The suggestion that she should have used the extra funds to develop a game utilising or circumventing the tropes that she's discussing. While these videos generate a lot of discussion, like most internet arguments they tend to just go around and around and around in circles. A game, or even a series of little vignettes to go along with each video could, I think, do a lot more good than just the discussion itself
I don't really understand this argument. We don't tell film or literature critics to go make their own movies or write their own books if they raise concerns about a trend in those mediums.
Luckily for you I suppose, she is in fact making her own game that turns the damsel trope on its head. She was talking about it in some backer updates a few months ago, I think it's meant to be released with the third part of this discussion. Personally, I backed the project because I wanted to see her critique rather than for her to make a game, but it's an interesting bonus.
Aaand the description uses "Trigger Warning" unironically.
The first video was alright but I am not watching this on the principle of hating SJW and their lingo. Good luck to the industry and everyone losing sleep over this at having it rectified.
So still nothing new here. More of the same from the first video. I don't think she is the one exploring the circumstances of some of those games, and she does tend to pick pretty dull games like Duke Nukem, or Dante's Inferno. Not that i excuse the portrayal of women in those games, but say Ico has an involved narrative and its portrayed here as a bad use of women in the game. Shadow of the Colussus as well. No matter that the main character dies for her, and she lives to continue a bigger cycle with him reborn. But nothing new from her previous video, which is a little disconcerting, as she said this video would handle more games that have shown strong female characters and what not. 2 videos that only show manipulation to me seems pretty biased.
Now... i think that its important to be aware of some of the statistics she brings up... Also... i thought it was supposed to be objective... and she laughs at one point like she knows better at what the situation is going on. Is that still considered objective? Came across to me as she knows better than everything she is talking about, and therefore should be praised for her enlightenment to others through her videos. Very annoying imo.
Also... what is the point of the videos? She tries to touch on some "conclusions in the last minute" but barely is there any solutions to a problem. She did touch on some issues that were called on her last video, like developers just going for emotion triggers. But repeating the same words over and over don't make for a solution across a video like this. from my experience say writing an essay, you have a theme and conclusion that is introduced, you then go and back that up with examples, quotes and what not, and then always go back to your conclusion as you go through those examples. Or what links those points of view.
I think i'll pass the last video unless i see a lot of discussions spark from that one.
The flipside of that is you allow comments, they are filled with trolls and useless flame fights, and the message is lost.
Yeah I agree its a risk but in a debate like that you really have to man up(sry couldn't resist) and let others speak. Your message should be strong enough to survive trolls me thinks.
Well these videos mainly just highlight poor/lazy writing in general so I'm not sure how much advice can really be given beyond "Write female characters as if they were people not plot devices". Highlighting bad examples is sort of advice in itself because it gives you an idea of what to avoid.
She does have one video at the end dedicated to positive female characters but at the pace she's putting out videos I doubt anyone will see it for another decade.
In the first episode, a lot of the numerous examples were from older games. This episode focused much more strongly on recent examples. It also highlighted the more "extreme" nature of these examples, and the possible unintentional messaging that could be conveyed through them.
I was a little surprised. I own several of the games that were used as examples. But due to my busy schedule, I had never reached the parts of the games that she was highlighting. (haven't even gotten around to putting Shadows of the Damned in my 360) I never got past the second or third level in Prey.
I'm going to try running these videos past a friend of mine who is working on a doctorate in psychology.
Yeah I agree its a risk but in a debate like that you really have to man up(sry couldn't resist) and let others speak. Your message should be strong enough to survive trolls me thinks.
You've been to YouTube before, right? I only ask because I can't remember the last time I read a single comment that was worth a damn there...
I really enjoy these videos. At first I wanted to hate on them, but I started watching and I have to say I can't wait to see the rest. Not only does she bring attention to something that needs to be talked about, but the general "video game history" of each video is fun on its own.
I'm trying to figure out why men are so quick to get pissed at her. My immediate gut reaction was to dismiss her as well... why are these videos bringing the hate out of everyone? A 45 page thread here... pretty much nothing but hating. Even people that aren't directly hating on her, are still hating on her video. You know just bashing her is a dumb response, so instead you nitpick her video? Why? What's the point? Is there something we're insecure about? Something we feel threatened by about her? Seriously... I'm trying to get to the bottom of this lol.
Even people that aren't directly hating on her, are still hating on her video. You know just bashing her is a dumb response, so instead you nitpick her video? Why? What's the point? Is there something we're insecure about? Something we feel threatened by about her?
i-isn't it better to criticize her work than to attack her? and shouldn't people nitpick her videos if they dislike them? this is an art forum, criticism is how we communicate. what is the point of this whole place then? do we simply come here to check out other people's art, and nitpick because we're insecure? because we feel threatened? because we're men?
i read this thread from time to time and i really don't want it to be full of people preemptively invalidating the opinion of others based on their character. it only serves to stifle discussion.
this is an art forum, criticism is how we communicate. what is the point of this whole place then? do we simply come here to check out other people's art, and nitpick because we're insecure? because we feel threatened? because we're men?
Because she's not an artist posting her artwork here? lol. If everyone here honestly believes they're providing her with constructive criticism that's fine... but I don't think that's the case. Haters gon hate. Simple as that.
I told myself I'd hold off judgment until her second video thinking she'd actually get down to some critical thinking and talk about games with good/positive examples of the trope, but it was just more of the same.
I have a hard time taking her as a credible source. There were a few times when things were taken completely out of context. Like during a Prototype clip where a couple of heavily armored guys shoot a girl in the head Anita says, "when I say violence against women I'm primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is connected to a character's gender or sexuality (10:40)." Prototype takes place on Manhattan where a virus is spreading turning everyone into these zombie-like abominations. The context of the clip is that the girl was being overrun by these creatures when some military soldiers stepped in and killed the horde (made up of both men and women). It's understandable that they shot her to prevent further infection. The violence had nothing to do with her gender or sexuality. Here's the intro cinematic and the scene starts at 1:26.
It feels like some of these "triggers" are only triggers because they're flashed in front of us without any context, no understanding of the characters or their motives. Gruesome visual after gruesome visual, like I'm being brainwashed.
Then there are the times when things are interpreted in such a way as to cram it into the trope idea. Near the end (22:15) during a Darkness II clip one guy says "so now I take from you" and proceeds to shoot the main character's girlfriend in the head as he's forced to watch. Anita goes on to say "the implication being she belonged to him, that she was his possession." Now I've never actually played the Darkness games so I may be wrong in thinking this, but...are you kidding me? That's a gangster mentality: you take from me, I take from you. It has nothing to do with "possession" and everything to do with hitting the main character where it hurts. She was his in the same way he was hers. It's called love.
This video series so far feels to me like a poorly written high school research paper. I'll likely give the third video a shot, but unless she actually provides some critical thinking or presents what's already known in a new and thought-provoking way, I'm done.
HitmonInfinity
I can't speak for the people attacking Anita personally, but this is a DISCUSSION board. This thread is about Anita's videos. We discuss the videos. I'm not trying to be an asshole about it or anything, but I don't know how to explain it any more simply. If you want to know why some people dislike the videos you can read their posts and probably figure it out. Personally I find the things she presents as superficial, lacking any real analysis, and the way she goes about it feels manipulative.
Then there are the times when things are interpreted in such a way as to cram it into the trope idea. Near the end (22:15) during a Darkness II clip one guy says "so now I take from you" and proceeds to shoot the main character's girlfriend in the head as he's forced to watch. Anita goes on to say "the implication being she belonged to him, that she was his possession." Now I've never actually played the Darkness games so I may be wrong in thinking this, but...are you kidding me? That's a gangster mentality: you take from me, I take from you. It has nothing to do with "possession" and everything to do with hitting the main character where it hurts. She was his in the same way he was hers. It's called love.
I have played Darkness II, and I don't even remember that scene. The game was fun as hell though.
The violence had nothing to do with her gender or sexuality.
What I think is important to understand, though, and I think Sarkeesian is pretty clear on that in the end, is that an in-universe justification isn't a justification. Some creator still decided that the person in distress had to be a woman. Creators all over do so repeatedly.
The woman in The Darkness isn't Jackie's because they're in love; they're in love because she is his. There was a meeting at one point in which developers were thinking about what would be a good motivation, and someone raised his hand and said "dead woman."
Imagine a TV show with a smart heterosexual person and a dumb homosexual person. That isn't necessarily homophobic, everyone can be dumb or smart and that has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Imagine all TV shows had smart herterosexual people and dumb homosexual people. Every single one of those would be a statistically possible combination, but taken all together that's pretty homophobic.
