Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[Guerilla]

I think it's time for feminism to step off of all media. They've turned entire discussion forums like SA or neogaf into humorless censored hellholes where fun goes to die, they constantly turn every gaming/TV/movie discussion into a political debate with their holier than thou attitude, they harass creators because they don't get their way like spoiled kids, and spin facts to suit their irrational propaganda about rape culture and privilege and they ALWAYS censor people when the can and if they don't they practically backseat moderate by telling you what offends them and what's allowed (trust me, it's very little).

Stop using the dictionary definition of feminism, modern feminism isn't about equality, it's about female empowerment any means necessary and profit. And before you use the usual no true Scotsman fallacy I can tell you that no, not all feminists are like that, but most of them are. And then there's even worse like tumblr, Jezebel, Shitredditsays, TwoXChromosomes and so on that are filled with hateful or extremist individuals who harm society and the relationship between the two sexes.

 

[Zen Bard]

So what do you guys think? Is there endemic sexism within the game industry and feminists complaints are valid, or is it a storm in a tea cup?

It would have saved you a ton of grief if you started your post with this or worked it into the title somehow. (You know how reactive this community can be).

But overall, it's actually a valid question.

Here's my take: Way back when computer gaming was first coming into its own, the core audience consisted of young men in their late teens to mid twenties. I know 'cuz I was one.

But now the industry, games and the audience have become far more diverse and sophisticated. Yet a lot of games still seem pander to the 1980's ideal of their consumer. Not a lot's been done to acknowledge the evolution of the "gamer community"

It's sort of like watching a detective movie from the 50's where women are referred to as "dames" and are either housewives or secretaries. Things might have been like that once...but times change. The medium needs to change with it.

 

[thundra]

I can't wait to get the Male Tears franchise up and running.

I can't tell if you're kidding on the square. I seriously hope not.

Feminists never kid.

I'm thinking we're going to follow it up with Eternal Patricide and The Matriarchy, the latter of which is going to be a big-budget MMO set in a female-only utopia.

i find that concept for an mmo perfect for some reason. Can i be a gay or trans minion that oppresses straight or cis guy slave.

Do female to male transgender people not become enslaved/included in the patricide?

No they can be minions or normal citizens but they face mistreatment by general public

 

[Guerilla]

I think it's time for feminism to step off of all media. They've turned entire discussion forums like SA or neogaf into humorless hellholes where fun goes to die, they've turned every gaming/TV/movie discussion into a political debate, they harass creators because they don't get their way like spoiled kids, and spin facts to suit their irrational propaganda about rape culture and privilege, they ALWAYS censor people when the can and so on.

Stop using the dictionary definition of feminism, modern feminism isn't about equality, it's about female empowerment any means necessary and profit. And before you use the usual no true Scotsman fallacy I can tell you that no, not all feminists are like that, but most are. Tumblr, Jezebel, Shitredditsays, TwoXChromosomes and so on are filled with hateful or extremist individuals who harm society and the relationship between the two sexes.

I'm sure "gamers" getting into heated debates with them, or better yet making pre-emptive "These fucking feminists, man! Am I right?" threads, in no way contributes to a deeply politicized and unpleasant forum experience. There's no way the other side is looking for an outlet to grandstand and air out their grievances. No. It's all them. Even though I can count the number of threads started by feminists here on one hand versus the number of "gamers" who have to be told not to make the 7th "Anita Sarkeesian" thread on page one of the gaming section.

Gamers react to the heavily politicized climate feminists have created the last 3-4 years. Before than onslaught of disgusting accusations, demands and self-promotion disguised as concern, gamers didn't give a flying fuck about feminism in general. In fact I don't even remember a single discussion about feminism before they started attacking everything and everyone in the gaming community.

