New Tropes vs Women video is out (Women as Background Decoration pt. 2)

The whole dismissal of this bullshit as only 'trolling' tells us everything about this conflict.

On one hand, we have people like Anita who appears by her own name, publicly, to talk the issue. On the other we have people who are ready to harass people anonymously but where are the public 'anti-SJW' debaters who would drive their cause by reasoned, polite arguments? Where's the guy who would go to GDC to talk to developers in a panel about how there's no sexism problem at all in games and they can just keep on doing what they want? Yeah, nowhere.
 
Transparent to us, maybe, but they've got this really cute act going where they pretend they're fighting corruption and censorship instead of just being an internet Don Quixote tilting at evil feminist windmills.

I'm not seeing that in the mountain of hate filled shit posts you get your pointing anything out to them. Heck, you get similar posts whenever you try to talk about something they don't like (naruto, the ps4, vita, popular games, etc).
 
So basically,

Police: Hi, what's the emergency?
EVIL SJW: Hi, I'm getting incredibly specific rape and death threats sent with my address and pictures of my house and family. They also know the names of some people I know that I'm not sure how they even got.
Police: Okay, before I take down your information, don't you think you're forgetting something?
EVIL SJW: What?
Police: Men get death threats as well.
EVIL SJW: Oh, sure? I don't really see how that's relev-
Police: GOOD DAY, TROLL *click*

i8kXbaNCKpyWN.gif
 
Oh I agree with most of what you say. And I do not mind someone critiquing a game. Except that most of the critque Anita has is incorrect, or pulled totally out of context in her video's. Making it seem like there is an underlying message of hatred/oppression towards women, which is just not the case. You can spin any story/game to fit your agenda but to me that is just not doing her cause any justice.

Underrepresentation, I can totally agree with, but in the end it's up to the writers to write the story they want. We should be less concerned of the race/gender of the protagonist but more about how the game plays, and the overarching story.

In the end I think that our definition of oppression is a little bit different. Oppression to me is being told what to think, what to write, what to say, what to do in fear of ones life, no free will. When I see people on Social media claim they are opressed, when they pretty much have everything in life, including freedom just rubs me the wrong way. But then again I'm a white, male European, according to most of the feminists I have talked to my opinion is worth less than doggshit anyway.

The goal of Anita's videos isn't always that the creators snuck into the back room and made plots that painted women in the light she showed while wringing their hands and twisting their 'staches. People keep using the word lazy because what she sees and points out is done without any forethought and very frequently. The situations are not malicious in their messaging on purpose but they are so ingrained that you can only see how warped it is when you take a step back. Like, I've rarely realized how many games I've played where a prostitute gets killed for X reasons which were almost the exact same reasons within each game. It's an integrated problem in the way people tell these stories that person of A, B, C race, creed, gender is used for purpose X then stowed back in the box as a prop with little thought outside the box.

Also I agree that writers should write what they want but so many write things that are eerily similar in all the problematic ways (women as objects, victims, etc.) If at least some developers take her opinion into account and think of a newer, more intriguing way of writing women or creating atmosphere beyond the norm then gaming will be all the better for it (The general public overall will stop perceiving gaming and game stories as immature shlock when they start to see more varied and interesting stories). You don't need every single game on the market to accommodate but it helps to have more that what you can count on one hand.

Also your opinion is important. What you have to understand is that some people have different experiences. As Americans see things differently from Europeans; Women, homosexuals, and minorities experience and notice things a lot differently from straight white males and vice versa. That's just a plain fact. As such, they are open to perceptions on how things are that might be vastly different from what you or I may see. All it takes to understand where people are coming from is a bit of empathy. The majority of the vast amount of people who bring issues like this up aren't just doing it because they have nothing better to do. No one is just agreeing with Anita because they've been brainwashed or they want to be cool. They do it because they value the medium and observe things in it that are stifling the medium as a whole from reaching what it could be.
 
Are you kidding me? If she really felt threatened, then she would have called the cops already. Instead she made a website where she posts some of the messages she get's on her video's. Yeah, wow she really seems impressed.

She DID call the cops! She also had to stay at her friends house because this person knew her address.
Jesus...
 
She had to call the police and go to sleep at a friend's house, but yeah, sure, she's evil and she doesn't feel threatened about people telling her that they know where she and HER FUCKING PARENTS live, she's just trolling us xdxd.

I never called her evil, I just said she is misinformed and that I do not agree with her. Nor have I ever said I agreed with the rape threats, or that I thought that was fine. I do not, some of the people whom I follow on youtube had the same shit happen to them, and that is not right no matter who you are.

I might not agree with her, but I do not wish any harm on her. Let's get that out of the way here.
 
The whole dismissal of this bullshit as only 'trolling' tells us everything about this conflict.

On one hand, we have people like Anita who appears by her own name, publicly, to talk the issue. On the other we have people who are ready to harass people anonymously but where are the public 'anti-SJW' debaters who would drive their cause by reasoned, polite arguments? Where's the guy who would go to GDC to talk to developers in a panel about how there's no sexism problem at all in games and they can just keep on doing what they want? Yeah, nowhere.

I suddenly have an idea for a Kickstarter.
 
It sounds like you're suggesting that a lot of this is still part of the male power fantasy that fetishizes female pain devoid of agency as a device to stroke the presumed male player's ego. I think I agree in large part, and I definitely think you're on point that it's not "realism" so much as our Hollywood idea of reality, which is already highly charged with sexualized violence.

Personally I think that any fantasy that exploits real pain that real people are still experiencing simply for cheap thrills, devoid of any introspection, is gross. Do I want to take all the grimdark toys away? No. I can play something else.

Except that for the most part, at the moment, there isn't a lot of "something else."

I think the statement that there isn't much aside from the "grimdark" stuff/stuff where women characters fit this trope is patently false. Now, we do have a narrowed topic here where the prevalence is fairly established (with arguably varying degrees of offense), but that statement doesn't work if we forget we are narrowing things down.

