Kierkegaard

Not sure who you are agreeing with? There is no fight to view women the same as men. Inherent differences are inherent. There is a fight to remove blatant and dangerous stereotypes in games if not used for some useful purpose.

Oh it does not! Do not blame ignorance and bigotry on those it's aimed at--Feminazi is not proof feminism is polarizing. It's proof Limbaugh has a sexist agenda.

Criticizing art for dangerous portrayals, choices, stereotypes, and norms is not perpetual victimhood. It's trying to make fewer people feel attacked and belittled in the world. It's trying to end victimhood itself.

Your perspective requires a cynical approach where social justice is about keeping people mistreated so the movement can stagnate and complain. That's incredible. And it's wrong. No real movement is about keeping things the same. That would be asinine.

@l4wd0g:

Well researched and thoughtfully done sir! I disagree, respectfully.

Third-wave, post-structural feminism need not be a victim game. The fact that Anita exists clearly proves it's about speaking and acting out, being a forceful subject, rather than it is simply whining. She's doing something. She's deconstructing and criticizing, not complaining.

Indeed, as I read her arguments, they lie not in fallacies, but in deconstruction of harmful norms. The strippers being dragged around illustrated, as well as much of that video, the disturbing possibility space. While those deaths are not necessary for progression, events like the horrific brutalization of female prostitutes in Red Dead are unavoidable and recurring. The argument that games using abuse against women as a gritty afterthought is wrong--that argument works. Her evidence works.

Here's the problem: "Let people create what they want, and if you do not like it, then let someone else enjoy it."

Right there, you are equating criticism to censorship. That's incorrect. Any art can and must be criticized for it to be legitimate art--it's how the whole thing works. Anita claims encouraging, forcing, or even allowing players to live in a space built around the brutalization of background women is wrong and developers should stop it. That's not censorship! Censorship would be her becoming elected into office, fighting for a law blocking any such depiction, and winning. Censorship is forced action. Anita is asking for thoughtfulness and intent.

Because that's the thing--too much of this is unintentional. Developers were and are unaware of the implications of what they make. Becoming educated about what messages and ideals your art generates is a necessity in being an artist.

One of the best examples: Look at Saints Row. She uses 1 and 2 as examples in the video because they required you to deliver "hoes" like cattle. But 3 and 4 aren't in there. Why? Because Volition figured it out. They went for equality and fairness and humor without abuse in 3 and 4. They went feminist. Those games are better than 1 and 2! There is no danger here.

Equity in pay and opportunity is fantastic. Keep working toward that. But do not accept thoughtless art for the sake of freedom. Fight the carelessness.

Sorry, had to edit that. Something felt like it didn't fit your criteria, though I guess there's probably a lot of disorder there. I've heard Silver Lining's Playbook would fit well there. It's Kinda a Funny Story is modern cuckoos nest. I just watched Sneakers for the first time and found it quite natural and human.

Netflix totally has a genre called "cerebral" that may have what you're looking for. I recommends my mom "cerebral dramas with strong female characters" a lot. Kinda creepy.

@believer258: Eh, why not report rather than ignore? Yes, playing into an argument with a fanatic may not go well, but sending their hatred to the authorities can't do anything but good. Ignoring bullying does not make it end. Responding to it specifically and eliciting consequences helps more, right?

@joshwent: While youtube is certainly something else, I refuse to believe doing nothing is the best option. Does anyone know how moderation actually works through google? Are there news stories about them actually moderating people based on hate speech? If nothing else, removing the post from my eyes and feeling like I made an effort is nice.

Radical feminists are a very different group than average feminists. It's disingenuous to conflate them. That is an interesting article. Seems to me that just as it is illogical to think that sexuality is a choice, it is just as wrong to see a transgender person as choosing to be a woman or a man or any or no gender. We are as we are born in these things--sometimes it takes working through lots of life to understand who we are. It's hypocritical for those fighting oppression based on gender to oppress others.

Let's never use the term "white knight" again, yeah? It's a fake chivalry reference that implies every person standing up and supporting caring for others is trying to be important. It assumes selfishness where there is care and selflessness. It's an ugly term.

Simple rule as others have said: If another person is doing no harm to others or themselves by being who they are, then they deserve no judgment or dismissal from others. They deserve acceptance and love. If a furry gets into bestiality, that's harmful to animals. If they choose to dress up as Sonic and have consensual sex with another adult dressed like Tails, I see no reason to attack them.

There is no normal, not really. What we prescribe to be normal changes every year if not every minute. Normal is constantly progressing toward acceptance of all people. Why try to hold back progress?

Yup, those are terms specifically created to denigrate someone for who they are--they look to belittle, dehumanize, and harm. If you tell another person that their voice is bad, you are certainly attacking an defining part of that person. We can criticize each other on legitimate, arguable grounds without being cruel.

The majority of commenters did that, criticizing or agreeing with Carolyn's arguments in the review. That's dialog, that's something to build on. That's not destructive.

@ubertron986: Damn it. I thought of that, that honestly but didn't change it. I guess: why do you play as a different gender? Or any gender? Thanks for adding your experience despite the false binary I set up there!

@spaceinsomniac: Well, hetero males have not faced entrenched societal sexism for thousands of years, so it is a bit different. But yeah, I'd say I'm critical of anyone whose primary purpose in creating a character in a non-sexbased role playing game is allure. Seems to ignore much more interesting threads in such a choice.

