New Tropes VS Women & the Importance of Basic Respect

I know she has said she fell out of videogames for a while and then came back to them(like a lot of folks as they grow up). Since starting the video series though, it sounds like she has gotten back into playing more games. On her twitter page last year, I remember seeing her talk about how much she was enjoying playing Spelunky.

Though, again, while any excuse to bring up Spelunky is a good one, I don't think her gaming habits are at all relevant to the actual topic of the thread.

I've got to go to sleep; so, duders please take good care of the thread and try to keep it on topic so it doesn't get locked as soon! <>

I've said it once I'll say it again I don't agree with how she says anything but the general gist is totally right on she just really really needs to tone it the FUCK down. Feminism is a good thing as all people deserve rights but jesus christ put down the spear.

Hey duder, sorry for the confusion. I was replying to Conmullian's quote:

C'mon, you cannot seriously take issue with her buying games for research. Of course that was going to be where part of the money went! She was completely upfront about that in the Kickstarter pitch:

I will be researching and playing hundreds of titles from across the gaming industry (including some truly awful games that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone!). Your support will go towards production costs, equipment, games and downloadable content.

It's like saying Giant Bomb is a huge scam because some amount of subscriber money goes to buying games for UPF.

Unfortunately, my phone doesn't let me quote only reply.

So, since you share concern about the general gist, maybe you could explain what you mean. Enough of us in the thread have said we don't appreciate how she particularly handles it, but considering the topic of this particular video, what do you specifically have to say about it? When you say the general gist, could you elaborate so I can better understand what you mean?

I'm glad many of us are saying we care about this, but I hope we can actually talk about it. I know for a fact many of us feel differently about the ramifications of these tropes and what can be done to potentially improve things. We might as well address those opinions while we're all jazzed that we care about the topic. heh.

@truthtellah three pages later we are still focusing on how to properly discuss the topic rather than actually addressing her latest video because any discussion around Anita is like dancing barefoot around broken glass.

Ultimately though it's not a topic that really deserves much attention - or rather not any more attention than any other YouTube video concerned with sexism in gaming of which there are many. What is worse is that this one person who has some pretty extreme views on the matter has become the face of 'women in videogames' across the net. While there are plenty of intelligent women talking about the issue in a much more rational way, it is Anita who seems to shine the brightest despite her oftentimes aggressive and belittling tone.

I guess I would have do it differently. I would have focused on the positive female characters and encouraged growth of the positive characteristics. We should want women to be empowered by video games not reasons to hate the industry and stay away from them altogether.

Characters like:

Lucca, Faith, Aerith, Rinoa, Rochelle, Jayde, Commander Shepard, Madison Paige, Meryl, Chell, Kate Walker, Kairi, Samus, Medli, Zoey, Elena, Eleanor Lamb, Tali, Leah, Marle, Bonnie MacFarlene, Alex Vance, Lady Hawke, Garnet (Dagger), and Zelda.

@humanity: ha. Well, the topic is also technically how to discuss the topic; so, I don't think it's a lost cause. ;)

I suppose it may be easier if I just linked her video as text and then explained the topic she touches on. Then maybe people wouldn't immediately see her face and want to simply argue about her and her plaid shirts in particular. *shrug* We'll figure it out. For the moment, people aren't eating each other; so, I consider it hopeful. If yall discuss things until I get the time to reply again, maybe I can personally respond to everyone and give some back and forth. If someone gives an opinion on the topic and not just Sharkeesian, I'll gladly reply!

@truthtellah: Better yet, just make a topic about sexism in gaming without invoking her name at all and have a normal discussion. Personally I don't see any value in attaching her name to anything at this point as she has made her viewpoints known already. There is nothing to be gained from watching the rest of her series because you very much know exactly what she's going to say.

I can't speak to the order she has chosen, but she seems to be of the opinion that talking about the potentially harmful tropes first before getting into better examples from gaming and ideas for how games can address those tropes and improve is a better way to handle it.

Though, as far as this specific video, the issue seems to be more with objectification of female NPCs(which speaks to the treatment of all NPCs), and so, even games that may have decent leading ladies like you mentioned could have problematic depictions of female NPCs(like the prominence of prostitutes and strippers which you can mistreat or random NPCs you can have bad videogame sex with). I think that such mistreatment can add to some narratives, but in other cases, it may just detract from experiences and feel kind of gross.

As I mentioned earlier, someone was gonna make a thread about it eventually(someone already did, in fact [but it crashed immediately]); so, might as well try to make it decent. Maybe I'll broach the subject itself in an independent thread later. For now, this is the thread we've got. Let's make the best of it!

I may not always agree with you, huma, but I hope you might add your perspective on the objectification of female characters(in particular NPCs and the prevalence of prostitutes, strippers, etc. in games).

Oh my goodness, yes, THIS.

And @truthtellah, if you don't want personal attacks to enter into the argument, maybe you should consider not replying to them.

[edit]

Her last video went by without anyone making a thread. Please remember that when her next video comes around.

heh. Well, it was still an opportunity to talk about showing basic respect in a discussion with those you disagree with. Something important for many of us and particularly relevant for discussion of her videos and similar topics.