The established ideals and fantasies exist far beyond Hollywood, but that's obviously an important source in modern life. To be more specific in what I have in mind, I'm not really talking about scenes of violence against women, but rather the use of institutions that can be considered sexist or exploitative, but relevant to the world-building (and verisimilitude), namely brothels and such, as that has come up a lot in this topic. I think having a baseline that leans towards absolutist in if or how these elements can be depicted is worth criticism in itself, especially if the elements are being equated to something explicit like God of War 3's worst moment with a female character.

Alternatively, it has been argued "there's too much"/"they don't have to use it" and I wouldn't put up too much of a fight against that even if I don't necessarily feel the seedy prostitution elements in particular are inappropriate in these crime or historical themed games, but as I said before, in an amicable/partial argument like this, the reasoning and language makes it sound more like "it shouldn't exist"/"they can't use it", which is at least contradictory. Note that I'm considering "it shouldn't exist unless they follow this exact process of mine that shifts what is important in the game" as the same thing.

Transparent to us, maybe, but they've got this really cute act going where they pretend they're fighting corruption and censorship instead of just being an internet Don Quixote tilting at evil feminist windmills.

I think you are overestimating how much of a message a board like /v/ can handle. There's virtually no organization, even in efforts to coordinate. There are posters who do believe they are taking the fight to the game journos for whatever fruitless purpose and there are people who hold conservative beliefs on matters of SJW corrupting their industry (some of which seems to come from another board like /pol/, which is apparently Hitler) and everything in between (and, just checking, there are the posters of every thread other than the 2 or 3 concerned with this that gives no fucks). The only thing that holds them together is that they feel threatened, insulted, and/or bored.
 
Jesus Christ. I won't blame her if she stops making videos after this.
What an utter waste of time the whole picking out SJW journos thing is. Why do they feel themselves so depended on writers anyway to make such a stink? I have to believe that there are still threads on /v/ interested in talking about videogames, assuming that comes from 4chan.
/v/ stopped talking about video games a long time ago. If you want to talk about video games on 4chan, you're better off in the /vg/ generals or /vp/ (if you can ignore the mountains of cartoon pornography).
 
Just to reiterate, the authorities did get involved.

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And also this gem:
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504718160902492160
BwEefh5IcAAG_ob.jpg:large

Tough to see this kind of thing.

For what it's worth, I think the videos I've seen of hers have made some valid points, while glossing over some of the narrative context of the discussed material. Some game narratives are lazy and do boil down to using lots of tired tropes, whether they are against women, or otherwise (but you can say the same about TV/movies, as well.) In comparing a list of blockbuster action games, is it really appropriate to look for progressive socio-political commentary? Still, some of the examples are certainly over the top in their violence.

And it's total bullshit to make violent threats over the internet to someone and their family. This stuff seems to happen at an alarming frequency to some of these internet personalities and it's digusting.
 
Imru’ al-Qays;127425455 said:
Why is it cheap? What does this mean?
Because it's lazy and thoughtless. Especially with the male elf option. The damsel in distress is used so often because of course men hate it when their women are taken. They must go after them. And this time we add the threat of rape. Why? Hmm how do you show the oppression of the elves in the city? Well... Rape the women. That'll show their oppression. The elf women get raped and the elf men's women get raped. Everyone is oppressed! There are many ways they could have shown how bad the city elves as a whole being oppressed, but they specifically chose one that targeted the women.

Imru’ al-Qays;127425455 said:
This argument is constructed so broadly you may as well say that all depictions of violence against women in games are problematic.

It's not simply about if the act is used, it's about why it's used. What its purpose is. One quick tip would be if using it isn't even about the act itself, but just being used simply as a means to elaborate on something else in the story (example: using it to show how evil someone, or a group is), then you might want to think twice.

Imru’ al-Qays;127425455 said:
The fact that the female elf is playable is extremely relevant, since part of Sarkeesian's thesis is that this sort of thing is objectionable in part because it exists to titillate "presumed straight male players."

Why is it relevant? Men do sometimes play as the female option.

Imru’ al-Qays;127425455 said:
That's the problem. They were completely different and she treated them as being the same.

They are still both examples. Just because you think one is worse than another doesn't make it not an example. It doesn't invalidate everything in the video, and it doesn't diminish either as an example.


Imru’ al-Qays;127425455 said:
Why did you find that objectionable?
See my response to why was it cheap.
 
I haven't been keeping up with this at all, I'm aware of the controversy with the kickstarter and didn't care. I know about the death threats via twitter and find it sad and unsurprising.

Does this deserve more attention or can I safely ignore it like most internet drama? It keeps coming up and doesn't seem to be going away which is the only reason why I'm asking.
 
Please elaborate on some of these contexts for us.

Like this context maybe?
https://twitter.com/AdamGoodallYes/status/504826648668024832
Well, yes actually. That makes her an actual NPC among others instead of a static object meant to be used for one purpose. I'd imagine other NPCs in the game can be used for similar purposes which would make singling her out like this quite dubious. If the situation really is so that the game has many different kinds of NPCs, all of whom can be killed and used to distract police, then yes she's definitely showing that scene in a misleading way and out of context.

It's pretty much the same as when she says that GTA among others incentivises brutality towards women by giving you a cash reward for killing them, conveniently leaving out the fact that everyone drops a pile of cash when killed in these games. That's either being completely ignorant of the game mechanics at hand or deliberately leaving out important facts to strengthen your point.
 
It is sick that people are threatening her, no matter who she is.


After some research, looking at the mistakes/inaccurate description of numerous games, and looking at her history prior to this series.

I've decided not to give her anymore attention. I fully believe there are sick/losers threatening her, and I hope she is 100% safe.

I no longer believe she's an honest person in this approach to gaming and women though. I'd take my wife's thoughts on gaming well before her, as I know for a fact my wife has been a massive lover of video games her entire life. Heck, she walked me through Chrono Cross (as she had beaten it multiple times) when we were dating..due to my having missed out on it.

Hope she is safe and nothing bad comes from the trash in the world. Good conversation on this subject can be had, I don't like the misleading/bias angle used on some games though. It shows a lack of real knowledge on the actual game in some cases.
 