Or imagine a game in which some evil racist doctor turns all black people into murderous zombies, which you then have to kill. Hey, that doesn't technically say anything negative about black people, they're just manipulated by some evil racist guy and he has a tragic backstory and it's all explained. But someone made that game so that you could shoot black people.
Don't look at what the creators are saying, look at why they're saying it, and in these cases, it's undoubtedly because they associate women with vulnerability.
(Of course so does Sarkeesian by repeatedly stressing how women are daily victimised by their husbands and boyfriends, but let's not get into that.)
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You know, the more I think about it, the more I think this isn't just a problem with bad writing, but with games as a medium. A game isn't about complex relations; it is, by definition, about objectives and obstacles. You can complain that today's games are mere wish fulfillment, but there's little of a game if you don't have a wish to strive for and there's little of a game if you aren't fulfilling it. The rationale behind Donkey Kong isn't to tell a story about the relationship between Mario and Pauline, it's a game about avoiding obstacles and getting to the top. The designers then need something at the top to make it clear that that's the objective. A symbol. And that's a princess, because boys want to rescue princesses. She isn't a woman turned objectified; she's an objective femininified.
(Which is still sexist, but bear with me.)
Similarly, I think the euthanised damsel that Sarkeesian coins isn't, at its origins, a story about relationships. It is, in a medium that knows only objectives and obstacles, the only way in which you can twist the girl as objective; she turns out not to be the objective, but an obstacle. It's the only way she can get any gameplay significance at all.
(Which is still sexist, but bear with me.)
If you analyse games as you do traditional media, you're not going to understand the choices that are being made. Form follows function in games. The protagonists are buff men because they need to convey that they can murder their way through. The objectives need to be fragile women because they need to convey that they need help. Those are, indeed, nasty stereotypes, but avoiding stereotypes makes the functioning of the game less clear while adding... nothing to the gameplay. It is like complaining that the women's bath room door show a stick figure with a dress. That's a stereotype! Not all women wear dresses. That's hardly a defining feature of women. But if you don't draw those stick figures with a dress, men and women look alike and the sign becomes meaningless. Form follows function. We don't have so many games about World War II because people want an interesting new take on it; it's because Nazis are, at one glance, bad guys. They're bad guys first, then filled in as Nazis.
I am accusing 'story in games' of being the root cause of sexism in games. What happens is that you turn what still have to be objectives and obstacles into people, and it's not going to do justice to them. The few positive games that Anita Sarkeesian mentions Dear Esther, Passage, To The Moon are terrible examples of good games. Dear Esther isn't a game, To The Moon is only at times and it's certainly not interesting at those times, and while Passage is most definitely a game, the woman is... a cumbersome accessory that keeps you from reaching all goals. It is no coincidence that those which are less game and more story are better, because it is an unhappy marriage. Stories shouldn't be burdened by gameplay patterns. Gameplay's abstract structure shouldn't pretend to be about real things.
Overall I think this video is better than the last one, she at least attempted to use some positive examples in the end, while she did sort of brush of some near the beginning (though they might be focused on in video 3 based on the ending.)
That and she did use some external research with the data from those abuse statistics and put the sources she had in the description. So whether I agree with it or not, I do think the videos are improving a bit more and is taking in at least some feedback from the first video.
Zwebbie: i dont agree. you could make the same justification of stereotypes anywhere in mainstream media, lets say in an action movie; "the bad guy has to be a russian, so the american audience knows hes evil". of course theses sterotypes are used because of a reason, that they sell. it has nothing to do with the game as a medium. theres is many games that work without these stereotypes, for example tetris.
so yeah, that one line of dialog saying that princess peach has to be rescued, could just aswell say that luigi, your brother has to be rescued. or even yet, if you played as peach, that mario has to be rescued. it makes no difference to the gameplay.
"If you analyse games as you do traditional media, you're not going to understand the choices that are being made."
yes they are easy to understand. rescuing hot girls is appealing to young boys.it has nothing more to do with "form follows function" than the storyline in your avarage blockbuster.
also
"Gameplay's abstract structure shouldn't pretend to be about real things." i dont agree with this. a lot of reason i play games would be eliminated if there was no story, setting and everything was represented by abstract cubes.
and i think this is true for a lot of people. why else would we look like soldiers when we compete against eachother in COD? or why would we spend an hour changing tiny details in the face of our Mass Effect character?
What I think is important to understand, though, and I think Sarkeesian is pretty clear on that in the end, is that an in-universe justification isn't a justification. Some creator still decided that the person in distress had to be a woman. Creators all over do so repeatedly.
Sure, there was a choice to cast that role as a female. But, I don't know. That kind of mentality screams accusation at the writers which I find unfair. These writers are drawing inspiration from their own experiences. When you need to write the tragedy of the character, that moment when they hit rock bottom, for many writers it would be to lose their loved ones. It's a powerful, albeit overused, storytelling device. The industry is saturated with males so it's safe to assume that loved one is a female (that may be a gross assumption on my part).
If those male writers started writing from the female perspective I feel like it would either be clumsy to write or awkward to read, or both. I could make a game about a lesbian in high school, but it would be abysmal. Being a white, heterosexual male I don't think any amount of research would prepare me to write that. It would feel fake.
Everyone has seen those weird, staged diversity photos in pamphlets and other marketing/informational packaging. The kind of photos that have a white kid, a black kid, a girl, an Asian, a kid with some handicap. I cringe at those. Partly from thinking about the casting auditions looking for that "perfect cripple" or "perfect Asian" but also because they're likely doing it because they feel they need to and not because it happened naturally. That fakeness turns me off.
It's a similar fakeness I feel when I imagine writers thinking too hard about casting some empty shell of a character. Unless there's a possibility for that character to actually mean something (symbolically or otherwise), why does it matter who fills that role? Like the nuns in the Hitman trailer everyone freaked out about. Violence toward women? Whoever was in that role was going to be beat to a pulp. They were empty vessels for Agent 47 to mess up. If there was anything there to throw a fit about it was the misrepresentation of the gameplay in the Hitman series. Can you imagine a white guy, an Asian girl, a black guy, and someone with multiple sclerosis get off that bus and engage Agent 47? That would have been far more insulting. (Sorry, I don't mean to dredge up that Hitman discussion again.)
I guess what I'm getting at is more variety of gender/sexuality/etc in the industry. This isn't a revolutionary idea, but it would lead to less shoehorning of diversity and equality. We need more wells of inspiration and experience to tap for new and natural stories.
This is the first time I watched one of her videos (I gathered enough about her previous ones by watching some replies) and I must say I definitely disagree with her on many many parts:
She still doesn't make a point out of Japanese vs. Western games. Seriously this is actually important since she uses so many of them in her examples. Including many that are deliberately tongue-in-cheek like Shadows of the Damned.
Complains about Ico If somebody didn't care for Yorda then they didn't care for the game period. The entire point of that game was to forge a bond with her by showing compassion. Yes she was a damsel in distress but seriously: you die if she is taken. (Like we all will if the women are lost.)
Laughs at Bionic Commandos premise. I don't get it, what's wrong with that? (aside from being somewhat dumb in the first place?)
Focuses on violence against women. So video games don't allow you to murder countless men in horrible and gruesome ways? I don't understand, if showing "violence against women" is immature because it panders to the trope that they are powerless then does she want less of it or as much of it as we have for men?
Dead all along. Why does she bring this up? If anything it subverts the trope that the damsel in distress is a an object reward by pointing out that the player's mission was pointless.
Mercy kill. I actually agree that the lack of choice these games present is annoying, but the lines are blurred way to strongly here with the concepts of 'killing a poor woman' and 'killing an enemy.' I certainly don't want less female villains.
Loss of masculinity and the ownership of women. It's nature. We don't own women as objects but we are naturally inclined to protect them for the sake of procreation. The loss of this is indeed, and always will be emasculating. When power to protect this need was required in order to survive then yes it was akin to ownership. Unfortunately this power was greater in males.
Something I agreed with her on. I didn't have a problem with "your wife died" trope but why in the hell do so many of these stories involve your daughter? Sons would be just as important to save and the fact that the mother is dead still retains impact.
Not in a vacuum. Yes stories send messages and they are not in a vacuum. But guess what? I can do that for anything! and I can reach for any conclusion I want! Context still matters because it's what makes a story relatable in the first place. How in the world would a Shakespeare story today make sense if we didn't consider the setting? The only way we could do that is to... change it?
