Prove to me that the Gaming Community Excludes Women

[Dizchu]

(I am a long-time lurker of these forums, but please don't dismiss what I have to say just because I haven't had experience in discussion here before.)

With the recent #Gamergate controversy, many opponents have claimed that the backlash to Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and their supporters has been because straight, white, cisgender male gamers want the gaming community to exclude any other demographics.

I find this claim insulting and lacking in evidence. While poorly-represented female characters and homogeneous "grizzled male beefcakes" are sadly too common in games, I find that games that have these issues are widely panned by the mainstream gaming public. Similarly, I find that games with diverse, well-written characters and fair representations of people of different sexes, sexualities and ethnicities are usually well-received by the gaming public.

So what I'm asking is this...

Can anyone give me examples of high-profile games with only straight, white male protagonists and absolutely horrendous portrayals of women that HAVEN'T had a backlash from the gaming mainstream?

On the other hand, can you give me examples of high-profile games that have diverse, well-written characters and good portrayals of ethnic minorities and women that have been hated BECAUSE they were diverse?

Thanks

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Depends on which sections of gaming you are talking about. We aren't just one massive community. We have sections who don't care about other sections. By and large, I no longer care what happens in multiplayer FPS land. In the same vein, a big CoD fan probably doesn't care about grand strategy as a genre. As another note, women generally play more casual/cell phone games, which I could also care less about.

While I couldn't say if female players of grand strategy games are rare considering these generally are not water cooler games that you discuss in public and aren't multiplayer, I know(at least back when I used to play them) that they are quite rare, or don't use voice chat, in multiplayer FPS. Why? Because they will be tormented by asinine children(in physical or mental age) for no reason other than they are female. I've heard it happen.

But this is more of a problem with developers. As far as I know, women are quite underrepresented in the dev community. This shows. Very few games have a female PC(in games where you can't choose gender) compared to generic McWhiteguy. I can think of a dozen games that fit that mold, but only a handful of female PCs. It's like developers don't expect men to be able to relate with a female character. Yes, there are some things men just won't get, but I've yet to see a game feature menstruation or pregnancy as game mechanics. All the rest can be understood.

It just seems like the male gamers don't always give female gamers respect and the devs don't give male gamers enough credit to "risk" making a game with a female lead. When it comes to major developments for consoles and PC, the male demographic is still the larger one. To a degree, it seems like it's a side effect of design by committee. In order to reach the largest number of people, the protagonist should be as similar to them as possible.

It is interesting that you bring race into it as well. While there are at least a substantial number of female protagonists, I think I can count on one hand how many black protagonists there are. I got... 3 off the top of my head. Prototype 2 guy, CJ from GTA SA and the black guy from GTA 5(haven't played it yet).

 

[Dizchu]

A lot of obtuse points in your post, not to mention the needlessly iconfrontational title, "Prove". Usually when somebody says "Prove to me!" they're stuck firmly in their position and completely immovable, not interested in discussion, but more interested in defeating points that are weak on the basis that the questions are weak as well. I'm not really interested in arguing the points, I'm trying to not gives myself a headache, just showing problems with the point anyways

It's not quite that I am completely closed to any responses and more nuance to my opinion, I am legitimately asking these questions because of the amount of hyperbole that has been going on and would like honest answers. The confrontational title, I must admit, was possibly a poor decision but I genuinely want to know why gaming culture is seen as a "boy's club" when we all know females that actively engage in the community without feeling out of place.

All straight white cisgender men? All of them, is that their claim? Notsome straight white cisgender men? Not most straight white cisgender men? Not the most vocal of straight white cisgender men among the gaming community?

Not all, I should have clarified this. What I meant is that it is the members of this demographic that is accused of being exclusionary. Not being part of this demographic, I can confirm that they might have the most attention from big publishers, sometimes frustratingly so... but they don't get all the attention. I don't see this as the same as being exclusionary.

"Mainstream gaming public"? Do you mean mainstream journalistic and editorial outlets? Do you include personalities? What makes them mainstream? Personalities Angry Joe and Total Biscuit get more viewers than many online reviews on sites like this do. Do you need a view limit to be considered mainstream? Are mainstream opinions ones that solely focus on gameplay, or can they focus on thematic and narrative aspects of the game?

