Ehhhhhh. She's boring. She isn't even thought-provoking. Honestly, I see little reason for her to get as much attention as she is. I made the mistake of watching part 1 and part 2 and got bombarded with recommended videos of her all over my YouTubez. I say mistake because she was boring. And I'm still fighting with YouTubez to wipe her off my page to make way for something better. If she's going to spit TvTropes at me, the least she could do is be remotely entertaining. I'll care about what she thinks when she gives me a reason to, beyond lol moderately attractive woman speaking!
I think I might duck out of this one. Go somewhere else on the internet for a while. Maybe FunnyJunk. Or away from the Escapist. I'm getting tired of seeing Anita this and Anita that.
Please don't speak as though the critics are a collective. A large chunk of people are offended that we're even discussing women in video games. They get offended at the notion of more female protagonists. I'm sure what you say is also true, but it is far from unilateral.
Which, by the way, is all Anita is doing: asking us to look at the medium.
To which she gets rape and death threats. Well played, gaming community.
You are correct, the critics are NOT a collective so not every critic should be dismissed because she is receiving rape and/or death threats from some.
I actually don't see your point. Just because some idiot disagrees with or takes issue with the her stance or ideas is not cause to refute others who disagree or take issue with her stance or ideas.
Being threatened with rape doesn't magically make your stance bulletproof.
Ehhhhhh. She's boring. She isn't even thought-provoking. Honestly, I see little reason for her to get as much attention as she is. I made the mistake of watching part 1 and part 2 and got bombarded with recommended videos of her all over my YouTubez. I say mistake because she was boring. And I'm still fighting with YouTubez to wipe her off my page to make way for something better. If she's going to spit TvTropes at me, the least she could do is be remotely entertaining. I'll care about what she thinks when she gives me a reason to, beyond lol moderately attractive woman speaking!
I think I might duck out of this one. Go somewhere else on the internet for a while. Maybe FunnyJunk. Or away from the Escapist. I'm getting tired of seeing Anita this and Anita that.
I'm sorry to say that the fact that you brought his attractiveness into a conversation about issues in the wider community kind of deep-sixed any justification you were making.
Also, boring is fine. Not everyone has to be Yahtzee and not everyone wants to be. I said before that I think she misjudged her crowd, but that doesn't mean it's not important to consider what she's saying. If you only watch things because they entertain you, then how will you learn about important issues that aren't written with that in mind? Don't you at some level think that as a member of the gaming community, you might have a stake in this?
Yeah, how dare they cash in on the expectations and demands of their consumers, and the lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of their critics to actually boycott or refuse to patronize titles.
Saints Row 3 almost realeased with a customization option called "Told her twice" which was -two- black eyes.
Yes, a game series known for its political correctness and proportional, fair representation of society. Same for God of War and its misogynist, brodude BS.
John Hemingway from Gearbox's "girlfriend mode" comment.
Which was a poorly-worded statement about being able to use Gaige to co-op with someone who typically doesn't game, or isn't a very good one. Of course, you never hear that part of his commentary that just might provide context.
...I don't care why they did these things, it doesn't change the fact they did, and in the big picture it makes the gaming industry look bad.
That these games are made doesn't make the industry look bad in a vacuum. That they are the most wildly-successful titles, perpetuating their creation, does.
The consumer buys it not just because they like it at times, but because they don't have a choice! It's either buy the game with the slutty looking women, or don't game, period.
Like fighting games? Tekken, Street Fighter, and Virtua Fighter manage to be well-received by gaming communities and critics, and manage to have female characters that are treated seriously, and don't look like strippers and bondage queens.
Like first-person shooters? Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Borderlands managed to bypass the brodude crap and have pretty good representations of females.
Like fantasy RPG's? The Dragon Age series and Elder Scrolls series managed to have decent representations of women, without the ridiculous women-in-fantasy tropes.
Like stylized action games? Well, you're kind of SOL there. It's eaten alive by brodude crap. At least DmC shows a glimmer of hope by having female representations that aren't ridiculous caricatures.
Those are the four most problematic genres in terms of depiction of women I can think of off the top of my head. Each and everyone one of them has alternatives that have decent portrayals of women. There's absolutely no Hobson's choice here, even for a person whose desire to see women portrayed more equitably in games is not outstripped by their desire to game overall.
