Happy Endings, available on a streaming network near you. You won't regret it.
Ah thanks, saw it a couple of time on Netflix but never clicked on it. Will try it!
Happy Endings, available on a streaming network near you. You won't regret it.
I'm actually with Anita on most issues. I did not, and never defended empty threats. I just said that they are empty and argued with people who said they were not or that we should take empty threats and consider them real ones.
Sorry that first line was actually supposed to be a joke. I'm not accusing you of defending Internet trolls.
Wow, they've received nearly $400,000 in donations since GamerGate started. Kinda funny that GG put FF in the black for the year.
I'm actually with Anita on most issues. I did not, and never defended empty threats. I just said that they are empty and argued with people who said they were not or that we should take empty threats and consider them real ones.
You were wrong. For instance the GDC event last year police sniffer dogs were called in after the bomb threat. Remember that if a threat is made to commit murder in order to intimidate, that also is a serious crime in most jurisdictions, for obvious reasons. You're wasting your time and ours trying to pretend that these outrages are just business as usual.
It would have been funnier if she'd just released this:
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Hmm...I wouldn't put myself out there to talk about gender on behalf of the female gamers. I wouldn't touch it with a 100 yard pole. Anita's been eaten alive, and those who speak similarly are treated just the same. Any woman or girl smart enough to do it would probably say f*** it. The community has made it clear that any talk about this subject is taboo.
I'd rather just wish her the best and see if things change. I'd like to see a safer environment, but I'm really not that hopeful.
It would (and it would have been commendable) but that would require a sense of humor and for one of those you've had to have had an independent thought ever and, frankly, I just don't see it with Herr Sarkesian.
I came in on page 8 and responded to somebody about laughing at death threats. I did not derail it, at all. It's just how the conversation ended up. And I talked about celebrity in the Quinn thread?
I just come here to argue and discuss. That's just my personality. I like to argue and check all the side of stuff and talk about them. If you find that I derailed this topic about the money Anita made, then I'm pretty sure it was derailed way before I got in here.
Not really. It's about attacking the personalities. If you attack a no name journalist, nobody care. If you attack a person who had several stories written about her and was in many controversy, people start to care. Same reason people attack Tom Cruise for being in the Scientology cult and focus on him and not the cult itself. Attacking a cult is boring to the masses, attacking a celebrity mean something.
Not really. I had no idea who Grayson was before this. Quinn is troublemaker girl and get stuff written on her. And she was on the spot light when Game Jam failed. People look at that. Grayson is really not on the radar of people. It's like comparing a starting celebrity with a journalist. Sure you wrote a lot of stuff, but nobody care about you, because you are not the article fuel.
It would (and it would have been commendable) but that would require a sense of humor and for one of those you've had to have had an independent thought ever and, frankly, I just don't see it with Herr Sarkesian.
That's why these videos are a thing, to make us realise how widespread the problem is that very few games actually break the tropes.I'm watching her videos thanks to this thread. I don't agree with everything a 100% but she presents a good case, with visual evidence on her point. I wish the videos dedicated a more time to show gaming example that break the trope, feels like it's just a couple of indie games.
You are doing this again and again, and I do wonder why.
She IS going to make at least one video (apparently now it'll be a series?) where she talks about positive examples. It's been on her Kickstarter page from day one.I'm watching her videos thanks to this thread. I don't agree with everything a 100% but she presents a good case, with visual evidence on her point. I wish the videos dedicated a more time to show gaming example that break the trope, feels like it's just a couple of indie games.
She IS going to make at least one video (apparently now it'll be a series?) where she talks about positive examples. It's been on her Kickstarter page from day one.
The point of those other videos, however, is to point out how widespread some negative examples continue to exist and that's what she's focusing on.
That's why these videos are a thing, to make us realise how widespread the problem is that very few games actually break the tropes.
Real talk, you should ask your girlfriend and your mother that question.
The answer may surprise.
I think it's about the frequency of these tropes because you're not going to get past tropes but these ones have been continuing in media for so long.Coming from an age when feminism was a much bigger thing, and my parents were active in it but were wise enough to focus on 'emancipation' of both sexes which I think is ultimately a better way of going about this, because my problem with videogames is how few games break *any* tropes. But that is also my criticism of what I've seen of her work so far - they are almost devoid of context (a Mafia or Godfather game needn't rise above the source material) or contrast (how about a game like Dragon Age to show what can be done). My wife will never make it past part I because (apart from that she's not a great speaker) the first part was incredibly boring to her, she felt it was almost just a ploy to enable watching sex scenes, in a sense making them worse than the source material, because taken out of context completely. They make me want to write articles or make videos like these myself on this subject, because I feel it could be done much better. And there's the biggest plus I think of her work - regardless of the quality, it makes people - and apparently game developers and publishers - more aware of how boring and/or unsophisticated they allow themselves to be.
People constantly toss this out there and it's not accurate. The average woman doesn't walk around in constant fear, terrified for her life. That's just ridiculous.
