Tropes vs Women in Video Games: Ms. Male Chararacter"

Post Reply New Topic

I've watched the whole video and he hasn't debunked anything. All he's managed to do really is miss every single one of her points.

Game publishers are scared of even allowing the developers to include scenes of female protagonists initiating sexual activity with male characters. They're scared that will set off homophobic feelings in male teenage gamers. The fact that Mass Effect at least allowed male romance options for female Shephard as well as gay male romance options for male Shephard still means that the game industry is getting there though. This stuff is partly the reason why it's useful to have discussions about the kinds of points that Anita Sarkeesian makes.

Video games are such a niche market, if there was a significant enough demand for more female focused games then there would be more. I don't really get the point of Sarkeesian's videos, what does she want? I know she wants video game developers to heed more attention to their female demographic which is fine but her digging thru the entire history of video games comes off as a not so implicit attack on the entire medium of video games and the people that play them as misogynists. I don't know what she all advocates but maybe it's just an overreaction due the to the way other feminists and members of the PC police usually conduct themselves toward people or things they personally disagree with(banning, firing, censoring, silencing) Video games are still an artistic medium, nobody has the right to censor or force their own agendas on to it.

Obviously Sarkeesian isn't a scholar or held to any academic standard, what she's doing is essentially just click bait, people seek out these topics and videos to debate and have their views heard. I don't think many people watch her videos passively, that's the whole gist of blogging and being a youtube star. I don't really care that she apparently pocketed something like $154,000 of her supporter's money, I'm not sure those people that donated to her knew that were going to be paying for shoes and steak dinners regardless of their abuse she faced on the internet but as said about fool and their money.

BTW, abuse on the internet isn't really a big deal. People manipulate it for attention, it's not hard to anticipate what will stir up the internet. I don't think anybody has ever received real harm from these online harassers. People say nasty stuff in literally almost comment section on the internet on pretty much anything, that's just the way it is unfortunately. \

Our culture has become way too influenced by bloggers and other attention seekers, some are great but most aren't. The ones that actually make money get paid by the click and have a quota of work they need to produce. It's a lot easier making a post about why such & such proves why God is or isn't real and anticipating the ****storm it will create than to actually produce something informative, creative, or whatever.

bolded to help you understand the point.

What's a female focused game? Women play games in all genres, even first-person shooters. Also, movies and TV shows are an artistic medium but doesn't mean that we shouldn't talk about how women or anyone else is portrayed in them either.



And what's wrong with debating the issues that she presents in her videos?

I'll repeat, Sarkeesian received zero legitimate rape or death threats. Guthrie (one of her supporters) allegedly received "thousands of rape and death threats" on twitter, and yet only one person was arrested and subsequently charged because he was in breach of a Canadian 'peace bond'. Sarkeesian clearly did not feel threatened by any anonymous abuse that came her way. Remember that Sarkeesian herself referred to the posters of "threats" as "trolls", which sums up precisely how little threat she felt. Amongst the posts she labels "threats", are a bunch of harmless if ill-directed jokes about 'making sandwiches' and 'going back to the kitchen'. By polarising the audience, she achieved exactly what she wanted, and the entire thing has been blown monstrously out of proportion.

In reality, 4chan (who the fudge takes 4chan seriously?) users - who are most definitely not representative of any gamer with a mental age higher than their shoe size - were largely responsible for the 'cyber-terrorism'. This was not a worldwide campaign of abuse against women (or indeed, woman), rather it was the stupid response of an immature community with a batshit crazy concept of what passes for 'humour'.

What I find appalling is the disgraceful manner in which any detractor of Sarkeesian is automatically tarred with the same brush, regardless how balanced their criticism of her work might be. It doesn't matter how many idiotic things have been said on either side of this debate, as with all 'journalism', Sarkeesian's work should stand or fall based on its merits. By turning it into a polarised media circus, this has been rendered near impossible.



Which points do you agree with? Please give details as I'm sure this would be a much more productive topic of debate.



Let us also remember that 'gamer' covers a massive range of different people from different backgrounds, despite still having the connotation of "spotty geek in darkened bedroom" attached to it.



Sarkeesian didn't create this thread, ignoring it does not constitute ignoring Sarkeesian. The subject has been put on the PPR table and so those of us who have an opinion on the topic are going to discuss it. I don't have a policy of ignoring posts on WP, especially when the subject matter touches on my personal interests. There have been a lot of active threads on PPR recently, so it's not surprising that some have been lost in the mire. Alternatively, it's possible that the other post wasn't interesting enough to inspire further comment.

As for Sephardic-Male, while I find his posting 'style' to be abrasive, hostile and incredibly badly written, he has made a number of valid points. Sadly they've been neutralised by his combative approach to dissenting views.

Gamers, if you don't want to be seen by a stereotype, stop acting like one!

[img][800:474]http://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/the-berenstain-bears-no-girls-allowed-e1341612225753.jpg[/img]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6Isg0bmVU[/youtube]

A genuine threat would, at the very least, be required to be found threatening by the target. In this case, it has been widely documented through video evidence that Sarkeesian herself dismisses such threats as "stupid trolling". A genuine threat would presumably lead to a police investigation and subsequent arrests. Nobody has been arrested for making death threats against Sarkeesian.

Despite her claims, it has already been shown that the harassment Sarkeesian received through 4chan and (correct me if I'm wrong) reddit existed prior to her creating the crowdfunding video. They are not directly attributable to "the gaming community", whatever demographic is supposedly meant by this.



So because a minority of people who play video games behave stupidly and therefore anything Sarkeesian posts is above critical reproach? Is this minority representative of gamers? Because that's what's happening here. There are numerous reasons for socially well-adjusted gamers to give a s**t about Sarkeesian's, the first being that her videos are ill-informed, poorly researched, politically (and financially) motivated codswallop. Sarkeesian, by her own admission is NOT a video game fan. Her goal is not the improvement of the medium, which is progressing nicely all by itself.



Didn't you just write a paragraph against ingrained ideas about social stereotypes?

lets take a break and have fun with costumes




some pictures from dragoncon2013

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtXuKOfUPKw[/youtube]

My son liked playing Xena Warrior Princess.I'm not sure about the princess part.That does sound sort of girly.

I really only have one problem with Anita Sarkeesian. She's not a female gamer making criticisms about gender inequality in video games - she's a feminist media critic whose chosen to pontificate about gaming culture.

I very highly doubt she's played even half of the games she's talked about - much less the tons of games that don't fall into her message that actually *do* feature women in prominent roles.

If I want to hear about the female perspective on video games, I'll go talk to Felicia Day.

Seems more reasonable than Xena Warrior Prince.

Anyone even remotely interested in games should follow this example.

Whenever I hear the word Prince,I think of The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.Not a character I'd want to be.You'd get your ass kicked.