Tropes vs Women in Video Games

Quote from Rick_D

Like campaign junkie said, I thought we were better than this, I thought being in the industry we would see exactly the kind of shit that happens on a day to day basis. Marketing and demographics over-rule common sense and morals, and those demographics aren't even accurate. Just because YOU think white males aged 20 make up 90% of the people playing games, and that those kids only like shooting arabs, doesn't make it true.

Personally I am getting tired of video games, I don't want fucking action shoved down my throat every second of every hour. I want good games that feature stories, arcs, progression. I want to feel that same "wow" I feel when I put down a good book, or finish watching a great movie. Just sitting with the status quo gets us shit like lollipop Chainsaw, and Hitman (recognisable by her small tits lol get it because she has small tits and she must be killed lmao!).

TL;DR for dux and sentura: fuck you lmao

When have you ever heard from someone in the industry that 90% of gamers are white 20 males. I thought it was pretty common knowledge that the average gamer age is like 33 and that 40% of gamers are women. I have literally never heard someone in the industry claim otherwise. (although those statistics in themselves are worthless as there are demographics for different games (or do we want to generalise gamers as well), just as there is a demographic for barbie dolls and everything else in human existance (people are different, different people like different things)

As to the shooters thing. Try expanding your horizons, there are thousands of games out there that focus on other things. I would say you perceiving only shooters is more your problem of generalising the "industry".

Quote from Rick_D

I thought being in the industry we would see exactly the kind of shit that happens on a day to day basis. Marketing and demographics over-rule common sense and morals, and those demographics aren't even accurate. Just because YOU think white males aged 20 make up 90% of the people playing games, and that those kids only like shooting arabs, doesn't make it true.

Personally I am getting tired of video games, I don't want fucking action shoved down my throat every second of every hour. I want good games that feature stories, arcs, progression. I want to feel that same "wow" I feel when I put down a good book, or finish watching a great movie.

That's the part of her argument that i agree with and from which perspective it should be discussed. It's an creative and buisness issue. I'm getting sick and tired of the same old tropes and stereotypes aswell.

What i don't believe is that anyone sits in a studio and decides "hey lets put this helpless but beautiful princess in the game so we can demean and objectivy women". These decissions are not made with malicious intend. It's purely a lack of creativity and unwillingness to risk new ideas. Ignorance perhaps but that's hardly the same as sexism or misogyny which is implied by Anita and other feminists as the core of the problem.

But then to be fair with some of the filth she gets as response to her work how can she not believe to be surrounded by sexist mysogynist gamers? It's a bit like someone who's clinically paranoid actualy getting stalked.

Does she get her tits out in part 2?

Quote from Rick_D

apinians

i openly support equality for all, race, gender, sexuality notwithstanding. i think, as someone else mentioned that she should be free to make and post these videos regardless of if her opinion is seen as "counter-sexist". it's fine, i don't mind being labelled whatever because i know it wouldn't be an unanimous decision by everyone on the planet. i think she could do a better job at convincing people why her topic is so important, but that's among my greatest criticisms for her. i think the crux for her videos or her message in general (i guess this is for zealous feminists) should be focusing at putting people in the imposition that women are in. when discussing this subject among women i often hear, "you don't know what it's like". and that's the thing: if i knew what it was like, i would have an easier time grasping what to do about it. it's hard to explain a feel to someone else in words, and in our day and time we have a boon in media (books, films, games) that could allow us to create a scenario where one could make a reader/goer/player be in the imposition that women are in. the message would be better conveyed, and instead of instigating this kind of provocation (i'm speaking purely based on observation here - males in general seem to not take too kindly to how she puts forward her points), you could have people that would push further for equality in vidya games/whatever other medium.

my problem with this kind of feminism lies in (again based on observation) that the people behind feminism seem more focused riling up the audience and causing an "us versus them" separation instead of focusing on pushing forward something worthwhile. i know the series isn't done yet, but i'm hoping we will see more of things done right instead of just her telling us things in the past done wrong. at least in that way, she could inspire future game developers to have a template understanding of how to maturely handle women in video games. doing the "here is a list of things that are wrong" without a comparison for what is right simply becomes a hate speech more than anything else.

i also thought that this was relevant:

Quote

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The industry likes the statistic that almost half of gamers are female and aged over thirty because it shows a diversity and maturity they would like to be associated with. People on this board presumably realise from their own experience that the audience of core titles is a much younger and male-dominated space.

