Most of them believe masculinity = a man.
So yes, they'll assume it is all very sexist.
Anita Sarkeesian has disclosed what she has done with the Kickstarter money
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Most of them believe masculinity = a man.
So yes, they'll assume it is all very sexist.
there are a lot of screenshots out there that make it very likely that she took other people's footage in at least some instances...things like position/stats that are identical
it's relevant to any discussion about where donations going, because if you are taking footage from existing youtube videos and putting it in your own videos, then you aren't spending money on producing and capturing that footage yourself. that is not to say that she took ALL of her footage from everywhere else. i'm sure at least some if not most of it is her own footage.
it's not really a big deal and doesn't have anything to do with the actual merits of what she's discussing. however, it is pretty scummy and not at all respectable to fail to acknowledge where she got the footage from. instead she has a blanket fair use disclaimer at the end of her videos.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
lol what
Is this a "pointing out the sexism is the true sexism" deal?
Why does the money have to be discussed? Shouldn't the focus just be that, she's taking other people's work? That is the issue, not the money.
Or am I looking at this wrong? Because regardless, if she's taking the time to make these videos, she needs to a job and a wage to live on. That's kind of apart of the deal when you donated to her. You were basically giving her donations, so she could make the video. Again, KS is not something where the person is accountable for how every single dollar is spent. They just ethically have to deliver the product they promised. Any money past the goal (or even money for the goal), really can be used for anything. So as long as the product gets done.
So the issue to me isn't the money and how she uses it, but that she's using other peoples' work with citing it. That she's not playing the games she is criticizing (if she's using other people's work and not doing it herself). Those are more meaningful criticisms IMO.
I never thought of it that way. Im just a big fan of fighting games. I know how alot of the females portrayed in fighting games are kind of shallow and vapid, like most of Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct but alot of the ones in Street fighter and King of Fighters are something I think does a good job.
Im interested in hearing her perspective.
El-Pistolero
Member
Could you enlighten me as to what egalitarianism means? If by that you mean equality before the law, and equality in terms of opportunity, then the western societies are already egalitarian societies. In fact, statistics in the US show than in a lot of fields (universities degrees, lawyers careers, doctors...) women tend to be overrepresented.
Unless by equality people mean preparing the terrain for a genderless society, where you are no longer a man or a female, but some new, yet to be defined type.
A lot of messages nowaday tend to support that view, suggesting that males and females are interchangeable, and that everything a man is good at could be tackled by a woman and vice versa. I do not believe that for a second. I think that there are innate differences that were highlighted by serious studies, showing that we display different interests from early on in life (male tend to be things oriented, while women tend to be more persons oriented).
DoktorEvil
Banned
She should've done this in the beginning frankly.
If she criticizes both unrealistic portrayals and lazy writing in video games, I think she'd win over many more people.
As it stand now, I like her videos and her polish has improved since the first set.
It's not referring to what she thinks the traits should be, it's what the traits already are in the media.That's from her thesis. What she thinks positive traits should be for men and women.
So why exactly can't women be strong or decisive for instance?
In a perfect world where you want no sexism, that table should be a list of negatives and positives, regardless of gender.
To me it's the same basic mistake as saying "the VG industry is mainly targeted at men because it's dominated by shooting and fighting and racing and sports games".
There is no reasonable, non-sexist grounds for thinking that these genres can't appeal to women.
This reminds me of the reaction to the Exploding Kittens thread. "HOW ON EARTH ARE THEY GOING TO USE ALL THAT EXTRA MONEY?"
CambriaRising
Member
The people doing the lets play videos don't own the footage in the first place, especially if it isn't commentated and is presented without audio.
fastballspecial
Member
I laughed at every "need salary breakdown." Feeling a little insecure? She could have burned the extra money. As long as the product was delivered, the rest is moot as fuck.
googleplex
Member
Why? As long as she delivers the product that was kick started why dose it matters what she dose with the money.
What. No. Why?
We have two ideas: there is a lot of "background radiation" misogyny in our media; and people learn about the world and adapt their attitudes based on the perception of the society's attitudes at large. We don't have to conclude "because games are violent therefore people are more inclined to murder". We can make more subtle claims like depictions of certain kinds of violence as normal or common encourage us to see them as more permissible.