Me? I loves the fuck out of me some Metroid, and Samus is one of my favorite game characters period. That's why I keep bringing it up. I refuse to buy or play Other M solely because of its misogynist content, and I'm a male, which breaks my heart because it looks like a game with very tight mechanics that would otherwise be a lot of fun. But, I'm not going to spend my money enabling sexist bullshit in games.
Please don't speak as though the critics are a collective. A large chunk of people are offended that we're even discussing women in video games. They get offended at the notion of more female protagonists. I'm sure what you say is also true, but it is far from unilateral.
Which, by the way, is all Anita is doing: asking us to look at the medium.
To which she gets rape and death threats. Well played, gaming community.
You are correct, the critics are NOT a collective so not every critic should be dismissed because she is receiving rape and/or death threats from some.
I actually don't see your point. Just because some idiot disagrees with or takes issue with the her stance or ideas is not cause to refute others who disagree or take issue with her stance or ideas.
Being threatened with rape doesn't magically make your stance bulletproof.
It doesn't make you bulletproof by a long shot. And i don't think she's ever asked for that. But don't you think that, as a community, we should've been more respectful considering she was taking an interest in the field?
I mean, you don't harp on a new football fan whose just discovered his favorite team even if they are kind of bad. You encourage them. The guys who insult them are the ones who either think they have better taste, or that can't stand the thought of someone having a different opinion then them. And those guys usually end up slinking off once they realize they aren't welcome, but in the Escapist threads they just keep coming back...
I suppose I misworded that bolded part. I wasn't particularly demanding, just suggesting.
Honestly, with developers like Naughty Dog, Rockstar, and Bioware, to say the least, do you really think it's a huge risk that they can't make a generally well received female playable character?
Why not exploit the niche market since so few others, if any are going to? Having less competition is generally a good thing for the bottom line, isn't it?
If I had the millions and millions of dollars, possiblty a billion to make a compeditive game company, I'd make a company that specializes in female protagonists. And I'd give a variety. I might not hold up to Anita's standards, but I'm seriously going to try and prove that the presense of a female protagonist won't damn a game by making -great- games, and a variety of women.
... But that means it's an even BIGGER risk than actually making a decent game! You'er saying I can't ask a risk while at the same time a bigger risk is suggested?
Lets be real, indie games are simply not going to have enough impact to have anything but the remotest chance to change the status quo. Going indie is an even bigger risk than starting one's own company because you won't be able to compete with AAA, or anything close, and you pay for your own company that could easily go bust if you make a crappy game.
I mean, I'm not saying that an entirely new game has to be made from the ground up, here. What about standalone DLCs like Liberty City Stories, Undead Nightmare, and Blood Dragon? Use an existing game to suppress a lot of the development costs, and time spent in making it.
Of course it'd be unreasonable to expect full price for it, but it'd be there, and it'd likely be a decent game, and odds are the woman won't be dressed like a prostitute. I'm not saying that the option to change clothes to look that way can't be there, but people will prolly have options for a more presentable look, too. It's not like Rockstar's a stranger to large wardrobes for their protagonists either.
There's a lot of ways to minimize the risk for the big game companies. I.E. not make a shitty game, and/or not make a shallow bimbo sex object chracter, and use existing game resources to make the game.
But there is evidence that points out that currently the niche market isn't that large, and catering to it hasn't been that profitable. There's a term in economics that describes this perfectly, that being Opportunity Cost. Opportunity Cost is the principle of taking into account the cost of what you forgo in order to create something. So in this case, could the resources that you're using to cater to this niche market be better used somewhere else instead? If they can, then it's best to go with the more profitable one.
I'd like to use the following chart as an example:
Think for a moment of how much praise you hear online in regards to Mass Effect for the performance done for Jennifer Hale, and how much people love her, and how horrible Mark Meer is for not being her. In the end, less than 20% of gamers playing Mass Effect 3 selected a female protagonist. And while that 18% is still a market to certainly go after, and the cost of having both a female and male protagonist has shown to be low enough to deserve the inclusion of both when creating a custom character, imagine what the impact would be if only a female protagonist was featured instead of allowing both. I know it's not the best comparison but it's a bit of food for thought is all. I really wish that more statistics like these were made public. Several games send back user data to their developers that show player preference. I'd be curious to see how many people actually selected to be a race other than Human in Dragon Age Origins, to see if that's why it was given up in Dragon Age 2.
