Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games Ep1

I really liked this. It felt intelligent, well-researched and balanced, meaning that she didn't sound too preachy or aggressive. I've watched some of her older Tropes vs Women videos and found them to be interesting, but this was a whole lot better. She just seems way more likeable in this video. Looking forward to the next part. I was actually thinking about how Elaine Marley subverts the whole trope while she talked about how only male characters are able to escape captivity.

it's almost definitely more complex than that (i'm not an expert on japanese culture, so i can't say from authority...but different societies have different standards and gender identities)- but one with an eye for design could see most of those sprites were anime/japanese influenced. that's a whole other can of worms, however (the dominance of japanese development vs. their societal tropes and influences)- and probably goes well beyond the scope of this video series.

Oh gods. I know I should watch this but I can't help but feel prejudiced against her because of the Sociology 101 level of thinking she's espoused in everything of hers that I've been exposed to so far. I want to take this on face value, I really do, but simply looking at her face makes me grind my teeth.

Nope.

Not giving her the traffic. No sir.

Fuck...I used a gendered pronoun. I'm such a sexist pig

I thought the video was great. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

Oh boy, where to start. Overall the video was pretty decent, it had some good information and wasn't hurr durr die cis scum.

What I didn't like was how she bent the truth in order to fit it into her own agenda. At 9:30 she describes how Peach was replaced with Toad in New Super Mario Wii in order to put her back into her place as a damsel in distress. This is only half true. Peach was replaced, but the reason for doing so was because her dress would have been too difficult to animate.

so give her some pink overalls?

No thanks i'm good.

To your first point of the culture of sexism having changed in 20 years: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To you second point on Dante's Inferno: The original text literally had nothing to do with saving Beatrice, so the game actually re-writes the story specifically to fit a trope that we still see employed today and are still accustomed to.

So, yeah.

I just... I can't make myself care. She's complaining about a plot device that's nearly 100 years old in American entertainment and the fact that Peach and Zelda aren't playable characters.

As first episodes go, this one was pretty fantastic and educational. Not at all preachy, and very direct and to the point with historical context.

Shiggy's role in perpetrating these plot devices and tropes was a good jumping of point.

By the time the Double Dragon segment had run it's course, there really was no denying the obvious and easily overlooked problems that just never go away with age. Those that find the subject disagreeable are going to be closed to it regardless. They really shouldn't be counted as a concern. I'd rather see this series dig as deep as it can possibly go without her tiptoeing around anything that might be to sensitive and nerd rage inducing.
But again, it's just the first in a series and she's got to present her positions in a manner that proves more useful than not . Great job as far as introductions go. I'll be watching to see where it goes from here for sure.

She forgot about super princess peach!

A game that has you making Peach cry and PMSing to get through levels.

@drdarkstryfe: Irrelevant. In the context of the trope, it's in direct contention. She didn't even comment on it.

This is actually her best work, but she still stretches things a bit to fit her analysis, which has always been a problem with her work.

@canteu: She specifically said that she would talk about it in the future.

I'm guessing you're being sarcastic with all of those points, maybe to try to hide the fact that they're kind of ridiculous? I know this is a series of videos, but once you've got the camera and the youtube clips, I can't imagine it's the hardest thing in the world to record another 20 minute episode. Sure, it's time-consuming, but it's not like she's shelling out for all those things every time she makes an episode. It's also totally incomparable to development of a new character for a fighting game; that can take a lot of time for a lot of people (artists, programmers, testers, etc) over a decent period of time. In fact, you can read about that right here: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/the-little-fighting-game-that-could/1100-4587/ .

I just expected more than something with about the same production values as your average video review. Meh, whatever, i'll see what she has to say next time, just disappointed by this particular outing.

I'm rather let down. It's not even a criticism of anything, just an an acknowledgment that shitty cliched writing exists in the world and points out some examples.

And a rather flawed deconstruction of the topic with this logic:

It's not just a male character who this is happening to. It's the protagonist, who, in her examples, just happen to be male - because no female protagonist has ever escaped confinement. Waiting around for someone to save you wouldn't be that riveting of gameplay.

It's not just female characters. It's NPCs. Any NPC. Ever. Ever ever ever ever. NPCs are worthless trash and all the protagonist ever does is save them. The plot device works by trading the disempowerment of anyone, be it the world, the president, a child, the villagers, for the empowerment of the protagonist.

But yeah, she's right that a woman being saved by a man is a cliche and making a female NPC the damsel does rob them of being the hero - just as it does anyone else. Unfortunately, as I said, she doesn't offer any real criticism on the industry by saying that it's widespread or completely confined to female characters. She just, in a complete vacuum, points out some examples of the device being used on women. My criticism would be that saving an NPC is annoying especially when their AI is shit and you have to escort them. The industry should look into that - be it a female or otherwise.

@sergio: I get the feeling that maybe this is where her true passion lies, in gaming and that her other analysis videos were less informed as a result of unfamiliarity or interest in what was being analysed.

All told I found this to informative and interesting. It's always nice to get a different perspective on gaming and it's history.

@mellotronrules: That would have been a creative workaround, but I don't think Nintendo would want to mess with her character design in a core Mario game.

It was interesting, but it wasn't anything special. I liked the history aspects of most of it, though.

My only real problem with it was it wasn't very modern. Is the damsel in distress still used? I don't see it often.

@breton: The point is that the examples of a male saving a women are exponentially greater than the other way around. In all her examples, the protagonist is male and the "damsel" is female because that's the norm. Obviously, there are outliers but you can't deny the overwhelming majority.

Hmmm...I stopped the video half way through. I don't think she's doing a particularly bad job or anything but I just didn't find it very interesting or entertaining. And if someone now calls me sexist I will punch you, wether you are a guy or a girl

Blah blah sexism blah blah blah misogynistic pigs blah blah buzzword buzzword buzzword.