That's worthwhile, because some people seem to not realize how to talk to others with that most basic respect. Unfortunately, they may not even realize that their carelessness is specifically damaging, but I hope all of us will keep in mind how we may at times be potentially hurtful to others and destructive to discussion.

I imagine neither you nor I or anyone else here desires to be a consistently damaging part of topics like this; so, being aware of where we may fall short at times can be helpful to us all.

@spaceinsomniac: Also, I seem to remember a short-lived thread for the video that got deleted, because some people don't like to discuss the topic and others don't show basic respect for other members. That's part of why this is so important.

I don't think some people's intent to burn down any thread mentioning her or social issues should deter me or anyone else from bringing it up. I won't let jerks tell me how to act to avoid their nonsense. What we have to do is figure out better ways to discuss it, not allow the worst parts of this community to hold us back from having decent discussion with one another.

Considering so many of us talk about caring about this and other social issues, we have to find some way to actually discuss it. I believe in the good folks of Giant Bomb, and we -can- make it work.

If a topic concerning one YouTube user's opinion on gender issues is locked because people can't stop talking about her specifically, I would think the appropriate response would be to create a thread about the issue itself, that is if you want to talk about the issue itself.

You can suggest "I won't let jerks tell me how to act to avoid their nonsense," but in the end you're continually creating a needless obstacle that gets in the way of having an actual conversation. What's the thought process, there? "I'm going to create an Anita Sarkeesian thread, and THIS time it's going to be about the issues, not just about her!"

*insert Far Cry 3 definition of insanity reference here*

But right about now it would be nice to stop having a conversation about having a conversation, and get back to the issues themselves. After post 96, I thought there would have a least been a drive-by "false equivalency" post that says nothing else to actually debate the connection that I made, and yet here we are still talking about how we should talk about these issues, rather than talking about these issues.

Here's my problem.

When the first thing people do when this topic comes up is to make accusations unrelated to the points being made and basically ignore the actual points you are basically attmiting you have no argument,

Most of he people here didn't watch the video at all and just came to make accusations they can't prove or post some other YouTuber who feels personally offended but the videos.

First I know huge gamers that have used other let play videos. Her not giving credit is a different discussion.

Some of the things she says in the videos , yes are can "do to men too" but if you watched the video it was said that male NPCs aren't overly sexualized like female ones are. They are made as eye candy for the make gamer.

People need to open their eyes, a lot of women I games are made to be decoration and eye candy for the male gamer in a way men almost never do. And one or two examples of it happening domestic mean there isn't an issue that could use so,e changing if gaming wants to evolve .

And yes, with gta basically being a satire I don't think it's the best example to use but there are some good examples in there.

I do think the whole "if you think your not effected you are the most effected" is kinda bullshit. I can understand something is bad but get past it. I post on Internet forums.

I have to admit I have spent more time trading peoples reactions to these videos than watching them. I sat and watched this video and was personally impressed. She presents a reasonable argument and there were few instances I could personally disagree with. The video was well produced with a lot of video capture which would be very time consuming. I don't quite understand a lot of the reactions to her personally.

It should be evident that her argument has merit from the sheer quantity of material available to demonstrate the issue. I can't say I can agree with some of the social outcomes based on feminist theory as I haven't read the papers they are based on personally. But I don't know how many games I have played that include a brothel or strip club in it but it is a lot, which is kind of gross.

Hopefully people who want to take something away from the videos can do it without getting embroiled in whatever issues people have with her personally or with her work.

I've been meaning to check out more discussions about these videos as I've never been able to understand what people don't like about them. Games have had the same deep rooted misogyny that's in many aspects of culture. I watched this video and it seems pretty straight forward.

A lot of these kind of social problems aren't so much any individual piece (or person) in a medium but rather the recurrence and wide spread nature of sexist (among other) themes. So I don't understand why so many people seem to get caught up on particular games they like that get used as an example. As she even mentions in her videos it doesn't make you a bad person (which seems to be what's offending people?) to like one of these games.

Edit: Reading some of these posts just leave me more confused. Since when is using the word "misogynist" just name calling? That's like saying you can't use "racist" because it's offends someone.

When I was a young girl, my family owned two gaming systems. In my brothers' room, and out of my reach most of the time, was an Atari 2600. In the upstairs family room my father had set up a Commodore 64, which was intended for everyone to use, though it mostly ended up being my de facto gaming system. We had a bunch of floppy disks with untold numbers of games, but I recall only really playing four or five. My favorite was probably Winter Games, followed by GI Joe. I loved watching my brother play Deceptor and The Legend of Black Silver, but I didn't quite understand the mechanics of those games and was not very good when I had a chance to try them myself. Finally, there was Barbarian, a crude and bloody fighting game that consisted of a buff Conan lookalike trying to save a bikini clad woman from an evil wizard. High art this was not, but nothing was more fun to me than being able to decapitate another barbarian, the head flying off and a pixelated red spray erupting from their neck. At the time I was too young to comprehend both the violence of the game and the fact that my character was literally fighting for a scantily dressed woman, but it didn't matter to me. I just wanted to get to the next stage.

