Flash Game Makes Players Beat Up "Tropes vs. Women" Creator

[Treblaine]

She holds up Chell of Portal 2 as an example of a good female protagonist... when she is a complete non-character, she never speaks nor does anything to judge her by, she is dressed in gender neutral prisoner overalls. She is a classic Valve empty-vessel protagonist.

Yeah, and Valve ciphers are good protagonists. There's no particular reason they're only allowed to be men.

I'm just saying there isn't a character there to critique on.

It's a matter of practicality.

And there's your answer re: why this is practiced.

And once again, please don't appropriate terms invoking civil rights like "segregation" over something as innocuous as safe-space subway cars. It doesn't really matter what your personal opinion is over the term's accuracy, it's still appropriation.

It is not practical to segregate public transport, men and women should be able to stand next to each other without a huge likelihood of sexual assault occurring, with dozens of people around not doing anything. This problem would end if the minority who molest passengers were prosecuted with extending limits limits as them being forbidden from public transport under the penalty of imprisonment.

I'm not appropriating anything from anywhere, I'm using a word from the dictionary. Every car should be a safe space wether surrounded by men or women.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/segregate

It is nothing but your opinion that it is appropriation.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

That's almost the sad thing though. It's not done as an agenda it's just done without thinking about it. Because that's what female characters are there for to be kidnapped or to look pretty. I was playing Tiberium Twilight last night with my mate and we were in hysterics that the game kills your wife in the very first mission and expects you to care about a bad actress who you have only known for five seconds of the game. (Not to mention the fact the game just presumes your are a straight guy.) It's these silly tropes that Sarkeesian is talking about. She is trying to improve writing in games. How is that a bad thing?

Chell is a good female character because she is presented as a normal person. Not a pole with two watermelons on that poses for the guys every chance she gets. Yeah she's a bit of a non character but at least she isn't just there for eye candy she actually comes across as 'just a woman'.

This is what you don't seem to want to address, it is done to both male and female allies. WHY should it be different if it was for a male?

No. SUPPORTING characters - male or female - are there to be kidnapped to be rescued, as may happen to add to the story to motivate the character. In Metal Gear Solid the alternate ending either the female Meryl or male Otacon were kidnapped and used as hostages with virtually no change to the dialogue, this is not a gender issue, this is a supporting character issue.

"Not a pole with two watermelons on that poses for the guys every chance she gets."

I have never played any game nor ever even heard of a game where you play "a pole with two watermelons on" that sounds like an insultingly sexist generalisation of female characters. You are practising a sex-negative attitude to women.

I am fed up to my back teeth of people who want to enforce the worst restrictions of Sharia Law on the likes of Lara Croft and are so blinded by their prejudice they obsess over her boobs and you know what, it is YOU who denigrate her for the way she dresses. She has a character, an arc but your prejudice is too offended by her not covering up. That's your problem, not Lara's.

PS: the problem with Tiberium twilight is that is fails in almost EVERY aspect of its design. The fans hated it. Virtually no one bought it. I did and regretted it. It's simply a bad game.

PPS: no, the game presumes NOTHING about you, you are role playing, the role is married to a woman. The film Philadelphia doesn't assume the audience is entirely gay men, even though the protagonist is a gay man. How can you not get this? These aren't silly tropes, these are storytelling elements that everyone seems to understand (except a few, apparently) that are simply badly done in C&C4.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

she sought a paltry $6,000 to make it happen. After igniting a reactionary misogynist firestorm [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117848-Kickstarter-Video-Project-Attracts-Misogynist-Horde]

I see that prejudice and misandry and demonising anyone who dares to call a fraud a fraud, are still very much alive on this forum.

Yeah people donated to something that you wouldn't donate too.

How dare they!