If the situation really is so that the game has many different kinds of NPC's, all of whom can be killed and used to distract police, then yes she's definitely showing that scene in a misleading way and out of context.
In that section of Hitman Absolution, it's only that dead woman's body that can be thrown over to distract all the cops. I remember doing that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEDMXndEuvo#t=8m - this is on a perfect silent assassin run, too
 
simply "venting" instead of showing proper analysis of the subject.

I'd still like to see some suggestions on how to improve this.

I think your first thought is the answer to your second thought.

I've since watched a few of her videos, some in the Tropes vs series, some in the general critique categories, and the biggest challenge is just remaining focused. There's a lot of jumping around, a lot of points she's trying to hit in a short period of time, and a lot of repetition. It has a very slapdash, scattershot effect that gets in the way of the truly poignant observations.

Throughout the Background Decorations video, for example, her arguably strongest case was Watch_Dogs. Its setting is modern, which distances it from period pieces like RDR and places it much closer to truly modern expectations of gender roles. Its implementation of the assault side activities is a mechanical nightmare and woefully contradictory--and something she should have explored much more thoroughly. Consider what that criticism would do for her point. Not only would she be calling attention to a very valid concern about the role and portrayal of women in the game, but she would also be approaching it from a game mechanics standpoint, clearly demonstrating just how broken the game is in this respect: the player can only take action at specific points. Otherwise he or she fails the side mission. The game, itself, essentially forces the player to stand by and watch the vignette play out, turning the player into a spectator and the NPCs into a sideshow. It's incredibly artificial design and needs more analysis than the sentence she spent on it.

If she were to do that, focus on both, it'd be a double-punch critique: "Hey, look, this is the superficial garbage of the game, and here is the garbage game artifice underneath of it."

It'd be a much stronger, deeper argument than the quick overview drive-by here. Examining one or two games in depth is preferable to zipping over 6-12.

I also think she really needs to figure out her starting point for some of this. For example, the video about Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles. I need to finish out S1 of Dollhouse but I never got the sense of the rape angle she's seeing. Likewise, when she asked why SCC didn't get renewed, noting the strong female characters, etc., she mentioned the original Terminator movies just being big macho action flicks, which couldn't be further from the truth. T1 and T2 are more about female empowerment than anything else. Together, they tell the story of a woman who finds direction for her life, becomes a warrior--and the literal mother of the savior--a guide, a hero, a teacher, and ultimately, discovers how to be a mother. That...isn't a macho action movie and her description of the movies kind of betrays a very superficial reading: focusing on the guns and explosions, not paying attention to the thematic underpinnings.
 
Transparent to us, maybe, but they've got this really cute act going where they pretend they're fighting corruption and censorship instead of just being an internet Don Quixote tilting at evil feminist windmills.

I remember you used to be more active in /v/ back in the day. Has the community changed or have you soured on it?
 
When she encountered her own troubles, despite John's chivalrous nature and due to the way the relationship between the two was formed through their interactions, I did not feel like John helped her simply because she was a woman in danger but rather because they came off as friends.
Welp if your outlook is invalidating anything that ties to anything outside of informal acquaintences or complete strangers, then there is nothing to discuss unfortunately. /exit
 
I haven't been keeping up with this at all, I'm aware of the controversy with the kickstarter and didn't care. I know about the death threats via twitter and find it sad and unsurprising.

Does this deserve more attention or can I safely ignore it like most internet drama? It keeps coming up and doesn't seem to be going away which is the only reason why I'm asking.

You answered your own question. Internet sociopaths like this come out of the wood work consistently when Antia puts up a video. Rational discourse is set aside in favor of threats of bodily harm simply for the crime of voicing an opinion. And it's not only Anita that has to put up with this. Inevitably, when any woman appears front and center and does something that doesn't fit squarely into the mentality of the vocal horde, they are torn down in vile, and honestly frightening ways. It happens consistently from women just using voice chat to play and FPS all the way up to developers and it needs to be nipped in the bud. If not for them, speak up because this is the vocal majority we are talking about here. Gaming will remain and insulated and immature medium if this is what continues to shake out when a woman has an opinion.

Welp if your outlook is invalidating anything that ties to anything outside of informal acquaintences or complete strangers, then there is nothing to discuss unfortunately. /exit

Did I say that? All I was stating is that the tone of the relationship was well done. John's relationships with Luisa and
his wife
were fine as well. I just liked what they did with Bonnie and John. In comparison to those three, John and the RDR fiction's relationship with/and use of women as characters otherwise ranged from tepid to problematic.
 
Because in a mature game it is almost always the end result of the damsel in distress trope. Not only do you have to save this hot woman who is helpless, you have to save her from another man who want's to savage her in some way. It's so consistent that you can almost set your clock by it. It's a ploy to garner a reaction from the expected male players by using the female as a prop for sexualized or sexual related violence to happen upon. At the same time, never have I personally seen a man in the same situation, being put in a situation where they are under threat of sexualized violence within a video game. Where are the orcs who want to kill all the village females and capture the men to take back to their pens? Are all depictions of violence or even threat of sexual harm against a woman really so bad they should be banished from all game writing? Not really. But taken alongside the roles that we very often see women in (sex object, or a prize to be won) it's no wonder that people are pleading for the depictions to be reduced. It's insane that so many AAA mature games have this running theme of the killing of a woman (sex worker or otherwise) as a spur for the action of the play or protagonist while not many of them have female characters with depth or expanded roles beyond the protagonist's girlfriend.

But the games you focus on aren't meant to be mature, they're meant to be gameplay experiences first, story experience second (if ever).
If a game gives a lot of focus to narrative, like the last of us does, then yes, I expect drawn out sequences to flesh out the characters motivations and background.
But in a game like Hitman, that is mostly about the gameplay itself, adding a lot of story elements will substract the "fun" out of the games for a lot of people, they wouldn't like to sit for hours watching cutscenes, they want to get straight to the action, so something short and to the point will fit such a narrative much more.
 
Because it's lazy and thoughtless. Especially with the male elf option. The damsel in distress is used so often because of course men hate it when their women are taken. They must go after them. And this time we add the threat of rape. Why? Hmm how do you show the oppression of the elves in the city? Well... Rape the women. That'll show their oppression. The elf women get raped and the elf men's women get raped. Everyone is oppressed! There are many ways they could have shown how bad the city elves as a whole being oppressed, but they specifically chose one that targeted the women.