This is the interesting dichotomy I've dealt with most of my life where games are concerned. My desire to progress through a game I enjoy the mechanics of while also being simultaneously pushed away by the more sexually overt depictions of women. The good thing about most games made in the last few years is that they allow for the choice to ignore, or to not participate in, examples of behavior that were cataloged in the video. I think the main phrase that stuck with me as I watched was, "the game allows," which I think is an important idea that also tends to diminish her own argument. My main view is not that the creators of these games want the person playing them to actively harm and objectify female NPCs. Many of the examples used to bolster the idea that games implicitly encourage this behavior merely point to the unfortunate limitations of programming open worlds. The dancing prostitutes that are copy and pasted are simply made that way because a programmer can't waste time programming hundreds of individual and distinct NPCs when 10 will serve the job just as well. Similarly, bodies disappear in games so that game resources won't be devoted to something that literally no longer serves a purpose. Again, with large open worlds, which this video focused on quite a bit, bodies disappearing is a necessary evil sometimes, and happens with both male and female characters. As an example of why this is a good thing, I almost had to restart from an hours earlier save in Fallout 3 because the area I was trying to load into had 5 dead and horribly gibbed brahmin in it. The game was trying to load the area and the brahmin pieces were just too much for it to handle, so the whole thing would freeze and I'd have to start over again. After much frustration, and pretty horrible language, my husband suggested a solution that ended up working and I didn't lose 3 hours of progress.

This is my main problem with the video. I enjoyed and mostly agreed with the first half of the piece. Developers often create worlds that have prostitute characters in them, or strippers, or scantily dressed NPCs, and their main purpose is to impart edginess and show how "mature" the game is. However, when I see this stuff, I kind of chuckle to myself. It's such a crass attempt, usually, to make a game seem more adult. That doesn't lend maturity to a title. Maturity comes from the story, the characters and their interactions, not whether there is a lap dance mini-game or the ability to pay for sex. I will note that these are things to add to your game when building your world, and there is nothing wrong with strip clubs and prostitution in a game or acknowledging that those things exist. On the other hand, at some point it becomes boring and childish to me. One of the most mature games I played in the last few years was The Walking Dead and there was nary a whore or stripper to be found in the title. In addition, most games lose nothing if you completely ignore these elements, so as a player I wonder why they're even there to begin with if they serve no real purpose for actual game progression.

Interestingly, I am just now playing through one of the games that was heavily featured in the video, that being Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I find it a bit disingenuous that the segue between showing a violent act against a female NPC in that game, to a scene from GTA I believe, was a statement that in many of these games, violence against these characters is rewarded. Deus Ex, at least in my time with it, completely steers the player away from violence against civilians. The achievements gained from knocking people out will not tally when committed against civilians, and nothing valuable ever drops from civilians. So why the implication that this is the case? Sure, the visual of that character stabbing a woman with arm blades is arresting, but it also undercuts and cheapens the points being made. The discussion also neglects to mention that while murder is an option, the better and more rewarding option is nonfatal incapacitation. But again, no rewards are gained from violence against random NPCs, only enemy characters, so the focus on that image was disappointing.

Another interesting wrinkle was the focus on the BioShock: Infinite DLC scene. I assume she was using it to illustrate the point that female NPCs in games, for the most part, are no better than commodities. The exact phrasing came out of the male NPCs mouth, for goodness sake! But, again, as someone who has played three games in that world knows, the views espoused by the inhabitants of both Rapture and Columbia are not praised by the developers, but instead cut down and shown to lead to ruin in their more extreme form. It is a funny line to illustrate her point, but as the player who walked through Rapture, we know that this line of thinking is what destroys the underwater metropolis. In Rapture you can have anything you want so long as you can pay for it, whether that's the companionship of an attractive woman, a new face or the ability to shoot fire from your fingertips. It's also what causes it to rot from the inside out. The player, in the end, is also both saved with the help of women or by women themselves. Jack would not have taken down Frank Fontaine without the help and guidance of Brigid Tenenbaum, and Booker didn't end up saving Elizabeth, I would argue that in those final moments, she ended up saving him.

I also feel like I need to spend some time talking about something that I can't even believe she missed in the video, and something that I think helps illustrate the idea of sexual objectification of women more than any example that was highlighted. This is either because she is focusing, for the most part, on recent console games, or maybe she just didn't think to look for it. I suppose it could also be in an upcoming video, so I won't completely write it off as a lack of research at the moment. I found it very puzzling that time was spent on the relatively inconsequential NPC interactions of The Witcher 2, when the first Witcher game had, as a gaming mechanic, a collectible card system that rewarded the player a raunchy picture card whenever you bedded a female NPC. These NPCs were both named and important characters, such as Triss, and also unnamed characters that held no importance to the overall narrative, such as the descriptive "Merchants" card or the "Poor Townsfolk" card. This game feature literally has you finding women, trying to have sex with them, and then giving you a sexy picture as a reward if you do everything correctly. The hilarious thing is that, even as a woman playing the game, I wanted to collect as many cards as I could. So instead of being offended, I just found it really silly and laughed at all the awkward trysts that my witcher was engaging in. Still, the fact that the game developers made finding sexual conquests into a Pokemon-esque game is pretty repugnant when you really think about it, and a much better example of the NPC as a sex object than was featured in the video overall, at least to me.