And while the company that you propose is one with good intentions, the reality is that it is likely one that is infeasible. Putting millions of dollars into the production of something that is aimed at a more niche market rarely makes it suddenly more accessible to the rest of the world. Even going more into that, there are few companies that have the ability to offer great variety on a whim. Bioware is a company known for their RPG's. Rockstar is known for their free roam sandboxes. Naughty Dog for their action adventure. Very few companies are capable of creating an RPG one year, followed by an FPS a couple later, and then a driving one after that for example. I don't know, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by variety, but I'm taking it as "female characters in multiple genres of game" in this case, please correct me if I'm wrong but it's slightly vague.
What the person you're responding to is meaning (I take this as from what I'm getting from the person, I may be wrong about it), is that companies will pay you large amounts of money to analyze a market, and figure out where profitable areas of it are. It's something that is actively done. If you can crunch the numbers, and prove that there is a market for a game staring a female protagonist in a third person shooter, set in a steam punk setting, that will be more profitable to tap into than the direction the company has already taken, it will take that direction instead. If it can't be proven though, there is a large risk to trying that, but if you believe the market is still there, the onus is on you to take action and find it. If the market truly is there, you will hit gold in tapping into it. If it's not though, the sting of the loss will be large indeed. It's a step that is not to be taken lightly though, and one that needs to have some certainty behind it in order to be made. That's why a larger company will not probably make that step unless reasonably assured that it can pull it off.
Here, to sum up my point better, I'm going to again go to another economic term, this one being a Disruptive Innovation.
Disruptive Innovation said:
An innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market. (E.g., the lower priced Ford Model T)
Examples of Disruptive Innovation are many, let's take the digital distribution of movie streaming (Netflix), compared to the classic video rental method done by businesses like Block Buster. That's a disruptive innovation that has been massively successful. Many companies today are still trying to play catch up to what they've managed to create. And in being the first company to make an adoption such as that big, they have gained several adopters that now have loyalty to their company making it difficult to replace them. There are several failures that go along with these though but they are harder to find because failures are forgotten instead of noted, an example could be Flexplay a type of DVD that would delete it's playback after two days in an attempt to replace the normal style of video rental returns. The product failed, and was soon forgotten. The innovation they attempted was not found to be one which was marketable.
The same can be applied to media. From Quentin Tarantino with Pulp Fiction, to Rockstar with GTA III, Mojang with Minecraft, taking a form of media, and playing with it and spinning it in a different direction can make something wildly popular. It can also wind up just as easily being a failure though, for example see virtually every RTS that has been made for console or the thousand of failed games that litter the Apple App Store that tried to do something new. That's not to say the potential isn't there behind certain ideas, but that attempts have been made and have yet to be proven to be wildly successful.
In the end, I'd love to see something like that work, but I'd not put my money on it coming out on top. Recent attempts to tap into the market haven't been met with massive degrees of success. Hell, I bought Mirror's Edge on release and liked the change in both having a female protagonist and the free running mechanics of the game, the first time I played Pokémon Crystal I played as a female avatar, and have played through Mass Effect with Fem-Shep. I will admit, most of the time, I personally prefer to use a male avatar or play a male character, but do not take issue with playing a female protagonist. I do believe that the female protagonist market is underserved, and has room to expand, but hasn't found a much success in the last decade, and isn't nearly as large as some people claim it to be. And until it's either proven that the market has been mostly untapped all along or has grown dramatically, the risks taken to capitalize on that market by the larger companies are going to be smaller and further between because they have yet to find the great success that justifies spending more resources in immediate pursuit of continuing efforts to cater to it.
TLDR: I think that there is a market that is still undervalued by companies and is larger than given credit for, but not as large as what many people seem to want to believe, and until the right formula to capitalize on that market is found, efforts to take advantage of it will justifiably be further between and done on a smaller scale. Also, while a company like the one proposed would be set in a good direction, it would likely wind up being a failure unless either blessed by staggering amounts of planning and analyzing that heavily indicates it can succeed before efforts are taken, or incredible luck.
Please don't speak as though the critics are a collective. A large chunk of people are offended that we're even discussing women in video games. They get offended at the notion of more female protagonists. I'm sure what you say is also true, but it is far from unilateral.
Which, by the way, is all Anita is doing: asking us to look at the medium.
To which she gets rape and death threats. Well played, gaming community.
You are correct, the critics are NOT a collective so not every critic should be dismissed because she is receiving rape and/or death threats from some.
I actually don't see your point. Just because some idiot disagrees with or takes issue with the her stance or ideas is not cause to refute others who disagree or take issue with her stance or ideas.
