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[hachi]

Wow, I see that I dropped an essay as the last post on a page. But the post number 4500 feels kind of significant, so that can serve as consolation.

 

[Loona]

I noticed in vid-docs for Guild Wars 2 that there appear to be a number of women at Arena Net responsible for character and racial design. This caught my attention as the human female archetype in GW2 seems a step more towards logic and realism - costumes, armor, hairstyles are less inclined to be based on wacky fantasy cliches.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that I found the female characters in GW2 more interesting than typical for an MMO. I suppose my perspective is different from most male players mind you, seeing as how I'm on team gay guy. The female form is pretty to me, nice aesthetics, but I'm not really moved by scanty costumes and cleavage.

The women in the cut scenes also tend to be rather aggressive characters and intelligent. Though I don't know offhand if any of the female staff members are among the writers.

I wonder what it would be like if action-adventure themed games in general, where the fiction is set in a dangerous world requiring a lot of conflict and fighting, were designed with the sensibility of modern MMORPGs.

It seems to me one of the advantages MMOs have on this topic, along with the possibility of a huge and varied player base, is the need for a persistent world with several NPCs to make it feel alive and plausible.

At its most basic, Mario is a game of 3 characters - a decent MMO, on the other hand, can have dozens of major figures, not even counting the players, so there's a lot more room for variety, interactions and nuance.

 

[Sblargh]

It's not about hating women, it is about not being sensitive to their individuality and, thus, neglecting them to the support role of the prize in a fight between two men. Nobody is saying that game devs "harbor aggressive behavior", that is just silly and a way to incite knee-jerk reactions to people who are already emotional about the issue.

The lack of respect for women's individuality, i.e., not thinking of them as individuals in itself, but only as the (typically female, therefore, inferior) role they perform, will be theme of most of these videos. Even saying it is a sexual power fantasy is more an attempt to find the unconscious root of the behavior than to imply that we want to fuck peach.

"Going after" a beloved series and a beloved creator is more a way to raise awareness that the behavior is ingrained in works that in no way we would consider bad and in people that in now way we would consider evil than to try to kill somebody's respect for said work or said creator.

 

[Kazerei]

I just watched the video and actually found it really interesting. Quick historical question. Does anyone know which came first, the Popeye licensing thing or the Radar Scope incident in regards to Donkey Kong?

In the video she says the reason why Donkey Kong was created was because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye. The story I always heard and read was that there was this game called Radar Scope that bombed in the U.S. Basically, Nintendo wasn't a household name back then in the late 1970s. They were trying to break into the North American arcade scene, so they overhyped this game called Radar Scope and sold a bunch of arcade cabinets to U.S. arcade operators. The problem was the game bombed financially, but Nintendo wanted to put those arcade cabinets to good use. They tasked Miyamoto with making the game better, but instead he decided to scrap the game's concept and made Donkey Kong instead, which went on to become a huge hit.

The video made it sound like they just switched the characters from Popeye and Olive to Mario and Donkey Kong, when what I've always heard and read is that it was an original creation by Miyamoto after Radar Scope bombed.

That aside, I really wonder what her thoughts on the new Tomb Raider are. I know the PR was horribly sexist, but she's actually a somewhat strong female character in that game. Yeah she's kind of weak at the start, but she starts killing people left and right later on. I've found some of the criticism of Laura in the new game kind of weird, because half of it sounds like male reviewers saying that they are unsettled by Laura, being a woman, acting like 99 percent of lead male protagonists, ala Nathan Drake, in that she *shocking* kills people. Am I reading this wrong? How is it cool when Drake does it, but it's unseemly when Laura does it? That's where I'm drawing a blank. Is the anger coming from the borderline BDSM stuff where they basically punish her in the game for shock value or that she's a woman doing stuff that traditional male protagonists do?

Edit: I might be wrong, I need to find my copy of Game Over ... somewhere ...

Edit2: Too lazy to search for a book IRL, so I searched on the internet instead

http://www.insidegamingdaily.com/2012/10/29/all-your-history-nintendo-part-1-leave-luck-to-heaven/

 

[HolyBaikal]

I agree with pretty much what she says, but this leaves me conflicted - It's still OK to like and enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw, right? Right???

You should see my video game collection.

You should see the video games I have played the most of.

If you imagined a gigantic pile of saccharine cuteness and pastel colours, you would be right. And no, not all of it is G rated. If what I'm getting at isn't perfectly clear by now. Your game collection contains Lollipop Chainsaw. My game collection contains almost everything from Compile Heart.

(Actually, more like games, moves, music and books, placed carefully into bubble wrap, put into clear stackable tubs, and placed onto wooden shelves. But close enough.)

 

[Orochinagis]

91 pages already? gotta watch that video now...23 mins......someday.....

 

[MisterHero]

Despite the Arcade game not happening, Nintendo did release a Popeye Game & Watch in 1981.

In the 60s, one of Nintendo's first major western partners was Disney and they produced merchandise with their characters. The Disney license was successful, so they were already on the track of using basic cartoon characters long before videogames and Popeye (or even Miyamoto!) came along.

 

[Riposte]

Wow, I see that I dropped an essay as the last post on a page. But the post number 4500 feels kind of significant, so that can serve as consolation.

Hate when that happens to me. lol

 

[Forkball]

It was alright. Some of the montages were neat, but it really doesn't tell us anything a lot of people don't already know. She needed thousands of dollars for this? I can go to TVTropes.com for free.

 

[Sorcerer Supreme]

The video felt so dull and it was boring to watch. It was as if I was watching a watching a high school presentation, boring and dry with nothing but obvious points we've all heard a million times about those games.

 

[Dreavus]

Wow, I see that I dropped an essay as the last post on a page. But the post number 4500 feels kind of significant, so that can serve as consolation.

Fantastic post.

EDIT: The linked one, I mean. Although this one is OK too.