I think it's about the frequency of these tropes because you're not going to get past tropes but these ones have been continuing in media for so long.
I don't know if her videos were helpful for developers or not in enacting progress (Bioshock devs have chimed in of appreciating the criticism), but last year there were a few great female protagonists. Dreamfall Chapters, Never Alone, Marvellous Miss Take, Last of Us Left Behind.
People constantly toss this out there and it's not accurate. The average woman doesn't walk around in constant fear, terrified for her life. That's just ridiculous.
Druckmann explicitly stated in one of his keynotes that the first Tropes vs Women-videos were an inspiration for how he wrote TLOU.
That's another thing I don't get about the criticism towards Anita's argument. One of the most common ones is "She doesn't offer solutions! She's just hating!" However, the obvious solution is: hey, games writers, don't resort to these tired tropes. . And when they don't resort to those tropes they are forced to write a more novel narrative and use female characters in ways they often haven't before.
Developers who watch FF can make that conclusion on their own, she doesn't have to tell them.
If she'd come out with a list saying: "this is exactly how you should write instead of Trope X," I'm pretty sure she would be getting even more critique for limiting creative freedom.
She is not a developer, it's not her role to develop games. But highlighting shitty practices in games-writing makes developers more aware of pitfalls they didn't realize before (the Bioshock-example above is perfect). Anita should not be prescribing solutions, that's for the creative people of this industry to solve.
It is ridiculous when you present it as a straw man. No, women do not walk around in constant crippling fear, but they do experience more fear than men.
While the study below is merely one indicator of "fear", it goes a pretty long way to showing how men and women have different levels of fear in their daily lives. Couple this with the studies that show that women experience more harassment online, and you have a situation where their experience of threats lead to far more serious conclusions than those thrown around in a DOTA-game.
"In 93 of the 105 countries and areas surveyed, women are significantly less likely than men to say they feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live. While this is not that surprising, the striking differences between men and women in some developed countries are. There is at least a 20-percentage-point difference between men and women in 21 countries, including Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
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I think it's about the frequency of these tropes because you're not going to get past tropes but these ones have been continuing in media for so long.
I don't know if her videos were helpful for developers or not in enacting progress (Bioshock devs have chimed in of appreciating the criticism), but last year there were a few great female protagonists. Dreamfall Chapters, Never Alone, Marvellous Miss Take, Last of Us Left Behind.
Awesome. Now what does that have to do with what I stated? Being afraid to walk alone at night and being in constant fear and terrified for their lives aren't even remotely similar statements.
Awesome. Now what does that have to do with what I stated? Being afraid to walk alone at night and being in constant fear and terrified for their lives aren't even remotely similar statements.
And there was no straw man, the poster I quoted claimed exactly that and I said it wasn't true. He's also not the first person around here who has said as much.
Yes you can. If 99% of the women in a game are trophies or sex symbols or reasons for men to act, then that is shitty writing. One well written woman does not compensate that.You can't on the one hand take Red Dead Redemption as showing that women are only for showing how men are evil, and on the other hand ignore that probably the first major character you encounter in the game is a strong independent woman,
You can't on the one hand take Red Dead Redemption as showing that women are only for showing how men are evil, and on the other hand ignore that probably the first major character you encounter in the game is a strong independent woman,
Awesome. Now what does that have to do with what I stated? Being afraid to walk alone at night and being in constant fear and terrified for their lives aren't even remotely similar statements.
Need the salary breakdown.
Conan-sanIt would (and it would have been commendable) but that would require a sense of humor and for one of those you've had to have had an independent thought ever and, frankly, I just don't see it with Herr Sarkesian.
I wish I could remember specifics, but I've read at least two accounts of team leaders showing their (design)-team FF videos to inspire more awareness for the issue and reporting that it opened a lot of eyes and caused them to look over some of the designs once again to improve them (was it Bioware? Naughty Dog?) I honestly forgot.I think it's about the frequency of these tropes because you're not going to get past tropes but these ones have been continuing in media for so long.
I don't know if her videos were helpful for developers or not in enacting progress (Bioshock devs have chimed in of appreciating the criticism), but last year there were a few great female protagonists. Dreamfall Chapters, Never Alone, Marvellous Miss Take, Last of Us Left Behind.
But if you take cherry picking to the extreme, that's the same as arguing the prevalence of the digit 4 over the other 9 in the following sequences:
0123456789
0123456789
0235602356
1478914789
You can't take things out of context just to show a pattern, except when your pattern here is to show that the digit 4 is used. But that is not what she is doing here. She is misrepresenting in order to push an agenda, which I personally I've seen more than enough of in my years as a literary scholar. That's not to say I disagree with everything she says or that I even disagree with that agenda (far from it in fact - average toy stores with pink sections drive me crazy), just that I think her work is diminished by not providing any context as much as the work of the makers of Rockstar is diminished by her misrepresentation. It is reductionist in the same way that a female version of an already abstract character is created (and I agree that merketing is a big factor here, because they tend to pander to statistics in the most horrible and unoriginal of ways) by adding hair decoration when the original game was genderless enough already to appeal to a wide audience.