Being threatened with rape doesn't magically make your stance bulletproof.
It doesn't make you bulletproof by a long shot. And i don't think she's ever asked for that. But don't you think that, as a community, we should've been more respectful considering she was taking an interest in the field?
You mean like every other community online who spit death threats and rape threats and racist jokes any time they are remotely not moderated, such as a youtube comment section?
I think you are very disingenuous here in trying to present the flack she got as something due to her being a woman or her being against games in particular, as though the gaming community is some vile ball of mass. The internet is full of asshole because anonymity allows it. On every political forum I have seen without moderation, there is the same level of crap. Why do you get to present it as though the gaming community as a whole was somehow responsible for the rape threats?
We, as a community represented by our news sites, our monetary contributions, out gaming websites dedicated to gaming in general seemed to do nothing but support it as an idea with a right to exist (even if some disagreed with the purpose) and bashed and discouraged the troll backlash.
What you try to do here is akin to saying the christian community should be more tolerant of gay people just because the westburo asshats and the small clusters of general homophobes. Besides misrepresenting the group as a whole, you also include a chunk who aren't a part just to make it look worse.
I mean, you don't harp on a new football fan whose just discovered his favorite team even if they are kind of bad. You encourage them. The guys who insult them are the ones who either think they have better taste, or that can't stand the thought of someone having a different opinion then them. And those guys usually end up slinking off once they realize they aren't welcome, but in the Escapist threads they just keep coming back...
Any political, ideological, or contentious video on youtube are probably filled with hateful ugly comments. Yes, it would be nice to have discussions without those trolls, but when the only forum people are looking at are the unregulated ones, then no, you aren't going to get that.
I don't dislike the fact she has ideas.
I dislike the fact she closes off any chance of anyone debating the issues with her ideas.
If she were a scientist, she'd refuse to have her research peer reviewed.
Also, Daystar... aren't we discussing and peer reviewing her work right here, right now, in this thread? Isn't that exactly what the OP did? He looked at her work and responded.
If he'd done that in YouTube comments, first off he'd have been too long, and secondly he wouldn't have been heard for all the rape threats.
Daystar, Daystar, Daystar... it's thoughtless comments like this that landed you on my Ignore list for a year (you've been removed from said ignore list due to being awesome). Tisk, I say. Tisk.
"Appeal to Worse Problems" is not a trope. It's a fallacy. It's a form of fallacious reasoning. The only thing it "attempts to stop" is lazy, irrational argumentation.
The best way to respond when correctly called out for abusing fallacious reasoning is to consider WHY what you said was fallacious and either reconsider your position or substantiate it in such a way that you cease to rely on fallacies. It's not to have a huff about "stopping discussion".
...and instead of allowing the context of the game to dictate WHY something happens she jumps up and down over a scenario where in which a damsel is used to motivate the protagonist. She's clearly done her research...
See, your former statement is the problem undermining the latter. In the course of making her videos, she lists a number of games that invoke the trope in satiric or subversive ways, many of which have a richer and more complex underlying egalitarian message, which she handwaves by arguing the context in which the trope is used does not matter. The example I love to bring up is Borderlands 2, which she actually cites as one of the more egregious offenders. She either hasn't done her research in nearly enough detail to cover or discuss aforementioned uses of the trope and how that relates to sexism in the game industry and portrayals of women, or she she, knows her argument is to a certain extent bunk, and is trying to shield herself from criticism by saying "counter-examples don't count".
The most important part you missed was "She's clearly done her research, albeit not in the most efficient way possible". She's done her research, however she's done it about as well as a school kid using wikipedia as a reference. I agree with you that in the case of Borderlands 2 it really seemed like she was grasping straws, especially when considering that one of her points that was suppose to show sexism was (and I'm paraphrasing here), "The male protagonist then kills Angel after she begs him to" when one of the protagonists can in fact be a woman. It also becomes annoying when someone as dickish as The Amazing Atheist is able to bring up points that are very legitimate that shows that Anita seems to trample over herself multiple times. I can't remember which of his videos had the actual section I'm referencing (Though it was in response to her Damsels in Distress series before the 3rd part) but in it he showed that her own writing pointed out that attributes such as courage were masculine ones and thus should not be attributed to female characters. That strikes everyone (I presume) as odd seeing as how in her latest video she wants a game where a captured princess, for a lack of a better word, nuts up and takes matters into her own hands and escapes a prison.