Anyway, talking about demographics reminded me of a post I was linked to written by Kelly Sue DeConnick in her Reddit AMA. It is, of course, concerning comics but much of it seems to parallel the games industry.

http://www.reddit.com/r/comicbooks/c…184q1?context=1

nvm fuck it

Quote from D3ads

Does she get her tits out in part 2?

D3. D3 never changes.

Sorry, obvious troll should be obvious, thinking this was EOT again

I tried to watch the video, but 5 minutes in and it just seems like a load of facts thrown at you and Anita doesn't have much energy in her as others have said, it's just really dull, which is a pity because it seems well made...

Ok I watched the whole thing, only to realise that this wasn't Tropes vs Women in Video Games Part 1: Damsel In Distress as I thought but Tropes vs Women in Video Games: Damsel In Distress Part 1 and there's going to be another 20 minutes odd about Damsel's In Distress in the second part and maybe even more parts after that before another topic ends up being discussed... I don't think I have the will to watch more of that...

She did a good job of being impartial throughout until the end when she called the scene in Streets Of Rage "crap".

Can't wait to see what she thinks of Tomb Raider!

itt, a woman makes one hundred sixty thousand dollars, and a career out of giving speeches, lectures etc to the video game industry, by claiming that video game industry subjugates women. she later becomes mayor of Ironyvile

itt, another bunch of dudes are line "omg I THOUGHT WE WERE BETTER THAN THIS. I thought we were better than to disagree with a feminist!!!!"

i'm now sawing my hands off and sticking my face in a vat of molten lead. if somehow my body musters the energy to make another post in this thread, please drop a solar system on what is left of me before i can hit the post button

Quote from FMPONE

itt, a woman makes one hundred sixty thousand dollars, and a career out of giving speeches, lectures etc to the video game industry, by claiming that video game industry subjugates women. she later becomes mayor of Ironyvile

itt, another bunch of dudes are line "omg I THOUGHT WE WERE BETTER THAN THIS. I thought we were better than to disagree with a feminist!!!!"

i'm now sawing my hands off and sticking my face in a vat of molten lead. if somehow my body musters the energy to make another post in this thread, please drop a solar system on what is left of me before i can hit the post button

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/AcHQ8.gif]

FMPONE, I’ve read all your replies in this thread, including the one deleted, and you seem to have major baggage with feminism that you really need to leave at the door. I disagree with a lot of feminist "theory" and don’t like the professional victim style used by some of its proponents, but it’s not a unilateral movement and this doesn’t negate the points being raised here. It is clear women do get the shitty end of the stick when it comes to video game representation and this is not a justified balancing act with prostate cancer research, child custody, workplace deaths, and other male inequalities. Equality is about fixing everything for everybody.

Quote from FMPONE

itt, a woman makes one hundred sixty thousand dollars, and a career out of giving speeches, lectures etc to the video game industry, by claiming that video game industry subjugates women. she later becomes mayor of Ironyvile

itt, another bunch of dudes are line "omg I THOUGHT WE WERE BETTER THAN THIS. I thought we were better than to disagree with a feminist!!!!"

i'm now sawing my hands off and sticking my face in a vat of molten lead. if somehow my body musters the energy to make another post in this thread, please drop a solar system on what is left of me before i can hit the post button

I'm going to make your same mistake. When I look at a situation like this, I like to ask myself, "Who is really wielding the power here?" And I feel like, asking ourselves that, it's hard to believe that real power is vested in a bunch of pseudnonymous online criticisms rather than in a person who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars as some sort of media figure and "expert" consultant to companies, who is herself a representative for an industry and social movement that wields such massive power that ordinary people are often afraid to voice their opinions publicly.

Quote from Rick_D

the same thing applies with all social issues, it's worthless to denounce someone's views simply because they differ from yours, the responsible thing is to ask "why do they feel like this?". You can pick data, and pick apart their arguments and statistic but why do they feel it is an important issue?

Anyway, it's never black and white. There's going to be extremists on every side. A problem is a muddle of greys, possibly without a right or a wrong position, and to just pick a position that comforts your world view does nothing to further society or yourself as a person. Humans fight for each other every day, they do incredibly selfless acts. Your mother risked her life to bring you into this world. That guy from Nigeria risked his life moving to some frozen wasteland to give his family a better chance. That policeman puts his life on the line every day to keep his community safe. I think the very least we can do is to question our views every once in a while and try to see things from multiple viewpoints, not just to appease some political or social agenda, but at the least to make yourself a better human being.