 

[Cyrano]

Wow, I see that I dropped an essay as the last post on a page. But the post number 4500 feels kind of significant, so that can serve as consolation.

hachi, I don't mean to be reductive and unscholarly, but your posts read like long-form straw men. You are asking for things from arguments which cannot exist through their intended authorship. Sarkeesian isn't writing a thesis, and it's not dangerous to use or address tropes, reductive though they may be. Well, I suppose tropes could be dangerous, but you would have to be willing to both deny and explain thousands of years of history and their popular success throughout cultures (which may make a great book, but I don't think it's what's being addressed).

 

[toastyToast]

It was alright. Some of the montages were neat, but it really doesn't tell us anything a lot of people don't already know. She needed thousands of dollars for this? I can go to TVTropes.com for free.

It was just the introductory video, the funding was for the series iirc

As for my opinion on it, it was mostly cut and dry. Her assertion that Peach being relegated to background character because of tropes didn't really gel with me. Mario games have been the same fucking story for more than 20 years. Peach gets kidnapped and then Mario jumps over stuff and fights Bowser. Same with Zelda. She gives props for Sheik but then suggests that her being captured once she reveals herself is because tropes once again. There's a reason why she gets kidnapped but I suppose narrative justification isn't good enough. We also have to consider that these games are based on ideologies born at the height of the Damsel in Distress renaissance if you want to call it that. At this point, Peach and Zelda getting kidnapped are tropes in and of themselves.

I'm not defending Nintendo and I do wanna see more richness in game narratives but it's like she's picking on the slow kid with this one. I'd like to see her tackle some more recent, less deeply ingrained titles/franchises

 

[Dabookerman]

I'm curious: How has the reaction been in other communities or among industry people? Any impressions from anyone?

The consensus, and one that I agree with, is that, yes there is discussion to be had, but Anita is the worst person to do it.
Personally I think to really make any sort of change, you'd need to include all forms of creative media, because with video games you're barely scratching the surface.

 

[faceless007]

Hmm--hachi's occasional presence in the thread is rather curious to me. His/her posts are no doubt constructed with a great deal of thought and attention, and represent at least a serious (I hope) attempt to grapple with the argument presented, but when I read them I just can't shake the feeling that it's actually a very simple and easily digestible argument maddeningly wrapped up in thousands of lofty academic words just for show. Far be it from me to criticize anyone else of being overly wordy or grandiloquent (for example, by using words such as "grandiloquent") but it's a bit difficult to cut through the fluff.
It isn't worth going into a point-by-point of the entire post, because the whole argument, if I understand it correctly, really hinges on a few key ideas. To start:

To ethically read DiD as she suggests would mean that we implicitly assume its use to primarily be a matter of altering the role of a female character who pre-exists this decision

Your interpretation of Sarkeesian's argument hinges on this sentence, and it's a blatant misreading of the video. No one, not even Sarkeesian, is naive enough to think that every example of DiD is the result of taking a pre-existing central female character and altering it into a DiD. She makes this claim about Starfox Adventures and Starfox Adventures only, and provides documented evidence to support it. That you projected her to then be extrapolating an identical accusation against the developers of every other example used, despite the lack of any language indicating as much, is simply false projection.

Even reading your argument more broadly, this argument falls to the exact same shortcoming exhibited by anyone who reflexively responds to feminist critiques with "But that doesn't make the developers a bunch of woman-hating sexists!" Indeed, it doesn't. The claim is not, and has never been, that the ultimate intent of these developers is to marginalize women. Please understand this: Their intent does not matter. What matters is the ultimate effect of these portrayals on their audience. What matters is how women are effectively taught by mass media from a very young age that the best and most popular stories are the ones where they are kidnapped and victimized. What matters is the way the story of "woman needs to be rescued by man" is inculcated in our culture through example after example to be common to the point of universality, to the point of making people believe unconsciously (or even consciously, as some in this very thread have expressed!) that that is the "natural role" for women to play. That is the problem. Whether game developers, or any other media creators, intend to convey that message--in fact, I'm certain that they don't--is besides the point. That's the message they're sending anyway.

It is not surprising, then, that early games drew from the most instantly recognizable tropes and elements, those of comic strips and cartoons; early games were never to be understood as themselves contributing stories, narratives, or anything of the sort, but instead were simply gameplay concepts that used the most familiar of elements to make the goals and items clear to the player.

What you don't seem to realize is that you're implicitly affirming Sarkeesian's point by acknowledging DiD as one of "the most instantly recognizable tropes and elements." It is no doubt true that DiD is such a pervasive and universal trope that designers working in the then-fledgling era of video games likely went with it simply because they couldn't think of any more original or creative ways to tell a story--the story didn't even matter that much. That doesn't make the reliance of it as a default "crutch" any less problematic when used so widely and pervasively. In fact, it makes the reliance on it seem rather lazy and uncreative.

To read the use of these elements as any kind of decision made regarding the female character’s agency would be akin to reading character-relevant meaning in Mario’s famous mustache, when it was only added as the easiest way to make a recognizable face with so few pixels--games of that era merely reflect, in shorthand, various simple elements that are immediately recognizable to the populace.

The idea that DiD was such a common part of early video games largely due to the need to be conservative with pixels and memory has been brought up before in this thread, and it goes a little bit to potentially explaining some examples, but it can hardly be used as a universal defense for every such use of the trope in the early days, especially not after the 16-bit era, unless you also contend that drawing helpless women under such technical restrictions was in fact easier and more recognizable than drawing men--or, for that matter, any other inanimate object that could just as easily serve as the object to be rescued. Which is ridiculous: you could just as easily make the thing to be rescued another man, an amorphous space alien, or even a fucking piece of cake, and the gameplay in such games would be exactly identical and easily perceivable. It was not necessary to these games, for either technical or gameplay reasons, to make the ultimate goal the rescue of a woman.

this "trope" that might once have been put to use in utterly humorless propaganda now becomes a kind of lighthearted joke, and it's hard to imagine anything but snickering today at the sight of the same propaganda poster she showed (though Donkey Kong is surely only one of countless pop and cartoon reproductions that led this kind of imagery to feel inherently comic)

There's nothing in Sarkeesian's or anyone else's definition of DiD that says it is any less problematic if used in a "joking" manner. I don't know where you got this. You make the same mistake in your last paragraph:

There is more to be said regarding the Mario franchise and how the series went on to celebrate childlike qualities in manner directly counter to any classic power fantasies of DiD

What makes you think that "childlike qualities" are counter to DiD? This argument is essentially saying, "If a damsel in distress is used in something targeted towards children, it's not actually a damsel in distress." That's a rather conveniently tautological definition of DiD. In fact, the pervasive use of DiD in children's media such as comic books and animated cartoon series is precisely one of the problems identified by feminist critiques at large. The stories we are exposed to from a very early age shape the way we conceive of the people around us and the way we direct ourselves later in life. There is a wealth of psychological and sociological evidence establishing the profound effects that media imagery has on us. Contrary to your assertion that surrounding tropes with childlike qualities somehow makes them less impactful, it actually makes them moreso, for much the same reason that advertising directed at children is so pernicious and influential in getting kids to want certain foods and toys.

