Dr. Gamelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sarkeesian.

[mega lenin]

A lot of you guys love to hate her, but there is something you need to realize. She represents part of a milestone for the industry. I remember there was a thread asking what the difference was between her and some American Politician of the late 90's early 00's who wanted to ratchet down the violence in video games via legislation. The difference is very simple, the politician looked at it like it was a dangerous toy, much like the Ninja Turtles Pizza Shooter of the early nineties (oh how I wanted that thing). Meanwhile Sarkeesian looks at it and critiques it like a serious medium for conveying narrative that can actually influence people. Do you get it? It means that video games is finally taking its place among the other "serious" narrative forms as not only a product, but an artistic medium. And that is a good thing. It means the next generations of Stanley Kubrick's, Vincent Van Gogh's, George Eliot's of the world may actually decide to devote their time and talent toward expressing themselves through the medium of video games instead of other more "serious" mediums. More talent be it artistic, expressive, practical, or simply business acumen is good for the industry.

The fact that Sarkeesian, a gender critic using academic tropes to analyze game narratives, even exists is a sign that the industry is maturing, diversifying, and being taken more seriously by people who would've lumped the best of its narratives with pulpy dime novels on the floor of a Goodwill bookstore and not wasted their time talking about it. You shouldn't feel threatened by it. The criticism doesn't invalidate the games you enjoy. It does the opposite. It treats them like the potentially serious influences on your life and how you see the world that they are. It acknowledges their influence on you, whereas before most would trivialize the medium to that of a dangerous pizza shooting toy. In short it means that games as a medium for narrative matters and has influence, where before it was a mere kids novelty (like a homoerotic He-Man toy).

Between Sarkeesian, Yahtzee Croshaw, and Jim Sterling a new brand of games criticism has arrived. Before most of it followed the product consumer review model of looking at games in much the same manner as one would figure out a rating for a new set of stereo speakers or golf clubs. A product generally devoid of narrative or meaning outside the context in which they are used. Emerging now are critics who assess not only the quality of the experience, but its historical value to the medium, its artistic merit, and its narrative structure and message intended or unintended. And again that is a good thing. It means that devs will be expected and be encouraged to actually to continue to grow and learn rather than just release itinerant updates.

As far as fears that your games will somehow be taken away by the influence of the Sarkeesians of the world again I will have to point out the fears are unwarranted. At the end of the day a company makes a game with the hope that it will make money and as long as a market exists for a game featuring content you enjoy, trust me, someone is going to tap that market. Even if it is a beat'em up featuring multiple Anita Sarkeesian character models. If there is still a place in Cinema for, "A Haunted House," even with all the highbrow criticism that movies get these days, there will be space for the pulpiest most shameless releases in this new era of games criticism. Your games aren't going anywhere.

Tl;dr
Have a drink and enjoy life because all this drama means that games as a medium are finally being taken seriously by serious critics who take things seriously.

 

[Keoul]

Games being 'taken seriously' doesn't benefit the industry in any way. What happens if it's acknowledged eh? nothing at all, people won't make better games, people won't make cheaper games, people won't care at all. The only difference is that more people will be into gaming and that doesn't benefit me, a consumer, at all.

Sure you can go on about 'monopolies' and how I'll have more options but it clearly isn't the case what with the current stagnation of the market.

As for Anita herself she is not critiquing it that says gaming can influence people so much as sharing her desire to censor gaming to suit her point of view. She does not talk about anything but how games oppress women and illustrate women in a negative light. That's not exactly showing it in an artistic medium, that's not discussing the deeper meaning behind a video game, that's just saying 'this is wrong'.

tl;dr If art, no benefit to consumer. Anita is just saying games are bad, not saying they are art. Criticism =/= Art

 

[Inglorious891]

Another Sarkeesian thread? Oh boy...