I don't hate her, I don't think what she is trying to achieve is inherently wrong, I just think the way she is doing so is very poor and it shows when after three 20 minute videos she has barely progressed from, "Look at all these women being used as plot devices, IT'S SO WRONG!".
"Appeal to Worse Problems" is not a trope. It's a fallacy. It's a form of fallacious reasoning. The only thing it "attempts to stop" is lazy, irrational argumentation.
The best way to respond when correctly called out for abusing fallacious reasoning is to consider WHY what you said was fallacious and either reconsider your position or substantiate it in such a way that you cease to rely on fallacies. It's not to have a huff about "stopping discussion".
I don't dislike the fact she has ideas.
I dislike the fact she closes off any chance of anyone debating the issues with her ideas.
If she were a scientist, she'd refuse to have her research peer reviewed.
Also, Daystar... aren't we discussing and peer reviewing her work right here, right now, in this thread? Isn't that exactly what the OP did? He looked at her work and responded.
If he'd done that in YouTube comments, first off he'd have been too long, and secondly he wouldn't have been heard for all the rape threats.
Daystar, Daystar, Daystar... it's thoughtless comments like this that landed you on my Ignore list for a year (you've been removed from said ignore list due to being awesome). Tisk, I say. Tisk.
I am pretty sure the complaint was about the complete lack of acknowledgement, let alone rebuttal to the many many people out there bringing up valid concerns and logical flaws with her arguments. The idea that refusal to do anything but preach is the same as a scientist who never peer reviews their work.
No one thinks of the youtube comment section as a haven of intellectual discussion and integrity, and fortunately no one was actually making that argument, in spite of how disingenuously you and bazilly try to paint it as such.
Also, probably the biggest complaint is that she uses the troll comments as a shield against actual criticisms, and the frequent use of the same tactic by others. Given that peer review is a process of people tearing the work to pieces just to make sure there is no mistakes before sending it back to be done without those mistakes, the refusal to address criticisms outside of the occasional snarky tweet makes the comparison all too similar to, say, the charlatans in the new age health industry who make claims of miracle cures in their products but refuse to peer review their "research" and instead claim victim status, be it from the evil healthcare empire or the gov't.
Other than you talking about a "sense of elitism", I see nowhere on this page where your misapprehension regarding "Appeal to Worse Problems" was addressed. If you already figured it out on your own, then congratulations, and I apologize for giving you redundant information.
Look people, stop debating about her. After loooongh discussions on the subject i have come co conclusion that she doesn't give a flying *beep* about what she is preaching. As far as I can deduce, she is using prevailing social wisdom to promote herself and gather income.
Now, that my opinion is out of the way, let's switch to the facts.
Basic notions of her videos is that violence against women in video games as well as their disempowerment along with lack of female empowerment through female player characters propagates abuse and disempowerment of females in real life (which feminists neatly summarized in two theories and one term switch. Patriarchy, Rape Culture and replacing words "domestic violence" with "violence against women"). Now this notion is actually the same as those who advocate against violence in games, and they had much better case built around it. They had loads of incidental evidence (school shootings being described, by shooters, through game analogies, children killing other children by imitating certain games children dying due to neglect caused by games etc), much better starting point (all media promotes violence but due to games interactivity and the fact that player does the violence willingly is special case), much greater prevalence of what they see as bad in games (violent behavior is in nearly half of the games and quite a percentage (2-3%)can be treated as snuff material due to nature or amount of it) and the punch line that violence is actually presented as a solution.
Her argument's are not nearly that strong or as well put together, yet, unlike antiviolence movement, people are willing to accept her views either because they agree with her underlying notions of patriarchy, rape culture i domestic violence is only against women (all of which have been proven as unsustainable social theories by numerous researches and social studies) or due to one positive notion in her videos which is pleading for more female protagonists. But if you bite that hook, you actually support her basic notions described in first sentence of this paragraph.
Now this is just a base of a tower of what is bad or wrong about her videos but I have to go to work. Maybe I will continue this further on.
Mainly because he probably didn't really contribute anything to the discussion. I once got a warning for saying "I have nothing to say on the matter," in a thread.
Yeah, how dare they cash in on the expectations and demands of their consumers, and the lack of intestinal fortitude on the part of their critics to actually boycott or refuse to patronize titles.
Saints Row 3 almost realeased with a customization option called "Told her twice" which was -two- black eyes.