Your entire argument, if I'm reading it correctly, can basically be summarized as "Every instance of a trope has its own context that should be looked at before assigning intent, and it's reductive to assume that all uses have the same intent or meaning." But since the entire point of the tropes-based analysis isn't to assign intent at all, this is a red herring. The argument is about whether such tropes are helpful or harmful to society, a question that your analysis doesn't even pretend to tackle, instead preferring to focus (somewhat ironically) on a misreading of Sarkeesian's intent. Because she isn't talking about intent; only you are.

 

[Keikaku]

I'm curious: How has the reaction been in other communities or among industry people? Any impressions from anyone?

From male friends that I've talked to in a bunch of different studios up here, the reception has ranged from mild to general agreement. No-one thinks she hit it out of the park but it wasn't the hack-job that some people were expecting. When I bring this up to female friends in the industry the reaction has pretty much been a pretty loud "Well, duh".

 

[Dreavus]

It was just the introductory video, the funding was for the series iirc

As for my opinion on it, it was mostly cut and dry. Her assertion that Peach being relegated to background character because of tropes didn't really gel with me. Mario games have been the same fucking story for more than 20 years. Peach gets kidnapped and then Mario jumps over stuff and fights Bowser. Same with Zelda. She gives props for Sheik but then suggests that her being captured once she reveals herself is because tropes once again. There's a reason why she gets kidnapped but I suppose narrative justification isn't good enough. We also have to consider that these games are based on ideologies born at the height of the Damsel in Distress renaissance if you want to call it that. At this point, Peach and Zelda getting kidnapped are tropes in and of themselves.

I'm not defending Nintendo and I do wanna see more richness in game narratives but it's like she's picking on the slow kid with this one. I'd like to see her tackle some more recent, less deeply ingrained titles/franchises

Yeah, I also wasn't a fan of how she just dismissed Zelda as always falling into the trope even when Zelda actually does have an active role in some of the games' narratives (most of the games, maybe? I didn't go down the list). It was kind of like "She has agency throughout the game ... but oops she gets captured once at the end so LOL Damsel in distress strikes again". I felt like she wasn't giving those stories a fair shake.

I suppose we'll see where she ultimately goes with this in part 2.

EDIT: It was like "Zelda getting captured at any point" was enough to check her off and add her to the DiD list, regardless of the circumstances or events leading up to the capture, when nearly every other example cited meaningless characters being kidnapped from the beginning for the purposes of "player motivation". Throwing those two in the same bucket doesn't sit well with me.

 

[thomasmahler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en&client=mv-google&v=hU446HDtGv8

 

[cutmeamango]

Hmm--hachi's occasional presence in the thread is rather curious to me. His/her posts are no doubt constructed with a great deal of thought and attention, and represent at least a serious (I hope) attempt to grapple with the argument presented, but when I read them I just can't shake the feeling that it's actually a very simple and easily digestible argument maddeningly wrapped up in thousands of lofty academic words just for show. Far be it from me to criticize anyone else of being overly wordy or grandiloquent (for example, by using words such as "grandiloquent") but it's a bit difficult to cut through the fluff.
It isn't worth going into a point-by-point of the entire post, because the whole argument, if I understand it correctly, really hinges on a few key ideas. To start:

Your interpretation of Sarkeesian's argument hinges on this sentence, and it's a blatant misreading of the video. No one, not even Sarkeesian, is naive enough to think that every example of DiD is the result of taking a pre-existing central female character and altering it into a DiD. She makes this claim about Starfox Adventures and Starfox Adventures only, and provides documented evidence to support it. That you projected her to then be extrapolating an identical accusation against the developers of every other example used, despite the lack of any language indicating as much, is simply false projection.

Even reading your argument more broadly, this argument falls to the exact same shortcoming exhibited by anyone who reflexively responds to feminist critiques with "But that doesn't make the developers a bunch of woman-hating sexists!" Indeed, it doesn't. The claim is not, and has never been, that the ultimate intent of these developers is to marginalize women. Please understand this: Their intent does not matter. What matters is the ultimate effect of these portrayals on their audience. What matters is how women are effectively taught by mass media from a very young age that the best and most popular stories are the ones where they are kidnapped and victimized. What matters is the way the story of "woman needs to be rescued by man" is inculcated in our culture through example after example to be common to the point of universality, to the point of making people believe unconsciously (or even consciously, as some in this very thread have expressed!) that that is the "natural role" for women to play. That is the problem. Whether game developers, or any other media creators, intend to convey that message--in fact, I'm certain that they don't--is besides the point. That's the message they're sending anyway.

At the first quote you've already read it all wrong.

(...) illustrates how the Damsel in Distress trope disempowers female characters and robs them of the chance to be heroes in their own right.

That is, this plot structure, isolated of narrative, already has function and meaning, and robs the writer of its control.

And not: Damsel in distress is used to substitute characters previously thought as heroines.

 

[hachi]

It isn't worth going into a point-by-point of the entire post, because the whole argument, if I understand it correctly, really hinges on a few key ideas.

Evidently you tried to skip to what you perceived as the main points when reading my post, because your resulting interpretation is a rather insulting misread at every point, so that leaves an intentional glossing to be the more charitable assumption.