Before I run too long, I would also like to talk about Mass Effect. When I first saw the title of this video, I knew that the Asari stripper scene was going to be in it, and of course it was. I never participated in this scene myself. I found the entire situation supremely uncomfortable and my Paragon FemShep would never spend valuable time and money on dancing girls. However, I think it is important to note that this scene, while not something I actively participated in, actually has some interesting character and world building implications carried across all three games of the series. Asari are a mono-gender species that can mate with anyone, any species, and any gender, so far as we know. Liara even says that she is "not precisely a woman" though what that means is never spelled out explicitly for the player. Over the course of the games, their culture is revealed bit by bit in interactions and interesting conversations are overheard concerning them. One of the most interesting and eyeopening is the conversation at a bar between a various aliens where they each state that the Asari are attractive due to a certain trait, and each of those traits is something intrinsic to the species. It's debated by the participants in the conversation whether they are victims of mind control or pheromones, or whether they simply focus on the trait that is attractive and all others are naturally diminished in their minds. I would argue that without these basic scenes of an Asari at a dance club, however crudely implemented they may have been at the time, we wouldn't have become knowledgeable about their race and have a window opened to how different races within the Mass Effect universe view them. These moments, while set in a club with dancing a gyrating aliens, actually lend a weight and importance to the characters and help us learn more about them and their views and their place in the Mass Effect universe.

In the end, I find that women could be shown in a better light in games. Women don't have to always be eye candy. Luckily, I think that games are expanding the roles that they find for women. While open world games add spice and edginess by adding in the brothel and the strip club, the also allow for you as the player to totally ignore those aspects of the game, if you so choose. On top of that, developers also are expanding on what it means to be a mature title, so that instead of naked women and uncomfortable sex scenes being prevalent, we have more games that focus on the maturity coming from player interactions with strong characters, male and female, and more interesting stories that appeal to a larger variety of people. I think it is important to note that while some games still follow in the mold of my old favorite, Barbarian, many more are doing new things and handling gender in more interesting and thoughtful ways.

Wow @jadegl that was some terrific post.

I absolutely agree, most of what you said echoes my own opinion about the topic. And yes the witcher sex collection minigame was so ridiculously out of context that to date, I find it some of the most uncomfortable treatment of sexuality and narrative in any game.

Great to see such thoughtful approach to the topic. Thanks!

@jadegl:

I often see you posting these long responses in sexism topics, so I've gotta ask the question: Why don't you just post these as blogs?

@video_game_king: I probably should, I just never think to. I don't usually start out thinking it's going to be that long, but I usually find I have more to say than I initially intended. :)

@sydlanel: Greta post and I think the reaction you had with a lot of the stuff in those games is what I did too. I'm not a women so I can't fully put myself in your shows but still.

I'm always a person where intention should always be thought of before getti too offended, I don't think most developers are being malicious when doing some of that stuff but I think questions should be asked.

I can't type everyone right now but I will later

I mean, I agree with the basic gist of what she is saying, that women are often used as eye candy in video games and this is a bad thing, but some of the examples she uses are really baffling and while I know it's been said a million times, they made me question whether she really played the games. Like is she aware that you can kill anyone in many open world games and that they will drop money? It seems bizarre to devote such a long segment to how video games have violence against women when really just a minute or two of playing the game would show that the violence is not gendered in any way.

Also, one of my thoughts while watching the video is that there are plenty of stories worth telling which involve worlds in which women are objectified, brothels, strip clubs, or nasty characters who would engage in the objectification of women. Like, I don't think any portrayal of the seedy criminal underworld of Los Angeles would be complete without some sort of exploration of prostitution and stripping. Games can portray these things without celebrating them (though I suppose many games do in fact celebrate them with their portrayal). I suppose games could be more explicit on condemning the sexual exploitation of women and the characters who engage in it even as they portray it.

One solution I'm okay with is equal opportunity objectification: add in equal amounts of male prostitutes and strippers when it makes sense in the setting, for example the worlds of Saints Row, Mass Effect, or Dragon Age. All the pimping you get up to in Saints row did make me feel very uncomfortable as a player but might have made me feel less so if they had thrown in male prostitutes (Sarkeesian is right that often male prostitutes are played as a joke, which is shitty). The bit with the Asari stripper in Mass Effect might have felt much less gross if there had been some human men on the poles as well. Obviously this doesn't make sense for every game but it can work for some.

On the other hand there's more than a fair share of objectification in games which has nothing to do with creating characters or settings, and has no good excuse to exist. Duke Nukem and the racing games she showed are good examples. This shit just has to stop.