It's not simply about if the act is used, it's about why it's used. What its purpose is. One quick tip would be if using it isn't even about the act itself, but just being used simply as a means to elaborate on something else in the story (example: using it to show how evil someone, or a group is), then you might want to think twice.
.


Well, that and show them being attacked, enslaved, tortured, isolated, forced into poverty, mocked and ridiculed by authorities, etc.

The rape was just one aspect of it. Even in the opening, we were shown quite a lot to highlight the oppression the city elves faced in their day to day lives.

As for the damsel in distress? I'm not so sure this really fits. Were they taken? Yes. Do you mount a rescue? Sure. It's your spouse after all. Their abduction was old school style intimidation and terrorism against the community, similar to say, a bunch of klan members raping a black woman or such.
 
The goal of Anita's videos isn't always that the creators snuck into the back room and made plots that painted women in the light she showed while wringing their hands and twisting their 'staches. People keep using the word lazy because what she sees and points out is done without any forethought and very frequently. The situations are not malicious in their messaging on purpose but they are so ingrained that you can only see how warped it is when you take a step back. Like, I've rarely realized how many games I've played where a prostitute gets killed for X reasons which were almost the exact same reasons within each game. It's an integrated problem in the way people tell these stories that person of A, B, C race, creed, gender is used for purpose X then stowed back in the box as a prop with little thought outside the box.

Ok, but that is the message she brings in her video's. That we take pleasure in the killing/torture of women. Yes, a protitute/stripper get's killed, but in the end of the game, how many unnamed NPC males have you killed? That is what I'm saying. I play games to escape from life for a bit. Not to worry about gender issues because I just shot some random NPC (be it male of female). That is pretty much the last thing on my mind when I play the type of video games she mentions. To me she is just looking for underlying messages which aren't there, see the video below, I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about it.

If men act like Feminists (don't mind the title, it's him doing a same format of Video Anita does in her FF video's)

Also I agree that writers should write what they want but so many write things that are eerily similar in all the problematic ways (women as objects, victims, etc.) If at least some developers take her opinion into account and think of a newer, more intriguing way of writing women or creating atmosphere beyond the norm then gaming will be all the better for it (The general public overall will stop perceiving gaming and game stories as immature shlock when they start to see more varied and interesting stories). You don't need every single game on the market to accommodate but it helps to have more that what you can count on one hand.

Yes, but you can look at it another way too. The "Damsel in distress" trope is also a story about a man trying to save a woman that he cares for. It's easy to say that the "damsel" in those story is the object, but that is not always true. She is the driving force behind the protagonists actions. If it was true what Anita claims, Mario would have said "fuck it" after Peach got kidnapped for the 987986th time (sorry for the bad example but Anita brings up Peach quite a few times so I thought it was fitting) and we would have no story or game.
In the end if she twists and turns the stories enough, she can find Misogyny/Racism in pretty much any type of story and I think that it will never be enough for her.


Also your opinion is important. What you have to understand is that some people have different experiences. As Americans see things differently from Europeans; Women, homosexuals, and minorities experience and notice things a lot differently from straight white males and vice versa. That's just a plain fact. As such, they are open to perceptions on how things are that might be vastly different from what you or I may see. All it takes to understand where people are coming from is a bit of empathy. The majority of the vast amount of people who bring issues like this up aren't just doing it because they have nothing better to do. No one is just agreeing with Anita because they've been brainwashed or they want to be cool. They do it because they value the medium and observe things in it that are stifling the medium as a whole from reaching what it could be.

I understand that people have different experiences in life. But to claim that one race/gender has absolutely no idea what others are going through, which feminists tend to do (I speak from experience), kind of contradicts that as wel.
And I think that is where my concern stems from. And Anita clearly doesn't value opinions, because her comment section/rating are always disabled. She says it's because of the threats, but there are plenty of opinion chanels on youtube who face the same issues and who does shy away from the discussion. We cannot tell her or her viewers that the images she decided to show have been pulled out of context and given the wrong explanation to begin with. Or ask her to clarify her stance on certain things. I have tried sending her PM's but there was never a response.
In a way she shuts people up, kind of like how people threaten her to shut her up, it's not the same means of course, but the result is the same.
It's not that I lack empathy for the girl, but I cannot find myself agreeing with someone who twists the video's to fit into her own agenda.
 
I don't even know why I'm bothering since you won't last long here.



This is exaggerated nonsense and not relevant at all to this thread. Do you know what "doxxed" means? Because it doesn't happen to people who "use the wrong pronoun".

Really?
http://imgur.com/qPH6cE5

You literally say we should strive for mutual understanding and then put "oppressing" in quotes. Keeping it classy.



Women get overwhelmingly more rape threats than men all the time for nothing and consistently have to deal with and face the very real risk of violence and rape in their day to day lives. But never mind #whataboutmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime#Worldwide_homicide_statistics_via_gender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#Risk_factors

But I don't see how man need to deal with depression, fear of murder, and fear of dying at work.

Educate yourself.

You're right all people who live in the first world should stfu. Maybe you can lead by example. Also, I just want to point out how great this bit is in the context of your first few lines of crying about being treated unfairly.

Nice shaming language, calling other people's opinions "crying".

So the representation of women and men in games is completely fair and even handed? We have just as many games with well rounded female characters as male?

No one said that.
However, if you look at the rate of women as a character in games out of "women as objects", you'll find that there are far more women characters "per capita" than man characters "per capita" (look at games like Uncharted, how many man are there just for you to kill them? What about in Call of Duty? or Assassin Creed?).

How about, I dunno, not having a temper tantrum when people make observations that threaten your self worth which is for some reason bound up in video games?

[/QUOTE]

Again with the shaming language, does every time you disagree with someone you speak in such a condescending tone?

(I hope the quotes come out alright)
 
Again, vikings had laws that outlawed rape by punishment of death or banishment. Vikings

Only rape within their own clan was punished, rape as a spoil of conquest was perfectly acceptable. Vikings also never allowed capital punishment, so death was never an actual penalty for said rape - or really anything.
 