Your interpretation of Sarkeesian's argument hinges on this sentence, and it's a blatant misreading of the video. No one, not even Sarkeesian, is naive enough to think that every example of DiD is the result of taking a pre-existing central female character and altering it into a DiD. She makes this claim about Starfox Adventures and Starfox Adventures only, and provides documented evidence to support it. That you projected her to then be extrapolating an identical accusation against the developers of every other example used, despite the lack of any language indicating as much, is simply false projection.

No, it's not about the developers, nor do I make any such implication. In taking great pains to explain how a normative example is constituted and functions, I very clearly separated its use from a causal example. The point remains that she framed her entire discussion by way of Star Fox Adventures, and I took her to task for doing so. What she did, in essence, was to set up the moral problem of DiD as one in which female roles are barred or diminished in the medium ("the Damsel in Distress trope disempowers female characters and robs them of the chance to be heroes in their own right"--her formulation drawn from SFA and then repeated in various guises in the remainder of her video). But in fact, as I argued later, the cases she chose to privilege--including the Mario franchise in particular--do not conform at all to this ethical dilemma, for it is fundamentally incorrect to read these as narratives about characters that each could or should have been better developed. There is no Peach story that might have been told, nor has there even been a real story of Mario himself; they're just mute pieces used to set the game in motion, openly ridiculous figures.

Even reading your argument more broadly, this argument falls to the exact same shortcoming exhibited by anyone who reflexively responds to feminist critiques with "But that doesn't make the developers a bunch of woman-hating sexists!" Indeed, it doesn't. The claim is not, and has never been, that the ultimate intent of these developers is to marginalize women. Please understand this: Their intent does not matter. What matters is the ultimate effect of these portrayals on their audience. What matters is how women are effectively taught by mass media from a very young age that the best and most popular stories are the ones where they are kidnapped and victimized. What matters is the way the story of "woman needs to be rescued by man" is inculcated in our culture through example after example to be common to the point of universality, to the point of making people believe unconsciously (or even consciously, as some in this very thread have expressed!) that that is the "natural role" for women to play. That is the problem. Whether game developers, or any other media creators, intend to convey that message--in fact, I'm certain that they don't--is besides the point. That's the message they're sending anyway.

At this point, you clearly didn't read my entire post. Quite frankly, it's insulting that you think I'm speaking of intent; I even explicitly stated that "one should not misunderstand this as a critique based on intentions." I also don't think you recognize that I've been reading the "hard" end of poststructuralist and even feminist theory for a very, very long time. Sarkeesian's reading fails on the level of discourse analysis. If you want to understand someone like Foucault--who is still the silent theorist behind this disavowal of intention in favor of effects, even when not cited--you have to think in manner a bit more sophisticated than this up-or-down vote to each pattern or trope, labeling some as harmful and thereby expecting that all uses share in that harm.

And here's where you completely missed my point:

There's nothing in Sarkeesian's or anyone else's definition of DiD that says it is any less problematic if used in a "joking" manner. I don't know where you got this.

Again, the intentions are not under inspection, it's the effects. But effects are much more complicated than your (and Sarkeesian's) insistence that every repetition of something like DiD is a part of the problem. When analyzing the effects of discursive statements, it's crucial to relate them to the context, read them as an action that operates in a definite time and place. I never said that any "joking" use of a trope is inherently a protection; in fact, I've long been critical of violence in film or other mediums that tries to argue for its harmlessness by presenting itself in a stylized and non-serious manner. But the effects of using DiD in something like Donkey Kong were not to somehow further empower an ideology in which women are helpless; reading this game as if it were a narrative production like that is absurd. By invoking the DiD theme openly in a cartoonish fashion with a male protagonist and villain who are each as absurdly distorted as the damsel, Donkey Kong is continuous with a long series of comic transformations of what once were highly regarded nationalistic and propagandistic images into evident tongue-in-cheek kitsch. The fact that damsel-in-distress now makes many of us think first of cartoonish imagery like DK is a positive rather than negative effect; you don't seem to understand that leaving these things to silence and reverence was what enabled them to be powerful symbols before they were carved up into pure pop-imagery.

Not that DK was somehow a milestone in either direction, but as an action (because discursive events are actions) in context, its effects are not at all what Sarkeesian suggests by framing the trope as a matter of eliminating female roles or agency.

Your entire argument, if I'm reading it correctly, can basically be summarized as "Every instance of a trope has its own context that should be looked at before assigning intent, and it's reductive to assume that all uses have the same intent or meaning." But since the entire point of the tropes-based analysis isn't to assign intent at all, this is a red herring. The argument is about whether such tropes are helpful or harmful to society, a question that your analysis doesn't even pretend to tackle, instead preferring to focus (somewhat ironically) on a misreading of Sarkeesian's intent. Because she isn't talking about intent; only you are.

It is becoming clear to me that you are unable to separate the examination of context from the examination of intent. These are not at all the same thing. I have little interest in the latter (although her video actually very frequently, particularly with SFA, breaks the line into intention-deduction herself). But if you don't examine context, you end up with this simplistic tropes nonsense, which is intellectually appealing to some like Sarkeesian only for its seductive ease of use. All you must do, if you wish to use this line of thought, is (1) identify a pattern, (2) find one "normative" example that shows why it is harmful, then (3) find each instance of the pattern and lump them together as part of one grand assertion or ideology.

The problem isn't that using tropes avoids intent; it's that it avoids the context within which any use of a trope or discursive elements plays out and creates effects. It flattens and makes everything into either a simple good or bad, the correction of which will lead to even worse art and narratives, for now you'll be stuck in the position of trying to counter every trope, striking all possibly stereotypical elements out of characters as if these latter bear the burden for the aspirations of every man and woman in the real world.

What makes you think that "childlike qualities" are counter to DiD? This argument is essentially saying, "If a damsel in distress is used in something targeted towards children, it's not actually a damsel in distress." That's a rather conveniently tautological definition of DiD. In fact, the pervasive use of DiD in children's media such as comic books and animated cartoon series is precisely one of the problems identified by feminist critiques at large. The stories we are exposed to from a very early age shape the way we conceive of the people around us and the way we direct ourselves later in life. There is a wealth of psychological and sociological evidence establishing the profound effects that media imagery has on us. Contrary to your assertion that surrounding tropes with childlike qualities somehow makes them less impactful, it actually makes them moreso, for much the same reason that advertising directed at children is so pernicious and influential in getting kids to want certain foods and toys.