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

That's almost the sad thing though. It's not done as an agenda it's just done without thinking about it. Because that's what female characters are there for to be kidnapped or to look pretty. I was playing Tiberium Twilight last night with my mate and we were in hysterics that the game kills your wife in the very first mission and expects you to care about a bad actress who you have only known for five seconds of the game. (Not to mention the fact the game just presumes your are a straight guy.) It's these silly tropes that Sarkeesian is talking about. She is trying to improve writing in games. How is that a bad thing?

Chell is a good female character because she is presented as a normal person. Not a pole with two watermelons on that poses for the guys every chance she gets. Yeah she's a bit of a non character but at least she isn't just there for eye candy she actually comes across as 'just a woman'.

This is what you don't seem to want to address, it is done to both male and female allies. WHY should it be different if it was for a male?

No. SUPPORTING characters - male or female - are there to be kidnapped to be rescued, as may happen to add to the story to motivate the character. In Metal Gear Solid the alternate ending either the female Meryl or male Otacon were kidnapped and used as hostages with virtually no change to the dialogue, this is not a gender issue, this is a supporting character issue.

"Not a pole with two watermelons on that poses for the guys every chance she gets."

I have never played any game nor ever even heard of a game where you play "a pole with two watermelons on" that sounds like an insultingly sexist generalisation of female characters. You are practising a sex-negative attitude to women.

I am fed up to my back teeth of people who want to enforce the worst restrictions of Sharia Law on the likes of Lara Croft and are so blinded by their prejudice they obsess over her boobs and you know what, it is YOU who denigrate her for the way she dresses. She has a character, an arc but your prejudice is too offended by her not covering up. That's your problem, not Lara's.

PS: the problem with Tiberium twilight is that is fails in almost EVERY aspect of its design. The fans hated it. Virtually no one bought it. I did and regretted it. It's simply a bad game.

PPS: no, the game presumes NOTHING about you, you are role playing, the role is married to a woman. The film Philadelphia doesn't assume the audience is entirely gay men, even though the protagonist is a gay man. How can you not get this? These aren't silly tropes, these are storytelling elements that everyone seems to understand (except a few, apparently) that are simply badly done in C&C4.

Why don't you watch Moviebobs video Gender Games he pretty much explains what is wrong with female characters in it.

The problem isn't that the characters don't wear any clothes. (Although why the hell would you try and fight in those...) It's the fact that the way a female character is presented is in a sexual way 99% of the time. Male characters can be anything. Vladof selling you guns in Borderlands for example but a female character is nearly always looks first, character second and that's a problem. I think someone asked a dev of a space marine type game if there was going to be female characters and his response was 'But how would we make them look sexy' That is pretty much the exact approach most devs take to the women in their games.

As for the princess rescuing it's annoying because the princess is presented as a reward for killing the badguy or defeating the threat unlike the Tomb Raider example where the dude simply has some info for you the woman is offered like the treasure at the end of the rainbow.

In a game like command and conquer why make any assumptions about the protagonist. They could be anything. But no they have to shove it in your face that your are male from the offset. You are right in that it is bad game design. So what can we do to improve that? I know we can make a series of videos pointing out what the stupid tropes are and call on video game writers to smarten up.

 

[Crazycat690]

This whole thing is just horrible, people donating money for a woman to say how games are sexist, and then her getting sooo much money for it, seriously, do the math on how much she got paid for every bullshit word she says on this subject. Then this, making games that directly prove her point, Jesus man... But then again, it's not like there's no flash torture games with a male victim, oh right how about THE TORTURE GAME? This is the internet, you will find everything you may or may not want.

I wish I could get paid that much to talk about how men are treated unfairly, then call anyone who'd disagree with me a sexist. Which many of these extremer feminists do instead of having a reasonable arguement.

I might be bias in this subject, mostly because it's men who has the reputation to be untrustworthy, what a load of shit that is I can tell you that! I had a girlfriend, was pretty happy and stuff, but she cheated on me and lied horribly to both me and her lover, not only that but after it all was obvious she tried to blame me for it all! Although her lover then became her boyfriend but I understand that even he was later cheated on so maybe men are just too trusting until they become "players", never beeing with one woman for too long and stuff... It took me years to get over that, then there was a new girl, she went with my brother instead, not even bothering to hide it! He was young and foolish so I can't blame him but her. Damn, she later got together with a friend of mine and big surprise, she cheated on him too!