What I mean by "mainstream gaming public" is your average gamer. Not limited to journalists or personalities, people in general. While some highly objectionable games can get commercial success, if they are tasteless, insult the player by pandering to adolescent fantasies (unless it's tongue-in-cheek) and appeal to the "lowest common denominator", they tend to get mocked by the gaming public. They rarely have any lasting impact in the way well-written games do unless the appeal lies solely in the gameplay mechanics.

Except when they're not games because you don't shoot people in the face, see: Gone Home and The Walking Dead. Not trying to imply that you feel this way, but its hard to take many people who don't believe such a thing seriously when they say "well then make your own game", like its an easy feat, and then when somebody actually does it, they say its not a game, and they reject it as being a game because they want to be unassociated with the game or the cultural values it brings with it.

Gone Home is a very tricky example and probably one of the better ones if you're going to argue for a heteronormative, exclusionary gaming public. Public opinion is polarised, though I'd say this is because of its minimalist game mechanics (and possibly misleading promotion?) rather than the relatively tame LGBT aspect. I am very fond of Gone Home and its story, but I do not personally consider it a gay-centric game and I think people's negative reaction to that aspect was a suspicion that it got sympathy from reviewers just for including a theme like this at all, rather than the game's merits. I don't agree with them but again, I think their problem is with the game mechanics rather than the themes.

The Walking Dead on the other hand has been widely praised. If I have heard any criticisms of it, it's because of its "interactive movie" nature rather than the fact that the cast is ethnically diverse and has realistic portrayals of males and females. In fact, the adventure game genre has always been much less insistent on conveying bland gender stereotypes than most other genres, as they are usually character-driven and people like multifaceted characters. The "well make your own game" argument is rather silly, I'll grant you that. I do disagree strongly with your core premise that non-violent, more passive games get dismissed arbitrarily.

Even in games they can't reject as "not games", they find other reasons to object to the inclusivity. See: Bioware romances. I never heard anybody complain about them before Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, but once they're including non-heterosexual romances, all of a sudden, it "ruins" the character to be romancable by the same sex in somebody else's completely separate playthrough because the character being romancable by both genders just ruins it because... reasons. HMMMMMMMMMMMMM...

I think your problem here is with a larger issue, homophobia. It exists but on the internet, people of all sexes and sexualities can congregate, so in more mainstream spaces (outside of right-wing, religiously extremist, bigoted niches) it is called out. I don't think it is a facet of the gaming community itself, rather it is by a minority of members in the community that have been informed on these issues by external sources like religion and heteronormative culture, which effects all media. If anything, I've seen that the gaming community is more inclusive than most, possibly due to the relatively young age of its members and their involvement with the internet. Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 have not been the most critically acclaimed games due to numerous writing and mechanical faults, so it's hard to say if the diversity is the primary reason for their bad reputations.

If you include negative racial portrayals, easy target, Call of Duty.

Call of Duty's campaigns and glamorisation of war, or more often the large portion of its players that are obnoxious adolescents, have consistently been the target of mockery.

If you're not including racial and sexuality portrayals, and thus, allows games with main characters that are not white or straight, I'd say GTA V. One woman gives the review a 9/10, and while still praising it, said how she felt that the game's treatment of women was too extreme to fit fairly under the banner of "misanthropy". The response to that was less than civil, and rather unpleasant, with a lot of sexist, homophobic, and transphobic responses among them.

This is an interesting example. I was there during this incident desperately trying to fend off hordes of transmisogynists, being a transwoman myself. I was not alone, many were rightly outraged and actively condemned this behaviour. GTA has one of the largest amounts of players of any series, and this inevitably includes loud-mouthed idiots. I think it is unfair to say this is a sign of the gaming community wanting to "keep gaming a male safe space" because it was a vocal group that got an equal amount of backlash from gamers that thought their behaviour was unacceptable.

A problem here is the defition of "high profile". Does that mean AAA games only? Does it include smaller games from indie or smaller developers? What is "high profile" exactly?

I agree, it was probably unnecessary in retrospect. I meant it in a way to differentiate from obscure flash games that have been the target of a few trolls, as I don't think that's indicative of a large-scale problem with the whole gaming community.

Quite frankly, the way the whole post reads, being so obtuse, is something written in a way so that you can reject any responses that counter your claims, especially with the word "prove", since, as we've seen in the past month or so, people tend to have really shitty standards of evidence, being too high when its something they oppose, and being too low when its something that would support them in some way or another.