It's good that this wasn't a scam at least but eh, I didn't bother to watch it because I'm really tired of all of this sexism talk enveloping games as a whole, and this is coming from a person who loves strong female characters and protagonists.

Hm.

Well... that was an OK history of the damsel in distress. Sooooo... next episode she'll start making her points?

This video reminded me of sitting in English class listening to educated dumb assess say smart things like "man all these 19th century books are pretty racist".

You're not wrong, but, come on. You gotta say something more than that.

I enjoyed the video. She offered a perspective that I don't tend to consider much when I think about the history of video games. I look forward to the upcoming videos.

Why did she need a kickstarter to do something many people on youtube do for free?

@geraltitude:

In the three or so videos I've seen of her's she doesn't make points. She offers a bunch of information but there's no analysis. There's just information. That's where she loses me. I can get this info from google on my own.

@milkman: It doesn't even have to be the other way around though. This trope isn't one of a man saving a woman it's protagonist saving Insert Anything Here. The cliche of genders comes as result of the mass presence of male protagonists marketing to the majority playerbase. I'm not denying it's presence, I'm saying Anita failed to make any criticisms. She just listed off some games that fell into a category and said "see, there are some games that fit into this category". She didn't make comparisons, draw conclusions, or set up an argument. It was just a (poor) examination of one cliche writing technique that exists in the world.

After watching the video I must say I am pretty impressed. I thought it was well produced and well researched which is suprising considering I usually disagree with the way she frames things. Hopefully the rest of her videos will be like this.

I enjoyed it. I know this doesn't seem like a series of videos that could cost 150,000 but what would you do with that money? She asked for 6 grand and they gave her 144,000 more. If the backers feel cheated by this, then it's on them.

Not only that but $6,000 is a lot of money! It looks like she didn't even invest in purchasing a better camera than the one she already owned, so where did it all go? I could've made this for three Canadian dollars if I had as much motivation on this subject as she has.

Yeah, I really don't understand the point of the Kickstarter. Many people do the exact same thing she is doing but for free.

*sigh*. Yup. This is my feeling. Maybe it's not fair for me to get annoyed by it but it is a bummer. It's great that someone really wants to champion female roles in gaming (and even game development) but rehashing this frankly obvious data... not the way to go.

The best defense I can offer up for her is that these videos are made for people who know exactly ZERO about games.

Wait. Actually.. that kind of makes this worse.

I would assume that she spent a lot of money on games, and then I guess basic living expenses while she played the games full time? I have no idea if that is true, but that would be my benefit of the doubt explanation; we'll probably never know.

I'm with this guy.

Plus, I like this site too much to get in a dumb argument with people on here, especially since arguing about stuff that has no conclusive answer isn't really my thing.

I think I speak for a lot of us when I say I'M GETTIN' THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

it's funny, when the kickstarter started I probably would've watched it, but now no interest. I don't need her to tell me that games are sexist

She doesn't say that at all. She traces the trope back a couple thousand years and moves up from there. Nintendo was one simply one of the very first to employ it in video games. They didn't do anything nobody else did just months later (or sooner), they're games were just the most popular.

I want to flip a table like that

I've only watched half of it, but she's already making points. Showing how the damsel in distress trope serves to make women objects, less than human beings who just exist to serve the male protagonist. The point of just how much patriarchal bullshit hurts women, I think that's a lot of things that most people simply don't comprehend.

Sly 4 came out this year, Carmelita is made the damsel half way through for no good reason. And there are of course the countless new Mario games that recycle it over and over again, and games from just 10 years ago like Banjo Kazooie that also base their entire stories around the kidnapped woman. I think the only reason why we're seeing it less in modern day games is because game stories have gotten more in-depth and complex, and many game developers have seemed to respond by removing the damsels, and women entirely, from the game's narrative, or making them any of the other countless tropes that she'll cover in future videos.

And even if it is starting to vanish in video games, it's still more than alive and well in pretty much every other form of popular entertainment.

He's pretty influential. I think it's fair to say that the original Nintendo has largely shaped the direction video games have taken since then. It's like when movies when to color after the stuff that came before. Plus obviously she's going to pick well-known examples to support her argument.

I thought it was a good video, if a bit 'clinical' in presentation. I do think there is a slight double-standard in highlighting a game that transformed into Star Fox Adventures, while downplaying Princess Peach's playable role in Super Mario Bros 2 because it was essentially a re-skin of Doki Doki Panic. They are sort of similar cases, yet she's arguing both ends of it depending on which one fits the theme.

Also, i do find it seriously ridiculous that Peach isn't playable in the New Super Mario Bros. I didn't play them so i had no idea. That does seem ridiculous, since she was a very useful playable character in SMB2.

I have noticed the more something gets ridiculed the more truth there probably is to it.

Yeah she did actually, and said she's going to expound on it in a future episode.

i just watched it, was better than i expected. didnt seem preachy or anything. seemed reasonable and well researched.

granted a majority of her examples were from old ass games, but hey.

More research is required.

@jasonr86: I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.

After re-watching it and mostly paying attention this time, I'm with you on this. It seems like Anita went straight to the facts while (maybe rightly) avoiding painting her agenda over the whole of the video. I would have liked to see more of a middle ground where maybe she gives more of an in-depth analysis of the tropes described instead of going for a more Wikipedia tone.

Maybe we'll see some good stuff in the coming videos.

I'm having a hard time seeing the purpose of the video. I guess it's educational, but for who ? Also, what does it have to do with videogames other than being the source material for examples ? The same exact video could be made using any other media, why videogames ?

@chrissedoff:

Psychology research joke. Sorry.