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

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But the mad guitar skills would be worth the trade-off surely?

^^

You know she's a feminist right?

So? Maybe he doesn't judge a woman based on whether they're feminists or not.

yeah, and when she talks about sexism in video games I listen - because I know that she knows video games and the video game culture, and the business of video games, etc. I lend her a lot more credibility that she actually knows what she's talking about.

You know this means I automatically win the thread, right?

Do you think, that genders have different worths and should have different rights, depending on their law?

If not, congratulations, you are a feminist too. Does that mean, that we should stop listening to you?

Yes, because putting a flash game on newgrounds.com where you have to beat her face until the screen turns red (where the image actually progressively starts showing lacerations and black eyes) is not legitimate harassment apparently. Among the posts that she got also included images of her being sexually assaulted and someone also vandalised the Wikipedia article on her and posted pornographic images on it.



I'm not really interested in 4chan. Also, there was far worse harassment against her than a "few immature jokes".



I haven't really experienced that. Although, a lot of the criticisms often miss the point that she was making.



Well for starters, my entire opening post was talking about what I thought of her latest video. With regards to her "Damsel in Distress" videos, I don't think the "Damsel in Distress" trope is always a problem in and of itself but when she got to the "Euthanised Damsel" variant, where the protagonist actually has to end up having to kill the damsel that he was trying to rescue, then that definitely is something that I've seen in a few video games which I find disturbing and I hate it. In fact I don't like it regardless of which gender gets "euthanised" but it's most commonly a woman while a male is extremely rare. I was glad that they managed to avoid that in Starcraft 2, regardless of many other Starcraft fans complaining that they avoided it because Raynor did not go through with his vow in Brood War that he would one day kill Kerrigan (yes, this would of been an example of that trope if he had gone through with it).



Yes, that's true. Though not all of those geeks are misogynists either.



Funny, you cut out the post you made that I was replying to and that was important for context. In it, you said that you were "disappointed" to see a thread about Anita Sarkeesian on WP, yet you now say that you have enough interest in the topic to reply to it? If you are interested enough in the topic to participate in the discussion then how can you be disappointed to see the topic on WP? I thought that that was the whole point of discussion forums.

That video of her lecture where she said that she didn't identify as a gamer doesn't completely convince me that she isn't a gamer as there are a number of possible explanations for it. The only requirement to be a gamer is really to enjoy and like playing video games and in that video, she really seems to be saying that she doesn't like violent video games. While she may of not identified as a gamer at that point in time, it's quite possible that there were certain types of video games that she did enjoy and that she changed her mind about identifying as a gamer later on. I mean, how many games do you have to play in order to be considered a gamer? I know that there is still a distinction between casual gamers and hardcore gamers though.

He already identifies as feminist or pro-feminist, so that question is completely useless. He said that because he was arguing with someone who was anti-feminist, (or at least I think so based on an argument that I had with him in an earlier thread).

I don't really care if she identifies herself as the queen of Zamunda, it doesn't make her any more qualified to command my attention. I used Felicia Day as an example because she has bona-fides - her contributions to the world of gaming consists of more than feminist pontification.

And she's the first prominent figure to experience this? Is this behaviour restricted to a specific group of people or aimed exclusively at women? Is any of this relevant to her video series?



Nobody is asking you to be interested in 4chan, but you have two options here.

1: Attribute the harassment and trolling to the correct source, or alternatively
2: Be consistent. If we're going to use minority subsets as normative examples, it logically follows that all feminists hold the psychopathic views of Krista Milburn. Every single feminist is guilty by association.

In this instance, the Sarkeesian hate-machine was spawned on 4chan (and to a lesser extent reddit) prior to her kickstarter video and she has unashamedly abused her prior knowledge of public opinion against her to garner public support, by specifically labelling "gamers" rather than "4chan trolls" as the guilty party (in complete opposition to her views prior to launching her kickstarter appeal). This has become part of the narrative surrounding her fabricated story that has been reiterated by her supporters as absolute, indisputable fact.



Again, you will probably need to expand on this.



I completely agree with you on the DID point. Whilst damsels (or indeed mansels) in distress might be considered a lazy plot device by modern standards, I can't actually recall the last time I've seen it used as the main arc in a game. The only one that springs to mind is Braid which, for those who are unfamiliar, is actually a deconstruction of damsel in distress preconceptions and therefore probably doesn't qualify.

Your take on "Euthanised Damsel" is one that I simply cannot agree with. I simply do not understand how anyone who reads a story, watches a movie or plays a video game featuring this plot device could possibly come to the conclusion that the author is in some way condoning such behaviour. The argument of "disempowerment" put forth by Sarkeesian is incredibly misleading, as are her criticisms of games as "power fantasies". These are fictional characters in fictional worlds and, regardless how much you suspend your disbelief, you would have to be pretty messed up to not understand the distinction between reality and fiction. Games are designed to empower the gamer, regardless of gender, and every character you encounter within a game - again, completely regardless of gender - is a tightly-controlled puppet with a predetermined destiny.

