sexy chick both play into the same power fantasy. The dude is there to fulfill the audience's desire for power while the chick is who you want to have sex with. Both are self-indulgent in the same way.

This isn't rocket science.
 
^ Tell all this to the developers of Dying Light.

They went for the 'we followed Anita's Way™ for making our game' and she still took issue with it.

She won't be happy with games period until she can't make anymore money off Patreon/Kickstarter/paid appearances.
 
If this doesnt create a firestorm... I dunno what will. So much of this is subjective, I guess it just depends who is at the top of the totem pole of money/wealth/power...
 
Methadras said:
Honestly, none of this will happen. In fact, the total opposite will happen just as a giant fuck you.
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Naughty Dog, Valve, Blizzard, Overkill, Nintendo, and many other companies have started or have already been moving in this direction for years. Its only accelerating. Story development for The Last Of Us was influenced by Sarkeesian years before nerds on the internet had their temper tantrum.

The only major league pushback has been from Ubisoft because they said putting in a female player avatar in Assassin's Creed would be "too hard", and that got them a ton of negative press around E3. The fact that they shipped a broken product was icing on the cake.

Either way, the tide has already been moving in this direction. I can't imagine the kind of company that would have such an extremist agenda to say "fuck you" to such a reasonable list.
 
Brad Wardell from StarDock says that he's been developing games without negative female stereotypes for years. At the end he sarcastically wonders out loud if his development team will get recognition for doing so.

"But wait…that’s not all…

>50% of the source code in Fallen Enchantress was written by women (plural) and much of the art in the game was created by women.

I look forward to Ms. Sarkeesian holding Stardock up as the model of what game studios should be doing. In fact, her and her allies are welcome to find any modern game or studio that has comparable representation of women both in terms of in-game characters as well as development.

I won’t hold my breath."

http://www.littletinyfrogs.com/article/461951/Stardock_Avatar_for_Sarkeesian_gaming
 
MostComfortable said:
Naughty Dog, Valve, Blizzard, Overkill, Nintendo, and many other companies have started or have already been moving in this direction for years. Its only accelerating. Story development for The Last Of Us was influenced by Sarkeesian years before nerds on the internet had their temper tantrum.

The only major league pushback has been from Ubisoft because they said putting in a female player avatar in Assassin's Creed would be "too hard", and that got them a ton of negative press around E3. The fact that they shipped a broken product was icing on the cake.

Either way, the tide has already been moving in this direction. I can't imagine the kind of company that would have such an extremist agenda to say "fuck you" to such a reasonable list.
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I don't know every company that well but why would you attribute this to valve, valve has always had an art style for most of their games that doesn't need or use overly flamboyant woman and this has nothing to do with any general direction of the industry or Anita. Its simply the art style they have chosen for most of their games. There is no tide please don't be stupid, feminist have been saying this stuff for as long as I have been alive (and long before that most likely as well) about film, and music, and guess what has happened? Nothing. That is why we know Anita is either A really dumb, or B she is a sociopathic liar and she doesn't care about any of this but she knows she can ride it out and make lots of money and fame and most likely she is reading old writings and copying them directly. Because if Anita had any of the knowledge and capabilities to do research she claims she would already know that nothing has changed in any other art based industry so there is no reason to see it change here. Fact is some studios have an art direction that Anita should like yet she doesn't.. And most of them were on this path or off it long before her nothing will change long after she is forgotten. When you see that kind of illogical nitpicking you know its not about the point its about the attention.
 
rudy said:
There is no tide please don't be stupid, feminist have been saying this stuff for as long as I have been alive (and long before that most likely as well) about film, and music, and guess what has happened? Nothing.
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If you think nothing has changed in the past couple years you haven't been alive that long.
 