Yes, but you can look at it another way too. The "Damsel in distress" trope is also a story about a man trying to save a woman that he cares for. It's easy to say that the "damsel" in those story is the object, but that is not always true. She is the driving force behind the protagonists actions. If it was true what Anita claims, Mario would have said "fuck it" after Peach got kidnapped for the 987986th time (sorry for the bad example but Anita brings up Peach quite a few times so I thought it was fitting) and we would have no story or game.
In the end if she twists and turns the stories enough, she can find Misogyny/Racism in pretty much any type of story and I think that it will never be enough for her.

Peach is not the driving force behind the heroes actions. What happens to Peach drives the heroes actions, and she represents a reward for the protagonist. Now am I saying the Mario games are sexist trash? No. But we are saying that simply using either the kidnapping or rape of women as a signifier for "this person is evil" is an all too common rather objectifing shorthand. Objectifying because again it defines the women in terms of what happens to them. They are not actors, they are only acted upon
 
I agree that writers should write what they want but so many write things that are eerily similar in all the problematic ways (women as objects, victims, etc.) If at least some developers take her opinion into account and think of a newer, more intriguing way of writing women or creating atmosphere beyond the norm then gaming will be all the better for it (The general public overall will stop perceiving gaming and game stories as immature shlock when they start to see more varied and interesting stories). You don't need every single game on the market to accommodate but it helps to have more that what you can count on one hand.


This is my problem with Anita's work in a nutshell. It's one thing to criticize a work for what it is, break down potential problems, etc - but it's another thing entirely to call out developers and ask them to change things to suit your opinions. I've literally never in the history of my academic life heard a professor say "Shakespeare employs the damsel in distress trope here, here, and here - which is a problem, because there are real-world implications to this - and if you end up writing in your lifetime, never employ Shakespearean techniques or narrative influences". It's bad criticism.

Also your opinion is important. What you have to understand is that some people have different experiences. As Americans see things differently from Europeans; Women, homosexuals, and minorities experience and notice things a lot differently from straight white males and vice versa. That's just a plain fact. As such, they are open to perceptions on how things are that might be vastly different from what you or I may see. All it takes to understand where people are coming from is a bit of empathy. The majority of the vast amount of people who bring issues like this up aren't just doing it because they have nothing better to do. No one is just agreeing with Anita because they've been brainwashed or they want to be cool. They do it because they value the medium and observe things in it that are stifling the medium as a whole from reaching what it could be.

It's people's prerogative if they want to change the way they make games because of Anita's content, but that should not be a critic's goal. I would too, like to see more thoughtful stories in video games, but I'm not going to criticize developers for tropes that "offend" me and subtly imply that they are misogynists or sexists because they use those tropes in the first place. Just because a group of people find them offensive doesn't mean the tropes are unimportant, or that they exist for no reason. If people get offended by a work, like the use of the n word in Tom Sawyer, it's their option to not read it. When Anita criticizes publishers for porting Sonic CD or Double Dragon like she did in her first video because they employ DID tropes ("regressive crap" were the words she used), as if they should pull those out and censor the game, or not release them at all (because nobody buys those games because people think they're classics, people buy them to rescue the damsels!) I can't commend her argument as a whole either.

Of course, it goes without saying that having disagreeable arguments doesn't mean you deserve to be forced out of your home on horrible, disgusting threats. I definitely am shocked by the amount of vitriol she receives simply for her opinion. I don't agree with her, but good lord.
 
Ok, but that is the message she brings in her video's. That we take pleasure in the killing/torture of women. Yes, a protitute/stripper get's killed, but in the end of the game, how many unnamed NPC males have you killed? That is what I'm saying. I play games to escape from life for a bit. Not to worry about gender issues because I just shot some random NPC (be it male of female). That is pretty much the last thing on my mind when I play the type of video games she mentions. To me she is just looking for underlying messages which aren't there, see the video below, I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about it.
There is plenty of critique about general violence narrative in games. Anita's critique is taking a feminist critique. That's all. I don't know if you understood the intent of this video series, but it is mostly to highlight tropes in games involving women characters. She isn't looking at the women killed to men killed ratio because that's not the point she is trying to make with this specific video. The fact that developers have casually used violence against women as a throwaway tactic to give the player an easy call the action is lazy, pervasive, and damaging to women as a whole. She isn't trying to point out any malicious intent about developers doing it, just that it is fairly prevalent even in the AAA space and I've found that even simply noting the frequency about it is spine-chilling enough to most people.
 
This is my problem with Anita's work in a nutshell. It's one thing to criticize a work for what it is, break down potential problems, etc - but it's another thing entirely to call out developers and ask them to change things to suit your opinions. I've literally never in the history of my academic life heard a professor say "Shakespeare employs the damsel in distress trope here, here, and here - which is a problem, because there are real-world implications to this - and if you end up writing in your lifetime, never employ Shakespearean techniques or narrative influences". It's bad criticism.

The difference being that there's no point in directing this type of critique at Shakespeare at this point as he's long dead. And there is plenty of critique out there about Shakespeare and his work/tropes etc. if you look for it.

Game devs and writers are still out and about writing stuff though. It is helpful to make suggestions about how they can improve their works going forward as they are still alive and kicking and writing games at this very moment.
 
The difference being that there's no point in directing this type of critique at Shakespeare at this point as he's long dead. And there is plenty of critique out there about Shakespeare and his work/tropes etc. if you look for it.

Game devs and writers are still out and about writing stuff though. It is helpful to make suggestions about how they can improve their works going forward as they are still alive and kicking and writing games at this very moment.

Again, critiquing a work is not about critiquing the author, it's about critiquing the WORK. That's the entire point. And the idea that you can't criticize something because the creator is no longer alive, and that criticism should only be applied to works whose authors are alive is insane. You're missing the whole point here.
 
Ok, but that is the message she brings in her video's. That we take pleasure in the killing/torture of women. Yes, a protitute/stripper get's killed, but in the end of the game, how many unnamed NPC males have you killed? That is what I'm saying. I play games to escape from life for a bit. Not to worry about gender issues because I just shot some random NPC (be it male of female). That is pretty much the last thing on my mind when I play the type of video games she mentions.