I posted this video because she isn't some "stupid whore" with poorly researched opinions that serve to put down and demonise men; but because it's interesting to see opinions from a different angle. Anita came to DICE and gave a talk to the studio about things we could do as an industry to improve how women perceive themselves in games, how we can get more women to play and enjoy games. believe it or not she enjoys video games, she really cares. her problem is that when we say "oh but it's always been like that" or " but everyone else does it" then we are part of a larger problem. Even if you go for the wallet then creating games that are more open for all ages and genders is going to bring you bigger profits.

Anita Sarkeesian is certainly entitled to her views, however ultimately everyone is an individual and has their own perspective. This is actually one of my primary objections to her efforts -- She presents her viewpoints as facts when ultimately they are simply opinions. As a woman you might take it as offensive that so many women are Presented as a "Damsel in Distress" -- But that's hardly the only valid opinion. As a woman you could find this a favorable trope for acknowledging the difficult-for-some-to-cope-with reality that women are physically much weaker than men but promoting the idea that one's value as a person might be independent of your ability to exert your will over people via force.

As a man you can equally take offense to a number of other ideas that are perhaps even more prevalent in gaming. A "Damsel in Distress" is definitionally a woman perceived as worth saving, but the flip side of that is that men are not subjected with similar frequency to this narrative trope because men's lives are often considered without innate value. The games where men are slaughtered without remorse by the hundreds or thousands for no reason other than wearing the wrong colored uniform are too many to count.

In my own eyes there aren't "shades of grey" as you say, but rather a multitude of blacks and whites and greys, and in our reality something can be both black for you and white for me, or anything in between, all at once. Both of ours are "true" from our given reference frames. Ultimately there are billions of different perspectives out there, stating that anyone's subjective experience is "wrong" is very presumptuous (we can, of course, be wrong about what something objectively is). And unfortunately that is exactly what these videos try to do -- They aren't attempting to present a complex and multifaceted reality which encourages our sharing and understanding of our experiences. These videos are about trying to establish and promote a particular narrative and hedge other perspectives out.

In my own opinion, this is largely successful precisely because the videogames industry is immature and because people who are the foundation of the gaming industry, those of us who have been gaming our entire lives (ie,nerds!), are not socially savvy enough to understand and articulate a proper response to what's really going on here. A similar thing happens with videogames when the topic of violence in gaming rears its head -- A socially powerful group (politicians) makes some flimsy claims ("Violence behavior is strongly influenced by violent videogames") and demands that the industry change to accommodate their demands.

Like the famous loaded question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" the only good answer is to refuse to play that game.

I highly recommend viewing these videos:

I like your view Wail. It's similar to mine. My opinion is that equality isn't about erradicating these tropes and stereotypes. That's where i think the feminist agenda is misguided and hence gets strong counter reactions for. Rather in a world of freedom and equality ther's enough room for all kinds of depictions especially in art and media which should be free of any form of dogma. So the focus should be on creating and offering more variation not to replace one monochromatic scheme with another. The tropes in videogames (which includes the male tropes) mostly annoy me because they are so prevalent not because they exist.

Personaly i have no problem playing a female or black or homesexual char in a game. It's all roleplaying and fun to me. For other people it seems more important that the char is a representation of themself. This seems not just be the case with the young male cod crowd that the industry gathers to but also for Anita and her followers ironically.

What's interesting is to take a look at a game where players have a lot of freedom to create their own characters. I play Eve Online which has a great character editor so i can share my observations from there. What you find is that male and female characters seem distributed pretty equaly even tho the majority of players is probably males. And what's more is that many chars are not designed for cool or beautiful looks by the players but for individuality. I would like to see Anita analyze the social behaviour patterns in such a game because i think it's very different from what she perceives playing singleplayer games or first person shooters. I have a female main and a black secondary char and i can honestly say that i can count the instances of sexist or racist comments on one hand.