  • More females? On average sure why not. Just don't get cranky if it's an all male sports game or for gender on main characters.
  • Lingerie armor is absurd, don't need it
  • more body options is nice (I don't care for the anorexic with implants look)
  • realisitic character models? sure. Realism has a lot of variances though
  • Skin color sliders? sure. Just don't make this affirmative action with % quotas
  • realistic animations? sure. Anime run animations are silly and not immersive anyways.
  • silly voice overs? go to Japan to fix that. I was never into that stuff
  • Violence against women? We don't need little boys thinking their raping this beoootch, ugly or not. But I'm not sure how you avoid it when they are boss characters that happen to be female. Either they think it or they don't. I'm not against women enemies, but I'm not sure if you're going to solve this one for people who's thoughts are less than ideal.

There, now can everyone stop making a big deal about Anita? Maybe take away this gamergate thing and stop pissing on gamers' cherios by people who don't play games? This isn't the 95 theses. What's with kotaku anyways? Are they the McDonalds of gaming or something? Way too much political agendas. Keep the feminism out of gaming, make realistic games, and take your complaints to Japan's culture. We don't need gaming to be some politically correct, sanitized, unfun thing.
 
Ducman69 said:
Anita has already bitched that ulgy = evil is unacceptable, so that bulldyke criminal would piss her off. Better luck with your white knighting next time.
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Which is ridiculous.

Ugly = Evil transcends gender.

There is a reason we have male actors who specialize in playing the bad guy, because they have a "bad guy face".
 
I vehemently disagree with her most times, but most of the list does sound like good suggestions.

Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.
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women soldiers or athletes still move like women; I don't know why she thinks otherwise.

Have characters of various body types
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Fixed that one for her

Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.
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If we went by that metric. Since all the male characters are freaking insanely muscular, the women would have rear ends like hoppity hops.
 
Until every last videogame high heel is replaced by birkenstocks, there will never be peace.
 
bending over backwards to pacify a very loud, and small amount of people is not a sane business model.

the unfortunate part of anita's terrible arguments, they don't sell games you know something the video game industry sort of needs to do to stay aloft...

if you don't like it make your own or vote with your wallet/purse.

Modern+feminism_bc82b8_5244092.gif


just saying.
 
rudy said:
I don't know every company that well but why would you attribute this to valve
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Aside from the obvious example of Chell and Glados in Portal, you're either ignoring or unaware of Legion Commander in Dota 2.

They deliberately changed LC's gender from male to female, made her non-sexualized (because she's a COMMANDER), and all of her battle noises don't sound like sex. I have friends on the Dota 2 team and this was all very much on purpose, and they're proud that they pushed through such big changes in Legion Commander's character.

Ducman69 said:
Anita has already bitched that ulgy = evil is unacceptable, so that bulldyke criminal would piss her off.
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Really? Because I've heard the exact opposite from her. A realistic portrayal of a criminal or character, be it ugly, fat, whatever, is preferable to her looking like a model. She's been really explicit about that.
 
mope54 said:
If you think nothing has changed in the past couple years you haven't been alive that long.
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Seriously. This has all been happening under their noses with some companies.

And again, it doesn't need to happen with ALL companies. I think Bayonetta is great! I like lots of stuff that some people would have problems with, but that's the same with any other medium (movies, music, etc). Like, I LOVE some rap music but would never get angry if it was pointed out that some of it is incredibly sexist or homophobic. I think most people understand and accept this.

This is a reasonable list that can be taken or left. Some creators actually listen and IMO that's a good thing because it increases the variety in stories. The Last Of Us is an excellent example. The fact that nearly half of gamers are women but that the majority of games appeals exclusively to men is a totally reasonable thing to address.

Even the most powerful, recognizable critics in a medium—like the late Roger Ebert—had no substantial capacity to really affect the conventions of mainstream commercial productions. Movies, music, literature, they've all received much more rigorous criticism for decades. Games get a tiny bit of 101 media criticism and nerds, neckbeards, and channers go absolutely apeshit.

Reactionary thought is so mindboggling. People should be able to say what they want whether you agree or disagree, and they certainly should be able to without fear of threats or whatever. Are we living in the Middle East or something?
 
MostComfortable said:
Aside from the obvious example of Chell and Glados in Portal, you're either ignoring or unaware of Legion Commander in Dota 2.

They deliberately changed LC's gender from male to female, made her non-sexualized (because she's a COMMANDER), and all of her battle noises don't sound like sex. I have friends on the Dota 2 team and this was all very much on purpose, and they're proud that they pushed through such big changes in Legion Commander's character.



