As always, the episode was quite good. She certainly does a good job of explaining the issues and giving many great examples of the problems. All of the episodes of the series are good of course, and this is no exception. Seeing all that stuff together... ugh.
There's really only one issue to debate here -- how much does what someone does in a game affect them in real life? The things depicted are clearly horrible, but the issue of how much impact it has on the player is very important. In the episode, Anita makes a case for why people are affected by what they do in videogames. Okay. But she doesn't mention that not all of the research shows that -- that there are just as many studies showing no connection between videogame violence and real violence or aggression as there are studies showing a link. It's easy to imagine, and see, how playing a game could potentially influence someone, but it clearly doesn't always happen, given the mixed results in studies.
However, I think that being affected by negative portrayals of women could easily happen whether or not someone is actually affected by the violence. Most people don't do violent things like those in games in real life, after all, but stereotyping and sexualizing women? That happens all the time, and games like those certainly do show examples of that culture. Anita's point that the people who insist the most strongly that they aren't being affected my media often are the most affected is a good one. However, it IS true that studies are far from in agreement as to how much games affect people. Just doing violent things in a game doesn't necessarily make people more violent, and that is potentially true about sexualization of women as well.
So yeah, I have mixed feelings as to the impact of this episode. There's no question that the things shown are disturbing when all put together, and it's absolutely true that that kind of negative stereotyping and casual acceptance of sexualization and violence is unpleasant to see, sets a bad standard for anyone who is affected by seeing it which could lead to worse things as per the studies she cites, and probably shouldn't be as common in games as it is. However... how much DOES it affect people? That's a very hard question to answer, of course. It's likely that these stereotypes (and actions) affect many people at least somewhat, but how many, and how much, are open to question. These are bad negative stereotypes, and the 'women as objects' culture these games promote is horrible, but I highly doubt that studies all agree that games actually lead to people those things more; if they don't for violence, which they certainly do not always do (and this is understandable, playing a violent game doesn't usually make people be more violent in real life...), then they probably don't for sexualization either.
Regardless of the direct influence on people though, selling that kind of power fantasy as an important element of many of today's most popular games is definitely disturbing, and it is a problem. I really dislike the negative, stereotyped images being portrayed. But what can be done? That's hard. Just equalizing thing by sexualizing men more is not, as she says, a complete answer, because of the vastly different societal positions men and women have, but it's a start at least; more equality in these depictions might do some good, even though the depictions of women are certainly a bigger issue because of the continuing effects of sexism in society. Of course, cutting those things out is another way, but I doubt that would actually happen... not entirely, at least. And that would be more just hiding the general societal problem this is a reflection of, rather than addressing it...
That whole segment highlighted an almost confusingly incompetent set of premises. She was attempting to highlight how women were treated differently, while disregarding (or obscuring) that the same criticism of the systems and mechanics would apply to any other NPC in those games. The efforts to downplay the systems in the games which communicate and enforce rules against anti-social (and by her measure, anti-women) behavior just seemed counter-intuitive. Characterizing police attempting to stop and arrest a player acting out violence on NPCs as "exhilarating" says much, much more about her assumptions than the attitudes behind the games. That exact criticism would apply to police in real life if that were an accurate take on the events. Police attempting to stop criminals is giving them incentive to commit violent acts? I can't agree with that relative to this conversation.
You don't seem to understand (maybe). The issue is the lack of punishment -- in real life, someone doing something like that who gets caught gets locked up for a long time. But in a game, because it's not considered fun that way, you're able to get away with the most horrendous crimes, even if you get caught, with only the barest slap on the wrist. It's pretty clearly saying 'in this world, doing these things is just fine; don't worry, you won't really get punished'.
So, you can have your fun running from the police, and then there'll be no consequences afterwards. Killing innocents benefits the player because it allows them to play the potentially entertaining 'get away from/kill the police' minigame, knowing that they will be able to resume normal play afterwards without so much as having to load their last save or something.