Yes, a game series known for its political correctness and proportional, fair representation of society. Same for God of War and its misogynist, brodude BS.
John Hemingway from Gearbox's "girlfriend mode" comment.
Which was a poorly-worded statement about being able to use Gaige to co-op with someone who typically doesn't game, or isn't a very good one. Of course, you never hear that part of his commentary that just might provide context.
...I don't care why they did these things, it doesn't change the fact they did, and in the big picture it makes the gaming industry look bad.
That these games are made doesn't make the industry look bad in a vacuum. That they are the most wildly-successful titles, perpetuating their creation, does.
The consumer buys it not just because they like it at times, but because they don't have a choice! It's either buy the game with the slutty looking women, or don't game, period.
Like fighting games? Tekken, Street Fighter, and Virtua Fighter manage to be well-received by gaming communities and critics, and manage to have female characters that are treated seriously, and don't look like strippers and bondage queens.
Like first-person shooters? Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Borderlands managed to bypass the brodude crap and have pretty good representations of females.
Like fantasy RPG's? The Dragon Age series and Elder Scrolls series managed to have decent representations of women, without the ridiculous women-in-fantasy tropes.
Like stylized action games? Well, you're kind of SOL there. It's eaten alive by brodude crap. At least DmC shows a glimmer of hope by having female representations that aren't ridiculous caricatures.
Those are the four most problematic genres in terms of depiction of women I can think of off the top of my head. Each and everyone one of them has alternatives that have decent portrayals of women. There's absolutely no Hobson's choice here, even for a person whose desire to see women portrayed more equitably in games is not outstripped by their desire to game overall.
Me? I loves the fuck out of me some Metroid, and Samus is one of my favorite game characters period. That's why I keep bringing it up. I refuse to buy or play Other M solely because of its misogynist content, and I'm a male, which breaks my heart because it looks like a game with very tight mechanics that would otherwise be a lot of fun. But, I'm not going to spend my money enabling sexist bullshit in games.
Sure, they can cash in, but why ignore a largely untapped market? Niche as it is, people are hungry for it. I mean look at X-com: Enemy unknown. It was the back burner project, but it released, and was a hit! People wanted that style of gameplay on a console, and such game styles are typically niche and under served. Theypeople behind Enemy Unknonw are working on a standalone DLC Enemy Within/Inside.
Yes, I know Saints Row and God Of war aren't meant to be the most moralistic of games, but they stand as examples.
Oh, yeah, John's comment is directed towards people who don't typically game. I.E. Girlfriends. C'mon, that's stereotypical, isn't it?
The games look bad because they're generally the standard bearers. They influence other games sooner or later. Look at all the God of War ripoffs.
It's not abject BS. Lets look at the fact you're going back YEARS for more than a few of your short list of examples.
I'll grant you that a lot of fighting games have reasonably dressed women among their rosters, but Street Fighter has Cammy and Elena, Tekken has Nina Willaims, christie and michelle chang and julia chang, Virtua Fighter has Sarah Bryant. Yeah, loose, or well fitted, or close to no clothes helps mobility. Can't say it's a huge excuse, though. And I'm just going on a short list here. Personally, despite the variety of women, I'm just not all that great at them.
On a separate note, there's this weird thing about women in strappy blue body suits with blonde hair. Sarah Bryant, Nina Williams, Jill Valentine & Zero Suit Samus Aran to say the least.
My laptop prolly can't handle halflife. Borderlands, I hate the hell out of the looting mechanic. Left 4 dead 2 I'm trying to get, but I can't say I relish fighting over the single female character with my significant other. I do appreciate you listing co-op shooters, or player vs AI types, though. I really like those more than pvp based thank in no small part of the community surrounding the PvP. No game's perfect, though, I guess.
Truthfully, stylized brawlers are not as eaten up as one might think. I mean, I appreciate Bayonetta as a character, and I'm glad she's getting a sequel, and it's likely to be one of my few wii u games. Koei's warriors series tries to incorporate women, and I mean actually -tries- to incorporate women into the roster.
Believe me, I understand how you feel about Samus.
Okay, now that we've gotten that out of the way, lets look at the ratio of games where women aren't dressed sexily vs the ones where they are, and how far and few in between the former can be. 'z still out of whack. IMO.