You've pretty much chosen to ignore multiple explanations from other comments here replying to your previous posts, so I'm not even going to attempt to offer a rebuttal.


To me she is just looking for underlying messages which aren't there, see the video below, I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about it.


If men act like Feminists (don't mind the title, it's him doing a same format of Video Anita does in her FF video's)

As a guy myself, and also as a feminist, this video is absolute pure garbage. Like the WORST counter-argument to the quality of work Anita has put out. How is it possible to have such a misinformed & confused perception of what feminism actually is?


Yes, but you can look at it another way too. The "Damsel in distress" trope is also a story about a man trying to save a woman that he cares for. It's easy to say that the "damsel" in those story is the object, but that is not always true. She is the driving force behind the protagonists actions. If it was true what Anita claims, Mario would have said "fuck it" after Peach got kidnapped for the 987986th time (sorry for the bad example but Anita brings up Peach quite a few times so I thought it was fitting) and we would have no story or game.
In the end if she twists and turns the stories enough, she can find Misogyny/Racism in pretty much any type of story and I think that it will never be enough for her.

I don't even know where to start here. Do you understand what the definition of a trope is? How can you say honestly that something like the Mario damsel in distress situation is actually 'Oh no wait, Peach is really the driving force behind the game guys!' It's historically a hackneyed cheap and lazy excuse to prop up the player's actions. They continue to regurgitate the same motivations for every game because it's a quick and easy crutch to lean on. That's exactly what a trope is. The writers actually need to write in additional wants and desires for Mario to come to the conclusion of 'ok fuck this'. He doesn't suddenly have sentience where he is able to come to his own conclusions. He's a fucking video games character that somebody wrote.

Furthermore, Peach has never been written in a way where she is anything more than the player's prize. You see her at the start, helpless and then kidnapped, you don't see her til the end, you win her back. There is absolutely nothing in that where you can believe she is the crux of the whole franchise. If Mario cares so much for the princess why doesn't he show it? Where do we see real in-depth characterization of Peach and her relationship with Mario? We don't, cause you know, fuck that, I want to stomp some goombas. This is a completely asinine argument you're trying to perpetuate.


I understand that people have different experiences in life. But to claim that one race/gender has absolutely no idea what others are going through, which feminists tend to do (I speak from experience), kind of contradicts that as wel.

Again, nonsense. The majority of men I have ever met in my life are completely oblivious to the sort of daily harassment women face, baseline objectification and ingrained social norms they have to put up with. In a society men have control over, it's very easy to overlook and dismiss the problems that never affect your personal life. But, jesus, have some empathy. Listen to women and their experiences, read the news, educate yourself on this stuff.

These 'claims' as you put it, come from hard & undeniable evidence that women are disproportionately the main victims of sexual/domestic abuse, harassment, rape, violence etc etc. Be it online or in every day life. As a woman, that is a burden you have to come to terms with. But why should women have to put up with that shit? Why can't they speak up about it and how these societal norms have affected the media around us. This is one person in a sea of millions who chose to critique a medium in a constructive manner and give her opinion. What she receives in return, for being a women, is a mountain of gendered harassment, death threats and abuse online.

How does that not illustrate how bad it is for females in our community? No one is denying harassment can happen to anyone from any background, but it's honestly a point that's redundant here when we are talking specifically about a women's perspective on the matter. Stop trying to turn the spotlight and attention away from her with 'but but..men's issues.'

And I think that is where my concern stems from. And Anita clearly doesn't value opinions, because her comment section/rating are always disabled. She says it's because of the threats, but there are plenty of opinion chanels on youtube who face the same issues and who does shy away from the discussion.
We cannot tell her or her viewers that the images she decided to show have been pulled out of context and given the wrong explanation to begin with. Or ask her to clarify her stance on certain things. I have tried sending her PM's but there was never a response.
In a way she shuts people up, kind of like how people threaten her to shut her up, it's not the same means of course, but the result is the same.
It's not that I lack empathy for the girl, but I cannot find myself agreeing with someone who twists the video's to fit into her own agenda.


Don't pretend like you don't know the exact reason of why comments are disabled. it's nothing to do with silencing criticism. It's about not giving space to people who actively spout unprecedented hatred and vitriol towards her.

She is not shutting anybody up, It's the bloody internet. If you disagree with somebody, there are many forums such as this one that you are able to voice your opinion on. Don't like that you can't contact her directly? Tough luck. We can have this conversation once she stops receiving threats against her life for exposing the icky parts of gaming.

Edit: he was banned..after I wrote all of that up. Sigh.
 
Again, critiquing a work is not about critiquing the author, it's about critiquing the WORK. That's the entire point. And the idea that you can't criticize something because the creator is no longer alive, and that criticism should only be applied to works whose authors are alive is insane. You're missing the whole point here.

I don't believe I am. I said that there are plenty of people who critique his work even today, and that it's more poignant to critique the work in this case as he's dead. However many works critique the work and the person who made it in modern media every day. Directors of movies are often called out for making bad movies and using tropes as a shorthand for actual story-telling, or flippantly throwing in touchy subject matter without giving it the gravity and levity it deserves to be treated with.

A HUGE part of her point in this videos (at least from what I've gathered) isn't so much with the tropes as much as how flippantly and lazily they're used without any thought put into them whatsoever. They offer no critique or gravitas, nor do they respect the actual subject matter as much as they simply use them for window-dressing. One of the things I like about Shakespeare to bring this back around, is that while he uses several tropes he uses them to critique the society he lived in. He didn't just throw tropes in there as a lazy shorthand, he explored each subject and gave them the attention they deserved. Most videogame devs do not.
 
I don't believe I am. I said that there are plenty of people who critique his work even today, and that it's more poignant to critique the work in this case as he's dead.

Whether or not there exists a large body of criticism on Shakespeare (there does, indeed) is completely and 100% irrelevant. I could easily say that there's a huge body of Mario criticism so Anita shouldn't be talking about Mario. It's an absurd point to make

Directors of movies are often called out for making bad movies and using tropes as a shorthand for actual story-telling, or flippantly throwing in touchy subject matter without giving it the gravity and levity it deserves to be treated with.