Asking for subtlety of gender representation in a 16 pixel high sprite character is silly in and of itself, in the context of how much cartoons struggle with this having always had a far wider range of expression. Questioning the need of course a completely different matter, and the marketing around it completely ridiculous. Similarly, the Smurfette syndrom can't be very well applied in a military setting as a trope, when in fact it basically trailblazes reality already because in reality in active military operations women are less prevelant. But the fact there are far more games that revolve around military rather than romancing, say, is a far bigger issue (especially considering that the Japanese gaming landscape has proven that finding suitable game mechanics isn't and hasn't been an issue for a long time).
Perhaps above everything else in her work, I am disappointed by how basic and backwards the whole discussion is, where I thought we were much further along in having this discussion already that allowed for detail and nuance.
Sure. The original video is ridiculously long, but here's a cut down version someone did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=dnwv0WHFty4 Feel free to skip the commentary bits, they're not particularly enlightening.
Bingo. This is what I realized a while back. Her work isn't super compelling for me, but its also not for me, I'm already familiar with everything she's saying.I don't, however, think that the shortcomings of Tropes vs. Women is a reflection on her ability to create these sorts of discourses though. Her enterprise is really tricky because it has to bridge two things that the GamerGate fuckery has shown us are very much incompatible: scholarship and gamers. Academics don't take gamers seriously, and I think there is a shared belief amongst people who most loudly identify as "gamers" that games shouldn't be examined through a critical lens. Which not only puts Sarkeesian in a really shitty no-win position, but it also means that whatever she produces under this umbrella has to be dumbed down in order to reach skeptical audiences on both sides.
I'm at a point now where I am through with any people whining about Sarkeesian. Her stuff is so bare-bones, so milquetoast, so 101, yet some people are still throwing a hissy-fit because they can't deal with a woman even questioning the status quo in the most mild and non-controversial manner. Because of their video games.
It's embarassing to watch people fall over each other to make misogynist fools out of themselves with almost no self-awareness and complete lack of empathy.
This is more a general comment on the reactions towards her, some of which are in this thread (and countless other instances).
But I thought the whole reason some people were picking apart her budget was they assumed it was going to 'salary and wages.'
Druckmann explicitly stated in one of his keynotes that the first Tropes vs Women-videos were an inspiration for how he wrote TLOU.
That's another thing I don't get about the criticism towards Anita's argument. One of the most common ones is "She doesn't offer solutions! She's just hating!" However, the obvious solution is: hey, games writers, don't resort to these tired tropes. . And when they don't resort to those tropes they are forced to write a more novel narrative and use female characters in ways they often haven't before.
Developers who watch FF can make that conclusion on their own, she doesn't have to tell them.
If she'd come out with a list saying: "this is exactly how you should write instead of Trope X," I'm pretty sure she would be getting even more critique for limiting creative freedom.
She is not a developer, it's not her role to develop games. But highlighting shitty practices in games-writing makes developers more aware of pitfalls they didn't realize before (the Bioshock-example above is perfect). Anita should not be prescribing solutions, that's for the creative people of this industry to solve.
It is ridiculous when you present it as a straw man. No, women do not walk around in constant crippling fear, but they do experience more fear than men.
While the study below is merely one indicator of "fear", it goes a pretty long way to showing how men and women have different levels of fear in their daily lives. Couple this with the studies that show that women experience more harassment online, and you have a situation where their experience of threats lead to far more serious conclusions than those thrown around in a DOTA-game.
"In 93 of the 105 countries and areas surveyed, women are significantly less likely than men to say they feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live. While this is not that surprising, the striking differences between men and women in some developed countries are. There is at least a 20-percentage-point difference between men and women in 21 countries, including Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
![]()
Sure. The original video is ridiculously long, but here's a cut down version someone did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=dnwv0WHFty4 Feel free to skip the commentary bits, they're not particularly enlightening.
I'm at a point now where I am through with any people whining about Sarkeesian. Her stuff is so bare-bones, so milquetoast, so 101, yet some people are still throwing a hissy-fit because they can't deal with a woman even questioning the status quo in the most mild and non-controversial manner. Because of their video games.
It's embarassing to watch people fall over each other to make misogynist fools out of themselves with almost no self-awareness and complete lack of empathy.
This is more a general comment on the reactions towards her, some of which are in this thread (and countless other instances).
Keep in mind, people encounter information at different points from each other and from different starting points. There are plenty of times where actively trying to convince them faster would have an opposite effect. Most of the time, people need to work through their own realizations, if they're open to a new idea in the first place. If someone is filtering out an idea, raising the volume of your point will make it that much easier to rationalize why they shouldn't listen.
Happy Endings, available on a streaming network near you. You won't regret it.
"In 93 of the 105 countries and areas surveyed, women are significantly less likely than men to say they feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live. While this is not that surprising, the striking differences between men and women in some developed countries are. There is at least a 20-percentage-point difference between men and women in 21 countries, including Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States."
![]()