A study on whether feminists are taking over video game publications

[RA92]

This should be fun.

Morgan Ramsay, founder of Entertainment Media Council (to which Alexander Macris, Publisher of the Escapist, is an adviser on), decided to run a study on whether video game journalists have made a major shift from focusing on video games to making everything about feminism, sexism and misogyny.

To do this, he downloaded 130,524 articles through 37 RSS feeds of 23 outlets (including The Escapist, Rock Paper Shotgun, CVG, Edge Online, Eurogamer, Gamasutra, Game Informer, GamePolitics, GamesBeat, GamesIndustry International, GameSpot, GamesRadar, IGN, IndieGames, Joystiq, Kotaku, Massively, MCV, NowGamer, PocketGamer.biz, Polygon, Shacknews and VG24/7) over a period of 12 months and ran a search on how often video-game journalists bring up feminism, sexism, or misogyny.

He found out that over a period of one year, 0.41% of 130,524 articles referenced feminism, feminist, sexism, sexist, misogyny, and misogynist explicitly.

Less than half of 1%.

Here are the numbers of individual publications:

<spoiler=Percentage by Overall Contribution>
1. The Escapist - 0.071%
2. Gamasutra - 0.061%
3. Polygon - 0.048%
4. Kotaku - 0.038%
5. Rock Paper Shotgun - 0.027%
6. GamesIndustry International - 0.024%
7. Edge Online - 0.018%
8. IGN - 0.018%
9. VG24/7 - 0.015%
10. GamesBeat - 0.015%


<spoiler=Percentage by Individual Output>
1. Edge Online - 2.06%
2. Gamasutra - 1.88%
3. GamesIndustry International - 1.20%
4. Rock Paper Shotgun - 0.93%
5. The Escapist - 0.86%
6. Polygon - 0.57%
7. GamePolitics - 0.52%
8. GamesBeat - 0.51%
9. Pocket Gamer - 0.43%
10. Kotaku - 0.39%


Source: https://storify.com/MorganRamsay/how-often-do-video-game-journalists-write-about-fe

 

[Erttheking]

Huh. I find those to be very interesting statistics. Then again people do tend to blow things out of proportion. I recall one person complaining about how "All we talk about is sexism in gaming nowadays" while it made up 20% of the total threads in gaming discussion. At the most.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

People see what they want to see. For whatever reason, feminism is seen as an outlier and one that needs to be extinguished. The critique of the critique as of late seems to come across as "You can't talk about these kinds of things EVER! If you're a feminist you're an outsider and not immersed in the culture enough." Though I'm sure it's just because it is the only real widely known and spoken about angle of critique right now. If we were talking about this from an MRA perspective, I'm sure we'd be hearing all about how they're attempting to censor games.

Basically, it's just an attempt to censor critique.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

I don't find this kind of information helpful at all. I don't know how many of those other sites work, but the escapist has a lot of non-gaming stuff as far as articles go, hell a lot of it is parroted useless twaddle (por ejemplo http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137515-Aubrey-Plaza-to-Voice-Grumpy-Cat i cannot be the only one who doesn't care this exists) Either way, MovieBob and Jim Sterling reference feminism of and on during their video segments. And one cannot really outwardly mention sexism, sexist, misogyny etc.. during a review of a game unless it's present in game. Which is far too hot button of a topic to exist in the safe AAA industry right now.

Since He won't distribute the database is basically useless. and We cannot even prove it's correct. The copywrite thing isn't correct either since this is for great science which falls under the research part of the Fair Use part of copywrite law. I'm not saying its all bullshit only that he needs to prove it isn't. And i think this encapsulates a big part of the problem. People taking things they don't understand and attempting to apply them incorrectly

 

[Colour Scientist]

Well, if we feminists were taking over video game publications, we feminists wouldn't want you to know, would we they?

 

[Pink Gregory]

Person who talks about feminism is a feminist. And then clearly that is what they are. There is no human at the centre.

This is the impression I get from some people; which is why I don't participate in these discussions.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Less than half of 1%.

NOW. Where is it going to be in FIVE YEARS? At half a percent? Or even three quarters?

This is a slippery slope, gentlemen, and we are plummeting down it.

 

[Phasmal]

Well, if we feminists were taking over video game publications, we feminists wouldn't want you to know, would we they?

I would follow up on this by making a joke post suggesting we they need to work harder to take over the games industry if there wasn't a good chance people on here might actually take it seriously.

... I guess I'll THEY'LL just have to settle for taking over the world instead.

OT: But seriously though yeah mostly the people who bring these things up are the ones who are all angry about it. I mean, look at the threads. For all the reported SJW's I don't really see that much of it here.
Maybe they're all on tumblr but I wouldn't know because all I view on tumblr is pictures of the guys from Supernatural.

 

[Fappy]

Less than half of 1%.

NOW. Where is it going to be in FIVE YEARS? At half a percent? Or even three quarters?

This is a slippery slope, gentlemen, and we are plummeting down it.

Thank God I live in 'Merica where I have easy access to gurns an' shit to defend against the growing femenist hordes!