Anita is not equal to Stanley Kubrick, Vincent Van Gogh, or George Eliot. She has nowhere near the fame (ask a common person on the street if they've heard of Anita, and I guarentee they'll say they have no idea) and has not made anything that's equal to the quality of these three artists. She may have made a lot of noise in the gaming community, but the amount of people who've heard make up a very, very small minority of the United States, nonetheless the world. Despite what she has made, the idea that videogames cause actual violence is still an idea in the minds of many people, and what Anita has done has had no effect on diminishing that idea. At all. She talks about feminism and its relationship to gaming, not proving the industry is some majestic art form. And to my knowledge, there are no people who are actively trying to push gaming as a form of art equal to that of literature, film, etc. that are actually making waves with society; and if there are people like that, Anita is not one of them.

You act like the critisim that Anita offers is, well, good. I know this is personal, but not everyone (who isn't fanatical with hate/love for Anita) agress with her. I don't particually agree with her ideas or the way she presents them for multiple reasons; it's for this reason I don't like her, not because "Ahm fraid she gun taek away mah vidya"! And just because Anita talks about videogames doesn't mean they're some grandly influential force on our lives; videogames influence us jut as much as anything else (unless, of course, videogames are the only role model for a child; in which case there are larger issues with this child's life than videogames).

Yahtzee makes funny videos with some decent criticism. He may be the most popular guy on this website, but he's not Rosa Parks of gaming. In fact, none of the people you've mentioned are anywhere near as great as you seem to be making them out to be. You're also hyping up game reviews as being equal to some grand artistic scholars. Look at Metacritic; most games either have all rave reviews or are shat on; very rarely is there a middle ground. They rarely offer and deep, meaningful introspective into that particular game or life in general, and when they do it's typically pretty pretentious.

So in a nutshell, no, all this drama doesn't prove that society takes games seriously. Parts may consider it srs busnees, but most people in the US and the world don't. Anita and critics like her aren't helping this; they aren't hurting it, but they certainly aren't helping the industry push to become some grand art form. Critics still aren't taking games very seriously, and those who do aren't doing a great job of it. Then again, how can they? Games that actually portray artful stuff well are brand new considering the age of gaming and when these games started coming out, so expecting critics to be snobby film buff types right away is asking for a lot.

Jesus, this post turned out to be longer than I thought it was going to be.

 

[mega lenin]

Anita is not equal to Stanley Kubrick, Vincent Van Gogh, or George Eliot

That isn't the intended implication of that particular line, so I apologize that you wasted so much effort debunking that. The point was that fifteen years ago, if you were to ask anyone what mediums had artistic credibility worth discussing, or as an artist worth getting into to be looked at as a serious artist, or writer, or etc. people would say movies, novels, theatre, and to a lesser extent TV. Video games wouldn't make the list. An ivory tower gender critic using garden variety analysis strategies like Saarkeesian wouldn't have wasted time applying those tools to critique video games, because the genre was considered a novelty that was beneath all that. In essence a toy that is not worth noticing. So if I were an ambitious artist wanting to be judged on my merits and influence of my work I would all the more likely have put my talents towards the more traditional and respected mediums than something the ivory tower that trained me considers a genre of novelties and toys. That was the point.

It means that the genre has passed that point where it became something more than a simple diversion. Like when movies went from being nickelodeons and vaudeville peep shows to full blown features in movie theaters around the twenties. And with that came all the trappings of legitimacy for what was just a few years ago considered a degenerate form of entertainment for debauched gentlemen drinking on the town. Newspapers devoted critics toward assessing the exploits and antics of Buster Keaton and Greta Garbo, but the masterpieces of the Hollywood Golden Era would be twenty years to follow with the next generation of actors, writers, directors, and producers who before this milestone of the twenties would've likely put their talent on the stage or the radio. After finally gaining legitimacy as a genre of narrative merit in the twenties it would be another twenty years before you see the likes of Citizen Kane and thirty to forty before Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock would make their Magnum Opuses and so forth. That happened because serious artists were funneled toward that medium one part because it was the cutting edge of narrative story telling and second because it had fought and won its begrudging acceptance from the public and ivory tower respectively. The fact an ivory tower critic, who fifteen years ago would've ignored the genre, would today actually spend most of her time criticizing it under the same kind of lens and analysis standpoint she would apply to a film or novel is in itself an acknowledgement of the merit of the genre regardless of what she has to say about it. It is an acknowledgement that the genre has the credibility, relevance, and quality that makes the time and effort worth it. It is begrudging acceptance that a game can be as influential as a book or movie. That is the big point.