This is my first time watching one of the Tropes. vs. Women Series and honestly I'm kinda disappointed. I'm pretty enthusiastic about bringing the cause of feminism to video games, but I don't know if I want Serkeesian being the face of that effort.

@jadegl: Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think you touch on some good specific examples; I appreciate the mention of Barbarian as an example of how potentially inappropriate depictions of women can actually detract from an experience and deter continued progress. It may not be as elegant as what you described, but I have remembered saying to myself, "ugh, not this crap again," at cringe-worthy additions to otherwise entertaining games.

And fortunately, there -is- a lot of progress being made. The recent hullabaloo with Ubisoft comes to mind. Their lame excuse for not including a female avatar option in co-op fell flatter than simply saying they chose otherwise, and it was especially surprising for a developer which prides themselves on improving diversity in their games. They have already had a female lead in their premiere series, and racial diversity has continued to be seen, even in the new Far Cry lead.

Not all main characters have to be non-white women, but it's nice for them to at least mix it up a bit and generally offer options for people. That's why it was somewhat surprising when they didn't, and as a company that says diversity is important to them, it's great that we can actually hold them to their word in offering the variety they say they want to offer. No developers are perfect and there is still a lot to improve, but diversity in the game industry is slowly but surely getting healthier.

This is a point that is all too often left out of the discussion surrounding the harm of these tropes. While it's not explicitly Anita's point, and she does always mention that not all uses are damaging (although she then uses language that pretty summarily contradicts that), these videos pretty clearly imply that the tropes themselves are innately bad and should therefore be avoided. But it's never discussed that the reason these tropes in some cases remain prevalent is precisely because they are bad.

I could elaborate but it's a bit off topic from this thread so I'll just add this brilliant quote from Kristin Bezio of TheLearnedFangirl. She's discussing her confusion over FemFreq's disappointment with the inclusion of a damsel in distress in Dishonored. The problem being that, while you are man rescuing a young girl who can't help herself, you're doing it because the situation she's in is horrible. Kristin remarks, "Dishonored puts a princess in a tower (literally) not because it thinks she belongs there, but because it knows she doesn’t." These tropes that are negative can still be effectively used to communicate exactly how negative they are.

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I also have to parrot the other folks asking you to make your post into a blog. Please! It's infinitely more enlightening and convincing to read the very specific examples you mention (and have discussed in previous posts) of problematic representation in a game's real context.

The question of Anita's 'gamer cred' is an ultimately pointless one, as she has an education in women's studies and is specifically applying that knowledge to this topic. But her misunderstanding (or at least misrepresenting) the intent and validity of some content in the game's own world (Like the BI DLC scene you mentioned) at the very least just makes her arguments unreliable.

I think the entire Tropes v. Women project would have been immensely improved if Anita, from the start, just said something like, "I like games a lot, I've played them all my life, but I'm not an expert, just as most of the people who play games aren't. I am an expert in women's studies, so I'm uniquely able to examine these games through that lens". And then made the extra effort to bring another woman who is explicitly knowledgeable about games on to the staff to ensure the accuracy of the criticisms. Because as it is, there are just enough cracks in all of her references and examples that these important and valid points unfortunately just crumble into dust.

It was a compliment no equivocations. If we are going to talk about these kinds of things here, I can't think of anyone better than you to run a thread. Something like this takes a lot of patience and deft phrasing to give people a fighting chance to have a productive discourse. That's a skillset and a desire most of us don't have.

So *high-five* back at cha. :)

@darkstalker: I think it's natural for many people to be reluctant to accept criticism, especially if they question the tone with which it is offered. I know we had years of lawyers and politicians in America banging drums about the ills of videogames, and since many grew up in that atmosphere where there were people using criticism to justify genuine censorship by the government, there can be a fear of such criticism regardless of its separation from such efforts.

Fortunately, the more we are willing to consider and discuss these issues amongst ourselves, the safer gaming and its developers will be to actual censorship. People aware of issues making clear decisions holds as a far more compelling argument for questionable things being protected expression than people just avoiding thinking about potential issues. Awareness and understanding of such pitfalls helps us criticize our own medium without the need for any outside influence meddling in the gaming that we care so much about.

As you noted regarding eye candy and poor female characters which don't actually add to the setting, there are some apparent flaws with the handling of women in games which still remain to this day, and while there will likely always be some level of such representation, hopefully us as gamers and perhaps even future developers will be conscious of the issues and willing to give more consideration to how games include and portray such characters. This can not only improve female representation but also general writing and world-building, as well.

Oooo! This seems to be a bit up my alley. I think the idea of respect necessitates being able to look at things from different points of view without relative bias. I say relative, because it is nigh impossible to see anything completely objectively. Opinion is always skewing what we say even if it is the slightest bit. Say someone comes along, and in the example says: "HEY MAN PUPPIES AREN'T CUTE!" Some people may really love puppies. They may take offense to that argument and say "HEY FUCK YOU PUPPIES ARE THE DOPEST SHIT EVER AND YOU'RE A TERRIBLE PERSON." But, that just openly emphasizes their own stance on the issue. Perhaps on an issue they're more luke-warm about, say climate change (YEAH, this hypothetical person loves puppies but doesn't care one whit about climate change), they'd be more willing to look at things from alternate view points. It takes a certain degree of objectivity to pull yourself away from an argument that you're passionate about and look at things from more than one side. It seems like for some people this is a more difficult task than others. To be quite fair, I firmly believe that everyone has done this from time to time, because it really is inevitable.