Quote from Rick_D

It makes developers and players look like immature, angry, hateful people

Not wanting to paint everyone with the same brush here but to a degree this is just true. A large portion of game developers and consumers have grown up in a counter culture that has been shunned by the rest of society for much of their lives. I was, and im not ashamed to admit it, but obviously its going to have an effect of how you react when someone starts preaching equality to you. Something to the tune of "where was my freaking equality".

/rant

Eh i don't identify myself with the youtube troll crowd. There are hateful, vile comments below pretty much every youtube video not just feminist videos. These people will write whatever it takes to rile up others. And these people are very loud so it's easy to mistake their bile for majority opinion.

The Amazing Atheist made a video about it. It's not exactly one of his best but he makes some valid points in regard to this phenomenon and how to deal with it.

I find it hard to give credit to some random people on Youtube when I see most of their comments, on any video, not just feminist stuff. I agree with Rick overall. Even if I disliked her video because I think she doesn't bring arguments and just stated examples the whole time, I don't hate the motive at all. I'd like to see a more well thought-out video with more stuff in it and possible solutions to the problem, which she doesn't bring at the moment. But hey, it's a series of videos so it may happen in the future.

One thing I didn't say is that different games target different people, and that what she may find sexist may not be sexist for other people. I know several women who aren't offended by the damsel in distress trope in Mario at all, for instance. What may be interesting is if several other women were invited to talk about it or something, so we can have multiple angles of approach and not just Anita's.

EDIT: Duh I didn't see Wail's reply. I also agree with it.

Really i find the subject quite dry to be honest, games for girls portraying them in a decent way do exist, by tons, which they find fun to play; i know it for a fact : i worked on a horse riding mmo game.

Ok it pleased the several 40 years old men shown in the database too, we even had a lawsuit for harrasment against a 50 years old dude. Now that's equality of enjoyment, and probably makes me the most progressive game developper of the boards working for the minorities of little girls and pedophiles alike.

Seriously though, when i see my girlfriend playing videogames (because she plays quite a lot actually, but isn't a nerd ) what does she likes :

- games like final fantasy 8 & 9, kingdomhearts, the last remnant, dungeon keeper, diablo 2, world of goo, plants vs zombies, terraria, stronghold, skyrim, baldur's gate 2, xcom etc

- she likes character customization for sure

- what's interesting is that most of the time (depending on the game) she doesn't like to play a girl and especially in the ones where she is forced to play an arbitrary given feminine character (she would rather play an animal/non human character if she has the occasion, like in skyrim).

- she also quite enjoyed god of war 3, playing this super macho man slashing around in this fancy greek ecosystem full of phallic symbols to the point of giving you a strange erection when you open doors and coffers. She even enjoyed the QTE where this weird abusive bald man go easy with aphrodite and her friends; but she didn't even identified in any way with the girls that were pictured here, because it's just so ridiculous.

Thing to never forget is that if games are about role playing, they are all about fantasms.

I enjoy playing for the laugh a bald man ridiculously full of testosterone in god of war (so she does), a cold blooded assassin, duke nukem, some super soldier or greedy gangster in GTA or whatever. (as ridiculous as it is, but i do enjoy "brainy" games too )

But these are just fantasms, for men, it's for the fun, it's ridiculous, over the top and too big for life. Not far at all from some Sergio Leone movies.

I mean i don't enjoy Ben Stiller or Jennifer Aniston in some random romantic comedy, nor i enjoy sex & the city.

And she also doesn't enjoy the virilism i seek in my WW2 wargames where i play an empowering general sending his flamboyant soldiers to the death or my competitive FPSs holding a bit fat long gun shooting at other players dominating them.

And that is perfectly normal stuff !!

What Anita actually attacks is games designed specifically for men fantams, which are a majority because yes, most of the consumers are males who like virility and borderline homo erotic games; and really there's not so much women to enjoy these actually like as i never saw a woman who fantasm to be a Sergio Leone cowboy or some Clint Eastwood.

If she honestly wanted to lift the debate way far beyond from just scratching the surface of videogames, excluding other medias and get a clear understanding of why men fantasms picture easy women, evil dominating seductresses and princesses in distress. It would take much more than lifting polemic and attention around her own image, setting up a donation system and community management on her website or setting up a kickstarter page for a ridiculous amount of 160 000$ when it's not that expensive to hold a blog/twitter/website/make videos on youtube.

In the timeline : denouncing ==> get money ==> presenting her developed full ideas

My tiny humble 2 cents