You're in the Buster Keaton years my friend. Enjoy it. In twenty years there'll be a game equivalent to Citizen Kane and maybe they'll exhume Billy Crystal to give out Golden Mario's to some douchey looking Creative Directors at EA. Right now where in that awkward era we're everyone still trying to figure out the limits and capabilities of the genre.

Another thing to consider that your first few video game generations, kids who've never really known a world without video games are just starting to hit their thirties and forties. That is how young this genre is.

As a final addendum I will add this to chew on. In the twenties and earlier there were tons of culture and arts critics who enjoyed every chance they could get to lambaste movies as dens of smut, iniquity, and everything unholy to serious artistic pursuits. After that it was TV. Do you see where this is heading now?

 

[hentropy]

I've never worried about Anite Sarkeesian. I don't think she would have ever had half the impact she did if the Internet Asshole Brigade? just ignored her or left her alone. Her videos alone have a net zero effect on the games industry as a whole. That doesn't take into effect the response to the videos and everything that has come with it. She's not in the industry, she's not an indie developer, she's not trying to get into the games industry, and she's not trying to enable others to.

The people obsessed with Sarkeesian can typically be split into a variety of camps, one of them being the aforementioned Brigade and those people are rather simple, but then there's those that insist that it's because it's bad criticism, filled with holes or other logical fallacies, that she's not 'really a gamer', that she's just trying to paint all games as sexist or ring the alarm bell for censorship... I don't really see much of that. Obviously she is not a woman who has grown up with games as an integral part of her life, so they have a point there, but...

Why should I care? Why should anyone care? Since when did game publishers give two shits about what someone says on a Youtube channel? Why is it so important to people to win this particular argument? If you are truly secure that you are not a sexist and can recognize when perhaps a game might be better on that front, then why does it bother you so damn much that the woman can't take a shit without a inferno being generated? Why does it matter if she's a real gamer by some standard or not?

It's simple: if she says something you don't like, it's very easy to respectfully disagree and make counter-arguments without devoting your entire life to trying to defeat some kind of perceived enemy? She's not trying to censor anything because she does not have anywhere near that power- she's not screaming to main media or government that all games and gamers are sexist and should be summarily condemned. She's picking out shit she doesn't like in video games and telling you why she doesn't like them.

If that is something that is worth years of outrage, then people really need to take a step back and adjust their perspective. Because this crap IS intimidating and scaring women away from the industry, afraid that if they say anything that can be construed as "feminist", that they will have hordes of people shouting at and above them. That is unacceptable in all its forms.

 

[Grach]

Why should anyone care? Since when did game publishers give two shits about what someone says on a Youtube channel?

Because of raisins. It's also topical.

To be honest all this malarkey involving "Feminism" has become more of a marketing and PR issue rather than an actual, design or storytelling reason.
As you said, this won't affect most developers (ESPECIALLY in the AAA industry) and even if it does, they'll just start using a random character generator to generate protagonists, rendering all this bullshit moot anyways.

Gender is an issue when it actually matters. A Marcus Fenix or Master Chief with tits are still bad protagonists.

What does "gaming's Citizen Kane" entail?

It entails that we still define gaming from the perspective of other media, rather than our own, I guess.