I noticed right at the end she covered her butt as much as possible by replying to pretty much every point of criticism that many people have given her. Like a big disclaimer, "even though this doesn't represent all the games, I'm still right!"
I feel like it shouldn't be called 'Tropes against Women'. It's like saying 'Bad Smells of the World'. How much positivity will be found, how much bias will there appear to be when your mission is exclusively to find the negatives? Not only that but so far it should be 'Tropes against Homosexuals and platonic male/male friendships' because I don't see anything wrong with a heterosexual male avenging/rescuing his beloved, but I did notice that it's almost never avenging/rescuing a same sex partner/friend.
She needs to make positive examples and stop dwelling on the 'bad' games that make a point of being over sexualised or action based. It's like making a video on why the holocaust was bad or why jean Claude van dammes wife dies in every single movie!!! I like the points she raises on the most part but she comes across to me as ultra feminist and shames all acts of violence towards women. If a woman slapped another female character I think she would say that that's still showing violence against women and written by a showmanistic man pig.
Some more positive examples and less nit picking would be alot better I think. I would like her to take on the walking dead or bioshock infinite possibly. Games which I think do it right, but are still not entirely free from female bashing if you want to look for it.
Walking dead is probably the only game that made me give a hoot about her subject matter here and it was because of good writing. It still had these tropes but I was engrossed to the bitter end. I even made some pretty bad decisions along the way which really surprised me, like leaving someone to die because they hurt/betrayed me.
Some more positive examples and less nit picking would be alot better I think. I would like her to take on the walking dead or bioshock infinite possibly. Games which I think do it right, but are still not entirely free from female bashing if you want to look for it.
That's why I perked my ears up at the end of this episode when she said that the next one would feature positive counter-examples and turnarounds.
yes they are easy to understand. rescuing hot girls is appealing to young boys.it has nothing more to do with "form follows function" than the storyline in your avarage blockbuster.
also
"Gameplay's abstract structure shouldn't pretend to be about real things." i dont agree with this. a lot of reason i play games would be eliminated if there was no story, setting and everything was represented by abstract cubes.
and i think this is true for a lot of people. why else would we look like soldiers when we compete against eachother in COD? or why would we spend an hour changing tiny details in the face of our Mass Effect character?
I disagree with both points. For the first, I would like to point out that average blockbusters are commonly held to be rubbish. At a higher level, ambiguity is very much a desirable quality in static media, while it is absolutely not in video games. I know, games such as Spec Ops are posing the 'who is the bad guy really?' question, but it is still trying to be clear as to who is hostile to you and who is not. Many of the things that make art great go directly against the theory of flow in games.
As for the second point, people also fuss about the stories in erotic novels; that doesn't change the fact that they're limited in terms of story because someone has to get laid at the end of the day. Just like how in video games, something or someone has to be the goal and something or someone has to be an obstacle, and that limits the story potential greatly. You can argue that erotic literature only talks about people who are great in bed and completely ignores asexuals, which is certainly irresponsible, but I don't really see a viable alternative here, other than just reading pure literature if you're after a good story.
I guess what I'm getting at is more variety of gender/sexuality/etc in the industry. This isn't a revolutionary idea, but it would lead to less shoehorning of diversity and equality. We need more wells of inspiration and experience to tap for new and natural stories.
I think you're approaching games too much as being designed stories first, games second. It is, I would argue, the other way around. Mario doesn't jump on Koopas because the designers identified with a chap jumping on turtles; he jumps on them because jumping is already one of his most developed gameplay elements. It's turning his movement into combat. Game designers don't almost exclusively make games about combat because they're all sociopaths, it's because deleting objects from an environment is a very easy and satisfying way to show challenge and progress. It's not because console designers identify more with anthropomorphic animals and PC designers identify with soldiers that up until a while ago we had more platformers on the consoles and shooters on the PCs; it's because controllers work(ed) better for platforming and mouse and keyboard work excellently for aiming and shooting. It's easy to develop a system of moving and looking for a PC with a mouse and keyboard. It's translated to gameplay by moving becoming dodging and looking becoming aiming. So how to convey that you're supposed to click enemies? You are represented as a tough guy with guns. Because if you were represented as a high-school lesbian, it wouldn't be obvious that you're going to have to click on enemies.
From that perspective, all the terrible space marine games make a surprising amount of sense. You instantly know who's who and what's what and what you're supposed to do at a glance.
The question is whether it's worth it and whether we wouldn't be better off with purple cubes than with awful stereotypes.
hmm i agree whith some parts of what your saying, but i think your missing the point. tetris doesnt need any stereotypes to convey its goals. surely it must be clearer to represent the player as a hihgschool lesbian, then the falling force affecting coloured cubes?
"You are represented as a tough guy with guns. Because if you were represented as a high-school lesbian, it wouldn't be obvious that you're going to have to click on enemies."
if this was true, then how come we have characters like jade in beyond good and evil, samus in metriod and laracroft in tombraider?
Just like how in video games, something or someone has to be the goal and something or someone has to be an obstacle, and that limits the story potential greatly. You can argue that erotic literature only talks about people who are great in bed and completely ignores asexuals, which is certainly irresponsible, but I don't really see a viable alternative here, other than just reading pure literature if you're after a good story.
The problem, as I see it, is that the vast majority of game narratives resemble the romance novel shelf you are describing. The number of times we break out of these tropes is not the rule, but the very rare exception. At present, our medium is defined by these attitudes. Any work that deviates from them is held up as an example of fine work, and all the rest are given a free pass because "they're just games."
If we want to move this medium forward as an accepted cultural force, we have to hold it to higher standards. We can never again use the argument that these are "just games." Such an excuse belittles the medium, and dismisses the growing influence that video games have over pop culture.
Whether we like it or not, video games are becoming more significant in modern society than they once were. That trend is going to continue. And the producers, developers, and writers of this medium are going to have to accept the increased responsibility that this change necessitates.
And that is why taking factors such as female victimization lightly is no longer an option.
So you didn't watch her video because there's a disclaimer that there's footage of dozens of women getting stabbed or executed in games within the past decade, and even 3 years? That's more than a bit silly. It's for people who might have seen horrible things in real life, as a result of, you know, being in war maybe. Your reaction is more than silly, it's ridiculous.
I've seen enough of the social justice warrior bullshit on tumblr, reddit and twitter to have the use of "trigger warning" trigger me into disconnecting and not listening to anything the person saying it has. It's a goddamn phrase invented and used by extremists who do nothing but whine and bitch day in and day out about how society is the worst thing ever and how nothing has changed, without offering any suggestion as to how to improve anything other than saying things like "all hetero men should die" or "all white men are rapists and the cause of all evil".
Just like the swastika is now a symbol of Nazism, "trigger warning" is a phrase used by extremist social justice warriors, aka people who's "points" get lost in vitriol and screaming about "tone police".
If she didn't want to turn away people like me from watching her video and show that she isn't part of the new age retard "no fun allowed brigade", she could have simply said: Warning: Contains disturbing footage relating to the topic etc.
And yes, it really is that big of a goddamn issue for me, just like it is a big issue for people about how fictional characters are fictitiously portrayed in fiction.
PS: Those guys behind you making light of that girls rape and saying she was lying are idiots trying to fit in and support their "bro". It's stupid and childish and the fad needs to die.
Edit: Also holy shit at that Foxnews video, ahahahahahaa wow. Time machines must exist because those idiots must have stepped in from 1955
The question is whether it's worth it and whether we wouldn't be better off with purple cubes than with awful stereotypes.
Well apparently it's still worth it since the games with a contextual story (awful or not) will likely sell better. I may not connect with a plumber jumping on a mushroom personally but I'd connect even less with a cube jumping on a circle. that's not to excuse poor stereotypes, but just to bring it back to about context, that once it is supplied it must be considered, otherwise we can even discuss it like this.
Of course I completely agree that games are limited in expression at current due to the relative ease to program violence than more complex interactions.
Whether we like it or not, video games are becoming more significant in modern society than they once were. That trend is going to continue. And the producers, developers, and writers of this medium are going to have to accept the increased responsibility that this change necessitates.
And that is why taking factors such as female victimization lightly is no longer an option.
So wait I can't write "just a book" or "just a song" anymore?
What? A man rape a woman? A man murder a woman? A man steal or lie? A man create a game that allows him to "take back" his masculinity from a society that "castrates" him daily? There's an awful habit of people in a position of power that was given to them by others who stole it, to pretend that they're the ones being attacked by everyone else.