Sure. But it's still their play sessions. Meaning, it's questionable whether she actually played the games she's criticizing if she can't even be bothered to use her own footage. And even though you are right the lets players don't own the footage they are using of themselves playing, it does come off questionable in an ethics sense (to take other people's footage, and not cite it).
And since her entire thing is about deep/critical analysis, it also kind of seems to be bad form.
Or maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Anyways, even if I didn't think it was an issue (which to be honest, I actually don't think it's that big of a deal. Never thought twice about it until it was brought up in this thread. I am siding more with you on it). I'm just saying if someone is going to take issue with that aspect, the focus should be on her borrowing others footage, not how the money is being spent. She's not obligated to spend the money that people gave her on specific things. People need to understand that KS is a donation based thing, and isn't about 1:1 paying for a product perse.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I think its probably something that is questionable if only for the lack of credit, and I think that its the kind of thing that we should be able to have a frank conversation about it
Sadly I'm not sure when, if ever, we'll have the environment to have that conversation free of all of the surrounding bullshit
CambriaRising
Member
I think at the very least she should have acknowledged it or asked the people For permission as a courtesy. But I don't think that's valid evidence that she hasn't played a game.
(Honestly I don't even believe one has to play a game themselves to point out a trope, especially in those games)
How is that proof she hasn't bought systems or played the games?
Uncle Rupee
Banned
Yep, it's pretty obvious from those examples that she has taken footage from Youtube let's plays rather than actually playing the game herself.
The problem is she uses other people's footage but still attributes 21% of her funding to equipment and game systems / games. That works out to about $32,000 which, from the looks of things, wasn't actually spent buying systems and games if she is stealing footage from other Youtubers.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Fighting games I feel like are different solely for the fact that a lot of them don't require deep character writing when the base game is focused on inputs and combos. Killer Instinct has made improvements to their female characters like Maya, who wore nothing but a bikini in the original, and Mortal Kombat X is doing the same with theirs. Kitana has a respectable outfit, though it still shows some skin but not a lot compared to her past outfits. If nothing else a lot of fighting games are adding in non-sexy female characters to balance out the sexy female characters.
Agreed. To be clear, my point to that post was more so, I don't agree that the focus should be the money. People have a very wrong idea about what KS is. And it's weird that people keep focusing on how much money she made, whether she's worthy of that money (that the amount of work matches up with the amount of money she made), and how every dollar is spent. People with their own free will, chose to give her money. They chose to give her an absurd amount of money way past her goal. No one forced them.
KS is 100% donations, and the KS owner isn't obligated to spend each dollar on that specific project. For instance, someone could live off the money for wages, and say that the donations allowed them to not have a job so they COULD make the project people wanted funded. That means the money could be spent on groceries and basic living expenses.
Again, it's a donation based thing. You aren't promised your money is 1:1 being spent on X thing. You are giving your money, so the person can make the product. People need to stop focusing on the money aspect with her, and start focusing on the things they disagree with (content wise, examples she uses)...and in this case, them taking issue with her using other people's footage without citing. And questioning that.
I don't care for Anita's work. But I don't understand how hard it is, to be reasonable when it comes to criticizing her. Quit focusing on her money. Quit focusing on her personally. Focus on what she's saying, and be reasonable with your counter-arguments.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Looking at her old Bayonetta video, I'm pretty sure that's wrong.
That's fair enough.
Personally, as long as she releases the videos and accomplishes what she set out to do, I don't see why people should complain about how large her salary is. People gave her money to make her videos, and she is doing just that.
Her video series is about women and their portrayals in gaming, so I don't really think she "should have" been talking about men in this series. We already talk about men in media all the time and taking time out of a series specifically about women to talk about men some more would have been disrespectful to her backers.
Now that she has produced more content and has a better understanding of the criticism that is going to be levied against her, creating a separate series to address these issues seems like a good idea. I just hope she continues to release the rest of the Tropes vs Women videos.
Consider how much time and hard drive space the guys at Giant Bomb (and others) say it takes to do a single five minute video about just one game.
