I'm not singling you out for this post, but this post is a good example of a lot of things I've seen in this thread since last night, and I wanted to over them.
First, many have said "All that money for this?," which is basically your same complaint of poor research, writing, and delivery. I don't know how, after watching this particular video (which is what this thread is about), anyone could question her research, writing, and delivery. She clearly went through dozens, probably into the hundreds of old games, looking through the stories, getting clips, and editing them into a coherent 20 minute video documentary. To the people saying, all that money for this? - do you have any idea how hard or how much time something like that takes? Given that this is part 1 of 1 of 12 videos, I can see that she put a lot of time, money, and effort into it. Her delivery was very good (and I imagine wasn't done all in one take! As an aside, I wonder if there's overlap between people saying "I could make this crappy video for 500 bucks in my basement!" and people who eagerly listen to a podcast of a bunch of dudes shooting the breeze about video games - something you really could do in your own basement with a few microphones. Anyway).
One of the other things I highlighted from your post was that many, many people have taken this video as some kind of "argument." I really don't know why anyone thinks this, but obviously some people have taken this video as everything from an argument that Nintendo sucks! to Crystal is a bad character! Dudes, she's not making an argument. This is basically a survey class, an introduction to a particular trope that is frequent in the video game industry - the damsel in distress model. She found significant examples to discuss more deeply, and ALSO showed many, many other games from many different developers that used the trope. She is not making an argument at all (unless you think the following statements are debatable - 1) The damsel in distress trope is common in video games, 2) this trope can be problematic, because of the subject/object dichotomy she lays out).
So no, she's not going to look into the Mario RPG's to say, Peach is really a well developed character! Or hey, look, Crystal isn't just a damsel in distress, because look at the alternate endings of later Star Fox games! That's not the point. Those are just notable examples used to illustrate the subject she is discussing. She's not attacking those characters, or Nintendo, or video games. Hell, I was kind of sad that she had to make so many pre-apologies in the damn video, going so far as to show herself as a kid playing Nintendo games. She did everything she could to say, this is just feminist criticism internet dudes, I like video games, I like these particular games, I'm not saying video games are bad or that video gamers are bad people. So of course people disregard all that.
I wanted to circle back around to another point really quickly. Look, writing an introductory survey of a course is hard. Making a video of that is even harder, especially once you're talking about well done video editing. I think she did a good job, and based upon the reactions in this thread, I don't know how anyone could say what she's saying is obvious or so what? To those saying so what, did you watch the video? Did you see where said why damsels in distress can be a problem? She didn't hit the point repeatedly - presumably she trusts somewhat in the intelligence of the audience. Maybe she over-estimated that, or under-estimated the knee-jerk reactions.
Quick edit: Because a lot of people seemed to miss it, she discusses why the DiD trope is problematic (I'm pretty sure that was her word choice - she wasn't even damning it, just saying, hey, this might not be good). The problem is that in typical form, a woman is reduced to a powerless object, and the woman's disempowerment is used to empower the male (who is usually the player character and the subject of the narrative). She doesn't get into the social science of it, but it kind of naturally follows that you may not want impressionable minds repeatedly being told the story that women are weak and powerless to save themselves (from situations which, as she shows, male video game characters are able to use brains or brawn to effortlessly escape).
*I'm not going to re-watch the video now, but I'm 99% certain Twilight Princess was shown in the video.