While you're right I think so many men fall back to this position because they subconsciously assume that by the woman claiming that men did such a thing (especially in reference to interacting with said man) that she is assuming that he is of the same calibre. So basically if none of these men would rape her then they all immediately take offense and disbelieve her on the basis that she is accusing them of being rapists. It's a stretch but I see it in reactio to this debate.
None of the men here are happy with being labelled as racist/sexist (even if they are) if they disagree with someone.
I've seen enough of the social justice warrior bullshit on tumblr, reddit and twitter to have the use of "trigger warning" trigger me into disconnecting and not listening to anything the person saying it has. It's a goddamn phrase invented and used by extremists who do nothing but whine and bitch day in and day out about how society is the worst thing ever and how nothing has changed, without offering any suggestion as to how to improve anything other than saying things like "all hetero men should die" or "all white men are rapists and the cause of all evil".
Just like the swastika is now a symbol of Nazism, "trigger warning" is a phrase used by extremist social justice warriors, aka people who's "points" get lost in vitriol and screaming about "tone police".
If she didn't want to turn away people like me from watching her video and show that she isn't part of the new age retard "no fun allowed brigade", she could have simply said: Warning: Contains disturbing footage relating to the topic etc.
And yes, it really is that big of a goddamn issue for me, just like it is a big issue for people about how fictional characters are fictitiously portrayed in fiction.
PS: Those guys behind you making light of that girls rape and saying she was lying are idiots trying to fit in and support their "bro". It's stupid and childish and the fad needs to die.
Edit: Also holy shit at that Foxnews video, ahahahahahaa wow. Time machines must exist because those idiots must have stepped in from 1955
Have to agree with you, surprised as to how vile 'socially oppressed' people can be. You would think MAKING allies in your personal burdens would be more important then making me carry the weight of what my great-great grandparents, in a distant land did. You can sum up that in one sentence actually.
"New Age Bigotry vs. Old Age Bigotry is the new debate of the 21's for idle hands".
Seriously, we have much bigger fish to fry, we can start say with the racist Head-Scientist in the USA who berated her peers for calling her out on a mistake she made about space landings, or the pro-rape conservative talkers, who don't seem to understand that human-women aren't ducks?
HELL, I'm pretty sure you can be doing more good by being part of your neighborhood-watch then losing sleep over the bust size of a bust size of a single female character in a single video-game from the 4,000 being first licensed published every year (non-licensed games not withstanding).
hmm i agree whith some parts of what your saying, but i think your missing the point. tetris doesnt need any stereotypes to convey its goals. surely it must be clearer to represent the player as a hihgschool lesbian, then the falling force affecting coloured cubes?
"You are represented as a tough guy with guns. Because if you were represented as a high-school lesbian, it wouldn't be obvious that you're going to have to click on enemies."
if this was true, then how come we have characters like jade in beyond good and evil, samus in metriod and laracroft in tombraider?
Well, Tetris isn't very intuitive, is it? It's just simple enough that you'll get the gist of it within mere seconds. But don't get me wrong, I like that about Tetris, that it's pure game and won't make concessions. Raph Koster once suggested a version of Tetris in which you're dropping people in a pit, and the bottom layer will suffocate if it complete. Just Tetris, but with different graphics. It might even be more intuitive that way, but it's kind of unethical.
The graphics have taken over. It started as symbols to clarify what we were doing, but people have attached so much importance to graphics and backstory and what-not, that it has come to dominate gameplay; it's why all guns in FPS today are hitscan instead of Doom's dodgeable ones. Because people demanded a closer link between the graphics and the gameplay function, and since we have no real weapons that function as Doom's, it's the gameplay that had to change.
As for your examples of women depicted in games: Samus wasn't a woman until halfway into the development of Metroid and she has a gun for an arm, so it's pretty clear at a glance that you'll be solving things by shooting. Beyond Good & Evil employs stereotypes as much as any next game, you're just not playing the strongest, most combat oriented character; Double H fulfills that role and he is, surprise, a buff space marine. Lastly, I think we both know why Lara Croft is in Tomb Raider, and it's not to make the game better. (It's to have breasts).
(Which isn't to say it's impossible to really have a trope-defying female lead, but like a trope-defying bathroom sign, that has more to do with diversity for diversity's sake than with making your message clearer)
The problem, as I see it, is that the vast majority of game narratives resemble the romance novel shelf you are describing. The number of times we break out of these tropes is not the rule, but the very rare exception. At present, our medium is defined by these attitudes. Any work that deviates from them is held up as an example of fine work, and all the rest are given a free pass because "they're just games."
If we want to move this medium forward as an accepted cultural force, we have to hold it to higher standards. We can never again use the argument that these are "just games." Such an excuse belittles the medium, and dismisses the growing influence that video games have over pop culture.
I think refusing to analyse them and see them for what they are belittles games more than holding them to low standards of other media. They're not "just games", but they have other strengths and weaknesses than traditional media. People have been taking chess seriously for quite a while now, you know. I think romance novels aren't (just) bad because the writers don't try, but because they need to be formulaic to be romance novels in the first place. Games, too, need to have certain elements and lack of ambiguity to be games. I refuse to believe that all people who have been working in the games industry for the last decades are just too thick to be able to write love stories; rather, I believe that you just can't meaningfully convert such a theme to game mechanics, and as such, it's best not to try. It's when you try to say meaningful things about the human condition with systems that you end up with the twisted rubbish that we've got going on now. Slapping a "this is a person" sticker on a game mechanic, obstacle or goal is disrespectful, and it's at the root of this whole sexism business. I have far more faith in board games which take actions and structures that are interesting and turn them into game systems than I have in video games which pretend their systems are meaningful and of the same substance as stories.
(I think our difference of opinion might be that you see some games as reaching the level of 'art', whereas I haven't played a single one that I didn't consider to be complete nonsense when viewed as a story.)
whereas I haven't played a single one that I didn't consider to be complete nonsense when viewed as a story.
Oh yes we all know that Zwebbie.
Curiously though, and I suspect that you probably don't do this in general, but has there been any games where you were able to separate the story from the game and then considered it differently? Like as if you forgot that it was even a game and were instead reading a book version or film version: would there be any that you consider good?
I quick example for me is Planescape: Torment, but that one's easy since it's practically a book anyway.
*edit* and I don't mean a book version or film version of "and then I did this in the game and then I did that in the game" but the plot/narrative/characters.
Swebbie: I think that you are wrong. You blame the medium itself and it's inabilty to portray anything human for the sexism, but that doesnt make sense.
like you put it "Slapping a "this is a person" sticker on a game mechanic, obstacle or goal is disrespectful"
well we have already slapped those stickers on for a long time now. but we decide what sticker to put there dont we? and eventhough you're against the whole sticker-slapping buisness you must recognize that some stickers are a worse representation of a person then others.
so the questions is; why are we, as an industry, so inclined to slap the "girl"-sticker on the object that your trying to achive,save or win, and the "boy"-sticker on the avatar for the player in the game? this you can't answer with "sticker-slapping is bad for games", cuz it could still be bad without being sexist.
note; sticker-slapping isnt the best of metaphors, but i'm not a native english speaker, so yeah...
...has there been any games where you were able to separate the story from the game and then considered it differently? Like as if you forgot that it was even a game and were instead reading a book version or film version: would there be any that you consider good?
Xenogears was amazing that way. The story could have existed without the game and would have done very well as a book. I can think of a number, but most of them would be RPG's, and older-school RPG's at that. I can't think of many recent examples where the story isn't discombobulated and an annoying side to the gameplay.
Ah well yeah that is an enlightening side of it. Obviously I'm not implying that the woman's claims weren't genuine and was not siding with the men. The instant-defence is both a knee-jerk and informed by the quite clearly toxic culture that lying underneath.
The graphics have taken over. It started as symbols to clarify what we were doing, but people have attached so much importance to graphics and backstory and what-not, that it has come to dominate gameplay; it's why all guns in FPS today are hitscan instead of Doom's dodgeable ones. Because people demanded a closer link between the graphics and the gameplay function, and since we have no real weapons that function as Doom's, it's the gameplay that had to change.
It's always been a hunt for graphics, being able to have smooth scrolling was considered a fantastic graphical feat, and doom was nearly completely praised for what it achieved technically and graphically, I would actually blame the age of the nes and the eventual rise of pc-gaming with doom and the likes to be where the hunt for graphics started.
Hitscan weapons are purely because of settings, there aren't many dodge-able small-arms today.