I'm sorry if I came off as confrontational. I suppose I wanted to get my point across with as little ambiguity as possible, seeing as a lot of misleading stuff can be slipped in if I were being ambiguous. I am generally open-minded about this, despite many of the people arguing this recently. I don't think women and demographic minorities have it easy but I think it is a big stretch to suggest that they are not welcomed into the gaming community, so I wanted to see if there were any notable examples of this that I have missed lately.

 

[Dizchu]

Depends on which sections of gaming you are talking about. We aren't just one massive community.

Excellent point. I'd argue that there's a place for everyone in gaming and that there isn't some conspiracy amongst the entire gaming community to repel women, LGBTs and ethnic minorities. The recent "The word Gamer is dead" sentiment really rubs me the wrong way because they do suggest that it's one homogeneous group of straight white males.

Because they will be tormented by asinine children(in physical or mental age) for no reason other than they are female. I've heard it happen.

It does happen, but I don't think it's the fault of games or the gaming community. They're usually trolls and bullies that need to get a rise out of someone else. It sucks but there's not much anyone can do about that other than people in their personal lives and other players moderating poor behaviour by banning them.

But this is more of a problem with developers. As far as I know, women are quite underrepresented in the dev community. This shows. Very few games have a female PC(in games where you can't choose gender) compared to generic McWhiteguy. I can think of a dozen games that fit that mold, but only a handful of female PCs. It's like developers don't expect men to be able to relate with a female character. Yes, there are some things men just won't get, but I've yet to see a game feature menstruation or pregnancy as game mechanics. All the rest can be understood.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think it is specifically a problem with more action-oriented games, but the gruff, bulky white guy has become such a tired cliche, propagated by ignorant committee choices and awful focus groups. This is a problem that is slowly being alleviated but as you said, it's a problem that occurs on the development side. People are much more open to playing people of different genders and races than they'd initially think.

It just seems like the male gamers don't always give female gamers respect and the devs don't give male gamers enough credit to "risk" making a game with a female lead. When it comes to major developments for consoles and PC, the male demographic is still the larger one. To a degree, it seems like it's a side effect of design by committee. In order to reach the largest number of people, the protagonist should be as similar to them as possible.

I think the problem is with a vocal minority of socially awkward teenagers and stereotypes of the gamer demographic. The point I was getting at is that games that deviate from these "design by committee" games to offer fresh experiences are welcomed, if the gameplay is good. I heard refreshingly little backlash to the announcement that half of the player's choice of characters in the next Borderlands would be female, a series that if anything has done well with including diverse characters.

It is interesting that you bring race into it as well. While there are at least a substantial number of female protagonists, I think I can count on one hand how many black protagonists there are. I got... 3 off the top of my head. Prototype 2 guy, CJ from GTA SA and the black guy from GTA 5(haven't played it yet).

I brought up race because much of the "gamer identity is dead" discussion was about how white male gamers try excluding every other group, which I believe is absurd. I think people are more than willing to play as black characters but developers are hesitant to make them, which is disappointing but the warm reactions the black characters we do have is encouraging to me.

I think this problem is to do with marketing. In the western gaming market, straight white males are the dominant demographic. They're not the entire demographic though, but because games are marketed solely to the dominant demographic all the others get overlooked. It's a sad reality of marketing, but if 10% of customers are gay and 90% are straight, it won't result in 90% of products being marketed to straight people, it'll result in almost all of them being marketed to them, because more money can be made out of that demographic. Hopefully more diverse developers would solve this problem.

 

[Something Amyss]

With the recent #Gamergate controversy, many opponents have claimed that the backlash to Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and their supporters has been because straight, white, cisgender male gamers want the gaming community to exclude any other demographics.

[citation needed]

Especially for Anita. I'd be surprised if she said anything of the sort. It's especially weird because one week, the narrative is that feminists don't care about anyone else and next, it's this sort of thing. I'm starting to think Anita Sarkeesian is like one of those things in Harry Potter that morphs into whatever you fear the most.

I find this claim insulting and lacking in evidence.

Since it's a strawman claim by all appearance, you could rectify that by simply not presenting it.

Similarly, I find that games with diverse, well-written characters and fair representations of people of different sexes, sexualities and ethnicities are usually well-received by the gaming public.

Where's your evidence? What games are you looking at? What criteria are you using for reception?