Look at the clips from Red Dead Redemption alone. They take place hours and hours apart in the game. Just because she uses footage from other sources doesn't mean she hasn't played the game. She just might not record every second of her gameplay -- which would take up thousands of dollars worth of hard drive space, if it was being saved for the entire length of producing the series -- or might not always have the time to go back and replay moments just for one clip in one segment. Her comments about looped moments in Red Dead make it very obvious she's played it.
Some of the footage not being captured during her own gameplay sessions doesn't really suggest anything about whether or not she's played it. It's about the basic logistics of creating a video series covering such a wide range of games and moments.
Honestly, I'm both very interested in hearing her perspective and dreading the thread that will result from it. It'll be interesting to see how much ground is covered, at least.
Yep I agree. I think certain games you absolutely need to play, since the character's design is informed by the plot and how they act. I think, you can look at games from a distance and still point out tropes. But you really have to sit down and play some of them (it just depends).
That said, I have no idea if she isn't actually sitting down and fully playing them. No one has proof of that. I'm just saying, if she's using other people's footage, it comes off as lazy, and questionable.
Oh I agree. There is no proof she hasn't played the game, just because she uses other's footage. But I can understand why some would feel it's questionable as a result. And even if you don't think so, at the very least she could cite the people she borrows from.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
I didn't say it was proof she didn't use the money that way. I said it makes it look like she didn't spend it that way. If she did spend $32,000 on equipment and games, why would she need to steal footage from other YouTubers? The funny thing is, she could have even just emulated the games and recorded footage that way, but apparently that would take too much effort too.
You don't think that a few hours after an event like that it might be too soon to draw conclusions? It could be mental health, it could be anything. If Jack Thompson tried to attribute an event like a shooting to GTA or other violent game we'd all probably say hold the fuck up.
You really, really don't need to play a game to see tropes. Tropes are ridiculously easy to identify. That's why they're tropes.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
That Bayonetta video was about the advertisement than the actual game. It did get weird though where half way in she then went on to criticize Japanese society. Didn't she take that down?
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Context is important too.
She got several aspects of the game quite wrong, which were part of the criticism to the game and advertisment.
You need to on some games. She got Bayonetta largely wrong. And it showed that she had not played it.
So that alone is proof that you absolutely need to play some games. That said, I never suggested that you need to play every game to talk about tropes. It depends on the video, and what context you are criticizing it under. And sometimes, that context requires you to play the game.
It's funny because there is a lot of feminists that think Bayonetta is a pro feminist game (Lea Alexander wrote articles praising it). Again, not all feminists agree on everything, and that is okay. But I think Bayonetta is certainly a game where you can have a knee jerk reaction, and you need to play it all to understand the context of which the character is designed around.
The issue with mortal kombat is their female character model used for all the females in the game with barely any tweaking. It's literally just like putting another dolls head on another body the rest of it is just cosmetic and it's very noticable. Other fighting games have remarkably different models for every character.
and you cant tell me that the new black orchid doesnt look like a blowup doll.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Yes. She's reassigning traits that already exist in the media, trying to turn negatives into positives and maybe some positives into negatives. She is not claiming that this is the end all be all of women's representation, rather she is very realistically recognizing that you don't end thousands of years of stereotyping overnight.
I think Sarkeesian is entitled to all the excess funds for her own personal or professional use.
That said, she's made like 2 videos in the last year. 2 videos in 12 months? There's really no excuse for all this ass-dragging. I think she needs to be held accountable for her time rather than her spending.
As irritating as many of the other YouTube superstars can be, at least they bust ass to put out content on a very regular basis. I get the sense that Sarkeesian has lost interest in actually completing the project. Either that or she believes she can indefintely extend her 15 minutes by releasing videos as slow as humanly possible.
That said, she's made like 2 videos in the last year. 2 videos in 12 months? There's really no excuse for all this ass-dragging. I think she needs to be held accountable for her time rather than her spending.
As irritating as many of the other YouTube superstars can be, at least they bust ass to put out content on a very regular basis. I get the sense that Sarkeesian has lost interest in actually completing the project. Either that or she believes she can indefintely extend her 15 minutes by releasing videos as slow as humanly possible.
But Anita didn't say that the shooting was due to video games at all. If anything, she implied that since our cultures has such distinct and idiotic views about what it means to be masculine and what's not, it leads to the feeling of isolation and grief to those that fall outside those values.