I don't know if I'll ever be able to trust a girl again, after the first girlfriend I've suffered extreme paranoia, I have friends but no close friends because I never truly know who to trust.. Because of several women, I may never be happily married, I might never get kids (which is a shame because I love kids) and I might never get a "best friend". This is why it pisses me off everytime a female feminist starts to whine about trivial shit that doesn't matter in the slightest, I actually had a female friend who complained that her boyfriend looked at other girls, SERIOUSLY? Couldn't believe anyone would want to be her boyfriend, she constantly talked about how men are pigs and whatnot.

Sorry for my rant, it's really hot, I might have been bitten by a poisoned snake making me a bit dizzy and I'm a bit stressed out, hope I didn't offend too many.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Yeah, and Valve ciphers are good protagonists. There's no particular reason they're only allowed to be men.

I'm just saying there isn't a character there to critique on.

Well, that's not quite accurate either. Gordan Freeman and Chell are in fact characters - they're just characters that happen to be ciphers. It's okay for a character to be a cipher.

It's a matter of practicality.

And there's your answer re: why this is practiced.

And once again, please don't appropriate terms invoking civil rights like "segregation" over something as innocuous as safe-space subway cars. It doesn't really matter what your personal opinion is over the term's accuracy, it's still appropriation.

It is not practical to segregate public transport, men and women should be able to stand next to each other without a huge likelihood of sexual assault occurring, with dozens of people around not doing anything. This problem would end if the minority who molest passengers were prosecuted with extending limits limits as them being forbidden from public transport under the penalty of imprisonment.

And if that's a practical solution, It's likely Japan will adopt it as well. I think their primary concern is to prevent sexual assault, not to validate the folks over in the Anglophonic world who are rustling their jimmies over an old Feminist Frequency video.

I'm not appropriating anything from anywhere, I'm using a word from the dictionary. Every car should be a safe space wether surrounded by men or women.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/segregate

It is nothing but your opinion that it is appropriation.

Nope. If you say setting aside subway cars to help defend women from sexual assault is "apartheid" you are appropriating. If you say it's "segregation" in the same breath, you are also very clearly appropriating "segregation" as well. I appreciate you dropping the use of "apartheid," but you should also drop the use of the term "segregation."

 

[Kahunaburger]

This is why it pisses me off everytime a female feminist starts to whine about trivial shit that doesn't matter in the slightest, I actually had a female friend who complained that her boyfriend looked at other girls, SERIOUSLY? Couldn't believe anyone would want to be her boyfriend, she constantly talked about how men are pigs and whatnot.

Um... I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how, as a victim of infidelity, you're having a hard time understanding why someone might not be comfortable with their significant other checking other people out.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Sorry that you have been treated badly but I have pretty much been bashed around by every man I've been close to including my Dad. I still don't think every guy is violent. Get your snakebite seen too it sounds nasty.

 

[Treblaine]

Pardon if I leap in here:

You consider this might be for a reason other than an anti-woman conspiracy?

This is something I see a lot, and I think it's kind of the crux of why this is such a volatile issue. It is due, in large part, to the fact that someone like Ms. Sarkeesian doesn't have quite enough maturity to speak on an issue they've studied extensively** without some degree of condescension, but that is somewhat beside the point. In any case:

This is a gross overstatement of the stance that feminists take. They talk about things like Patriarchy and such, and it discredits their argument, because the problems they are addressing are far from something so monolithic. What they are addressing, however, is a lot of underlying cultural baggage that we've been collectively hauling around since the birth of civilization - ways of thinking that are so engrained that we don't even realize we're thinking them.