Doesn't make it good criticism either of course. Critiquing a work is about critiquing a work. In fact, a common point in Anita's videos is that "we shouldn't look at these games in a vacuum" - but that's incorrect. Criticism is precisely about looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not a critic's job to hold the author responsible for the work. That's the editorial piece, the blog entry, the forum post, the watercooler discussion, the Youtube vlog - but Anita is trying to put out criticism on a professional level. I don't buy it, sorry. I respect her efforts though, and if the net positive is that women are inspired to play more games and grow stronger in the face of assholes being assholes on the internet - I certainly appreciate that. But I'm not going to agree with the main points here. It's still bad criticism at the core.

A HUGE part of her point in this videos (at least from what I've gathered) isn't so much with the tropes as much as how flippantly and lazily they're used without any thought put into them whatsoever.

That's your opinion. Neither you, nor me, nor Anita, nor anyone in the world could prove that any of these tropes were created out of laziness or without thought, though. That's conjecture.

They offer no critique or gravitas, nor do they respect the actual subject matter as much as they simply use them for window-dressing. One of the things I like about Shakespeare to bring this back around, is that while he uses several tropes he uses them to critique the society he lived in. He didn't just throw tropes in there as a lazy shorthand, he explored each subject and gave them the attention they deserved. Most videogame devs do not.


Again, that's really your opinion that devs use these tropes as "lazy shorthand" or "window dressing". You can't prove authorial intent, which is why it's bad criticism to assume these things.
 
Doesn't make it good criticism either of course. Critiquing a work is about critiquing a work. In fact, a common point in Anita's videos is that "we shouldn't look at these games in a vacuum" - but that's incorrect. Criticism is precisely about looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not a critic's job to hold the author responsible for the work. That's the editorial piece, the blog entry, the forum post, the watercooler discussion, the Youtube vlog - but Anita is trying to put out criticism on a professional level. I don't buy it, sorry. I respect her efforts though, and if the net positive is that women are inspired to play more games and grow stronger in the face of assholes being assholes on the internet - I certainly appreciate that. But I'm not going to agree with the main points here. It's still bad criticism at the core.

Er...what? Criticism in a sociopolitical context is a venerable and well established idea. You never heard of someone's "Marxist critique of X"?
 
Whether or not there exists a large body of criticism on Shakespeare (there does, indeed) is completely and 100% irrelevant. I could easily say that there's a huge body of Mario criticism so Anita shouldn't be talking about Mario. It's an absurd point to make



Doesn't make it good criticism either of course. Critiquing a work is about critiquing a work. In fact, a common point in Anita's videos is that "we shouldn't look at these games in a vacuum" - but that's incorrect. Criticism is precisely about looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not a critic's job to hold the author responsible for the work. That's the editorial piece, the blog entry, the forum post, the watercooler discussion, the Youtube vlog - but Anita is trying to put out criticism on a professional level. I don't buy it, sorry. I respect her efforts though, and if the net positive is that women are inspired to play more games and grow stronger in the face of assholes being assholes on the internet - I certainly appreciate that. But I'm not going to agree with the main points here. It's still bad criticism at the core.



That's your opinion. Neither you, nor me, nor Anita, nor anyone in the world could prove that any of these tropes were created out of laziness or without thought, though. That's conjecture.




Again, that's really your opinion that devs use these tropes as "lazy shorthand" or "window dressing". You can't prove authorial intent, which is why it's bad criticism to assume these things.

I disagree. Just because a creator did not intend to send a message doesn't mean that they didn't send a message. Many books have readers who find various forms of symbolism in them that the author never intended. However as this month said on the crash course YouTube video series "symbols do not exist for the benefit of the author, they exist for the benefit of the reader." The reason I disagree with your argument is that it alleviates the creator of the responsibility of what they created. As an (amateur) creator myself I cannot agree to that.
 
Doesn't make it good criticism either of course. Critiquing a work is about critiquing a work. [...] Criticism is precisely about looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not a critic's job to hold the author responsible for the work.

It's not your job to decide what her goals are either? You're using criticism and critique interchangeably, which I think is where you're missing Anita's project here.

These videos are as much about encouraging the laity to pay more attention to the games we play than just say "well it's fun".

She's pushing back both against the authors of these games but also the readers. The status quo for both is "don't actually look at this cultural objects with a critical eye for what they mean", so she's presenting tools and methods which we can bring to bear on games.
 
I've literally never in the history of my academic life heard a professor say "Shakespeare employs the damsel in distress trope here, here, and here - which is a problem, because there are real-world implications to this - and if you end up writing in your lifetime, never employ Shakespearean techniques or narrative influences". It's bad criticism.

First of all, this analogy of yours is a bit bad, if you're comparing game designers to Shakespeare.

But even ignoring that, let's consider that critiquing the real-world implications of Shakespeare may really only seem moot because that's a time and place far removed from our own current time and place.

Reflecting on (and criticizing) modern art (whether it's a new book, or a new videogame) is different from doing the same with old works because we are living in the time and place that produced it, and the things we can infer from that reflection is actually relevant to our daily lives.
 
A lot of people seem to be confused that criticism of art as art and criticism of art as a reflection of society and its impact on the observer are two different fields entirely. If you only ever engaged with one and not the other, it makes sense that you would think that no one has anything to say about the sociological implications of Shakespeare.

But you'd be wrong.
 
First of all, this analogy of yours is a bit bad, if you're comparing game designers to Shakespeare.

Shakespeare was pop art.

A lot of people seem to be confused that criticism of art as art and criticism of art as a reflection of society and its impact on the observer are two different fields entirely. If you only ever engaged with one and not the other, it makes sense that you would think that no one has anything to say about the sociological implications of Shakespeare.

But you'd be wrong.

Yep.
 