Really? Because I've heard the exact opposite from her. A realistic portrayal of a criminal or character, be it ugly, fat, whatever, is preferable to her looking like a model. She's been really explicit about that.
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Because valve did that shit long before Anita or anyone was talking about this it was simply the way they always were shall we go back to alyx or before? There is no new tide just creative people doing what they do and valve acting very much like they have for a long time. And even if a couple of devs change their mind due to the new tide there will probably be just as many devs who spit in her face by going in the exact opposite direction. As I said open your eyes and look at longer term trends in older art based industries. I have had the capability of playing female characters that were not overly sexy or objectified in valve based games all the way back to Gina in HLDM the first ever valve game. And she wasn't wearing a thong, but then again some people put her in one for aftermarket mods, just like people are doing to this very day. I repeat Nothing changed, nothing will. Anita knows this and lies and pretends she cares because fools feed her....
 
MostComfortable said:
Naughty Dog, Valve, Blizzard, Overkill, Nintendo, and many other companies have started or have already been moving in this direction for years. Its only accelerating. Story development for The Last Of Us was influenced by Sarkeesian years before nerds on the internet had their temper tantrum.

The only major league pushback has been from Ubisoft because they said putting in a female player avatar in Assassin's Creed would be "too hard", and that got them a ton of negative press around E3. The fact that they shipped a broken product was icing on the cake.

Either way, the tide has already been moving in this direction. I can't imagine the kind of company that would have such an extremist agenda to say "fuck you" to such a reasonable list.
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Well, i'm currently working on a game that is unrelated to this. But if/when that is finished i would absolutely make a backlash game because "fuck you". it's the one nice thing about being an independent studio. not sure what my agenda is other than outright hatred of feminists... also half our designers are female and pretty much feel the same way for what its worth.
 
MostComfortable said:
Really? Because I've heard the exact opposite from her. A realistic portrayal of a criminal or character, be it ugly, fat, whatever, is preferable to her looking like a model. She's been really explicit about that.
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I don't doubt that you have. It shouldn't come as a surprise that she's a hypocritical inconsistent whiner.

Its part of her "Unattractive Equals Evil" - Video #9

Female villains can't be unattractive, or its a trope, and furthermore your bulldyke looks like a male, so it would also fall under "Male with Boobs".

The sad part is that she got $160K spewing her inconsistent illogical bullshit, and yet there are still tards on the internet that defend her.
 
So I guess what I keep waiting for some to ask Anita is whether or not this list is a list of things she would like to see more/less of in games I.E. dear developers please include more women of color, more women who are realistically proportioned, more female villains who are not sexualized, less sexualized violence against women.

Or a list of things she wants completely removed from video games I.E dear developer you must never allow female characters to be sexual/sexualized please remove all violence against wome that includes sexualized content, never allow women to be victims (I.E they most alway be able to meaningfully fight back).

Because if it's the first one I think we can all just agree those are reasonable requests and go home but if it's the second I think we can all agree what she is asking is completely unreasonable as it's asking creators to stifle their creativity just because it offends you which is the definition of infringing on free speech; and additionally is not realistic as sometime those things exist in real life. I.E sometimes women are sexualized IRL, sometimes women (and men) are victimized and can't fight back IRL and hey in the real world you average action hero type character, soldier, athlete etc are typically large physically strong adult males because you know those are the people best suited for jumping from buildings running and shooting bad guys IRL.

OFC I doubt anyone will get a straight answer from Anita on that one as that would actually settle the debate instead of stirring up drama that can be milked for money and fame,
 
You know, looking at her 8 talking points, it sounds like Anita would love games like Left 4 Dead and Titanfall right? Right? No/
 
If sites like this one would pay no attention to Anita then Anita would for practical purposes not even exist.
 
rudy said:
Because valve did that shit long before Anita or anyone was talking about this it was simply the way they always were shall we go back to alyx or before? There is no new tide just creative people doing what they do and valve acting very much like they have for a long time.
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As I posted before, Neil Druckmann was directly influenced by all this. The Last Of Us had the best game story and ending in years because of this. He name checked her when talking about writing TLOU and presented her with a GDC award the following year.