While we can be more tolerant of depictions of women, imagine the people on the outside looking in, who haven't done as much research as we have on the subject. People who want to game, and walk into the game store, and look around, and see how woimen are depicted. Snap judgements, and all. We know there's alternatives from the women dressed overly sexy, but lets look at how common these alternatives are, and how much research a person has to do to see through the pandering to male sex drives.
I'm not saying that people can't pander to the male sex drive, but lets look at how common it is in games. I mean, can you really go through the past 10 years of gaming and find one fairly well known game where the woman wasn't dressed provocatively for each year as a playable character?
Reread entire thread to find the post. My guess, it was far too short and got hit with a "low content" strike. Given how it seems every post is usually reported in one of these threads as it is, by one side or the other, not too surprised we have this happening.
Please don't speak as though the critics are a collective. A large chunk of people are offended that we're even discussing women in video games. They get offended at the notion of more female protagonists. I'm sure what you say is also true, but it is far from unilateral.
Which, by the way, is all Anita is doing: asking us to look at the medium.
To which she gets rape and death threats. Well played, gaming community.
You are correct, the critics are NOT a collective so not every critic should be dismissed because she is receiving rape and/or death threats from some.
I actually don't see your point. Just because some idiot disagrees with or takes issue with the her stance or ideas is not cause to refute others who disagree or take issue with her stance or ideas.
Being threatened with rape doesn't magically make your stance bulletproof.
It doesn't make you bulletproof by a long shot. And i don't think she's ever asked for that. But don't you think that, as a community, we should've been more respectful considering she was taking an interest in the field?
You mean like every other community online who spit death threats and rape threats and racist jokes any time they are remotely not moderated, such as a youtube comment section?
I think you are very disingenuous here in trying to present the flack she got as something due to her being a woman or her being against games in particular, as though the gaming community is some vile ball of mass. The internet is full of asshole because anonymity allows it. On every political forum I have seen without moderation, there is the same level of crap. Why do you get to present it as though the gaming community as a whole was somehow responsible for the rape threats?
We, as a community represented by our news sites, our monetary contributions, out gaming websites dedicated to gaming in general seemed to do nothing but support it as an idea with a right to exist (even if some disagreed with the purpose) and bashed and discouraged the troll backlash.
What you try to do here is akin to saying the christian community should be more tolerant of gay people just because the westburo asshats and the small clusters of general homophobes. Besides misrepresenting the group as a whole, you also include a chunk who aren't a part just to make it look worse.
I mean, you don't harp on a new football fan whose just discovered his favorite team even if they are kind of bad. You encourage them. The guys who insult them are the ones who either think they have better taste, or that can't stand the thought of someone having a different opinion then them. And those guys usually end up slinking off once they realize they aren't welcome, but in the Escapist threads they just keep coming back...
Any political, ideological, or contentious video on youtube are probably filled with hateful ugly comments. Yes, it would be nice to have discussions without those trolls, but when the only forum people are looking at are the unregulated ones, then no, you aren't going to get that.
How can you say the negative reaction to her wasn't because she was a woman, when she specifically received threats of sexual assault? While men can be assaulted of course, the meaning of the assault is usually very different. Say it to a man and they'll see it less of an attack on their sexuality as on their abilities ("I got raped during that last match") whereas when it's said to a woman it's not just to say they are inferior, but that BECAUSE of that inferiority they are open to sexual assault ("My husband threatened to rape me if left the house")
This is misogyny, the unnatural hatred of the feminine (vulnerability) that feeds into women in the gaming community having to "Prove" they aren't trying to make money off fans or "looking for nerd cred"
When I say the community, mean the people who play games. When I talk about the commenters, I mean the people who thought it was within their rights to be hostile to someone who also played games, because she said things they didn't agree with. When I say why didn't the community do as much, I don't assign blame, I just want to bring up the question why we would tolerate such unkindness. Why did people focus on explaining why she was wrong instead of banding together and telling the commenters that doing that towards one of our own was unacceptable?
Why were we so focused on arguing for her impartially, that we neglected to come to help her when we saw what she was going through?
Other than you talking about a "sense of elitism", I see nowhere on this page where your misapprehension regarding "Appeal to Worse Problems" was addressed. If you already figured it out on your own, then congratulations, and I apologize for giving you redundant information.
Appeal to worse problems:
Arguing that expressing concern about a (relatively) small problem means that the person doesn't care about any larger problems.
My Argument:
I don't bother listening to those who waste time and money on small problems while bigger problems still exist, and acting like what they do is as important as the bigger problems.
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C'mon, that's stereotypical, isn't it?