Doesn't make it good criticism either of course. Critiquing a work is about critiquing a work. In fact, a common point in Anita's videos is that "we shouldn't look at these games in a vacuum" - but that's incorrect. Criticism is precisely about looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not a critic's job to hold the author responsible for the work. That's the editorial piece, the blog entry, the forum post, the watercooler discussion, the Youtube vlog - but Anita is trying to put out criticism on a professional level. I don't buy it, sorry. I respect her efforts though, and if the net positive is that women are inspired to play more games and grow stronger in the face of assholes being assholes on the internet - I certainly appreciate that. But I'm not going to agree with the main points here. It's still bad criticism at the core.
The reason for not looking at these things in a vacuum, because shes trying to make a point about the wider video game medium and not specific games.
 
i actually just watched the video and holy shit am i embarrassed. I usually find things that i strongly object to in her past videos, but this one was just spot on.
 
It is honestly terrifying to see these agents of hate banding together in an unprecedented way (at least for this industry). It's as if the moment being a progressive, empathetic member of society is given a moniker ("Social Justice Warrior"), all the assholes and neckbeards and Men's Rights Activists in the games sphere finally have a focused and dehumanized enemy to band together against and fight as Anti-Social Warriors.

Those images with the lists of progressive (and therefore threatening) journalists and developer/publishers are frightening and disheartening. Whenever the internet is used to the peak of its potential for hate, I get incredibly sad. The same tool that is educating and enlightening millions of young people today in a way never before capable is also allowing ignorance to seek out ignorance and hate to find comfort in hate. Very sad.
 
i actually just watched the video and holy shit am i embarrassed. I usually find things that i strongly object to in her past videos, but this one was just spot on.

This is by far her best one. I haven't been a fan so far because (for whatever reason) I don't think she's done a very good job at actually explaining the concepts behind the patterns she's trying to point out, but this one has me much more interested in the series going forward
 
Er...what? Criticism in a sociopolitical context is a venerable and well established idea. You never heard of someone's "Marxist critique of X"?

A Marxist reading of a text is still an examination of a text. Any inference on the author of that text however, is conjecture.

Just because a creator did not intend to send a message doesn't mean that they didn't send a message... The reason I disagree with your argument is that it alleviates the creator of the responsibility of what they created.


Right, but in "academic" criticism, all of this is irrelevant.

First of all, this analogy of yours is a bit bad, if you're comparing game designers to Shakespeare.

First of all, if the whole point of this whole video series is to try to elevate games by proxy of appreciating them as a form of high art and ascribing the same standards of high art to games - then why shouldn't you make this comparison? Trivializing it, I imagine, serves to demean the entire premise of what people like Anita are trying to do.

More importantly though, you and a few others are taking my Shakespeare bit too much at face value. I was only trying to illustrate that academic criticism never concerns itself with criticizing the author for a work's "problems". I wasn't trying to directly compare Shakespeare with games. Not even remotely sure how you came to that juncture to be quite honest.

But even ignoring that, let's consider that critiquing the real-world implications of Shakespeare may really only seem moot because that's a time and place far removed from our own current time and place.

Reflecting on (and criticizing) modern art (whether it's a new book, or a new videogame) is different from doing the same with old works because we are living in the time and place that produced it, and the things we can infer from that reflection is actually relevant to our daily lives.

Someone already made this point and I refuted it.
 
This is by far her best one. I haven't been a fan so far because (for whatever reason) I don't think she's done a very good job at actually explaining the concepts behind the patterns she's trying to point out, but this one has me much more interested in the series going forward

I agree that this was her better one. The bit about Watch Dogs and commenting on how it's strange that you can't use that incredibly powerful phone to call an ambulance was an excellent point.

On the other hand, her comment at the end about how "replication isn't commentary" was ridiculous and frankly wrong. Replication can absolutely serve as commentary and there are countless examples of this across all mediums. You don't get to decide the definition of commentary because certain commentary offends you.
 
Really?
http://imgur.com/qPH6cE5



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime#Worldwide_homicide_statistics_via_gender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality#Risk_factors

But I don't see how man need to deal with depression, fear of murder, and fear of dying at work.

Educate yourself.





Nice shaming language, calling other people's opinions "crying".



No one said that.
However, if you look at the rate of women as a character in games out of "women as objects", you'll find that there are far more women characters "per capita" than man characters "per capita" (look at games like Uncharted, how many man are there just for you to kill them? What about in Call of Duty? or Assassin Creed?).

Again with the shaming language, does every time you disagree with someone you speak in such a condescending tone?

(I hope the quotes come out alright)[/QUOTE]





What is going on in that first pic?
Edit: Not sure why the quote came up as it did, but the above line is mine obviously.
 
As for the damsel in distress? I'm not so sure this really fits. Were they taken? Yes. Do you mount a rescue? Sure. It's your spouse after all. Their abduction was old school style intimidation and terrorism against the community, similar to say, a bunch of klan members raping a black woman or such.

It fits even less when you consider that you can play as a female city elf, get abducted, and mount your own rescue. The Dragon Age example is just really weird since it fits basically none of the criteria for the trope. Besides that the rapist is depicted as a bad guy, I guess.
 
Every time, always the same drama. This approach, talking down existing games, exaggerating examples, is going to get negative reactions rather than helping the cause.
But she does help the cause. Prominent devs (from Druckmann to Tim Schafer and others) have responded positively to her videos. Druckmann says her videos inspired the writing of The Last of Us. And TLoU is the game with the most rewards ever, but yeah, clearly her videos are doing harm and making games worse because....?

Imru’ al-Qays;127422260 said:
Very enlightening post, thank you.
You're welcome.

(Seriously, it really was. It's not a matter of "making rapists complete monsters" vs "making rapists suddenly sympathetic".)

Imru’ al-Qays;127423628 said:
This too. The implication seems to be that games are particularly bad about this sort of thing, but a lot of the examples given are actually no worse than stuff that happens in other media that no one seems to care about. And so we have the sort of bizarre spectacle of someone with a Game of Thrones avatar denouncing video games' supposed overuse of sexual assault.
Avatar cheap shots are allowed now? Okay. But in any case, while I don't want to get in a book vs show argument here, even despite the show's shortcomings, its handling of sexual assault is far more mature and nuanced than the cheap window dressing you see in the games shown in the video. For one thing, the women involved are actually characterized, instead of being, y'know, background decoration. Anita never said sexual abuse should never be depicted at all, she took issue with the manner in which it was.
 
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