And as I said before, I have friends on the Dota 2 team. I know for a fact that the devs at Valve have been paying attention to this because we all discussed this back in July and again in November. Ditto my friends at Blizzard.

I mentioned Nintendo earlier when Miyamoto was talking about the main character in Splatoon being a girl. Here is them talking about Super Mario 3D World: http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/super-mario-3d-world/0/6

Koizumi: I felt like a player-character you might want to choose besides Mario was necessary to convince, say, my wife to feel comfortable picking it up and playing. This time, we welcomed in Princess Peach, so you can play as a female character. In that way, I feel like we filled in a piece that had been missing.

Iwata: A weight that had been on you for years was lifted.
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Either way, artists should be able to make whatever kind of content they would like. Absolutely! Artists in other mediums have benefited from critical analysis for decades.

Some games benefit from sexy protagonists. Like I said, I love Bayonetta! I also don't freak out if someone has comments about her appearance. I see zero problem with other voices coming in with criticism. People can critique and creators can benefit from or ignore this analysis. Again, its how so many other mediums (film, music, literature) have developed and progressed.

What I think is stupid is the temper tantrum that some people have had in response to this. I mean, death threats? I don't understand what they think is the worst-case outcome for someone like Sarkeesian's critique. A few developers make fewer sexualized female characters? A few developers avoid really lazy and obvious tropes? Challenging someone to be less formulaic, predictable, and cliche is a bad thing?

How in the world is their reaction proportionate?
 
Enzian said:
You know, looking at her 8 talking points, it sounds like Anita would love games like Left 4 Dead and Titanfall right? Right? No/
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Games I've seen her single out as liking are Portal 1 & 2, Mirror's Edge, The Last Of Us, Dark Souls, Beyond Good & Evil, Towerfall Ascension, Broken Age, Borderlands 2, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Katamari Damacy.
 
MostComfortable said:
Games I've seen her single out as liking are Portal 1 & 2, Mirror's Edge, The Last Of Us, Dark Souls, Beyond Good & Evil, Towerfall Ascension, Broken Age, Borderlands 2, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros, Katamari Damacy.
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Liking, as in she actually plays them? You realize she's a lying douchecanoe, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-69xXD734

Please watch the video, and tell me which of these two conflicting self-professed stories sounds like a scripted blatant lie. The one where she candidly says that she doesn't like video games, doesn't play video games, and had to research games because she doesn't know anything about them, or the one where she's found a niche for herself making over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars pretending to be a gamer? Yet some people seem most comfortable to defend people like her.
 
MostComfortable said:
As I posted before, Neil Druckmann was directly influenced by all this. The Last Of Us had the best game story and ending in years because of this. He name checked her when talking about writing TLOU and presented her with a GDC award the following year.

And as I said before, I have friends on the Dota 2 team. I know for a fact that the devs at Valve have been paying attention to this because we all discussed this back in July and again in November. Ditto my friends at Blizzard.

I mentioned Nintendo earlier when Miyamoto was talking about the main character in Splatoon being a girl. Here is them talking about Super Mario 3D World: http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/super-mario-3d-world/0/6



Either way, artists should be able to make whatever kind of content they would like. Absolutely! Artists in other mediums have benefited from critical analysis for decades.

Some games benefit from sexy protagonists. Like I said, I love Bayonetta! I also don't freak out if someone has comments about her appearance. I see zero problem with other voices coming in with criticism. People can critique and creators can benefit from or ignore this analysis. Again, its how so many other mediums (film, music, literature) have developed and progressed.

What I think is stupid is the temper tantrum that some people have had in response to this. I mean, death threats? I don't understand what they think is the worst-case outcome for someone like Sarkeesian's critique. A few developers make fewer sexualized female characters? A few developers avoid really lazy and obvious tropes? Challenging someone to be less formulaic, predictable, and cliche is a bad thing?

How in the world is their reaction proportionate?
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Thanks for making a whole post repeating yourself and ignoring the logical explanations. Random anecdotes do not signify a tide or significant change in the industry.