It isn't a matter of some vast anti-woman conspiracy - and nobody ever believed it was. When a feminist talks of Patriarchy, it is that cultural baggage to which they refer: that history of telling male dominant stories in a male dominant society, over hundreds of years, until those stories and the elements of those stories are so ingrained that they escape our notice.

My opinion on sexism in the media is never in any single work, not what any of them include, but what as a whole they lack.

It isn't a problem that any single game doesn't have a female protagonist, but when the top 20 action video games of 2011 all have male protagonist then it becomes a problem.

Absolutely right. EDIT: Okay, it should be pointed out that some works can be and are overtly sexist on purpose, but these are usually isolated cases.

But no single game is responsible, you can't say you MUST have a female lead.

And I can see why developer shy away from having female leads in games as every time they do people like Ms Sarkeesian exploiting that to start a disingenuous moral crusade.

It's easier to just not have women in video games or have a woman in an extremely limited role than have to deal with such inconsistent logic. She holds up Chell of Portal 2 as an example of a good female protagonist... when she is a complete non-character, she never speaks nor does anything to judge her by, she is dressed in gender neutral prisoner overalls. She is a classic Valve empty-vessel protagonist. That seem to be how you avid such hollow "critique".

But here I think you kind of lose track of your argument. It doesn't make sense that a game developer, when faced for a loud clamor for a well-rounded, non-hypersexualized female protagonist would shy away from one. If enough fans are asking to see a specific type of character more often, chances are you'll see that type of character more often. You certainly will never see it if you don't bother asking for it. The fact that Ms. Sarkeesian is getting so much support - that so many seem to agree with her general point that there ought to be more positive female protagonists - seems to send the message to developers that more female leads are in order. It's the lack that causes all the clamor and the dissatisfaction in the fanbase - that is what they will shy away from. If they bother paying attention to this little debacle at all, which is unlikely.

Also, don't knock Chell. I like Chell.

**EDIT2: The issue I mean, for clarification's sake, is gender representations in media, not gaming. If she were more avid a gamer this might not have been so big a deal in the first place.

First let me say I can't knock Chell because, well, Chell is a part of me. Chell only ever did anything, even take a step or move a muscle when I made it as a conscious input, she never said anything I didn't say, because she didn't say anything at all. I did the portal mirror thing and looked at myself and saw a woman. It was a virtual reality as a woman. I WAS CHELL! And so was Anita Sarkeesian Chell when she played that game, she couldn't object to anything Chell did as she did that. You couldn't dislike Chell without disliking yourself.

There are millions of feminists on this planet (billions if you include the definition of feminism as "treat women as equals") I do not know what all of their stances are. I am looking at what Ms Sarkeesian's stated stance is, regardless of what kind on stance it might be defined as.

"underlying cultural baggage that we've been collectively hauling around since the birth of civilization"

I don't ascribe to that as it can go both ways. Paranoia from a history that is no longer practised can make equal treatment seem unfair by only looking at how women are treated rather than in comparison to men.

I too am fed up of male protagonist simply because by god, I've had enough of them. It's interesting to see a female protagonist of an action feature and you'd really struggle to overdo it.

My point about female characters is it's better to avoid bad press than get a load of good press. An all male cast is a safe bet, as you can't have someone make a troll video series about how this game is misogynistic if it completely avoid the issue. If a game isn't set in Japan and doesn't have any Japanese characters, you can't say its racist against Japanese.

Yes, a lot of us want female protagonists with real character, but it's not worth the risk of the likes of Ms Sarkeesian misrepresenting a female character as misogynistic.

Look at how she attacked Bayonetta, a strong female protagonist. How she attacked Catwoman. And Lara Croft. All her videos are about blatantly misrepresenting female protagonists, even saying that Bayonetta DIRECTLY caused women to be sexually assaulted. She does not care about strong female protagonists, she is on a moral crusade against sex and worse than that, she says women being sexual causes sexual assault. Watch ehr bayonetta video review.

