So, I agree with pretty much everything in Anita Sarkeesian's Damsels in Distress video.

[Maximum Bert]

People can see what they want to see I guess I dont think the wider audience actually gives a crap male or female they play games to have fun and well thats it usually I suppose some play competitively for money or to educate themselves but usually its for fun.

Many things look different depending on your viewpoint like the glass half empty or half full whichever you think its still half way. Viewpoints are never right or wrong they just are and we are obviously encouraged to embrace certain views because it helps define order and makes things easier when dealing with things on a mass scale but really thats all they are viewpoints no-one is more right than any other even if one side is seemingly nonsensical and irrational.

For example, Tifa in FF7 is a badass pretty much the whole way through and the instant she needs help the game is sexist for using the damsel in distress trope? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. If someone is captured, regardless of whether they need help or not, their loved ones are still going to try to help them. I don't really see how that's sexist. Why isn't it the same when another, male character needs help?

What Tifa is incredibly sexist she wears a short skirt and has large breasts,...just joking I like Tifa although I didnt for a while but her character won me over she always seemed one of the strongest characters personality wise in the game plus her fighting style always looked awesome Cloud has his huge sword and Barrett has a friggin gun what does Tifa have her fists dammit and she kicks ass with them also Tifa does actually free herself from the gas chamber and has to support Cloud throughout most of the game I wouldnt argue she isnt eye candy but she also a damn good character in her own right. Cloud and Sephiroth are pretty feminine but they are also good characters imo at least in FF7 not so much in some of their other appearances.

Also why did this video series cost so much?

 

[magicmonkeybars]

In this case, though, I would have broke away from the traditional example, and shown more modern games with the damsel in distress trope.

That is what her second video is supposed to be about, the present day DiD, I'm sure it'll be posted within... well whenever it's done I suppose.

Never got this really. Men like being the hero and rescuing the girl. Its not about the woman as in her being weak or pathetic. Its just that, as a man, we like to rescue the victim and men love woman. Some say its sexist but then we, as men, have a mum, sisters, girlfriend, daughters and wives. We, as men, would rescue and save female members of our family and friends. Its not sexism to think woman need to be saved. In Tomb Raider you saved your male friends multiple times and never once did any men comment negatively on this. Its saving the person you love, whether friend or family. Not because she is female......thats how i see it anyway.

Did you quote the right person ?
Personally I would just call the cops if a family member or loved one was abducted.
As a person I never really saw the people I was saving as a reward or possession I had lost.
The DiD trope seems to be a flimsy excuse to have a reason to play a game, you know player motivation.
The DiD are often so one dimensional that you can replace them with anything really, a plant or a robot, whatever you like, maybe even pie, I love pie.

 

[krazykidd]

Quick question? Why? Why is this woman getting so much attention? She made a kickstarter and a youtube series, why are we paying so much attention to her? Is she really that important? Come on.

Why ? I think jim sterling made a jimquisition video on why . Because , people don't ignore her . Just let her do her thing and she will soon disappear in the mist like eveyone else :

OT: while she's not 100% wrong , i personally think she's blowing this stuff WAY out of proportion . Am i'm pretty sure most of her supporters don't even play videogames . Anyways i heard what she had to say , an not impress and will ignore her for the rest of her existance.

 

[Kmadden2004]

Dinosaur Planet
There is nothing wrong with this example at all. And I agree entirely, the way in which Dinosaur Planet had a strong woman originally, only to eventually play second fiddle to Fox McCloud, is saddening to me. And an evidence of sexism that has long been in the industry, and still exists today. There has been recent talk about "Remember Me" and articles from Penny Arcade [http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/remember-mes-surprising-connection-to-facebook-and-why-its-protagonist-had], about the industry purposely pushing female characters out of the way for male ones. Crystal, is a strong female character we lost because of this industry practice, and I lament it.

And, there is nothing historically inaccurate about her claim. This is a piece of video game history that happened.

While there's no debating the turn of events (Dinosaur Planet being turned into a StarFox game), Anita and your assessment that this was done because of sexism in the industry is not a historically accurate claim, it's just your personal interpretation.

It's just as - if not more - widely held an opinion (read: reported by the game's developers) that Nintendo's suits didn't want to take a huge gambit on a new IP, took one look at the two main characters and said "Hey, they kind of look like foxes. Don't we have an already established series that stars a fox? Yeah, just re-skin this game as that, then we'll ship it". That doesn't necessarily point to Nintendo being a sexist organisation, just corroborates with the general attitude from gamers that Nintendo is lazy.

 

[REZNoR_greed]

The DiD are often so one dimensional that you can replace them with anything really, a plant or a robot, whatever you like, maybe even pie, I love pie.

maybe on the NES, and similarly technologically-limited consoles, where you came up with the gameplay and stuff first and maybe, if there's room left, a little plot or character development. but that pretty much ended with the SNES and beyond. I mean, play Minish Cap or Skyward Sword, then come back and tell me that Zelda is still one-dimensional.