@raven10: I made a mage black lady in Amalur. Because of my class she never wore a helmet so I saw her throughout the adventure. Despite gender never being a factor (which is unfortunate--it's a meaningful thing that should have impact), seeing her throughout that 50 hours was still different than playing a white male.

Not weird at all! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and life experience. I remember loving Mulan and Robin Hood and Jasmine, to go disney with it, but definitely hung with my dad most often. I think my original nurturing media definitely tended toward stereotypical male, but all the fairness and care taught through sesame street and Harry Potter and such, augmented with really liberal parents, led me to choose a liberal arts degree. From there, through philosophy and English and deep considerations of political, social, and religious ideas, I began to develop my love of complex, responsible media. Always interesting where our stories lead us.

Ha, okay thanks for clarifying. It was just a vague section that I wanted to address. Have I made sims die in swimming pools? Yes. Have I used the fact of Skyrim's save system to see if I could make long jumps? Yes. Have I run Nathan Drake off a cliff to see what happens? Yes. You're right--part of play is experimentation, and having a safe place for abusive experimentation, like a test bed to see if you're a sociopath. If I found that some kid enjoyed that sort of destructive play all the time, that may be worrying.

I think it comes down to what we consider the core purpose and what we consider side activities. If the core purpose is something scary or creepy, that's something worth changing or at least examining. Same with the positive--it's all worth exploring.

@random45: I thought the argument he made about deep mechanical understanding of games, and being able to communicate them to an audience, was strong. I disagree with the conclusion that subjectivity in reviews should be overtaken by pure mechanical objectivity, but I can see an important combination.

One example I can think of is when Arthur Gies said that Uncharted's shooting felt bad in comparison to Gears of War. On Rebel FM, he had a hard time articulating why. It's really hard! We can use words like "tight" and "loose" and "responsive" and "dynamic," but they are still stand-ins for a feeling.

There have been multiple quicklooks where Jeff especially will just fire off a gun and talk about how it feels. Enemy Front is the most recent one. If we think about describing why shooting feels good, it has to come down to all the factors involved that are purely mechanical:

• how long it takes from pressing the trigger to the bullet firing,
• whether the bullet's trajectory feels fast enough, accurate enough, obvious enough,
• whether the gun kicks back in a way that feels like something impactful happened,
• whether the bullets fire too fast and make reloads happen to often, or too show and make reloads feel too seldom,
• how many bullets it takes to kill different enemies and whether that feels fair (for this, you definitely would need to test and count to convey the reality of your point),
• how the character reacts to bullets fired at them, whether that reaction is obvious to the player so they can know location of enemy and be able to find safety,
• whether that reaction makes it too hard to return fire, creating a feedback loop of pain,
• how fast or slow the movement of your gun's targeting is, whether this is configurable, whether it feels too manic or too slow.

That's just a few mechanical considerations when it comes to designing and reviewing gun play. And all of them are still interpretive and subjective--Killzone's movement could be slow to some and deliberate and impactful for others.

Describing mechanics is really complicated. It may be a great thing to communicate to your reader the "feel" of the game in this way, but whether that feel is good or bad has to come from what you consider a strong mechanic. There are objective elements to games, but reviews will always be about judging those elements subjectively.

Absolutely. You seem to have a deeply consistent approach to character creation and design. Thanks for answering the questions. It's interesting how some of us use games to explore very different avatars than ourselves while others use them to explore worlds as ourselves, more than likely putting ourselves into different situations and choices than we face in real life, but using our real life morals and beliefs to respond to them. That you associate choices that aren't so heavily with the appearance of the character making them is also a cool relationship. Having your bad-choices run-through require an avatar completely unlike yourself and your Mass Effect avatar means you're connecting the morality of your character to its consistent appearance.

I feel like I'm doing a bunch of psychoanalysis in this thread. Not trying to assume or judge; just drawing out the implications I'm seeing.

The primary problem with societal issues like the male gaze is ignorance about it, I think. And, like you said, there is a different between finding someone attractive and objectifying them.

I guess the issues with games is that since you are the creator of this being, and you control it, it's different than encountering an attractive person in the world. A human you like is likable in part because they are not you or yours--they are a separate agent of human existence. And since any relationship where one person controls the other is abusive and wrong, character creation in games can come up against some heady concerns.

You're not making a sex toy, but a person you would like in life, it sounds like. (Although, the "I don't play a game [where I make my avatar an abused sex puppet] very often" section is pretty creepy....). You're constructing a companion. It's like this crazy balance of making who you want and pulling back from making him or her a sex puppet.

Personally, I avoid the issue by, when making a female character, the gender I am attracted to, making someone who could have an interesting back story, fits the world of the game, and is internally consistent. I think of her not as a person I'm controlling but as a persona I'm adopting. For Skyrim, my partner and I created her together, which was a fascinating and accidental lesson in what interests and attracts both of us.

For me, if I created a girl to lust at and who's choices and actions I controlled, that'd be fucked up. I can see your perspective and approach, though.

Right, if the game gives you enough agency to enact or reject your own desires and needs, you are part of the character regardless. It's interesting that a character we make to be wholly unlike us may explore just as much about us if not more as a character we create to reflect us.