This would be my point exactly they aren't obligated to technically even spend more than they got at their "goal" level. This has been an issue I've had with KickStarter from the beginning.... Great Service! but WAY TOO MUCH depends on the people running the campaign...
How a trope is used doesn't make it "escape" from being a trope.
CambriaRising
Member
You believe she hits record every time she sits down to play a game? Or that she hadn't played some of these games before he series production started? You're looking for fires where there is no smoke.
She didn't "steal" the footage by the way. The lets players never owned it in the first place.
You're not only saying she's a liar, but that she is also lazy and a theif. That's literally what you're accusing her of. I hope you have more than this to back that shit up.
Yeah, but you can get a trope wrong, if the game subverts the trope and you are only calling it a trope because on a surface level you think that's what it means. Some games absolutely are not what they seem. And the context of the story and how the character acts, informs the design.
Still think she should cite. While they don't technically own the footage, I still feel Let's plays are their own work (ie. playing the game, and recording their play sessions).
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Because there's nothing in the current data that supports the continuation of a sexist narrative.
What does that have to do with the money? Focus on that, if you don't agree.
EDIT: Might have read that wrong. Sorry.
If you actually read the entire paragraph, she is reassigning traits from Table 2 (what TV promotes as the traits of men and women) into a new table that would be more progressive. She is not saying women can't be strong. She is saying things like women being portrayed as passive, which is often positive in TV, should be portrayed as a negative attribute instead. Or that men, which are portrayed positively as violent, should be portrayed negatively when that trait occurs.
Presenting what you're going for without the second table she's contrasting it with and what she is talking about when presenting those tables is extremely disingenuous.
I would say it depends on the game here. Some tropes are clean cut and have nothing more to them like Bowser kidnapping Peach. Whereas other games do more with their story lines and taking a scene out of context can make a game appear worse than it actually is.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
If you were listing tropes, to fill a tvtrope article sure. When you do a research job on them and their possible negative implications? Context is important, of course.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
The problem is when you take something completely out of its technical context. Like complaining about how retro female characters are colored pink or are given bows / lipstick (in the case of Ms. Pac-Man) to differentiate them as female. The fact the designers of Ms. Pac-Man only had a 16x16 sprite to work with, or the fact that games made back then had limited color palettes, limited memory, etc doesn't even enter her "analysis". She could just as easily complain that female film characters weren't given a voice during the silent era.
I'm not referring to who owns what copyright, I'm referring to the specific clips that were uniquely created and uploaded by let's players. So yeah, she is probably lying about having purchased those games, and she is lazy for downloading other people's video clips, and doing so without attribution could be called stealing. That is literally what she has done, at least in the above examples.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
Doctor_Thomas
Member
I'm less interested in the breakdown (hell, she has to treat it as a job) but I am still not sure why she needs this much money to produce something that Youtubers do on a monthly basis (recording, acting, effects, cameras etc). From a pure production point of view, I'm yet to see anything that warrants the money.
I agree it'd be nice if there were citations.
I do wonder, having worked in TV for a while, if an entertainment lawyer might have advised them not to do so. Fair use is tricky and lawyers are especially jumpy about it. Citing another source might have opened them up to further complications, although this is only a guess on my part.
As a few people have already explained, mental health relates closely to issues of toxic masculinity. One of the many things "toxic masculinity" refers to is the idea that men and boys should never, ever ask for help. That receiving help of any kind is weakness and people with mental health problems are just giving in to their weakness. Acts of violence and dominance as a response to these feelings of inadequacy and weakness are not uncommon.
All that being said, Sarkeesian's main point was that nearly every single shooting of this kind has been committed by a man. This is a fact. Either we assume that excessive acts of violence are innately, naturally male or we have to begin to wonder if there is something about the way society treats men and masculinity that isn't working as it should. This is what the concept of toxic masculinity is about.
But this is a bit off topic. (I mean, maybe. It gets brought up in every single Sarkeesian thread at this point along with all the other usual bullet points. It's hard to tell sometimes what is "on topic" with discussions of Anita.)
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Well its worth pointing out that originally she didn't. She asked for what...six thousand dollars on her kickstarter?
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