 

[Guerilla]

dp, sorry

 

[carnex]

I'm sure "gamers" getting into heated debates with them, or better yet making pre-emptive "These fucking feminists, man! Am I right?" threads, in no way contributes to a deeply politicized and unpleasant forum experience. There's no way "gamers" looking for a forum on which to grandstand and air out their grievances. No. It's all those pesky feminists. Even though I can count the number of threads started by feminists here on one partially-mutilated hand versus the dozens of "gamers" who have to be told not to make the 7th "Anita Sarkeesian" thread on page one of the gaming section.

I have to ask you one thing. What pesky feminists? Because if I have learned something it's that people so damn often label themselves with some ideology without ever actually looking into what that ideology stands for at present time but it's rather satisfied with some sweetened selling speech by some presenter. I have seen here, among many other places, people who self identify as feminist who in no way support many of ideals of today's feminism. Also have encountered many who won't believe that those are things their movement stands for. Also I have encountered people who flat out deny any notion, research, statistic or anything else that opposes their perceived world view. I have seen all of this.

So what feminist are you talking about since there are so many varieties and they most certainly do not agree with each other on great many things.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

Well... Yeah. They should step off. Then they should go make their own excellent games filled with the things they want instead of telling studios to include what they want. There's a difference between making a change and forcing your opinion on a group.

 

[Guerilla]

Gamers react to the heavily politicized climate feminists have created the last 3-4 years. Before than onslaught of disgusting accusations, demands and self-promotion disguised as concern, gamers didn't give a flying fuck about feminism in general. In fact I don't even remember a single discussion about feminism before they started attacking everything and everyone in the gaming community.

I have a feeling what you define as "attacking" and how a reasonable person would define it vastly differ.

The "journalists" and pundits seem to be more the problem than feminists as a whole, and even then a lot of the nastier criticism is directed toward a particular stereotype of neckbearded, fedora-wearing misogynists. The recent discourse from gaming "journalists" is profoundly unprofessional to the point of being disgusting and warranting reprimands, but I also realize the caricature they're attacking doesn't apply to me or most gamers. At least, I wouldn't think so if not for the legions of "gamers" standing up and taking offense. If they're prefacing such comments with qualifiers like "to the sort of people who harass girls online", why assume they're implicitly smearing you and throw yourself into that fight even assuming you don't believe the problem of internet harassment toward women is prevalent or noteworthy?

It seems that you see only what you want to see. This isn't a recent phenomenon and it's not limited to gaming "journalism" hacks. This extremist behavior is observed in gaming forums like RPS and neogaf, in the indie community where doxxing is apparently A-OK if a feminist like Quinn does it but when her boyfriend releases info extremely relevant to corruption in the gaming industry it's "reprehensible", in games blogging where scam artists like Sarkeesian have become rich from whining about EVERYTHING, and last but not least in the entire gaming industry that censors, stays silent and many times tries to appease even the worst of them.

They've created this image of this humorless whiny asshole because that's how the majority has behaved the last few years. I'm a socialist who also believes in equality but have you seen us being hated by the gaming community? No? Let me give you a hint on how we achieve that. Instead of acting like self-righteous assholes, we argue with people rationally instead of preaching and we don't look for the slightest reason to get offended and use that as an argument. Yes, most people I meet don't agree with me but even when things get heated we still have some mutual respect (well, unless you're a bigot or someone lacking basic empathy for your fellow human beings).

So you consider yourself as "making excellent games" simply because the video game designers happen to share your gender and/or skin color?

Fuck you and this canard.

You created a strawman to be offended with and then decided to be extremely rude to him about something he didn't say. You were *just* saying that feminists behaving terribly are isolated incidents, right? You do see the hilarious irony in this, right?

 

[Phil the Nervous]

So you consider yourself as "making excellent games" simply because the video game designers happen to share your gender and/or skin color?

Fuck you and this canard.

That was mature and well thought out. Let me rephrase my statement.

At what point do you get to dictate other people's behavior to get what you want?

 

[mecegirl]

As far as "artistic integrity" goes, artists aren't free from criticism. That's the primary way audiences interact with their work. An artistic can't bask in praise while shunning negative feedback as illegitimate. Want to be free from criticism? Paint in your basement and never release it to the public for their opinion. Not to mention how much of this "art" is be committee. Just look at Ubisoft to see how rote the design of their AAA games are. Art, more often than not, is a commercial product. Hence your suggestion to "vote with your wallet".