 

[Redingold]

Spoiler: I am very much reminded of this:

I am very much reminded of this:

 

[Denamic]

As for the train thing I agree with her there. The problem with groping is of epidemic proportions and as a woman I would rather been in a relatively safer environment than just trust that these twisted guys are going to behave themselves.

This is though, that is the exact opposite of what feminism is about.
Sexual harassment is bad and should be rooted out, I agree, but having train cars specifically for women is the definition of sexism. Discrimination in favour of women is still discrimination. It also sends the message that men are sexual predators and cannot be trusted, which is often true but in most cases not, and that women has to be protected. Women may be safe in said cars, but I don't think the damage it would do on the whole is worth it. Imagine putting all black people in their own train cars so they wouldn't have to suffer racism from other people.

I can't give any good solution to this problem in place of this, but that does not make a female only train car a good idea.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

As for the train thing I agree with her there. The problem with groping is of epidemic proportions and as a woman I would rather been in a relatively safer environment than just trust that these twisted guys are going to behave themselves.

This is though, that is the exact opposite of what feminism is about.
Sexual harassment is bad and should be rooted out, I agree, but having train cars specifically for women is the definition of sexism. Discrimination in favour of women is still discrimination. It also sends the message that men are sexual predators and cannot be trusted, which is often true but in most cases not, and that women has to be protected. Women may be safe in said cars, but I don't think the damage it would do on the whole is worth it. Imagine putting all black people in their own train cars so they wouldn't have to suffer racism from other people.

I can't give any good solution to this problem in place of this, but that does not make a female only train car a good idea.

Yeah but there is a difference between someone being a racist which is a clear conscious choice and someone who is sick enough to go around groping random women.

My friend wants me to come and work as a proof reader in Tokyo and as a blonde lady with big boobies getting groped on a train is not an aspect I am thrilled about...

The solution doesn't have to be permanent just until the authorities can get a handle on how to deal with the problem

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

The game wasn't blammed because it was hate speech (hell back in the good old days, NG promoted a shit ton of "assassin" stuff where no feminist/Celebrity/Children's Show Character was safe from the wrath of the Flash Maker. The reason why it was blammed was because it was a pathetic 24 hours in flash type of game.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

This is up there with that sick fuck who made a Doom mod re-enacting the Columbine massacre.

Why is this a scam again? PROPER ELABORATIONS, PLEASE.

 

[Phasmal]

snip

Sorry that you have been treated badly but I have pretty much been bashed around by every man I've been close to including my Dad. I still don't think every guy is violent. Get your snakebite seen too it sounds nasty.

Yeah, this.
Also pisses me off how dudes are allowed to say these things about ladies.
I've had shitty experiences with men, but I don't blame men for it. That would suggest the shitty people weren't individual shits, which they were. But imagine if I did?
How quickly would I be flamed on this forum?

 

[Treblaine]

In case you missed it, I did respond to the video a few posts ago, when it was liked by rbstewart, so I discussed the topic of subway cars there. To paraphrase myself, Sarkeesian is only endorsing that one specific subway car case, and then only implicitly, probably to prove her point. And while her point is knee-jerk and extreme, it is understandable, particularly given Japanese cultural fetishes (including subway rape) and kind of horrible treatment of women in general - as evidenced by the guy talked about in the OP.

I still think Apartheid is a really bad comparison. It's just so much more vast and more destructive than a safe-zone subway car ever could be.

As for the Bayonetta ad? I guess its placement was just a matter of unfortunate coincidence? I can't say I agree with her on that point, either.

OK, that is a plausible explanation... but so it is also plausible that she approves of segregation IN GENERAL as a solution of a minority of criminal assault. Never the less, she still supported this as a solution. It is very hard to excuse.

Japan actually has one of the lowest rape per capita in the world, lower than Canada:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita

Lower than strictly conservative countries like Morocco that ban all pornography and forbid women showing their body.