Penny Arcade Report had a bit o games with female protagonists or protagonists of selectable gender both receiving less promotion and selling fewer games than their male-only equivalent, and while this is far from a full rebuttal of your claim, it makes me doubt it. But then, you're making claims without evidence and then trying to put the burden on us, and that's not exactly honest.

Not all, I should have clarified this. What I meant is that it is the members of this demographic that is accused of being exclusionary. Not being part of this demographic, I can confirm that they might have the most attention from big publishers, sometimes frustratingly so... but they don't get all the attention. I don't see this as the same as being exclusionary.

When you have Naughty Dog talking about how they had to fight to get women in focus groups, that looks pretty exclusionary. Do you need links? You say you're a lurker, but these are brought up pretty common so you should probably be aware. But again, exclusionary as far as what specifically goes? Would it be, inf your definition, okay to exclude women in the "core" (usually defined as shooter/action/racing) category because there are games that cater in the "casual" (much harder definition to standardise, but for the sake of argument, let's just arbitrarily use the weak category of "mobile phone games." I don't care that it's a weak definition, as it's merely an example).

What I mean by "mainstream gaming public" is your average gamer. Not limited to journalists or personalities, people in general. While some highly objectionable games can get commercial success, if they are tasteless, insult the player by pandering to adolescent fantasies (unless it's tongue-in-cheek) and appeal to the "lowest common denominator", they tend to get mocked by the gaming public. They rarely have any lasting impact in the way well-written games do unless the appeal lies solely in the gameplay mechanics.

You still haven't defined the average gamer. That argument could mean the average gamer is a Candy Crush playing soccer mom. IT's mainstream, commercial, etc.

A good analysis will precisely define its terms and establish a methodology to seek a conclusion. It looks like you have instead worked back from a conclusion and obscured it with poorly defined terms. This isn't a good way to approach any matter in an honest and reasonable fashion.

 

[Something Amyss]

I brought up race because much of the "gamer identity is dead" discussion was about how white male gamers try excluding every other group, which I believe is absurd.

Most of the articles talk about a narrowly defined group of angry white males who have been the marketing focus. I think you're trying to redefine the "opposing" argument for convenience.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm sorry if I came off as confrontational. I suppose I wanted to get my point across with as little ambiguity as possible, seeing as a lot of misleading stuff can be slipped in if I were being ambiguous.

I appreciate that, and as you're (apparently) new here, it's quite possible you're not familiar with the tone of these discussions here on this forum (and by "these discussions" I of course mean "gender focused" discussions). They are up to the ears in hyperbole, polarizing rhetoric, inflammatory and accusatory language, and hostile generalizations. Ergo, if you want your thread to turn into anything other than a big pile of shit for monkeys to fling at one another in fits of histrionic rage, you would be well advised to avoid any appearance of sensationalism or confrontational language. If, on the other hand, you're looking to get an early badge for a highly active thread, try throwing "Sarkeesian" into the title, and lace your OP with nebulous conspiracy theories and thinly veiled well poisoning. It'll be ten pages inside of a day.

As to your question...this isn't like applying for a membership at a gym at getting turned down. It's not the kind of exclusion you "prove". And frankly I don't even particularly like the word "exclusion" because I think it's inaccurate. I think a better way to describe the situation as regards the industry is that it does a very, very good job at pandering to the perceived wants of 12-24 year old white heterosexual males, and an absolutely worthless job at appealing to anyone else. It's improving, but that improvement has been slow, and a certain demographic of the gaming public has been dragged along kicking and screaming about the evil women and minorities out to turn "their" hobby into a politically correct wasteland (not to be confused with the actual Wasteland, which is a fine product and embraced by all).

If there is an attitude of true exclusion, it is in certain circles of "hardcore gaming enthusiasts", who fret over "fake geek girls", rage about "friend zones" and "attention whores", and if certain stereotypes are to be believed own more fedoras than the cast of Sex and the City owned Manolo Blahniks. That's where your hyper hostile boy's club misogyny tends to come from...they want "Others" out of their clubhouse. Not so much from developers themselves, although a few have been accused of being a bit testosterone heavy in terms of corporate culture.

How excluded the atmosphere resulting from such antics makes any one person feel will depend on how much of it they are exposed to, and how thick a skin they have. Personally, I think expecting everyone engaging in a particular hobby to have an extreme threshold for vituperative insults, harassment, death threats, stalking, etc, etc, etc, as though "assholes" were a force of nature beyond anyone's power to control, is a bit silly. Others, as you have probably noticed, feel differently.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I find this claim insulting and lacking in evidence. While poorly-represented female characters and homogeneous "grizzled male beefcakes" are sadly too common in games, I find that games that have these issues are widely panned by the mainstream gaming public.