Here's an interesting topical point: someone experiencing games and other media for the first time, like during a young age will not experience the trope, as he/she has not experienced a lot of things,
the trope is not about what happens, it's about something having been done too many things, it's not about the trope being wrong.
Here's an interesting topical point: someone experiencing games and other media for the first time, like during a young age will not experience the trope, as he/she has not experienced a lot of things,
the trope is not about what happens, it's about something having been done too many things, it's not about the trope being wrong.
Then of course that raises the question:
If they are encountering this trope for the first time because they are young and therefore it is not a trope yet, does it still become a formative element in their development?
I think that is one of the agendas this topic is addressing: since these young people cannot objectively assess this trope as an overused storytelling device, the message it conveys is stronger.
I hate to bump threads, but Last of Us had some of the best representation of females in games I've seen. It has multiple strong support female characters (I think there might be more of them them than male characters). And also Ellie,
who you play as at one point, actually takes care of Joel when he's sick and almost dying.
Yes, this topic has been discussed to death *hides from rocks being thrown in my general direction*, but I just found this post today that kind of rustled my jimmies.
Here's what happened, if you don't want to read it (kind of long)
1.) Girl goes to comic-con
2.) She's disgusted at the vulgar humor (racist and sexist jokes) as well as irritated by the nerd lingo going around. Guys are throwing around the word "rape" loosely.
3.) She goes to a Marvel studio panel
4.) Most of the people there are white males. This troubles her.
5.) Michelle Rodriguez comes out and talks for a bit about sexist things that have happened to her, and other females recall tragic sexist memories.
6.) Audience is quiet and uncomfortable.
7.) Michelle says more women need to start writing (for games and movies)
Okay, so I'm a pretty understanding guy. Being in a place where everyone makes fun of my people would suck. Oh wait, being the Mexican minority in high school. Except it didn't suck. Unless the jokes were lame, then I'd have to pretend to laugh.
You know how much shit Mexicans have been through? A lot of shit; literally and figuratively. But I don't get butt hurt when someone makes fun of me hopping over borders. Because why would I?
That's not even the part that bugs me all that much, though.
The part that bugs me is how she says "more women need to write" (for videogames and movies)
I think if more of the female population wanted to be in this industry, they would. It would be like me going to an erotic novel convention and telling all the middle-aged women there that erotic novels should be for ALL demographics, and that more men need to write them!
And they all need to have Mexican leads!
And the leads can't have abs, because darn it then you're objectifying us!
If you disagree with me, please reply. I always love hearing the other side and maybe you can sway my opinion on this a bit. But for now this problem just seems like a non-problem to me.
Well one of the very points brought up in this thread is how we are encouraged through our experiences to gravitate to certain groups, societies, interests by way of association. So until recent time, women didn't broadly associate with video games. Men played them, men made them, and if a women had an interest in them then that itself was 'different' rather than the norm.
Simply, that lady is pointing out that if more women associated with games then there would be less situations where women gamers would be treated differently.
So yeah, they don't have to all be Mexican leads, just more Mexican leads - especially where that would enhance the media by adding more realism/depth/character.
The problem is, no one wants to be the first one to take 'the step' and follow suit.
Susan O'Connor, the writer for Bioshock 1, Infinite and a few other titles that had pretty good stories, essentially said that he was fed-up of the industry and the way it treated stories.
She's hinting at a possible 'I will quit soon enough vibe' article, but what really bothers me if she expects an industry that is (for a lack of better terms, like it or not) that is about GAMES, to change over-night, and be an almost pseudo-Hollywood suit.
This is almost a carbon copy of other issue, such as how the industry is composed mainly (like it or not) of people (men in this case) who were made fun of for being a nerd, or liking the power-rangers (especially those of the opposite sex) when they were younger. Transition a few years later, and these people are the ones that are in these respective fields, be it science or nerd culture.
You can see how things can come a grind when two sexes from the 90's have their own BS to deal with when younger.
Many people expect over-night change to happen, so they passively hint at stuff like "we're going to fight a long battle" or "we're not even making a dent!" attitudes, this isn't going to happen, nothing every happened like that. Half of the people that actually DO start a change, only get to see the ball rolling, not the changes on the way or the results.
Rome wasn't built in a day, our industries didn't change over-night, social change is a torch that you pass but don't get to see it burn, and the game industry is in the mushy middle were it doesn't know what it's identity lies, blah blah blah, you all know the good old sayings people use.
All in all, humbug issue honestly, I wish someone would actually write an article like that for the important stuff and take into consideration more then simple issues of "I want to see the fall of the chainmail bikini in my age!".
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGFWQEQUT5g"]Damsel in Distress | Critical Context [Anita Sarkeesian] - YouTube[/ame]
dunno if this has been posted, but this woman is clearly wrong when you use any critical thinking.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I understand a couple of Anita's points, but I in general do not think that her analysis is particularly strong. I can understand why women would not want to be in this industry, considering all of the potty humor and the number of dicks I've been seeing here lately. Not that this stuff bothers women necessarily, but that it's just not really the sense of humor that most women have, it's little boys humor, humor for the less well-adjusted.
My comment was that when I see women like Anita talking about stuff like this, it reminds me of my mother. My mom was one of the first female firefighters in the country, a long time back, and now since recently retired.
I wonder how the fight for 'equality' would have gone for her if she would have sat down in front of a camera after every shift and whined about men and how unfair they are, and how blind they are, and demand equality, and then pass out the videos the next shift at work.
Probably not well. The first women firefighters, and my mom, kept their heads down and did what they needed to do, and proved themselves capable people, and by the time she retired women were standard on the job, and by and large didn't face the same skepticism that the original women did.
I suppose I would say to Anita, it's fine to sit outside the industry and snipe, but it doesn't do anything for anyone. I suppose she knows this, since the videos I have watched appear to be grabs for fame/attention more than anything.
Replies
I don't really understand this argument. We don't tell film or literature critics to go make their own movies or write their own books if they raise concerns about a trend in those mediums.
Luckily for you I suppose, she is in fact making her own game that turns the damsel trope on its head. She was talking about it in some backer updates a few months ago, I think it's meant to be released with the third part of this discussion. Personally, I backed the project because I wanted to see her critique rather than for her to make a game, but it's an interesting bonus.
The first video was alright but I am not watching this on the principle of hating SJW and their lingo. Good luck to the industry and everyone losing sleep over this at having it rectified.
Now... i think that its important to be aware of some of the statistics she brings up... Also... i thought it was supposed to be objective... and she laughs at one point like she knows better at what the situation is going on. Is that still considered objective? Came across to me as she knows better than everything she is talking about, and therefore should be praised for her enlightenment to others through her videos. Very annoying imo.
Also... what is the point of the videos? She tries to touch on some "conclusions in the last minute" but barely is there any solutions to a problem. She did touch on some issues that were called on her last video, like developers just going for emotion triggers. But repeating the same words over and over don't make for a solution across a video like this. from my experience say writing an essay, you have a theme and conclusion that is introduced, you then go and back that up with examples, quotes and what not, and then always go back to your conclusion as you go through those examples. Or what links those points of view.
I think i'll pass the last video unless i see a lot of discussions spark from that one.
Yeah I agree its a risk but in a debate like that you really have to man up(sry couldn't resist) and let others speak. Your message should be strong enough to survive trolls me thinks.
She does have one video at the end dedicated to positive female characters but at the pace she's putting out videos I doubt anyone will see it for another decade.
In the first episode, a lot of the numerous examples were from older games. This episode focused much more strongly on recent examples. It also highlighted the more "extreme" nature of these examples, and the possible unintentional messaging that could be conveyed through them.
I was a little surprised. I own several of the games that were used as examples. But due to my busy schedule, I had never reached the parts of the games that she was highlighting. (haven't even gotten around to putting Shadows of the Damned in my 360) I never got past the second or third level in Prey.
I'm going to try running these videos past a friend of mine who is working on a doctorate in psychology.
I'm trying to figure out why men are so quick to get pissed at her. My immediate gut reaction was to dismiss her as well... why are these videos bringing the hate out of everyone? A 45 page thread here... pretty much nothing but hating. Even people that aren't directly hating on her, are still hating on her video. You know just bashing her is a dumb response, so instead you nitpick her video? Why? What's the point? Is there something we're insecure about? Something we feel threatened by about her? Seriously... I'm trying to get to the bottom of this lol.
i-isn't it better to criticize her work than to attack her? and shouldn't people nitpick her videos if they dislike them? this is an art forum, criticism is how we communicate. what is the point of this whole place then? do we simply come here to check out other people's art, and nitpick because we're insecure? because we feel threatened? because we're men?
i read this thread from time to time and i really don't want it to be full of people preemptively invalidating the opinion of others based on their character. it only serves to stifle discussion.
edit: oh yeah and go equality
Because she's not an artist posting her artwork here? lol. If everyone here honestly believes they're providing her with constructive criticism that's fine... but I don't think that's the case. Haters gon hate. Simple as that.