@jadegl: Wow, I completely forgot about that collectible card sex-game from the first Witcher. I remember when I played the game I hardly bothered to even do it though, because it never rewarded XP and I felt it was a waste of time. They really should have just removed the mechanic I think, especially since it does come off as a bit creepy.

Great post, it's pretty rad to see your perspective.

@truthtellah: Apologies. It sucks how easy it is for this conversation to derail into a defense or offense of Sarkeesian.

My thought on objectification actually bleed into my thoughts on narrative in games as a whole. The medium is just now, within the last decade or so, actually trying to tell stories through interactivity on a regular basis. In the 90's, only a select few RPGs and Japanese action games actually gave a shit about their stories. Because of this, we're in a weird spot where some games try to have real characters with real arcs that mean something significant, some games are just purely about mechanics and have no interest in telling a story, and other games try to straddle the line between the two. I think we get more games that try to straddle that line than anything. The result of that straddling is a certain amount of dissonance with the characters in the game. Mechanically, most characters only serve the purpose of being something to interact with. This leads to said objectification of some characters that happen to be women, idealized or not. I think there's room for all kinds of games, including one's that just don't give a shit about their stories or their characters, but at some point in time, games are going to have to choose whether they want to have multidimensional characters peppered through their games or not.

I also don't think the issues with representation in games today come from any sort of malice on the developers part or on our part as the players. It's more out of ignorance or a lack of empathy, which may or may not be worse. That's why I don't really agree with Sarkiseean's toaster analogy that just because some questionable act is in a game with the intent for people to play it out means that that act is the intent of the creator. Game developers are in a tight spot where they have to see all possible sides to every angle in a game or someone is going to find a sort of intellectual invisible wall where they can't do a terrible thing in a game because the game won't let them. In that case, games can sort of be a cross between a Rorschach test, a release valve, or on of those pictures that could be several different thing depending how you look at it (like that picture that is either Wolverine or two Batmans looking at each other). Just because it's a shitty thing doesn't mean it should be excluded from a game because it's shitty. If that fits with the theme of the overall game, so be it. But really the issue at hand is one of balance. We can have our Bayonetta's so long as we get more stuff like Gone Home. The games industry is big enough that we can have our questionable cakes as well as out respectable cakes, and we can eat them both.

Does nobody tire from this discussion?

Except that doesn't seem like anything revelatory or even inherently bad. Characters that fill that role exist in all forms of stories, regardless gender.

i don't know what world anita lives in but seems like a nice place where all the prostitutes are covered from head to toe, women are not abused/assaulted.

the point I'm trying to make is, games like movies try to recreate the real world, some of the stuff games allow players to do is messed up but that's what freedom of choice in a open world is.

People who think its ok to abuse women, objectify them etc would do it in real life regardless of how women are portrayed in games.

I will not give this video a view, based on her previous videos, it will just piss me. Based on what people are saying she is stil stretching and warping the truth to fit whatever preconcieved opinion she had at the begining of all of this. She comes off as somebody who skims through each game to find a part that could loosely made to seem sexist and then compiles it into one video. I wish somebody would do a worthwile video series on this topic, this one is terrible.

Skimmed video. This is standard Sarkeesian fare. She starts with a valid but pretty specific point, argues poorly for it and expands the argument well past the boundaries of the issue she is apparently intending to discuss and thereby undercuts a lot of the validity of her position as a whole. She then uses a ton of example footage that is completely unrelated and edits it in a way so as to appear more sexist than it is in context.

This video, she includes a great deal of footage of prostitutes in games. Does she have a problem with the presence of the prostitutes themselves in the game, or is she trying to say that the prostitute's dialogue is inaccurate to women of that trade? "Love you long time" and so forth is more of a racist quotation than a sexist one. That line is a reference to vietnam war and the veteran's accounts of their experiences with local prostitutes while in country at the time, made famous by Full Metal Jacket. Normally when I hear that phrase used, it is intended as a racist dig at a person's limited grasp of english. If you're going to have prostitutes in your game, they're going to have some corny dialogue because, well, prostitutes do actually talk a blue streak of the most offensive shit possible when speaking to people they are targeting as potential customers. That's fact. So, does Sarkeesian want no prostitutes, or equal measure male/female ratio of prostitutes, or prostitutes with unrealistic dialogue?

As always, there's no position for change here. Does Sarkeesian have any ideas about what should change and how? Do you want a gender equal paradigm or would you prefer skewed one where female characters must be treated with extra fluffy kid's gloves so nobody gets offended? Or perhaps a matriarchal where women must be shown as equal to or better than men in all instances? Because when I watch the videos, that is frequently my takeaway.