The design by committee philosophy is why I've always found the artistic integrity argument to be largely uncompelling, apparently, when a publisher changes the artists vision we all bow to the god of capitalism and justify it as just a business decision, but the ramblings of the internet masses with little actual power to force change are apparently derided as attempts at censorship.

Generally this argument smacks of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, games are apparently a commercial product whenever it is convenient, but they are also some form of mythical sacrosanct artistic vision as soon as some form of criticism we don't like comes along, not just with diversity arguments either, I see this form of argument get trotted out for a lot of other things too.
It's people pretending that they care about the artist's vision for a game, except when the publisher comes along and forces story, gameplay, or artistic mandates in line with their focus-grouped marketing studies, then apparently all those artists and writers can go fuck themselves because games are suddenly a business product again.

Yep. Because somehow not having more diversity in protagonists is both the artistic vision of the developers and because games without the "standard" protagonist just don't sell.

The reality is probably a lot closer to publishers choosing to only fund games that already are, or can easily be tweaked to become, what they believe will sell. So if artistic integrity has anything to do with it we are only seeing a percentage of what the developers want to create.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

That was mature and well thought out. Let me rephrase this.

Thank you.

Protip: Someone calling you mature for misrepresenting them and cursing them out? That's sarcasm.

As much as consumer sovereignty and the right to assemble allows?

If you're able to be loud enough to get others' attention and can find and/or influence groups of like-minded people to advocate on your behalf, isn't that how one's supposed to enact change?

No, that's how you get a bunch of people whining at anyone who'll listen. That's how a majority of lazy, talentless individuals jump on a bandwagon together and yell until people get tired of them. If your solution to not having food is to ***** until someone feeds you then you deserve to starve. If your solution to misrepresentation in games is to ***** until someone changes their behavior to suit you you deserve to be left out.

The solution is to change it yourself. Not whine until your mother feeds you.

 

[Guerilla]

Yep. Because somehow not having more diversity in protagonists is both the artistic vision of the developers and because games without the "standard" protagonist just don't sell.

The reality is probably a lot closer to publishers choosing to only fund games that already are, or can easily be tweaked to become, what they believe will sell. So if artistic integrity has anything to do with it we are only seeing a percentage of what the developers want to create.

That's called a moral equivalence fallacy. You basically make excuses for one wrong by focusing on a different one. If you have evidence that publishers compromise the artistic vision of developers by not allowing them to have more diversity then please post them. Until then you have no leg to stand on with this argument and is completely irrelevant to the subject.

 

[Phil the Nervous]

Protip: Someone calling you mature for misrepresenting them and cursing them out? That's sarcasm.

As is someone responding to obvious sarcasm in an ironically amicable fashion. At least we both have an equally low opinion of the other.

Funny how easy it is to pick up on sarcasm after it's pointed out to you.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Not if people want their oil. Then you're just squeaky.

The bold is where I take back my apology, gracious as it was, and re-iterate "Fuck you."

You're going to have to point out that gracious apology to me cause I totally missed it. Or, just edit it into one of your posts someone didn't quote already.

 

[mecegirl]

Yep. Because somehow not having more diversity in protagonists is both the artistic vision of the developers and because games without the "standard" protagonist just don't sell.

The reality is probably a lot closer to publishers choosing to only fund games that already are, or can easily be tweaked to become, what they believe will sell. So if artistic integrity has anything to do with it we are only seeing a percentage of what the developers want to create.

That's called a moral equivalence fallacy. You basically make excuses for one wrong by focusing on a different one. If you have evidence that publishers compromise the artistic vision of developers by not allowing them to have more diversity then please post them. Until then you have no leg to stand on with this argument and is completely irrelevant to the subject.