The DiD trope seems to be a flimsy excuse to have a reason to play a game, you know player motivation.

and the implication herein lies the (current) main problem I have with Sarkeesian's videos. while the "you must rescue X" plot device is lazy, I will admit, I get the feeling that she thinks; and this statement is kind of implying that; the developers go in with a checklist of tropes they have to fill while making the game. tropes aren't vs anything (i.e. intentional). they're just names for things that happen to happen.

 

[McMarbles]

Quick question? Why? Why is this woman getting so much attention? She made a kickstarter and a youtube series, why are we paying so much attention to her? Is she really that important? Come on.

It's not so much the woman as the collective jimmies that she rustled just for, y'know, speaking.

So much of the criticism isn't "you're wrong and here's why" it's "no SHUT UP".

 

[Keymik]

Its part of the male dna to see big breasts as a thing.

I am a male with male dna in me. I don't see big breasts as a thing, I generally dislike women in video games with big boobs for the sake of big boobs

 

[Uratoh]

The problem with Anita's videos isn't so much the premise, as the execution. She doesn't really present anything as an opinion, and disallows any form of feedback unless she sees it directly benefiting her. Attitude in this kind of thing is everything, and she tends to come off as someone standing up on a hill pointing and yelling 'bad! bad! this is bad! fix it!' without even really offering suggestions as to how. Sexism and the like is a very real issue, but she tends to paint it in raw, black and white when it's a lot more complicated than that.

 

[WanderingFool]

Because she's right and I completely agree with her.

So... congratulations?

Whoo hoo?

Awesome?

Good for you?

Is this really worthy of a stand alone thread?

 

[BreakfastMan]

Quick question? Why? Why is this woman getting so much attention? She made a kickstarter and a youtube series, why are we paying so much attention to her? Is she really that important? Come on.

Mainly because she is a perceived outsider criticizing video games. That is pretty much it. Whenever an outsider does that, everyone jumps on the hate train, regardless of the arguments presented. If it was one of "us" (and by "us", I mean overweight, hetero, cis-gendered, male 20-something), there wouldn't be nearly this level of continuing controversy.

I also think it has to do with the extremely negative perceptions of feminists (and women in general) in male-centric social circles (which is pretty much based only on strawmen and misinformation, btw), but I think that is more of a side-note than anything (though it does pop up a hell of a lot whenever any discussion about feminism or feminist theories occurs).

 

[Raine_sage]

Hurray you agree that the damsel in distress trope exists. Next we can agree on the fact that water is wet and snow is cold because in terms of new ground broken these videos didn't really do much other than state the obvious.

"Peach and Zelda are routinely kidnapped in their games and have been as long as the franchise has been running? Gee no shit sherlock I never would have guessed."

She did have glimmers of good points I will admit but she never expanded on them. It was all very brief and very topical and I can hardly claim to be a scholar of feminism in games but she still managed to tell me nothing I didn't already know about the industry. Instead she glossed over two very important points which would have made her video actually interesting.

1. She does not acknowledge the fact that princess peach was, while still a damsel in distress certainly, a playable character in all of the mario rpg games, from the first one through the paper mario series. And in two of those games she at some point stops being a damsel and joins your party though I admit I don't know how that comes about since I've never played the original mario rpg or super paper mario. In paper mario and paper mario: thousand year door she is being held prisoner but the game lets you take control of her between chapters and has you sabotaging her kidnapers, and relaying important information to mario. The only reason she doesn't save herself is because she is literally being held in outer space both times and "how to fly a rocket" is probably not one of her many skills. I'm not saying that this invalidates the fact that she was still a distressed damsel (well distressed is up for some debate) but it would have been interesting to see Anita at least acknowledge the fact that this has been done before and perhaps draw a comparison between an "active" damsel and a "passive" damsel. I.E. Between a damsel who disappears from the story as soon as she is kidnapped and one who actively participates in the story even while kidnapped. With peach, ironically, having filled both those roles in one game or another.

2. I would have liked to see her address the different types of female objectification rather than just assume all objectification is inherently sexual. Zelda and Peach are objectified, but not as sex objects. Both Mario and Link have very chaste relationships with their respective princesses, and rescue them out of a sense of duty to the kingdom and close personal friendship. Skyward sword, while not the first to hint at a possible romance between link and Zelda was the first game to be quite so obvious about it and even then it is treated like innocent courtly love. A knight and his lady. Fox rescues crystal undoubtedly because she is sexually presented to him as an attractive partner. Link rescues zelda because the kingdom would be lost without her. Zelda is objectified but it is symbolic objectification, or rather she is objectified because her role in the story could easily be replaced by some kind of mystical item. Indeed the reason she is so important to Gannon's plans is because she carries the triforce of wisdom.
She's basically an anthropomorphic representation of peace, so is peach for that matter. The writers opted to make her a person because link can't exactly interact very well with an inanimate object. It's still objectification but it's definitely not of the "I want the audience to want to get in your pants" variety. Does that make it any less problematic? I don't know if only someone had done like, a video series. Exploring tropes affecting women in video games. Yeah that would have been swell.