I'm not talking about childlike qualities in the sense of it being a child's franchise (and Mario is indeed meant to be for all ages, not targeted specifically at children). What I meant is that Mario himself is actually a rather prominent counterbalance to most male protagonists and power fantasies. As the games developed into 3D, he has become more and more of a toddler in his movement and stature, with the high-pitched screaming added in as he bounced around various playground-like levels. For the DiD scenario to operate, there are two halves, and of these is the assertion that an inherently more powerful man must save the woman. In the context of today's gaming world, there are many power fantasies with distortedly muscular male leads; but Mario, against that context and backdrop, has the effect of actually reversing that sense of the protagonist as a place of power. That's the effect in context.

 

[frequency]

I noticed in vid-docs for Guild Wars 2 that there appear to be a number of women at Arena Net responsible for character and racial design. This caught my attention as the human female archetype in GW2 seems a step more towards logic and realism - costumes, armor, hairstyles are less inclined to be based on wacky fantasy cliches.

Maybe it's not a coincidence that I found the female characters in GW2 more interesting than typical for an MMO. I suppose my perspective is different from most male players mind you, seeing as how I'm on team gay guy. The female form is pretty to me, nice aesthetics, but I'm not really moved by scanty costumes and cleavage.

The women in the cut scenes also tend to be rather aggressive characters and intelligent. Though I don't know offhand if any of the female staff members are among the writers.

I wonder what it would be like if action-adventure themed games in general, where the fiction is set in a dangerous world requiring a lot of conflict and fighting, were designed with the sensibility of modern MMORPGs.

I've only played a little bit of Guild Wars 2 (15 or so levels on 2 characters). I was pretty impressed with the way your female character presented herself in the cutscenes. You're portrayed as extremely capable and speaking with confidence in yourself.

It doesn't surprise me that women were more deeply involved in development.

And even the clothing that shows off more skin (that I've seen) is alright. The Elementalist costume is a little risque but I don't really mind it.

The thing I love so much about these is that the female characters are never portrayed as weaker or less capable than the male characters. And female characters are very well represented in the stories and populations too.

And we know that many male players choose to play female characters. So again, I think you made a great point in bringing up MMOs. Many of them are excellent examples of treating female characters fairly while still appealing to male players.
Not only is nothing lost, but it becomes better for everyone. It creates an infinitely more believable world and removes the hostile atmosphere for women and even minority groups (you can choose skin colour and design your character how you want!).

I agree with pretty much what she says, but this leaves me conflicted - It's still OK to like and enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw, right? Right???

Totally.
Lollipop Chainsaw, Dead or Alive, I would even say games with pornographic content, ALL have a place in gaming. There should not be censorship and no one should feel bad for liking the games they like.
At the same time, we can acknowledge weak points and try to address them. The solution, to me, is not removing what currently exists. It is to add more variety to appeal to more groups of people. An increase in competent female representation in games is my wish. Not at the expense of the things current players love - But in addition to the things current players love.

Expanding your target demographics can only help in positive growth of the industry - one that is struggling at the moment.

 

[Salsa]

Liked the video. Liked the points being raised, although somewhat common and/or not as insightful in terms of something that most people already knew (wich by all means are still important to be brought into light). I expect a more deep analysis in following videos.

I dont see the justification for the kickstarter money, though.

 

[deviljho]

That's the effect in context.

I think what you're saying is that not all instances of a "trope" have the same effect, and that we can actually evaluate various factors to inspect the effects of each instance to some extent, while also learning from the distinctions. And that "lumping" all the instances together while also talking about a specific effect kind of falls into the trap of influencing society in an unfavorable way, almost like overcompensating to fix a problem.

It's easier for me to think of it like a scenario where one flavor of baskin robins ice cream was accidentally made with expired milk in one particular region and so they decided to just switch to sherbert everywhere. I'm only kidding...

 

[V_Arnold]

Watched the Damsel in Distress: Part 1.

Boy, has this been an eye opener. (She is absolutely right, btw, and I cant wait to see the other parts. What a big mess this whole industry is when looked from the gender equality point of view.)

 

[dan2026]

Why does nobody ever complain about the over sexualisation of men?
Those sexy, sexy men...wait what.

 

[Metal Gear?!]

Why does nobody ever complain about the over sexualisation of men?
Those sexy, sexy men...wait what.

You know in this entire thread we've had surprisingly little "but what about the men" derails, thanks for heading it off at the past. I guess we will probably get more of them when we get a video about the sexualization of female characters specifically.






Things Cost Money

This is true. Many posters here don't seem to grasp this, but they may learn.

This was especially true in the How did that cost $X to make?! thread, and it will remain so here.

Why did she need a kickstarter to make this video? Literally anyone could have made it. It's just clips and her talking. Every YouTuber does that (me included).

Honestly, even if she had only met her original 6K goal and still turned this exact video out, I'd feel the same way. It's the exact same thing she's always done, and she never asked for money to do it before. Not to my knowledge, at least.

What I don't understand is that people gave her $158,000 for this video series. Really? If the production value in every other video is the same as this one, she should give $138,000 back. There is no way in hell each episode costs more than $2,000 to produce. I will wait and see.

Props to her though for ganking all those people for all that cheese. There's a sucker born every minute.

It was alright. Some of the montages were neat, but it really doesn't tell us anything a lot of people don't already know. She needed thousands of dollars for this? I can go to TVTropes.com for free.

The 150K Anita obtained with Kickstarter is rightfully hers to do with as she pleases. There's no question about that. However, that doesn't prevent valid criticism of how this new series of videos appears to be just as cheap and slapped-together as all her other ones. After watching this new video, I'm scratching my head wondering what all the money and time were put into. Even the initial $6000 she asked for doesn't show in this video at all. I suspect most of the game footage was just gathered from Youtube and the internet, and I doubt much game-playing was done to piece this together, if any at all. I understand this could change with the upcoming videos in this series, but I suspect they'll all be the same: Anita talking in front of a camera with videogame clips gathered from Youtube.