I also continue to argue that there is mass confusion between definition of sexually overt depiction and sexist depiction. They are not the same. Sexually overt is generally agreed on. Sexist, in this case, would be sexual depiction while also implying that the sexual aspect is the only quality that characters possesses. Puritan ideas about sex (the act and things related) keep bleeding in to topics of sexism where they do not belong, somehow twisting the argument toward all sexual depiction is bad because sexist because sexy = sexist apparently and that pisses me right the fuck off. If you think a depiction of a female character is sexually overt to the point of disrespect or sillyness, the word you are looking for to describe that is crass. Crass also does not automatically equal sexist.

@freedo: I consider Bayonetta to be an excellent and pretty complex character who is, at worst, a neutral depiction if viewed as representative of her gender. She's an intelligent and highly capable person, member of a sect of women who essentially manipulate the strings of reality God Emperor style. She patronizes the male characters she interacts with, with cutesy nicknames and general condescension. The only thing you can point to about her that could be sexist (on a different character) is the fact that she's sexy. See previous paragraph for me opinion on that.

I watched her whole video, I agree that there's a problem in general, but I think she omits some context in the examples she pulls which doesn't help her argument and stirs up a lot of anger.

She made me think more about feminism, but I've thought a lot about it already. I doubt she had the same effect on the people she wants to change. I think she needs to be more fighty and more positive for that to happen. This video was a lecture and a tour of her punnet of neatly plucked cherries. I am aware of the issues with people calling out her tone rather than her argument, but to engage people who may not be as receptive to her views as I am she does need to frame it better.

To the Thread Starter:

You don't feel threatened by Anita. I don't feel threatened by Anita. The reason why is probably because we see that there are problems with society as it is currently structured.

I myself am a Middle-Class, conventional, straight, half-white male, who speaks English has a first language, who has an English name and who could probably pass for being white provided you don't look too closely. Society has treated me well - very well, in fact. I've never had to deal with racism to any great extent, I've never had to deal with discrimination based on my sexual orientation, cultural background, language, style of dress or, well, much of anything at all.

Yet I see that there are things wrong with society. I see people who are different to me being treated quite poorly, and I don't buy that this is the best society we have nor that things are the way they should be. So when Anita speaks out about things she finds problematic with games or society at large, I'm receptive to her and I respect her right to say things, because I think some things need to be said. I think that society, as beneficial as it has been to me personally, isn't as good as it could be, and I am not afraid of change - even if that change would result in me losing some privileges (not rights, privileges).

I don't believe Anita is out to "get" me. However, if you are a person who wholeheartedly buys into the 1950s era-stereotypes about gender roles, and adamantly pushes for the dominance of Men over Women, then Anita is attacking you. The Hate against Anita is quite "logical" in that she is directly pushing against certain ideologies and people who hold them.

Frankly, while the level and wide-spread nature of the hate against Anita is disappointing, I always expected some level of it, and so did she. Hate is natural whenever someone says something uncomfortable, when someone speaks out and pushes against firmly entrenched opinions. The fact that Anita gets so much hate is proof that she is being effective - she is ruffling feathers, and that's the job of progressives. Do I agree with everything Anita says? No. Do I need to, in order to respect her? No. There is not a single human being on this planet who I agree with 100% of the time.

I'm not going to bother asking for everyone to respect Anita, because that's a lost cause. She is going to get hate, because that is the nature of her work, her very valuable work. It is sad that it is so widespread and I don't think anyone "deserves" to be hated in this way, and if we lived in a better universe, we wouldn't see this sort of thing. But we don't live in a perfect universe, and when you challenge the basic assumptions of many people, they aren't going to thank you for that. They are going to be nasty and horrible - but that's how you know you're impacting them. And hopefully, after enough time, some of them will realize that the hatred they feel against someone for merely speaking up is a toxic mess that they need to abandon.

I dont necessarily agree with all her points. I think alittle sexy is just good fun, and having some more sexy for the lady gamers would be great for them. It's entertainment afterall why not be sexy entertainment?

Though watching her video, with a completely open mind, the biggest thing i realized was how often strip clubs and brothels show up in video games. I've never really noticed it before. I've actually never been to a stripclub or brothel in real life so i can't speak to the accuracy. (I don't see the point of paying for blue balls a brothel well...i've not reached that level of desperation). I do find it odd that they're such popular locations for games, well honestly i don't as a straight man its fun to go to a sexy place in a video game. I'll admit it. I banged a few hookers in the witcher 2 for the sex scene! I'm not ashamed!

I just think instead of less sexy stuff, it should be more sexy stuff for everyone. Obviously well written preferably. But sexy isnt bad.

Plus most of her examples seemed to be open world hijinks that you could literally do to any NPC but killing a hooker is worse than killing a businessman cus she's objectified? What?