Normally I would hope these might be covered in a later video but she pretty much said "Ok I'm done looking at these guys now lets move on to modern games" at the end of this first one. Anita's crime isn't that she's wrong. Just that's she's boring and uninformative and generally unwilling to admit that the definitions she works from are not as ironclad as she seems to think they are.

 

[REZNoR_greed]

She just calls it tripe and offer no actual analysis of the movie or any of the previous work of the director.

unless you count that part where she says Watchmen and Sin City are evidence that he has a thing for violence against women.

 

[b.w.irenicus]

Quick answer:

I don't doubt that there are certain tropes in videogames that depict women as weak or inferior (be it intentionally or not), or to be more precisly: depict certain individuals as weak or unable to deal with their situations (because showing a female as a hostage that needs rescuing doesn't automatically " send a massage" that all women are weak etc.).
Apart from that i don't think taht those tropes really hav much of an impact on society, just as violent videogames don't turn gamers in to killers. On the contrary these tropes originate in society and its values, not the other way around.
So in conclusion, yeah: it would be nice to see more female heroes and less female stereotypes. But using one of these tropes isn't a bad thing in itself imo.

I hope i got my point across, I'm no native speaker.

 

[Schadrach]

Dinosaur Planet
There is nothing wrong with this example at all. And I agree entirely, the way in which Dinosaur Planet had a strong woman originally, only to eventually play second fiddle to Fox McCloud, is saddening to me. And an evidence of sexism that has long been in the industry, and still exists today. There has been recent talk about "Remember Me" and articles from Penny Arcade [http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/remember-mes-surprising-connection-to-facebook-and-why-its-protagonist-had], about the industry purposely pushing female characters out of the way for male ones. Crystal, is a strong female character we lost because of this industry practice, and I lament it.

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is more due to Nintendo's general business practices than some industry practice of pushing female characters aside. Nintendo has a history with placing their popular characters (especially Mario) into another game. In this instance, it was Fox McCloud, and let's face it, people want to play as Fox in Star Fox game, not some mysterious character they've never heard of, or is the Sonic community the only one like that? Could they have handled it better? Yeah, probably, but I think saying that they did it just to push a female character aside because she's female is sort of a stretch.

Even better when you consider that Dinosaur Planet had two protagonists. Krystal was made into a DiD who then became a member of the Star Fox team in following games, while Sabre ceased to exist entirely. Certainly a better fate than having to be saved once, huh?

Where it gets even better is that one of the very games she used as an example of "but when a male character is captured, they effect their own escape" has said character saving several POWs who do nothing to effect their own escape and are male (Metal Gear). I could say the same thing about Metal Slug in that you save lots and lots of male characters who do nothing to effect their own escape. In fact, it's hard to think of enough examples to suggest that what she's saying is actually a gendered line and not "when the *protagonist* is captured, they effect their own escape, when secondary characters are captured they most often are saved by the protagonist" -- which is really just an example of the protagonist in video games generally having extreme hyperagency compared to literally everyone else in the setting.

 

[talker]

i didn't even finish reading it. not because it's not an interesting topic to argue over, but because it was just so long. i think sarkesian has some points, but exaggerates a number of things.

 

[Requia]

Quick question? Why? Why is this woman getting so much attention? She made a kickstarter and a youtube series, why are we paying so much attention to her? Is she really that important? Come on.

Because she is very good at PR, and major news outlets covered her Kickstarter as a result.

While I think Anita mostly does a bad job of making the case for good points, her dismissal of Mario 2 having Peach as a playable character because the devs were being lazy is inconsistent. If we accept lazy writing as an excuse then DiD isn't really a problem[footnote]See Bioshock Infinite for an example of DiD with good writing[/footnote]. But the reasons why something bad happens don't excuse something bad from happening (which is not to say the reasons are not important, I think asking for quality writing in games is a relatively easy sell for example), and thus I cannot accept the same reasoning in the other direction.

 

[REZNoR_greed]

Also I just watched the review again. Not a single word mentioning Watchmen or Sin City. There is a part where she rails against the Akira movie and "white-washing". That really doesn't have anything to do with Suckerpunch. So your attempts to misdirect have failed good sir.

having rewatched the video myself, I see that you are correct. not entirely sure where I thought she did.
that aside, however, I was being facetious. even if she had said it, it wasn't intended as legitimate analysis. more just to reinforce the fact that she's more than just a little biased on this topic.
and methinks she would be praising violence against men.

but anyway, carry on.