So I'm watching this at the moment

What was the 150K fund needed for?

She is just video blogging on youtube

For the most part I agree with much of what she said in the video but I'm completely enraged over the poor presentation and the lack of research or reporting.

What the fuck did she do with the $158,000????

Never-mind the good questions she raises in her analysis of women as tropes in video games; this woman needs to be investigated for fraud.

I could have made the same video for like $500. She's laughing all the way to the bank.

So, 6 minutes in...

How did this cost $150,000 to produce? It's literally simple editing.

Hell, I, or anyone else, could do this for free, and totally faster than a year.

I'm too lazy to actually go ahead and do it, but if I was doing this because it was a cause I greatly believe in and wanted to spread the word, like her, I would have motivation to do it and I would.

Seriously, get me an $300 HD Camera, a Adobe Premiere (or any decent editor) and I could do this easily.

Things cost money, and sometimes people who may not previously have charged will have to start charging. Skullgirls didn't require crowdfunding to be made but it did require crowdfunding to get extra characters. Andrew Sullivan didn't charge readers before but he does now. This happens a lot for various reasons. And as others have tried to explain, $6,000 (before kickstarter's cut and taxes) wasn't much at all for the low end professional level of video production her videos demonstrate. Certainly the $158,000 (before kickstarter's cut and taxes) she ended up with is more than plenty, but it's not clear how much of that amount even could actually be poured into making these videos.





This was nothing new

The video felt so dull and it was boring to watch. It was as if I was watching a watching a high school presentation, boring and dry with nothing but obvious points we've all heard a million times about those games.

I just watched this video and thought it was well done but can't help but wonder what the point of it is. She basically spent 20 minutes explaining that Princess Peach and Zelda are damsels in distress because they are kidnapped all the time and need to be rescued by men. Well DUH, no one noticed that before, what a revelation that needed months of 'analysis' to be found. Why does she need many months and thousands of dollars to tell us what everyone knows already? And why does she explain terms like 'subject' and 'object', what is her audience, kindergarten children?

Good for you that you knew all this already and didn't need another introduction to it. Based on many responses here, however, not everyone is so enlightened.

 

[Kai Dracon]

It seems to me one of the advantages MMOs have on this topic, along with the possibility of a huge and varied player base, is the need for a persistent world with several NPCs to make it feel alive and plausible.

At its most basic, Mario is a game of 3 characters - a decent MMO, on the other hand, can have dozens of major figures, not even counting the players, so there's a lot more room for variety, interactions and nuance.

It's a good point that the design and mechanic requirements of MMOs have all but forced a more balanced representation of a game world. In that sense, an improved female sensibility is a "happy accident". That's true... but it's still very interesting to see the end result when such a thing occurs. This was brought up when discussing Mario sports games earlier - the requirements of their design forced the inclusion of playable female characters, and those characters had to be made more fleshed out to compete with the rest of the cast. In that case though, they were "spinoff" games which didn't ever seem to bleed back into the headline titles and affect them.

An MMO is its own core game title, so the genre seems to give us a preview of what it'd be like of gender representation was more balanced in games which featured things that the male demographic already likes: action, adventure, fighting, and big men with big weapons.

Lollipop Chainsaw, Dead or Alive, I would even say games with pornographic content, ALL have a place in gaming. There should not be censorship and no one should feel bad for liking the games they like.
At the same time, we can acknowledge weak points and try to address them. The solution, to me, is not removing what currently exists. It is to add more variety to appeal to more groups of people. An increase in competent female representation in games is my wish. Not at the expense of the things current players love - But in addition to the things current players love.

Expanding your target demographics can only help in positive growth of the industry - one that is struggling at the moment.

It's a side thought, but I've always felt the way male gamers insult and mock people who play Dead or Alive because it's "crap for perverts", and the way that a lot of male gamers in the west currently mock or expend hatred on what they see as "anime games", is a bit disingenuous. Maybe not intentionally so; but it is at least self-blind. Because an awful lot of the western games that seem to pass by without comment or incident, are really no better or different at the root. They just don't tend to have aesthetics as nice. (I recall that business about Team Ninja effectively telling westerners "STFU, we of Japan make pretty women.") Though perhaps a touch ironic this last bit, since DoA5 intentionally shifts the art style a bit more towards realism and away from the Japanese idealized doll look.

And the fact remains for fighting games, that the females are playable and capable of kicking every man in the head, regardless of how they are dressed.

But this aspect is why I've found the reaction to Skullgirls interesting. You see a lot of "Loli garbage" comments directed that way. Aside from the fact that none of the playable females in Skullgirls are "weak" either literally or in personality, I always felt the gothic style undercut its apparent glamorization of sexy women. The mood is more Tim Burton or Addams Family than Arcana Heart.

 

[michaelius]

I agree with pretty much what she says, but this leaves me conflicted - It's still OK to like and enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw, right? Right???

There's nothing wrong with enjoying game despite whatever fightning feminists think about it.

 

[Montresor]

This is the same person who said Mariah Carey's Christmas song was sexist... Is it wrong of me to think that makes her lose loads of credibility? I haven't been keeping up with discussions lately but I quickly glanced at the OP's video (no sound here at work) and I see that it is the exact same person who released the video awhile back that listed the top sexist songs, including the Mariah Carey jingle.

 

[partyphone]

I'm not talking about childlike qualities in the sense of it being a child's franchise (and Mario is indeed meant to be for all ages, not targeted specifically at children). What I meant is that Mario himself is actually a rather prominent counterbalance to most male protagonists and power fantasies. As the games developed into 3D, he has become more and more of a toddler in his movement and stature, with the high-pitched screaming added in as he bounced around various playground-like levels. For the DiD scenario to operate, there are two halves, and of these is the assertion that an inherently more powerful man must save the woman. In the context of today's gaming world, there are many power fantasies with distortedly muscular male leads; but Mario, against that context and backdrop, has the effect of actually reversing that sense of the protagonist as a place of power. That's the effect in context.