To an extent, but they still get made because they still sell, and lots of people want things to continue like this.

Can anyone give me examples of high-profile games with only straight, white male protagonists and absolutely horrendous portrayals of women that HAVEN'T had a backlash from the gaming mainstream?

Er...well, who is the mainstream? How many of them need to oppose something for it to count as a backlash?

On the other hand, can you give me examples of high-profile games that have diverse, well-written characters and good portrayals of ethnic minorities and women that have been hated BECAUSE they were diverse?

This would require the people against them to overtly say they were against them due to their own prejudices, wouldn't it?

People hate various games, and it's very common for privileged people to "just happen" to hate games about people who aren't. Now, often this will be because those games are rubbish, but statistically, there's a lot more of them being hated than you'd otherwise expect, which is telling.

And of course no one wants to shut out the female CUSTOMERS, they have this thing called money and it's pretty handy for running a business.

Depends. Businesses make terrible decisions all the time. Companies can not get that more female customers would help, and still have enough income to stay afloat. Alternatively, they might get that, but totally fail to be interested in actual ways they could get them.

 

[Dizchu]

[citation needed]

Especially for Anita. I'd be surprised if she said anything of the sort. It's especially weird because one week, the narrative is that feminists don't care about anyone else and next, it's this sort of thing. I'm starting to think Anita Sarkeesian is like one of those things in Harry Potter that morphs into whatever you fear the most.

My issue in this instance is not with Anita Sarkeesian or any aspect of the Gamergate thing other than some bizarre over-generalisations. My problem is with the highly simplified narrative that a large group of straight white males want gaming to be a "boy's club" and wish to exclude others. I got the impression that a majority of "gamers" don't want diverse characters because it'd infringe on their hyper-masculine power fantasies. I don't deny some of these people exist but they're the basis of a stereotype that affects everyone else. I think it's harmful and ironically, it makes the games industry appear even less attractive to women.

Since it's a strawman claim by all appearance, you could rectify that by simply not presenting it.

Do you disagree that the sentiment that a large proportion of gamers want to exclude everyone different to them has been spreading around? People are attempting to speak for and claim to know the motivations of large groups of people and I'm merely suggesting alternatives.

Where's your evidence? What games are you looking at? What criteria are you using for reception?

Many of the most well-known and adored female characters in video games have been celebrated for reasons other than them being two-dimensional sex objects with poor writing and characterisation. Samus, Lara Croft, Zelda, Jade, Alyx, Glados, Shodan, etc. They counter this idea that there is this poisonous hyper-masculine male gaze that wants submissive, objectified female characters. Poor representations of females are either laughed at for pandering so much to adolescent sensibilities or criticised for being poorly written and detrimental to the game experience as a whole.

When you have Naughty Dog talking about how they had to fight to get women in focus groups, that looks pretty exclusionary. Do you need links?

That seems to be exclusion on the part of publishers rather than the gaming audience, based on stereotypes that I think many of the accusations I am concerned about have exacerbated. The fact that Naughty Dog did fight to get women into those groups indicates an inclusive attitude amongst the actual developers and players.

Would it be, inf your definition, okay to exclude women in the "core" (usually defined as shooter/action/racing) category because there are games that cater in the "casual" (much harder definition to standardise, but for the sake of argument, let's just arbitrarily use the weak category of "mobile phone games." I don't care that it's a weak definition, as it's merely an example).

It's never okay to intentionally exclude anyone. In fact when it comes to games that target larger demographics I think developers and publishers have more of a responsibility to be more inclusive. Some developers have succeeded at this better than others, but it does not suggest that there is a widespread conscious attempt to exclude anyone.

You still haven't defined the average gamer. That argument could mean the average gamer is a Candy Crush playing soccer mom. IT's mainstream, commercial, etc.

My definition includes any of them. Anyone that plays games. The fact that all of these demographics do exist suggests that there is more incentive to include rather than exclude.

A good analysis will precisely define its terms and establish a methodology to seek a conclusion. It looks like you have instead worked back from a conclusion and obscured it with poorly defined terms. This isn't a good way to approach any matter in an honest and reasonable fashion.