But yea, an alarming amount of games have strip clubs and brothels in them. thats pretty much all i took from this video. Cus well she's right on that point. Alot of games do have that. Granted i don't mind when games, especially crime / sneaky games incorporate prostitutes as game mechanics, hiring "dancers" in assassins creed games to distract guards. It seems appropriate. If you're making a gritty crime game that deals with that stuff trying to ignore prostitution seems weird. It's called the oldest profession for a reason. It's massively widespread pretty much everywhere and has pretty much always been that way. When i see prostitutes in video games i usually feel bad for them and try to help them out. Sure! I'll hire them for sexy times, why not? It's a game i'm not hurting anyone.

I just think this kneejerk reaction to sexualized characters in video games as a bad thing is foolhardy. Sex is a huge part of the human experience. Lots of people are sexually frustrated and wanna get their kicks out of various media. Why not video games as well? Though obviously they do need to make some sexy for everyone, why not have a shower scene with nathan drake in uncharted 4 for no reason, cus fuck it why not the ladies might enjoy that? I DUNNO! I'm not a lady so designing sexy for ladies would be a bad idea for me. I've rambled too much ill shut up now.

@insectecutor: @herbiebug: You both bring up context. The thing is, Anita doesn't care about context when she gives her examples. That isn't my interpretation either, she has said in previous videos that she willfully ignores the context. Some people are perfectly content to go along with it, but this is one of the reasons why I have problems with parts of her videos.

This is why an actual examination of tropes in games could be really valuable for us and game developers as a whole. Writing in games is generally poor when compared to other mediums, clichés are rampant, and quality and depth in most other areas that aren't graphics related are really stagnating. The problem is when the tropes are connected to wild claims like reinforcing real world violence toward women.

So many times in these videos I'm right along with her, interested in what she's exploring, and then she pulls out some false equivalence or inaccurate assumption about a game that makes the record scratch in my brain and instantly dilute any good point trying to be made. And based on a lot of comments in this thread, I'm not the only one to constantly have that "Oh. Hmm... WTF?!" experience.

A deep analysis of tropes in games would be wonderfully productive and potentially widely influential. Unfortunately though, that's just not what these videos are really about.

So you're saying some regulars from the Giant Bomb community should work together to make a substantive video or blog series based on the potentially problematic tropes within games and how they might be handled better in future titles? ;)

I imagine you might still take issue with some of my differences in perspective on the relative damage or dangers of some aspects of games, but maybe people could look past the moments of difference to consider seriously the core points and ideas worth their attention.

Took her sweet time.

Of course respect is important. What's easy to lose through communication (especially internet communication) is context, and that easily leads to dissin'. Posting guidelines I try to always adhere to:

1. It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
2. Perspective is paramount- your experience isn't necessarily the same as others'.
3. Don't feed the trolls.

I'm not a frequent poster, but I love the Giant Bomb community, and a successful community polices itself. Can't do that without respect. It's just rules. We're gamers, we know about rules. Don't be bringin' your blue-shell bullshit up in here. You get a green shell or banana peel like everyone-fuckin'-else.

I would have to question what would be considered damaging or dangerous. If a piece of media is consumed by an impressionable mind that is still developing, then it is possible that they may be affected. In most cases, that media was not intended for them. If the media contains an ideology, then it is possible that an adult may be drawn to it. If the media contains a brothel or strip club, it isn't damaging or dangerous, it's just a trope.

Is she some sort of alien? I mean the way she sees things is so strange and weird, like she is seeing world trough a some sort of absurd rulebook.

@charlie_victor_bravo: actually that's just what she is doing. I took a literary criticism course in college as part of my major and it's very much like this. You have a tool set, maybe gender theory or queer theory, and you read the texts with that theory, it's definitions and thought processes, in your mind. This is not to say you suddenly agree with it, but you're taking a specific set of critical tools and applying them to the literature, in my case, but you could so the same or similar things with games and film. She is taking her tool set, women's studies and feminist theory, and viewing games through that lense. For what it's worth, I thought my literary criticism course was interesting, but I wouldn't say that any of the various theories seems more right than others. They were just ways to view a piece of art and ways to consider different points of view that may otherwise be ignored.

I think it's important to remember hat while these videos are on YouTube, she's really creating an academic piece that I suppose she wants to be used in schools or colleges. One would hope that in those courses, the instructor would impress upon their students that these are opinions and conclusions that are drawn from a specific point of view and that there are always other ways to interpret material and her way may not be intrinsically right. The validity comes from viewing, digesting and critiquing the material that she creates and also going to the games themselves and participating in your own "close reading" of the source materials. I'm lucky in that I feel like I have played a lot of what she has shown in this video, so I can see the broken seams of the arguments a bit easier while also seeing the good points. What scares me, as a "gamer" first, is people writing off a game, in total, based on a feminist reading of the game instead of playing it for themselves to gauge the strength of the critique.

Well, in the essay, too. Otherwise, nobody has a clue what you're talking about.

That's generally not how you're supposed to use theories in literary criticism. I think I said it earlier in the thread, but it's more about applicability than anything else. You can't really apply postcolonialism to Metal Gear Solid 4 (anybody want to prove me wrong?), but less because it's wrong and more because there's just not a lot to work with.