And yet, it is perfectly acceptable for you to disagree with the creative decisions an artist takes. It simply is not reasonable to try to insert your personal political views into that media as unproven assertions of fact, a la Sarkeesian. Her 'criticism' of the games amounts to "this does not conform to my personal beliefs and my personal beliefs should be given special treatment in games" and "the group of people who enjoy this media are universally terrible people if they don't agree with my personal beliefs". She isn't interested in discourse in any environment where she cannot directly control the narrative.



Exactly so. The majority who actually do conform to the stereotype are probably insecure, impressionable young people with an immature understanding of the world.



Reading back I realise I left that rather open to interpretation. Visit any forum where discussion of Sarkeesian's videos has been initiated, and you will very quickly notice the trend (which I'm sure you will agree has continued here). Rational, objective discussion of the videos becomes buried under a landslide of reactionary, combative posts by her supporters and detractors. Indeed, rational posts themselves are dragged into the crossfire and attacked by either one or both extremes, based only on the political leanings of the poster (perhaps ascertained from a single statement or word choice) and ignoring the facts. Typically the outcome is a closed thread.

Much as I would love to believe that a rational discourse on the works of Anita Sarkeesian is possible in any public forum, experience dictates that such belief would require blind faith. This is an issue that I have a vested interest in, and not just because I'm one of millions of people who enjoy escapist pursuits as a refuge from mundane reality.

I know that Felicia Day is a well-known actress but I'm unfamiliar about what she has said about the portrayal of women in games. If your issue with Anita Sarkeesian is that she doesn't know everything about the games that she is criticising then that may be true in some cases. She does seem of made a few mistakes regarding some of the details. If Felicia Day had made any criticisms then I would listen to her too.

I don't care how many people have experienced it before her, that doesn't mean it's not harassment.



I haven't seen proof that all the harassment comes from 4chan. From what I have seen though, it seems like MRA's and MGTOW's have been partly behind it, though encouraging other people to harass her. Some of them may be from 4chan anyway.



?! I don't see how that follows. I could of sworn that I specifically said in a previous post that it was unfair to label the whole gaming community as misogynistic. And who's Krista Milburn anyway? I haven't heard about her.



Regardless of my ignorance about 4chan, I know about the reddit source and most of it comes from people in the Men's Rights subreddit. So, that actually supports what I've seen regarding MRA's being partly behind it. The Gaming subreddit may of had threads discussing her videos, like this one, but I don't think they would've openly discussed harassing her, unlike what the Men's Rights one seems to do.



I tell you what, show me some specific criticisms that that you think are good which some people have made, then I'll try to explain why they miss the point, or not, depending on whether they are valid. Sephardic-Male has already posted that video of Jordan Owen criticising her most recent video. However, although I've watched the whole thing and do think that most of it missing the point, that video is simply too long for me to go through all of it and give counterarguments to all of them.



Hmm, the problem that I have with Euthanised Damsel has got nothing to do with the developer wanting to condone anything, that's besides the point. The problem that I have with with it is that the player's character is forced to kill the damsel in the end even though via the in-game story it's someone that he supposedly loves as well as the fact that the killing is portrayed as a good thing. The usual argument to defend it is that it depends on context and that there's usually a backstory where it seems to be justified. However, regardless of the backstory, it is still the player's character that pulls the trigger and I hate it and find it distasteful when that happens, especially when it's a character that you get to know early on in the game and that the character is completely innocent.



I don't necessarily want to impose political beliefs on anyone else but I think that the euthanised damsel trope is horrible extremely bad storytelling. Oh, and since I think that video games are a form of art, then one can criticise them just like any other form of media including television and media. I doubt that Anita Sarkesian has any power to force her views on anyone. If she influences the game industry it would be because she has some support from developers.



Well, some of them maybe teenagers but I don't know if the majority of them have an immature understanding of the world. Maybe some of them are just reclusive.



I've seen few threads about her on the internet that weren't locked but ended normally and people just lost interest. I don't think that that will happen to this thread though. Already, it got buried under a number of other threads after I hadn't responded to you for just over a day.

Calling Felicia Day an actress is a bit like calling Barak Obama a black politician.



No, my issue is that she has no knowledge of games outside the ones she's hand-picked and done tons of research on as examples of sexism in gaming. As an example, I completely fail to see how one can really thoroughly examine the Ms. Male Character trope without addressing the elephant in the room - the Metroid series. She spends the first few minutes of the video painting the trope as a lazy excuse for a plot device by early game developers, and then spends the next few minutes explaining that when game developers include female characters in their games, it's for no other reason than to have a "token chick". Well, then, explain Samus to me please. Or at least acknowledge that there are actually games, even contemporaries to the games that you call out, that don't conform to this. Herald them as a positive example of what game developers can do.

In fact, the only games she ever highlights as praise for "breaking the rampant misogyny in games" are indie games. Any "mainstream" game that works against her message is conveniently brought up just to be dismissed as an "accident" or "not meaningful" (including the Mass Effect series, which is truly hilarious).

My experience with Felicia Day is limited to 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.' I haven't heard, seen, or read her saying anything substantial about video games, good or bad, even after googling her in the context of this thread.