I haven't reached a conclusion yet. I just thought my own observations and those of my peers conflicts strongly with some of the sentiments that have been thrown around.

Most of the articles talk about a narrowly defined group of angry white males who have been the marketing focus. I think you're trying to redefine the "opposing" argument for convenience.

If that is their sole target then that must mean that the large backlash I have witnessed on social media from women, gays, lesbians, people of all colours that have either been mistaken to be angry white males or have been insulted by the large amount of oversimplification by sloppy analyses must have been misled?

 

[ElMinotoro]

http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/02/misog-apologists-and-gaming/

Anyone else remember this one?

 

[Dizchu]

I have to be honest, some of your responses have been great. Even if we may seem to be on opposite sides of the issue there's a refreshing amount of overlap between our opinions.

The kind of shit you won't get in those monstrous Gamergate threads you know?
I just wanted some responses from people that weren't personally invested in this to the extent that they start throwing insults all over the place. There's actual gender discussions to be had without the whole conspiracy angle. I must admit I started off a bit angry because of the hyperbolic language used elsewhere but I was just curious really.

The current state of the discussion is a sorry sight indeed.

 

[Calbeck]

A lot of obtuse points in your post, not to mention the needlessly iconfrontational title, "Prove"

Yes, that single word DOES make running a guilt-presuming inquisition difficult to justify.

 

[Thaluikhain]

My issue in this instance is not with Anita Sarkeesian or any aspect of the Gamergate thing other than some bizarre over-generalisations. My problem is with the highly simplified narrative that a large group of straight white males want gaming to be a "boy's club" and wish to exclude others. I got the impression that a majority of "gamers" don't want diverse characters because it'd infringe on their hyper-masculine power fantasies. I don't deny some of these people exist but they're the basis of a stereotype that affects everyone else. I think it's harmful and ironically, it makes the games industry appear even less attractive to women.

That is an over simplification, yeah, but I don't think it's one that's really being seriosuly considered. Might crop up as shorthand when explaining the issue is too much time or effort.

It seems more to me that "it's not broken, so don't fix it". From the point of view of people being extensively catered to, it's not broken. Or "this isn't a problem for me, you are making stuff up".

Also, some people have a real problem separating "the gaming industry has issues with women" and "you are a cannibal". This sort of thing crops up in lots of fandoms, but stick gender issues in and things get really bad.

 

[Dizchu]

It seems more to me that "it's not broken, so don't fix it". From the point of view of people being extensively catered to, it's not broken. Or "this isn't a problem for me, you are making stuff up".

I actually find the "it's not broken, so don't fix it" response from many opponents to be as bad as the "gaming culture is inherently misogynistic" assertion. The way some publishers treat the industry in terms of gender is very problematic and requires analysis and discussion. The problem with the discussion is that it feels like the middle ground is non-existent. It certainly gets less attention, which is frustrating. I want positive examples of gender in games to be used as the foundations for like-minded games rather than having them overlooked in favour of some poorly-made fanservice-ridden shlock.

 

[BNguyen]

I don't think that it's that men are working to exclude these groups but that certain members of this group can't take the same level of challenge or verbal abuse through online that so many others get and when it starts flying their way they take it all too personally and assume that it's some kind of coordinated attack against them and thus some kind of mob mentality thing to exclude people like them.

Basically, the way I see it is that if you're going to be a part of the community, you better be ready for every aspect that comes with being a member and don't take insults or whatever personally.

 

[Vault101]

the fact that both of these things exploded the way they did (sarseskian and quin) I think speaks for itself

 

[Dizchu]

And on GTA V, saying its sexist or racist is essentially shooting your argument in the foot. That game is clearly parodying the very concepts of such things. You cant call something sexist if it has a sexist guy whos represented as evil just because he's sexist, else your saying sexism is good and they shouldn't have represented it as a bad thing. Clearly you havn't played it. And the reviewer who said that was clearly high at the time or too stupid to be a journalist for saying such an illogical thing.

I think giving GTA a pass because it is satirical is problematic. The Saints Row series, while its humour is less dry than GTA's, can get away with it better. I love GTA's humour but there are a lot of people that play GTA, some of them are completely sexist idiots that will take it at face value. I wish it had a badass female player character, if anything it'd be different. I didn't agree with everything the journalist in question said but she did not deserve the amount of shit flung at her for having the audacity to give the game a 9/10.