 

[Colour Scientist]

Maybe they're all on tumblr but I wouldn't know because all I view on tumblr is pictures of the guys from Supernatural.

I wasn't aware that there were things other than photos of Jensen and Jared on Tumblr.

Apart from pictures of Mischa Collins and the actors from Sherlock.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Thank God I live in 'Merica where I have easy access to gurns an' shit to defend against the growing femenist hordes!

I initially read that as "Gronns" and got super confused.

Spoiler: Gronns

 

[Andy Shandy]

I've been reliably informed that those raging feministas have infiltrated (and by infilitrated, I of course mean fucked) their way to the highest levels in gaming journalism.

 

[DrOswald]

Talking about feminism/sexism/misogyny is not a bad thing. Just want to get that out of the way. Not against talking about sexism, I don't think there has been too much of it. I want people to continue discussing it and all that jazz.

That said, this is, frankly, one of the shoddiest "studies" I have ever seen. Where is the year to year (or even month to month) trend comparison? Where is the qualitative analysis of articles? Where is the control group?

I mean, come on. Without any of those things his this data is completely useless.

At least he makes comparisons to some other extremely important subjects absolutely central to video game design and development. That is at least something.

 

[generals3]

Useless study is useless. Let me elaborate, you'd need to have reached a very very bad level if even articles like "Game X gets PC version" or "News about the latest sim city" would contain feminist product placement, at least for anyone who hasn't gone totally nuts. Basically the majority of articles de-facto leave no room for it. Might as well make a study regarding Islamophobia by including non-muslims and asking them if they faced islamophobic slurs.
Would be more interesting to look at the percentage of reviews of AAA action/rpg games containing feminist product placement.

Is it just me or do we have a huge buttload of "studies" using shitty samples that invalidate the whole analysis?

 

[Lieju]

OT: But seriously though yeah mostly the people who bring these things up are the ones who are all angry about it. I mean, look at the threads. For all the reported SJW's I don't really see that much of it here.
Maybe they're all on tumblr but I wouldn't know because all I view on tumblr is pictures of the guys from Supernatural.

Yeah, I would have never heard about Sarkeesian for example (or things like Bieber or Twilight for that matter) without all the people being mad about them and wanting them to go away.

I follow some feminist stuff on Tumblr and generally they very rarely even mention video-games.
Although it probably is there, if you go looking.

If you want to be offended at feminists coming to take your hobby away or something I'm sure you'll find some.

 

[omega 616]

The thing I find is the conversation isn't "should there be more equality in games", instead the conversation is feminist saying "we want less male leads etc" and everybody else saying "fuck feminists".

In a large number of cases I can understand the opposite view point, like I am for gun control in America but I can understand the opposite view point but I just can't fathom not wanting more diverse stories.

How can you enjoy playing as the brown haired white guy saving the day constantly? Then again, people watch films at the cinema 10+ times, so I guess I just don't understand people.

 

[Quadocky]

Half of a percent is one half too many. In healthy cultures feminists would be slaughtered and burned at the stake like the witches they are!

This includes internet articles! Its a well known fact that WOMEN ruin everything! Gamergate is their fault! FEminists caused gamergate!

 

[generals3]

In a large number of cases I can understand the opposite view point, like I am for gun control in America but I can understand the opposite view point but I just can't fathom not wanting more diverse stories.

How can you enjoy playing as the brown haired white guy saving the day constantly? Then again, people watch films at the cinema 10+ times, so I guess I just don't understand people.

Because the protagonist being a brown haired white guy has no impact on the diversity of stories? Surely hitman (okok he's bald but i doubt that really matters), MGS, GTA, Mario, Mass Effect (and so on) have quite different stories. On the other hand take GTA and just replace the protagonist with a woman and... you have the exact same story. If diversity of stories is what it is about than the looks of the protagonist is very irrelevant.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Nice idea. Methodology is flawed.

The ideas or ideals behind an article, review or blog post may not use buzzwords, or use those specific ones. ie: a common term is "problematic element" rather than "sexist" one, or may ask if Link can be a girl without even mentioning feminism or misogyny.

Second, these sites run so much crap over every tiny bit of news or public interest that any topic that isn't VERY general is only going to be covered in very small percentages. As a big picture thing it's small enough to be laughable, but how does it compare to similar generalities like JRPG coverage, fighting game coverage, Marvel Movie coverage, comic book coverage, Doctor Who coverage, cosplay coverage.....

Third it of course assumes all articles are equal. Counting a quick press recap of a smash bros reveal with a 5 page editorial on how Ubisoft's actions on Assassin's creed 4 are wrong, is not a fair distribution. Kind of like if you got X amount of dollars to split among a group for a job, why would you split it evenly if you did most of the work yourself while they goofed off.

Like I said, nice idea, but just looking for terms does not a complete statistical analysis make.

 

[Something Amyss]

Then again people do tend to blow things out of proportion.

That's it in a nutshell.

Worse? I doubt this is going to change anyone's minds.

Well, if we feminists were taking over video game publications, we feminists wouldn't want you to know, would we they?

Shhhhh....You're going to ip-tay our and-hay.

Thank God nobody speaks Pig Latin on the internet.