Nothing is going to change get over it. Thanks for all your unverifiable anecdotes you must be really powerful in the game industry with so many friends in such big companies. All giving you great inside information. Artist always have been able to make whatever they like as I pointed out clearly valve has been doing things like this far longer than any recent "tide". Come back in 5 - 10 - 15 years lmk know how your tide works out. Sex sells always has always will there is nothing truer. You have no counter to my point that some developers are going to go in the opposite direction just as well as some will respond. Great you have 1 guy who is responding positively to Anita whom will publicly talk about it.

Its amazing how you completely ignore the bigger picture, Artist in video gaming have been able to do whatever they want for a long time just like every other industry, and they have also been able to respond to critique any way they want. Nothing stops them from doing that except sales figures.

The point is simple nothing is changing at all anywhere. its all the same crap from movies to music to video games for 40 years strait at least.
 
Isn't this the same woman who flipped out over Bayonetta 2, than Platinum came out and was like, wtf is your problem, this was created and the major developer of this title was a female. Whats the big deal?
 
Ducman69 said:
Anita called out for the hypocrite that she is, as she's the female version of Jesse Jackson, who only wants to stir up BS to make money and gives two craps about women:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z85GQF9--s
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Ducman69 said:
Liking, as in she actually plays them? You realize she's a lying douchecanoe, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-69xXD734
These are spot on.
MostComfortable said:
Neil Druckmann, writer of The Last Of Us, is the most vocal example. Here he talks about the direct influence Anita's videos had on his own work. Massive spoilers if you haven't finished TLOU: http://youtu.be/Le6qIz7MjSk?t=30m

He talks about how he went in to make a great non-sexualized female character that was fully realized. The end result was a story and an ending that wouldn't have been possible if he went with the standard dudebro characters you see in almost every game out there.

People say they're bored with games all the time, then they lose their minds when someone proposes that game developers stretch themselves with more diversity and better representation. Blows my mind.
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I just find it funny that he attributes this to Anita. From what I can tell, the story chose the type of female. Although perhaps he wrote the story around the kind of character he'd like to play? /shrug still seems backwards.

In any case, most games could use better writing. And if they had better writing you'd get the right characters for the roles. There is most definitely too much of the cookie-cutter he-man/barbie nonsense in games (and all media), but as with everything--if the core product is solid, then you typically don't have these tropes.

What bugs me is that the issue shouldn't be so focused on women. It should be focused on the all characters equally.
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rudy said:
Nothing is going to change get over it. Thanks for all your unverifiable anecdotes you must be really powerful in the game industry with so many friends in such big companies
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I work in the film business, but yes, I'm also pretty connected in the game industry.

Its a very small world. If you're in any circle for a while, especially in a creative field, you're bound to form a network. I've been to Valve multiple times. When I was there last summer I checked out some of the VR stuff, some of which I think they're showing at GDC this week. I visited my friends at Blizzard back in December. Again, small world and I've been around a while.

Either way, things are shifting whether you like it or not. I don't understand the denial, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It seems inevitable with so many developers growing older and maturing.

Sex sells always has always will there is nothing truer.
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Absolutely, and I never argued against that. What we've been seeing and what we will continue seeing happen is more diversity in the kinds of stories that are being told.

That's all, that's the whole point. Freaking out about diversity in content or freaking out about talking about it is what I don't get.
 
Ducman69 said:
Liking, as in she actually plays them? You realize she's a lying douchecanoe, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-69xXD734

Please watch the video, and tell me which of these two conflicting self-professed stories sounds like a scripted blatant lie. The one where she candidly says that she doesn't like video games, doesn't play video games, and had to research games because she doesn't know anything about them, or the one where she's found a niche for herself making over a hundred and sixty thousand dollars pretending to be a gamer? Yet some people seem most comfortable to defend people like her.
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You repost Sargon and Thunderfoot, so I'm not going to pretend that I can change your mind.