I have a hard time taking her as a credible source. There were a few times when things were taken completely out of context. Like during a Prototype clip where a couple of heavily armored guys shoot a girl in the head Anita says, "when I say violence against women I'm primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is connected to a character's gender or sexuality (10:40)." Prototype takes place on Manhattan where a virus is spreading turning everyone into these zombie-like abominations. The context of the clip is that the girl was being overrun by these creatures when some military soldiers stepped in and killed the horde (made up of both men and women). It's understandable that they shot her to prevent further infection. The violence had nothing to do with her gender or sexuality. Here's the intro cinematic and the scene starts at 1:26.
It feels like some of these "triggers" are only triggers because they're flashed in front of us without any context, no understanding of the characters or their motives. Gruesome visual after gruesome visual, like I'm being brainwashed.
Then there are the times when things are interpreted in such a way as to cram it into the trope idea. Near the end (22:15) during a Darkness II clip one guy says "so now I take from you" and proceeds to shoot the main character's girlfriend in the head as he's forced to watch. Anita goes on to say "the implication being she belonged to him, that she was his possession." Now I've never actually played the Darkness games so I may be wrong in thinking this, but...are you kidding me? That's a gangster mentality: you take from me, I take from you. It has nothing to do with "possession" and everything to do with hitting the main character where it hurts. She was his in the same way he was hers. It's called love.
This video series so far feels to me like a poorly written high school research paper. I'll likely give the third video a shot, but unless she actually provides some critical thinking or presents what's already known in a new and thought-provoking way, I'm done.
HitmonInfinity
I can't speak for the people attacking Anita personally, but this is a DISCUSSION board. This thread is about Anita's videos. We discuss the videos. I'm not trying to be an asshole about it or anything, but I don't know how to explain it any more simply. If you want to know why some people dislike the videos you can read their posts and probably figure it out. Personally I find the things she presents as superficial, lacking any real analysis, and the way she goes about it feels manipulative.
I have played Darkness II, and I don't even remember that scene. The game was fun as hell though.
The woman in The Darkness isn't Jackie's because they're in love; they're in love because she is his. There was a meeting at one point in which developers were thinking about what would be a good motivation, and someone raised his hand and said "dead woman."
Imagine a TV show with a smart heterosexual person and a dumb homosexual person. That isn't necessarily homophobic, everyone can be dumb or smart and that has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Imagine all TV shows had smart herterosexual people and dumb homosexual people. Every single one of those would be a statistically possible combination, but taken all together that's pretty homophobic.
Or imagine a game in which some evil racist doctor turns all black people into murderous zombies, which you then have to kill. Hey, that doesn't technically say anything negative about black people, they're just manipulated by some evil racist guy and he has a tragic backstory and it's all explained. But someone made that game so that you could shoot black people.
Don't look at what the creators are saying, look at why they're saying it, and in these cases, it's undoubtedly because they associate women with vulnerability.
(Of course so does Sarkeesian by repeatedly stressing how women are daily victimised by their husbands and boyfriends, but let's not get into that.)
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You know, the more I think about it, the more I think this isn't just a problem with bad writing, but with games as a medium. A game isn't about complex relations; it is, by definition, about objectives and obstacles. You can complain that today's games are mere wish fulfillment, but there's little of a game if you don't have a wish to strive for and there's little of a game if you aren't fulfilling it. The rationale behind Donkey Kong isn't to tell a story about the relationship between Mario and Pauline, it's a game about avoiding obstacles and getting to the top. The designers then need something at the top to make it clear that that's the objective. A symbol. And that's a princess, because boys want to rescue princesses. She isn't a woman turned objectified; she's an objective femininified.
(Which is still sexist, but bear with me.)
Similarly, I think the euthanised damsel that Sarkeesian coins isn't, at its origins, a story about relationships. It is, in a medium that knows only objectives and obstacles, the only way in which you can twist the girl as objective; she turns out not to be the objective, but an obstacle. It's the only way she can get any gameplay significance at all.
(Which is still sexist, but bear with me.)
If you analyse games as you do traditional media, you're not going to understand the choices that are being made. Form follows function in games. The protagonists are buff men because they need to convey that they can murder their way through. The objectives need to be fragile women because they need to convey that they need help. Those are, indeed, nasty stereotypes, but avoiding stereotypes makes the functioning of the game less clear while adding... nothing to the gameplay. It is like complaining that the women's bath room door show a stick figure with a dress. That's a stereotype! Not all women wear dresses. That's hardly a defining feature of women. But if you don't draw those stick figures with a dress, men and women look alike and the sign becomes meaningless. Form follows function. We don't have so many games about World War II because people want an interesting new take on it; it's because Nazis are, at one glance, bad guys. They're bad guys first, then filled in as Nazis.
I am accusing 'story in games' of being the root cause of sexism in games. What happens is that you turn what still have to be objectives and obstacles into people, and it's not going to do justice to them. The few positive games that Anita Sarkeesian mentions Dear Esther, Passage, To The Moon are terrible examples of good games. Dear Esther isn't a game, To The Moon is only at times and it's certainly not interesting at those times, and while Passage is most definitely a game, the woman is... a cumbersome accessory that keeps you from reaching all goals. It is no coincidence that those which are less game and more story are better, because it is an unhappy marriage. Stories shouldn't be burdened by gameplay patterns. Gameplay's abstract structure shouldn't pretend to be about real things.
Yeah, I said it.
That and she did use some external research with the data from those abuse statistics and put the sources she had in the description. So whether I agree with it or not, I do think the videos are improving a bit more and is taking in at least some feedback from the first video.
so yeah, that one line of dialog saying that princess peach has to be rescued, could just aswell say that luigi, your brother has to be rescued. or even yet, if you played as peach, that mario has to be rescued. it makes no difference to the gameplay.
"If you analyse games as you do traditional media, you're not going to understand the choices that are being made."
yes they are easy to understand. rescuing hot girls is appealing to young boys.it has nothing more to do with "form follows function" than the storyline in your avarage blockbuster.
also
"Gameplay's abstract structure shouldn't pretend to be about real things." i dont agree with this. a lot of reason i play games would be eliminated if there was no story, setting and everything was represented by abstract cubes.
and i think this is true for a lot of people. why else would we look like soldiers when we compete against eachother in COD? or why would we spend an hour changing tiny details in the face of our Mass Effect character?
Sure, there was a choice to cast that role as a female. But, I don't know. That kind of mentality screams accusation at the writers which I find unfair. These writers are drawing inspiration from their own experiences. When you need to write the tragedy of the character, that moment when they hit rock bottom, for many writers it would be to lose their loved ones. It's a powerful, albeit overused, storytelling device. The industry is saturated with males so it's safe to assume that loved one is a female (that may be a gross assumption on my part).
If those male writers started writing from the female perspective I feel like it would either be clumsy to write or awkward to read, or both. I could make a game about a lesbian in high school, but it would be abysmal. Being a white, heterosexual male I don't think any amount of research would prepare me to write that. It would feel fake.
Everyone has seen those weird, staged diversity photos in pamphlets and other marketing/informational packaging. The kind of photos that have a white kid, a black kid, a girl, an Asian, a kid with some handicap. I cringe at those. Partly from thinking about the casting auditions looking for that "perfect cripple" or "perfect Asian" but also because they're likely doing it because they feel they need to and not because it happened naturally. That fakeness turns me off.
It's a similar fakeness I feel when I imagine writers thinking too hard about casting some empty shell of a character. Unless there's a possibility for that character to actually mean something (symbolically or otherwise), why does it matter who fills that role? Like the nuns in the Hitman trailer everyone freaked out about. Violence toward women? Whoever was in that role was going to be beat to a pulp. They were empty vessels for Agent 47 to mess up. If there was anything there to throw a fit about it was the misrepresentation of the gameplay in the Hitman series. Can you imagine a white guy, an Asian girl, a black guy, and someone with multiple sclerosis get off that bus and engage Agent 47? That would have been far more insulting. (Sorry, I don't mean to dredge up that Hitman discussion again.)