Did you not hear what happened to Remember me? Or what about Bioshock and the publishers putting Elizabeth on the back of the box. Or about how developers for the Last of us had to demand both female focus testers and to put Ellie on the front of the box?

 

[Guerilla]

Could you be just a little more condescending and dismissive? You insist this isn't a recent phenomenon (a point I'd agree with, by the way) only to proceed to cite the most recent example. On top of that, you expand your indictment to include... bloggers and forum moderators who are even lower on the totem pole than the "'journalist' hacks".

I admittedly don't know what "doxxing" is and frankly I don't want to get embroiled deeply enough in this internet warfare horseshit to know. Likewise, I don't see where the outrage about Sarkeesian earning more than her Kickstarter pledge. That's a fault of kickstarter and everyone who pledged wanted her to get their money. If they feel they didn't get their money's worth, let them complain about it. To be so morally-outraged on behalf of people contributing to this feminist blight you loathe is... not honest.

The fact that feminists gathered 200,000 dollars for a professional victim is proof that feminism has been meddling with gaming for a long time now and sponsoring the wrong people too. The fact that the have disgusting double standards is proof that feminism in gaming is irrational. The fact that they have harassed many developers is proof of feminist bullying tactics which instead of trying to inspire women to become gamers or developers it accuses and make demands from everyone who happens not to be a woman. There's your proof, I don't know what else you need from me.

Again, I'm sure "gamers" played no part in that image and never at any point generalize or strawman it for their own gain. The same way it's unfair to paint "gamers" as fedora-twirling Redditors, how do you know the "majority" has behaved in the way your criticizing? On top of that, is it not possible that "gamers" are being reactionary and taking the worst

Gamers being fedora-twirling Redditors is a stereotype only SJWs use and desperately try to spread. Noone else thinks gamers are like that. Again, I repeat, there are many gamers with different ideologies, I mentioned mine for example, there's only one that is starting to become really irritating to us. There's a reason behind that and it's the obnoxious behavior of a very large number of feminists.

My point, coarse and ill-explained as it was, is that on an individual level "White Guy A" has no more right to be pandered to than "Black Guy B" or "Woman C". They all pay their $60 the same, and one doesn't get to bask in collective accomplishment/benefits while spurning collective guilt as pedantically as "white dudes on the internet TM" tend to.

Actually you're wrong. An industry panders to its customers not the whole planet. Lipstick manufacturers make lipsticks based on women's faces, lips and skin because their product is targeted mainly to women. They're not being "sexist" because there are a few men that wear lipstick, they're just being practical and logical. If the majority of core gamers are men then that's the demographic they should mainly pander to.

 

[EternallyBored]

No, that's how you get a bunch of people whining at anyone who'll listen. That's how a majority of lazy, talentless individuals jump on a bandwagon together and yell until people get tired of them. If your solution to not having food is to ***** until someone feeds you then you deserve to starve. If your solution to misrepresentation in games is to ***** until someone changes their behavior to suit you you deserve to be left out.

The solution is to change it yourself. Not whine until your mother feeds you.

This is a disingenuous representation and bad logic, part of changing something is to talk about it and to advocate for change, especially in cases where the change is being advocated from at a citizen or consumer level. The civil rights movement didn't work because people changed it themselves, they took action, but much of what was accomplished in the beginning was due to "complaining", protesting, and convincing people who were already in positions of power to change their minds. To use a less drastic example, before people mistakenly think I'm trying to equate consumer advocacy to the civil rights movement, many recalls and consumer policy changes are made due to lobbying and talking to the actual corporations where change is desired, and in many cases it works.

You are basically lumping all forms of complaint into "whining", which is disingenuous and wrong, "whining" has accomplished much throughout history, and will accomplish much more, because society cannot support itself if every person tried to personally get involved and actively change an industry within every time they dislike something about it, it doesn't work that way, and while you can work to get more sympathetic people into positions of power, the first step is usually to convince those already in power to sympathize with your cause and beliefs, history has proven it to be an effective tactic for years now, especially in the age of instant communication.