This is insane. You don't think Mario is powerful because he's not some gruff looking bald-headed space marine? Bowser effortlessly kidnaps Peach and in retaliation Mario wrecks all of his stuff, kills his minions and then throws him, by his tail, into some bombs.

Is there a fancy word for having your head up your own ass?

 

[APF]

There is no Peach story that might have been told[...]

That's the point.

 

[Kai Dracon]

This is the same person who said Mariah Carey's Christmas song was sexist... Is it wrong of me to think that makes her lose loads of credibility? I haven't been keeping up with discussions lately but I quickly glanced at the OP's video (no sound here at work) and I see that it is the exact same person who released the video awhile back that listed the top sexist songs, including the Mariah Carey jingle.

There's a lot of controversy surrounding her possible agenda and how much spin she's reading into things. For example, her Bayonetta video is pretty poorly regarded, especially when other female writers have analyzed Bayonetta with dramatically different results.

That said, many people are trying to wait and see what this series actually turns into. The first episode isn't bad, and judging by many of the internet reactions, needed to be made regardless of who made it. There have been some decent objections to aspects of how she frames things in this episode; but it's still not bad. It's sparked real discussion.

 

[marrec]

Hachi, I went cross eyed reading your post.

I certainly would not downplay the importance of normative examples, nor their power to forge new, rich links between various practices or features of our world and our sense of right and wrong. But their rhetorical power can also make them a dangerous or suspect choice if the analogical connection between the chosen normative example and those cases that are to follow is weakly supported--and that is in fact the case here.

You've missed the entire point of the video. Though you've done a great job analyzing a straw man.

For example, what if SFA is not a normative example and is instead, just the first one she mentions? Or what if it's just a way to segue into Miyamoto's other works?

That may not be the most efficient way to make her point, or scholarly, but defining SFA as normative is assigning more meaning to it than I believe Sarkeesian intended.

 

[Delusibeta]

I'm curious: How has the reaction been in other communities or among industry people? Any impressions from anyone?

From what I can tell, this thread is par for the course.

 

[aceface]

Wow, I see that I dropped an essay as the last post on a page. But the post number 4500 feels kind of significant, so that can serve as consolation.

I see your point; however she does present a long history of the DiD trope (going back to Greek mythology and including early films) and shows how early games which used that tope were garnering a response from the audience based on their expectations of the roles of monkey and damsel as it were. While others might have seen Miyamoto as demonized in this video I didn't really see it that way- if anything his crime was a lack of creativity in storytelling.

Anyways, I agree that early games like Donkey Kong had to quickly convey the object of the game to players without much information/text, thus employing the DiD trope was one way to do this. I think what she is saying is that later games like SFA should be held to a higher standard. Games like that and the Zelda examples she gives have more than enough opportunity to convey the objects of the game to players, thus there's no need for the trope anymore. So, while early examples like Donkey Kong can be lumped in with the long running tradition of having a DiD (which is certainly not admirable put perhaps necessary to efficiently convey the object of the game to players), there's no need to remove female agency in later games.

 

[Lord Ghirahim]

This is the same person who said Mariah Carey's Christmas song was sexist...

And it's "bordering on stalker territory" when sung by a male performer.

 

[marrec]

And it's "bordering on stalker territory" when sung by a male performer.

No need to poison the well guys, the video is easily judged and discussed based on it's content and not some other video that she released awhile ago.

 

[Delusibeta]

My game collection contains almost everything from Compile Heart.

(Actually, more like games, moves, music and books, placed carefully into bubble wrap, put into clear stackable tubs, and placed onto wooden shelves. But close enough.)

HolyBaikal
Japanese Culture Expert
(Today, 06:43 AM)

No need to poison the well guys, the video is easily judged and discussed based on it's content and not some other video that she released awhile ago.

I disagree. Her previous videos is a large part of the reason why there is such controversy on this series, and subsequently why this thread is so long, why she raised so much money on Kickstarter and why the video is getting so many views. Indeed, without her previous videos, nobody would care about this one.

 

[marrec]

I disagree. Her previous videos is a large part of the reason why there is such controversy on this series, and subsequently why this thread is so long, why she raised so much money on Kickstarter and why the video is getting so many views.

And none of that addresses the content of this video.

 

[captainnapalm]

And none of that addresses the content of this video.

I'm sorry, but I think its relevant.

I just watched that video about sexist Christmas songs. I'm hoping it's meant in a lighthearted way and isn't meant to be taken that seriously.

When you're up against attitudes and opinions like that, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to argue the issues at all. People are firmly in the grip of some kind of analytical coma. It leads to such a warped view of reality.

I'm starting to remember so much of what I hated about the Humanities when I was studying. It really had been completely hijacked by this sort of thing.

 

[Kazerei]

I'm not talking about childlike qualities in the sense of it being a child's franchise (and Mario is indeed meant to be for all ages, not targeted specifically at children). What I meant is that Mario himself is actually a rather prominent counterbalance to most male protagonists and power fantasies. As the games developed into 3D, he has become more and more of a toddler in his movement and stature, with the high-pitched screaming added in as he bounced around various playground-like levels. For the DiD scenario to operate, there are two halves, and of these is the assertion that an inherently more powerful man must save the woman. In the context of today's gaming world, there are many power fantasies with distortedly muscular male leads; but Mario, against that context and backdrop, has the effect of actually reversing that sense of the protagonist as a place of power. That's the effect in context.

This is reeeeeally stretching. The fact that Mario isn't a muscular male power fantasy simply does NOT reverse the sense of the protagonist as the place of power. He's still the hero in the story, while Peach is the damsel-in-distress.

 

[partyphone]

I'm sorry, but I think its relevant.

I just watched that video about sexist Christmas songs. I'm hoping it's meant in a lighthearted way and isn't meant to be taken that seriously.

When you're up against attitudes and opinions like that, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to argue the issues at all. People are firmly in the grip of some kind of analytical coma. It leads to such a warped view of reality.

I'm starting to remember so much of what I hated about the Humanities when I was studying. It really had been completely hijacked by this sort of thing.