I guess what I'm getting at is more variety of gender/sexuality/etc in the industry. This isn't a revolutionary idea, but it would lead to less shoehorning of diversity and equality. We need more wells of inspiration and experience to tap for new and natural stories.
Probably the best article i've read on writing fiction with women.
aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/
She still doesn't make a point out of Japanese vs. Western games.
Seriously this is actually important since she uses so many of them in her examples. Including many that are deliberately tongue-in-cheek like Shadows of the Damned.
Complains about Ico
If somebody didn't care for Yorda then they didn't care for the game period. The entire point of that game was to forge a bond with her by showing compassion. Yes she was a damsel in distress but seriously: you die if she is taken. (Like we all will if the women are lost.)
Laughs at Bionic Commandos premise.
I don't get it, what's wrong with that? (aside from being somewhat dumb in the first place?)
Focuses on violence against women.
So video games don't allow you to murder countless men in horrible and gruesome ways? I don't understand, if showing "violence against women" is immature because it panders to the trope that they are powerless then does she want less of it or as much of it as we have for men?
Dead all along.
Why does she bring this up? If anything it subverts the trope that the damsel in distress is a an object reward by pointing out that the player's mission was pointless.
Mercy kill.
I actually agree that the lack of choice these games present is annoying, but the lines are blurred way to strongly here with the concepts of 'killing a poor woman' and 'killing an enemy.' I certainly don't want less female villains.
Loss of masculinity and the ownership of women.
It's nature. We don't own women as objects but we are naturally inclined to protect them for the sake of procreation. The loss of this is indeed, and always will be emasculating. When power to protect this need was required in order to survive then yes it was akin to ownership. Unfortunately this power was greater in males.
Something I agreed with her on.
I didn't have a problem with "your wife died" trope but why in the hell do so many of these stories involve your daughter? Sons would be just as important to save and the fact that the mother is dead still retains impact.
Not in a vacuum.
Yes stories send messages and they are not in a vacuum. But guess what? I can do that for anything! and I can reach for any conclusion I want! Context still matters because it's what makes a story relatable in the first place. How in the world would a Shakespeare story today make sense if we didn't consider the setting? The only way we could do that is to... change it?
I noticed right at the end she covered her butt as much as possible by replying to pretty much every point of criticism that many people have given her. Like a big disclaimer, "even though this doesn't represent all the games, I'm still right!"
I feel like it shouldn't be called 'Tropes against Women'. It's like saying 'Bad Smells of the World'. How much positivity will be found, how much bias will there appear to be when your mission is exclusively to find the negatives? Not only that but so far it should be 'Tropes against Homosexuals and platonic male/male friendships' because I don't see anything wrong with a heterosexual male avenging/rescuing his beloved, but I did notice that it's almost never avenging/rescuing a same sex partner/friend.
Some more positive examples and less nit picking would be alot better I think. I would like her to take on the walking dead or bioshock infinite possibly. Games which I think do it right, but are still not entirely free from female bashing if you want to look for it.
Walking dead is probably the only game that made me give a hoot about her subject matter here and it was because of good writing. It still had these tropes but I was engrossed to the bitter end. I even made some pretty bad decisions along the way which really surprised me, like leaving someone to die because they hurt/betrayed me.
That's why I perked my ears up at the end of this episode when she said that the next one would feature positive counter-examples and turnarounds.
This is a lie....
As for the second point, people also fuss about the stories in erotic novels; that doesn't change the fact that they're limited in terms of story because someone has to get laid at the end of the day. Just like how in video games, something or someone has to be the goal and something or someone has to be an obstacle, and that limits the story potential greatly. You can argue that erotic literature only talks about people who are great in bed and completely ignores asexuals, which is certainly irresponsible, but I don't really see a viable alternative here, other than just reading pure literature if you're after a good story.
I think you're approaching games too much as being designed stories first, games second. It is, I would argue, the other way around. Mario doesn't jump on Koopas because the designers identified with a chap jumping on turtles; he jumps on them because jumping is already one of his most developed gameplay elements. It's turning his movement into combat. Game designers don't almost exclusively make games about combat because they're all sociopaths, it's because deleting objects from an environment is a very easy and satisfying way to show challenge and progress. It's not because console designers identify more with anthropomorphic animals and PC designers identify with soldiers that up until a while ago we had more platformers on the consoles and shooters on the PCs; it's because controllers work(ed) better for platforming and mouse and keyboard work excellently for aiming and shooting. It's easy to develop a system of moving and looking for a PC with a mouse and keyboard. It's translated to gameplay by moving becoming dodging and looking becoming aiming. So how to convey that you're supposed to click enemies? You are represented as a tough guy with guns. Because if you were represented as a high-school lesbian, it wouldn't be obvious that you're going to have to click on enemies.
From that perspective, all the terrible space marine games make a surprising amount of sense. You instantly know who's who and what's what and what you're supposed to do at a glance.
The question is whether it's worth it and whether we wouldn't be better off with purple cubes than with awful stereotypes.
"You are represented as a tough guy with guns. Because if you were represented as a high-school lesbian, it wouldn't be obvious that you're going to have to click on enemies."
if this was true, then how come we have characters like jade in beyond good and evil, samus in metriod and laracroft in tombraider?
The problem, as I see it, is that the vast majority of game narratives resemble the romance novel shelf you are describing. The number of times we break out of these tropes is not the rule, but the very rare exception. At present, our medium is defined by these attitudes. Any work that deviates from them is held up as an example of fine work, and all the rest are given a free pass because "they're just games."
If we want to move this medium forward as an accepted cultural force, we have to hold it to higher standards. We can never again use the argument that these are "just games." Such an excuse belittles the medium, and dismisses the growing influence that video games have over pop culture.
Whether we like it or not, video games are becoming more significant in modern society than they once were. That trend is going to continue. And the producers, developers, and writers of this medium are going to have to accept the increased responsibility that this change necessitates.
And that is why taking factors such as female victimization lightly is no longer an option.
I've seen enough of the social justice warrior bullshit on tumblr, reddit and twitter to have the use of "trigger warning" trigger me into disconnecting and not listening to anything the person saying it has. It's a goddamn phrase invented and used by extremists who do nothing but whine and bitch day in and day out about how society is the worst thing ever and how nothing has changed, without offering any suggestion as to how to improve anything other than saying things like "all hetero men should die" or "all white men are rapists and the cause of all evil".
Just like the swastika is now a symbol of Nazism, "trigger warning" is a phrase used by extremist social justice warriors, aka people who's "points" get lost in vitriol and screaming about "tone police".
If she didn't want to turn away people like me from watching her video and show that she isn't part of the new age retard "no fun allowed brigade", she could have simply said: Warning: Contains disturbing footage relating to the topic etc.
And yes, it really is that big of a goddamn issue for me, just like it is a big issue for people about how fictional characters are fictitiously portrayed in fiction.
PS: Those guys behind you making light of that girls rape and saying she was lying are idiots trying to fit in and support their "bro". It's stupid and childish and the fad needs to die.
Edit: Also holy shit at that Foxnews video, ahahahahahaa wow. Time machines must exist because those idiots must have stepped in from 1955
Of course I completely agree that games are limited in expression at current due to the relative ease to program violence than more complex interactions.
So wait I can't write "just a book" or "just a song" anymore?
While you're right I think so many men fall back to this position because they subconsciously assume that by the woman claiming that men did such a thing (especially in reference to interacting with said man) that she is assuming that he is of the same calibre. So basically if none of these men would rape her then they all immediately take offense and disbelieve her on the basis that she is accusing them of being rapists. It's a stretch but I see it in reactio to this debate.
None of the men here are happy with being labelled as racist/sexist (even if they are) if they disagree with someone.
"New Age Bigotry vs. Old Age Bigotry is the new debate of the 21's for idle hands".
Seriously, we have much bigger fish to fry, we can start say with the racist Head-Scientist in the USA who berated her peers for calling her out on a mistake she made about space landings, or the pro-rape conservative talkers, who don't seem to understand that human-women aren't ducks?
HELL, I'm pretty sure you can be doing more good by being part of your neighborhood-watch then losing sleep over the bust size of a bust size of a single female character in a single video-game from the 4,000 being first licensed published every year (non-licensed games not withstanding).
If you want to know how such things usually come into existence, here is a nice post to read: http://www.reddit.com/r/short/comments/1fbzou/im_noticing_considerable_animosity_towards_women/ca8xj1w
The graphics have taken over. It started as symbols to clarify what we were doing, but people have attached so much importance to graphics and backstory and what-not, that it has come to dominate gameplay; it's why all guns in FPS today are hitscan instead of Doom's dodgeable ones. Because people demanded a closer link between the graphics and the gameplay function, and since we have no real weapons that function as Doom's, it's the gameplay that had to change.