 

[Redd the Sock]

People can be willing to be criticized and still disagree with the criticism. It actually surprises my when I read these things how many people come out critical of something, but get so surprised and butthurt that the thing they criticized, or someone that likes it steps up for rebuttal. Calling it "high minded" or "artistic" criticism is not a blanket protection to tell anyone that disagrees with you to be silent. Criticism, is not itself immune to criticism.

As it is with Anita, a lot of us find her examples lack context, her overall picture lacks a measure of representation (how often does something come up), and relies on tenuous if not disproven links between media and external actions while appealing to emotion. It might not be at congress, but it's still the mindset that gave us the Hays code, or the Comics Code Authority, neither of which is seen historically as good for their mediums. This, to me, is bad criticism that seeks to lessen anything that comes out as lessor if it doesn't pass your moral standard like you personally own the medium.

Anita's free to do as she will, but sticking to her format, I'm free to classify it as the same type of criticism PETA made about Mario and Pokemon, or criticism One Million Moms made about Archie comics or Bioware games use of Gay characters, or that group criticizing Harry Potter for promoting witchcraft: all stuff from moralistic busybodies that shouldn't be justified.

 

[Inglorious891]

Anita is not equal to Stanley Kubrick, Vincent Van Gogh, or George Eliot

snip

The point you made isn't the same as the point you made in your original post. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the point you're trying to make in this post is that gaming is becoming reconigzed as something more than just stupid fun for kids and, as the industry matures, will become go-to medium for artistic expression. I'm not disagreeing with this; at least not completely. I don't think games will become as widely experienced as cinema due to the learning curve involved with actually playing a game; some people either don't have the time or the energy to really be good at playing most games. Watching a movie or reading a book, however, doesn't require any sort of hand-eye coordiation, so it's much more accessable. That being said, I agree that gaming will mature and be accepted by most of society as an artisitc medium versus that aformentioned stupid fun for kids.

However, in your OP that's not the point you were making. The point you seemed to be making was that Anita and critics like her are furthering this path to gaming being accepted and actually being an art form; this isn't the case. Anita, Jim, or any of the other gaming commentators aren't furthering gaming as an artistic medium. Jim is the only one that really offers good critsim, but that alone isn't furthering the industry much (I mean, hell, there are plenty of gaming critics out there, but despite these numbers gaming isn't becoming art at any kind of rapid rate). At the very least, the person named dropped in the thread's title isn't furthering gaming much. And no, pointing out that mean people exist on Twitter doesn't further gaming as an art form; games like The Walking Dead do this, not Anita or pointing out that trolls exist on the internet.

 

[Pogilrup]

I'll practice some of what Sarkessian preaches.

While denouncing her every step of the way.

I hope that is considered a great insult towards her ego.

 

[The Lunatic]

I'll practice some of what Sarkessian preaches.

You're going to start screeching at people for daring to enjoy a video game in which at one stage, in some part, taken randomly out of context, a women gets hurt?

 

[Pogilrup]

I'll practice some of what Sarkessian preaches.

You're going to start screeching at people for daring to enjoy a video game in which at one stage, in some part, taken randomly out of context, a women gets hurt?

Perhaps I should've said sane as well.

Look if I make any games, I'll be sure to include plenty of female protagonists with varying looks. But I'll also make sure to include in the credits

"Special Thanks
.
.
.
Anita Sarkessian (Subtitle) The Most Disappointing Source of Inspiration"

 

[Keoul]

That word doesn't mean what you think that word means. Ironic, since the OP goes out of the way to imply that politicians attempting to create legislation that would legally limit what can exist in a videogame is censorship and a person on Youtube making criticisms saying "this is bad, and I would like to see it no longer be present in games" isn't. Saying Anita is trying to censor games is like trying to say that the entirety of the gaming community is trying to censor developers whenever be bash games for their QTEs.

Eh you got a point there.
I guess I was pretty wrong with the censor part, but I still believe the part I said about how her criticisms aren't benefiting the industry is right. Specifically how it doesn't make videogames art and even if it did, videogames as art doesn't benefit the industry either.