So sexist Christmas songs are okay? Because they're tradition? Because Christianity is inherently patriarchal and sexist and we shouldn't really expect any better from those people?

Still not really sure what it has to do with this current video.

 

[Kai Dracon]

I'm sorry, but I think its relevant.

I just watched that video about sexist Christmas songs. I'm hoping it's meant in a lighthearted way and isn't meant to be taken that seriously.

When you're up against attitudes and opinions like that, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to argue the issues at all. People are firmly in the grip of some kind of analytical coma. It leads to such a warped view of reality.

I'm starting to remember so much of what I hated about the Humanities when I was studying. It really had been completely hijacked by this sort of thing.

And this is the attitude that is poisoning the discussion, both here, and on the net in general.

People are focused, if we get frank about it, on "defeating" the enemy. We have to stop the Feminists from taking away our games. We have to defeat this particular woman, prove she's a fraud.

Lets not use the points raised to have our own discussion, one that needs to happen - very obviously needs to happen considering how brittle, reactionary, and outright insecure game players react when the subject is brought up. No, let us focus entirely on disproving the validity of this particular woman. So we can just ignore the subject and go back to being comfortable and unreflective.

This is what an ad hominem attack is for, you realize. It's to distract everyone from what someone is saying, by focusing on who they are. And hopefully cause people to make an irrational, emotional leap to dismissing the actual point, because the point has been poisoned by association.

Edit: but to be fair, what we call "ad hominem" is natural. That's why it arose as a formal concept - to describe how people naturally behave. When we see someone saying something we don't like, one of the most instinctive defense mechanisms is to start attacking them and drive them away so that we don't have to be bothered. Once we got all fancy about it with language, people simply started using more sophisticated methods of shifting focus - making personal character attacks, citing agendas and conspiracies, bias, or just saying "people think about things too much, why we still got thinking?"

It's been said before in this thread, but: people are lazy and want to justify the status quo. They get angry when they think someone is attacking their sacred space.

 

[Delusibeta]

And none of that addresses the content of this video.

I disagree. She has a tendency of crying "sexist" at stuff which generally isn't seen as sexist (e.g. Ico, Lego etc), which will inevitably colour her videos, generally speaking. Admittedly, in this video there isn't a blatantly obvious thing that makes me go "that's bullshit and you know it", but I'm expecting her to cry "sexism" at something which isn't at some point during the course of the series (indeed, we've already got an arguable example of that with Skyward Sword).

 

[captainnapalm]

So sexist Christmas songs are okay? Because they're tradition? Because Christianity is inherently patriarchal and sexist and we shouldn't really expect any better from those people?

Still not really sure what it has to do with this current video.

She's saying Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' is sexist. It's absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Terareflection]

I hope she brings up the female clothes exploding in KoF 13. Cause what the fuck.

Only happens with Yuri and King, it's homage to the old AOF series that did the same thing.

I know it doesn't make it any less right, but just wanted to throw some context out there.

 

[captainnapalm]

And this is the attitude that is poisoning the discussion, both here, and on the net in general.

People are focused, if we get frank about it, on "defeating" the enemy. We have to stop the Feminists from taking away our games. We have to defeat this particular woman, prove she's a fraud.

Lets not use the points raised to have our own discussion, one that needs to happen - very obviously needs to happen considering how brittle, reactionary, and outright insecure game players react when the subject is brought up. No, let us focus entirely on disproving the validity of this particular woman. So we can just ignore the subject and go back to being comfortable and unreflective.

This is what an ad hominem attack is for, you realize. It's to distract everyone from what someone is saying, by focusing on who they are. And hopefully cause people to make an irrational, emotional leap to dismissing the actual point, because the point has been poisoned by association.

Edit: but to be fair, what we call "ad hominem" is natural. That's why it arose as a formal concept - to describe how people naturally behave. When we see someone saying something we don't like, one of the most instinctive defense mechanisms is to start attacking them and drive them away so that we don't have to be bothered. Once we got all fancy about it with language, people simply started using more sophisticated methods of shifting focus - making personal character attacks, citing agendas and conspiracies, bias, or just saying "people think about things too much, why we still got thinking?"

It's been said before in this thread, but: people are lazy and want to justify the status quo. They get angry when they think someone is attacking their sacred space.

Are you sure I'm the one intent on creating enemies where there are none? Or is that possibly the other way around?

Look, I'm still all for more strong female characters for female gamers to enjoy, if the market is there waiting to be catered for. I'm also all for strong female characters in games with male protagonists. It's not just women who need strong female characters. We all need good stories.

But I have definite problems with this kind of deconstruction and analysis. And it's not just based on a kneejerk defensive attitude. Like I said, I have some academic experience with this sort of thing too. Even if it sometimes approaches valid criticism, it also mangles as much as it attempts to fix.

 

[Stet]

Are you sure I'm the one intent on creating enemies where there are none? Or is that possibly the other way around?

Look, I'm still all for more strong female characters for female gamers to enjoy, if the market is there waiting to be catered for. I'm also all for strong female characters in games with male protagonists. It's not just women who need strong female characters. We all need good stories.

But I have definite problems with this kind of deconstruction and analysis. And it's not just based on a kneejerk defensive attitude. Like I said, I have some academic experience with this sort of thing too. Even if it sometimes approaches valid criticism, it also mangles as much as it attempts to fix.

I don't think analysis is inherently deconstructive. Looking specifically at details doesn't imply myopia of the bigger picture.

 

[partyphone]

She's saying Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' is sexist. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Hmm. I don't think I've ever even heard that particular song. But I did some digging and watched Anita's video.

NOTE: I include Mariah Carey’s song “All I want for Christmas Is You” only to illustrate the larger overall pattern in mass media where women are constantly presented as “only wanting a man”. Carey’s song itself is not really a huge issue but the larger media pattern is definitely problematic.

I don't see anything wrong with this argument? That song is really super creepy and bad.

 

[pixlexic]

So in the other thread I brought up the topic of when does actual parenting get involved?

When does it become the parents responsibity to make sure thier son or daughters grow up to be decent human beings? Or do we blame it all on the media?