As for your examples of women depicted in games: Samus wasn't a woman until halfway into the development of Metroid and she has a gun for an arm, so it's pretty clear at a glance that you'll be solving things by shooting. Beyond Good & Evil employs stereotypes as much as any next game, you're just not playing the strongest, most combat oriented character; Double H fulfills that role and he is, surprise, a buff space marine. Lastly, I think we both know why Lara Croft is in Tomb Raider, and it's not to make the game better. (It's to have breasts).
(Which isn't to say it's impossible to really have a trope-defying female lead, but like a trope-defying bathroom sign, that has more to do with diversity for diversity's sake than with making your message clearer)
I think refusing to analyse them and see them for what they are belittles games more than holding them to low standards of other media. They're not "just games", but they have other strengths and weaknesses than traditional media. People have been taking chess seriously for quite a while now, you know. I think romance novels aren't (just) bad because the writers don't try, but because they need to be formulaic to be romance novels in the first place. Games, too, need to have certain elements and lack of ambiguity to be games. I refuse to believe that all people who have been working in the games industry for the last decades are just too thick to be able to write love stories; rather, I believe that you just can't meaningfully convert such a theme to game mechanics, and as such, it's best not to try. It's when you try to say meaningful things about the human condition with systems that you end up with the twisted rubbish that we've got going on now. Slapping a "this is a person" sticker on a game mechanic, obstacle or goal is disrespectful, and it's at the root of this whole sexism business. I have far more faith in board games which take actions and structures that are interesting and turn them into game systems than I have in video games which pretend their systems are meaningful and of the same substance as stories.
(I think our difference of opinion might be that you see some games as reaching the level of 'art', whereas I haven't played a single one that I didn't consider to be complete nonsense when viewed as a story.)
...that was done a very long time ago
Curiously though, and I suspect that you probably don't do this in general, but has there been any games where you were able to separate the story from the game and then considered it differently? Like as if you forgot that it was even a game and were instead reading a book version or film version: would there be any that you consider good?
I quick example for me is Planescape: Torment, but that one's easy since it's practically a book anyway.
*edit* and I don't mean a book version or film version of "and then I did this in the game and then I did that in the game" but the plot/narrative/characters.
like you put it "Slapping a "this is a person" sticker on a game mechanic, obstacle or goal is disrespectful"
well we have already slapped those stickers on for a long time now. but we decide what sticker to put there dont we? and eventhough you're against the whole sticker-slapping buisness you must recognize that some stickers are a worse representation of a person then others.
so the questions is; why are we, as an industry, so inclined to slap the "girl"-sticker on the object that your trying to achive,save or win, and the "boy"-sticker on the avatar for the player in the game? this you can't answer with "sticker-slapping is bad for games", cuz it could still be bad without being sexist.
note; sticker-slapping isnt the best of metaphors, but i'm not a native english speaker, so yeah...
Xenogears was amazing that way. The story could have existed without the game and would have done very well as a book. I can think of a number, but most of them would be RPG's, and older-school RPG's at that. I can't think of many recent examples where the story isn't discombobulated and an annoying side to the gameplay.
It's always been a hunt for graphics, being able to have smooth scrolling was considered a fantastic graphical feat, and doom was nearly completely praised for what it achieved technically and graphically, I would actually blame the age of the nes and the eventual rise of pc-gaming with doom and the likes to be where the hunt for graphics started.
Hitscan weapons are purely because of settings, there aren't many dodge-able small-arms today.
Here's an interesting topical point: someone experiencing games and other media for the first time, like during a young age will not experience the trope, as he/she has not experienced a lot of things,
the trope is not about what happens, it's about something having been done too many things, it's not about the trope being wrong.
Then of course that raises the question:
If they are encountering this trope for the first time because they are young and therefore it is not a trope yet, does it still become a formative element in their development?
I think that is one of the agendas this topic is addressing: since these young people cannot objectively assess this trope as an overused storytelling device, the message it conveys is stronger.
https://www.facebook.com/HeroicWomen
http://m.xojane.com/entertainment/michelle-rodriguez-women-who-rock-panel-comic-con?utm_medium=facebook
Here's what happened, if you don't want to read it (kind of long)
1.) Girl goes to comic-con
2.) She's disgusted at the vulgar humor (racist and sexist jokes) as well as irritated by the nerd lingo going around. Guys are throwing around the word "rape" loosely.
3.) She goes to a Marvel studio panel
4.) Most of the people there are white males. This troubles her.
5.) Michelle Rodriguez comes out and talks for a bit about sexist things that have happened to her, and other females recall tragic sexist memories.
6.) Audience is quiet and uncomfortable.
7.) Michelle says more women need to start writing (for games and movies)
Okay, so I'm a pretty understanding guy. Being in a place where everyone makes fun of my people would suck. Oh wait, being the Mexican minority in high school. Except it didn't suck. Unless the jokes were lame, then I'd have to pretend to laugh.
You know how much shit Mexicans have been through? A lot of shit; literally and figuratively. But I don't get butt hurt when someone makes fun of me hopping over borders. Because why would I?
That's not even the part that bugs me all that much, though.
The part that bugs me is how she says "more women need to write" (for videogames and movies)
I think if more of the female population wanted to be in this industry, they would. It would be like me going to an erotic novel convention and telling all the middle-aged women there that erotic novels should be for ALL demographics, and that more men need to write them!
And they all need to have Mexican leads!
And the leads can't have abs, because darn it then you're objectifying us!
If you disagree with me, please reply. I always love hearing the other side and maybe you can sway my opinion on this a bit. But for now this problem just seems like a non-problem to me.
Simply, that lady is pointing out that if more women associated with games then there would be less situations where women gamers would be treated differently.
So yeah, they don't have to all be Mexican leads, just more Mexican leads - especially where that would enhance the media by adding more realism/depth/character.
Susan O'Connor, the writer for Bioshock 1, Infinite and a few other titles that had pretty good stories, essentially said that he was fed-up of the industry and the way it treated stories.
Link to TLDR: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124405-Bioshock-Writer-Fed-Up-With-Industry
Link to Long version: http://gameological.com/2013/05/susan-oconnor-game-writer/
She's hinting at a possible 'I will quit soon enough vibe' article, but what really bothers me if she expects an industry that is (for a lack of better terms, like it or not) that is about GAMES, to change over-night, and be an almost pseudo-Hollywood suit.
This is almost a carbon copy of other issue, such as how the industry is composed mainly (like it or not) of people (men in this case) who were made fun of for being a nerd, or liking the power-rangers (especially those of the opposite sex) when they were younger. Transition a few years later, and these people are the ones that are in these respective fields, be it science or nerd culture.
You can see how things can come a grind when two sexes from the 90's have their own BS to deal with when younger.
Many people expect over-night change to happen, so they passively hint at stuff like "we're going to fight a long battle" or "we're not even making a dent!" attitudes, this isn't going to happen, nothing every happened like that. Half of the people that actually DO start a change, only get to see the ball rolling, not the changes on the way or the results.
Rome wasn't built in a day, our industries didn't change over-night, social change is a torch that you pass but don't get to see it burn, and the game industry is in the mushy middle were it doesn't know what it's identity lies, blah blah blah, you all know the good old sayings people use.
All in all, humbug issue honestly, I wish someone would actually write an article like that for the important stuff and take into consideration more then simple issues of "I want to see the fall of the chainmail bikini in my age!".
dunno if this has been posted, but this woman is clearly wrong when you use any critical thinking.
I'm guessing 99,614 of them.
My comment was that when I see women like Anita talking about stuff like this, it reminds me of my mother. My mom was one of the first female firefighters in the country, a long time back, and now since recently retired.
I wonder how the fight for 'equality' would have gone for her if she would have sat down in front of a camera after every shift and whined about men and how unfair they are, and how blind they are, and demand equality, and then pass out the videos the next shift at work.
Probably not well. The first women firefighters, and my mom, kept their heads down and did what they needed to do, and proved themselves capable people, and by the time she retired women were standard on the job, and by and large didn't face the same skepticism that the original women did.
I suppose I would say to Anita, it's fine to sit outside the industry and snipe, but it doesn't do anything for anyone. I suppose she knows this, since the videos I have watched appear to be grabs for fame/attention more than anything.