Here are relevant quotes from the same NYU speech.

it seemed to me she was being careful to clarify whether she loves games. In a vacuum, this might seem strange, but the idea that Sarkeesian doesn't care much about games has been part of the narrative against her. There's a pre-Tropes vs. Women in Video Games clip, after all, of her introducing a video about gaming by telling a college class in 2011 that "I'm not a fan of video games. I actually had to learn a lot about video games in the process of making this."

At her talk, she showed a photo of herself as a kid, playing the Super Nintendo with a childhood friend. She recounted her efforts to get her parents to buy her a Game Boy. She talked about getting nostalgic while in college and buying a Super Nintendo to play Super Mario World.

She described her relationship with gaming as "complicated," credited the Wii for getting her back into gaming and showed a slide of Mario Kart Wii, World of Goo, Guitar Hero and Angry Birds. She said that she knew that some people didn't consider those "real" games but that she counted them as some of her favorites.

Sarkeesian mentioned her time in grad school, which I believe was the same time she was saying in that clip that she wasn't a fan of games. "If you asked me at the time, I would probably have said I wasn't a gamer," she said. Under her breath she added: "I don't even know if I want to say that now, but whatever."

She said she'd "bought into the bogus myth that, in order to be a real gamer, you had to be playing GTA or Call of Duty or God of War or other testosterone-infused macho posturing games which often had a sexist, toxic culture that surrounded them. So even though I was playing a lot of games—these kinds of games—I still refused to call myself a gamer, which I don't think is uncommon."

She would later emphasize the idea that "you can love something and be critical of it." That, she said, "is so important to what I do and is really important to engaging with any kind of pop culture."
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That seems reasonable. Like I said before, there are lots of movies and music that I love that I also know have elements that are offensive to some people, and its totally ok to talk about it without trying to discredit the offended, or do something stupid like dox, SWAT, or threaten.

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.
 
Oh that's kind of funny you work in the film business but you are completely unable to see how the film business has been more the same for decades and are unable to see how its just the same in the video game industry. More diversity in story, lol you got to be kidding...
 
rudy said:
Thanks for making a whole post repeating yourself and ignoring the logical explanations. Random anecdotes do not signify a tide or significant change in the industry.

Nothing is going to change get over it. Thanks for all your unverifiable anecdotes you must be really powerful in the game industry with so many friends in such big companies. All giving you great inside information. Artist always have been able to make whatever they like as I pointed out clearly valve has been doing things like this far longer than any recent "tide". Come back in 5 - 10 - 15 years lmk know how your tide works out. Sex sells always has always will there is nothing truer. You have no counter to my point that some developers are going to go in the opposite direction just as well as some will respond. Great you have 1 guy who is responding positively to Anita whom will publicly talk about it.

Its amazing how you completely ignore the bigger picture, Artist in video gaming have been able to do whatever they want for a long time just like every other industry, and they have also been able to respond to critique any way they want. Nothing stops them from doing that except sales figures.

The point is simple nothing is changing at all anywhere. its all the same crap from movies to music to video games for 40 years strait at least.
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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:
 
chockomonkey said:
I just find it funny that he attributes this to Anita. From what I can tell, the story chose the type of female. Although perhaps he wrote the story around the kind of character he'd like to play? /shrug still seems backwards.
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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.

the story chose the type of female
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This can be used to retroactively justify anything in a story. Ellie didn't have to be in the game. That sort of character (gay teenage girl) is unusual in any medium, let alone one a game. The story could have even justified a misogynistic woman killing simulator, but it didn't. These issues are easily solvable by the writers.

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.

In any case, most games could use better writing. And if they had better writing you'd get the right characters for the roles. There is most definitely too much of the cookie-cutter he-man/barbie nonsense in games (and all media), but as with everything--if the core product is solid, then you typically don't have these tropes.
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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.

What bugs me is that the issue shouldn't be so focused on women. It should be focused on the all characters equally.
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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.

I'm not even talking 50/50, maybe even just 30/70?

Great post btw, cheers.
 
rudy said:
Oh that's kind of funny you work in the film business but you are completely unable to see how the film business has been more the same for decades and are unable to see how its just the same in the video game industry. More diversity in story, lol you got to be kidding...
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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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