Giantbomb is sexist for not putting Tomb Raider in GOTY

Because it was "Game of the Year" not "Most Feminist Acceptable Character Reboot of the Year"

The GAME was just an Uncharted clone. It didn't deserve to be on the list.

And your "if there was a woman on Giantbomb, she'd have made the same exact argument I made" is uh...flimsy.

Her tactics are the same as someone who shouts "racist" just to shut up someone up. As several people have stated she cry's wolf about tons of stuff so if she ever does have a valid point to make then it will never be taken seriously. Seeing the screenshots of the characters in her game makes her commentary even more laughable.

@jasonr86: I don't think so. Calling out the hypocrisy of someone who chooses to publicly demonize people, many times over, is open to the same scrutiny she places on others. Using the slippery slope argument is weak as its implies the commentary will go sideways no matter what. As I said before, her argument is the same thing as a black person saying Starhawk didn't get in a game of the year list because all the Bombers on the podcast are white; its an idiotic issue. She even invalidates her own commentary by citing Jeff's disgust with the mechanics.

I'm incredibly happy to see a couple of well-reasoned posts here defending the article's main points. The article isn't the clickbait here, it's the reductive inflammatory title for this topic that's clickbait.

THE WOMAN PRAISES GIANT BOMB AND RESPECTS JEFF GERTSMANN FOR GOD'S SAKE. SHE JUST WANTS MORE FEMALE VOICES.

edit: and there she is posting a reasonable reply

I'm sorry, but bringing up the game she's working on is some petty shit.

Not at all. It's completely relevant.

@josephknows: Well if those female voices are all going to make "cinematic experiences" like Revolution 60, I'd rather there be no female voices at all.

I don't know. Sounds like a bunch of reaching to me. If the argument is that poorly written, seems kind of unnecessary.

@thehumandove: I'm not going to spend all evening in the forums, but I'll answer this. I wrote a long piece about our body types in as issue for Loop Insight Magazine recently. http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/12/05/the-loop-magazine-issue-16-women-in-games/ (Paywall, unfortunately.)

My piece was called, "I fear Anita Sarkeesian will not Like my Game."

For me, personally, I love gorgeous kickass women. I think, "Is this girl too sexy," is a red herring. I think, "Is this girl a real person," is the real question. For instance, 2013 Lara Croft is stunningly beautiful - but she's a real person. While playing Lara Croft, I don't feel like the camera is about staring at her butt, or showing her cleavage. It's all about the intent of the game designer.

This may surprise you, but just because I care about representation of women doesn't mean I share every view of mainstream feminism. I also own my own studio, which is a very expensive business endeavor. Like yourself, I have my own take on the world.

Okay. This has gone on for long enough.

The thread title was misleading, the discussion has derailed from the article itself and is now spiraling down into attacks on the author and really shitty/borderline sexist remarks. I'm going to lock this.

Well, the pages definitely lack objectivity and do read like press releases, but that's kind of a bit off topic for the thread. It wouldn't take much work to bring both of those pages in line with what is appropriate for the wiki, but of course if you deleted all of the subjective stuff there wouldn't be much left to speak of.

@sammo21:

I'm saying bringing up styles of dress in regards to any discussion of gender and sex discrimination is bad territory. For example, suggesting that one style of dress is objectifying and another is appropriate in turn limits the freedom given to a gender to chose how to represent themselves with their clothing. Look, I get it. I get why it would be brought up. But it's a point with a lot of problems. For every way it can be used to suggest sexism it could at the same time be used to show independence on the side of the person in the clothing. It's just a weak argument that is just waiting to cause a shit-storm.

Oh wow. Don't lock this thread

Every time a real dialogue starts, a thread gets locked.

We're definitely getting off topic if we're going to start hypocritically condemning her game for not following some minor branch of feminism that demands prudish morals. There's a difference between objectifying and sexualizing.

word

I feel like the real problem that people posting in this thread have with her article is the assumption that Tomb Raider didn't stand a chance to win GotY because there were no female voices on the bombcast. The general sense I get from this community about Tomb Raider is that it's a pretty cool game, but it's kind of an Uncharted roller coaster clone with some ideas of its own. It doesn't sound like something that would win the spot of best game of the year.

The author of the article did not address this in her post to this thread. Instead, she was more concerned with convincing us that she likes the bomb crew.

Why are threads being locked and unlocked as of late? And was one of these posts undeleted? I didn't even know you could do that.

This should totally have been locked.

Wasn't this locked? Mods?

I think this is probably a good place to bring the discussion to a close.

You don't think that might have to do with the hugely misleading title of the thread, and the majority of the posts jumping on that bandwagon?

@spacekatgal: I have to take issue with the idea that Lara was never anything but a sexbot before the 2013 reboot. While the PS1 games and Angel of Darkness were poor about setting a personality for her, we could see the beginnings of Lara as something more even in the first two PS1 games, to say nothing of the Legend/Anniversary/Underworld trilogy. Eidos' piss-poor marketing in the 90s shouldn't be confused for the games themselves, and while TR2013 went full-bore, it wasn't the only one where Lara was more than meat.

Also, I have to take issue with such things being part of the consideration for GOTY. Such accolades belong to what the judges (in this case, the GB crew) feel are the best game, not the ones that further one agenda or another.

I saw about six minutes into the first video, then had to stop as the hideous graphics and near-nonexistent game-play was making me lose the will to live. It's like someone took a Bioware RPG and completely removed all game-play, replacing it with bad acting and an orgy of quick-time events.

The faces in particular were... Disturbing. Like... Are the girls supposed to be Asians? Or does someone not know how to make faces that don't look weird?

The super-tight outfits and stupidly slender bodies didn't exactly help either. Seriously, maybe they should make sandwiches for themselves?

While GOTY is mentioned several times, this really dealt with the discussion regarding the biggest surprise of the year. While I might not agree with everything she says in her article, I think the guys were very fast to dismiss Tomb Raider. Not only did they change how Lara looks, but they caught a lot of flack needlessly before the game ever came out.

You see, that's the point, it's Giant Bomb's GOTY deliberations, not yours. Tomb Raider was not on the list because they thought it was a not great enough to be among the other great games, no ulterior motive.

You're right that there should be more women in the industry, but saying that they didn't consider Tomb Raider because they are all dudes is kind of ridiculous, I think. Just like the assumption that if there were a woman in the staff they would have stood up for TR.

If I come off as an asshole then I'm sorry. That was not my intent.

Well I see a comment that someone intended to lock this, but it isn't locked...so I'm going to try that now I guess? Probably a bug, there has been some weird stuff with locks and other things not sticking lately.

Just as a fair warning to everyone though, this article is going to pop up on the forums a lot over the next week or so when people start seeing the conversation on Patrick's twitter and what not. So be ready for this whole thing to be redone again and again.