Porn is a completely different topic, a subgenre of films. If you desire to talk about it, I would suggest making a thread in the offtopic section. And now, this derail of the topic should stop.
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Anita Sarkeesian: 'What I Couldn't Say'
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Porn is a completely different topic, a subgenre of films. If you desire to talk about it, I would suggest making a thread in the offtopic section. And now, this derail of the topic should stop.
You're talking about the overbearing prevalence of stuff aimed at men, but restricting that to 'blockbuster games', 'the ones that make the big bucks', 'GTA, CoD, Battlefield, Ass Creed' etc. There's a logical fallacy here. There's so much being made in the industry for all types of people, and tons of women have decided that iOS is a great place to play. But you turn around and say 'These male-oriented AAA franchises are all I'm assessing, and all of them are male-oriented.' Yes, by this pinhole vision of the industry the whole thing is aimed at young men. But this is one bedroom of the huge house of modern gaming. Even EA or Ubisoft make plenty of stuff that's female friendly. Child of Light? Rayman Origins and Legends? The Sims? Dragon Age Inquisition? Plants vs Zombies? Just Dance? That's just bigger stuff from the last year or so, I'm sure there's more. What about Nintendo's entire output? Is that not AAA console gaming?
I just don't see this industry the way you do. There will always be a group of blockbusters aimed at young men. So long as those games aren't actually sexist and there's plenty of other stuff out there, I don't see much of a problem.
^^^^ This
Poor wording, objectification doesn't mean it's okay to look at someone sexually, that's sexualize/sexualization.
Objectification is see a person as a object to be won or owned rather then a person. It's bad. No no. Don't say that. Shame to the people saying that.
Keep noping Opto!
Your nopes are noping the nopes of nope!I'm not going to speak for everyone.
I'll give one example that might help. My stance on Bayonetta as an empowered character and a symbol of both camp and glamour, for example, was very unpopular here.
Because don't you know, those comments are "the best part about YouTube." Why are you trying to censor someone's right to harassment?
sensui-tomo
Member
Here is the thing, Women can be sexy, sure no problem, a woman shouldnt be created to be sexy to sell for marketing reasons WITH THE EXCEPTION of a game that satires the idea, and it'd be more alright if the vast majority of games didnt try to sell on just sex alone Now do i like games with sexy characters, sure, i'm liking bayonetta(just been playing it since i bought the wii-u) and Dragon's crown (its reminiscent of those old D&D books and art style) Do i care if others like the games? No, Do i care if someone finds the art repulsive? No (because that's their opinion) Do i care if someone shames someone for liking it? Yes because That person is an asshat for shaming somebody for something they like. Thats all, I'm sorry for going off topic a bit.
I'll move it to PMs to keep from derailing.
OT: People who send death threats are dumb and I'm glad Anita isn't hiding.
The Shogun
Banned
OK I came back for this because whatever you are now personally attacking me.
What the fuck does this even mean, I've never even been in a Gamer Gate thread and get along with 99% of GAF. I talk a lot in general because I like discussion which can of course cause disagreements but for the most part we all are cool. When I'm a dick I apologize.
What in the hell is with this personal crusade against me now? Listen let's not derail this anymore I already feel bad enough as it is,but come on your post is a flat out attack against me.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Oh boy, the critics of objectification being called prudes again.
Maybe this pornographer is a prude, too?
Maybe this pornographer is a prude, too?
Bayonetta is a case study I won't even go near considering how deeply divided feminist circles are over her.
I can't tell if you are serious, lol. But to give you an honest answer. Yes, of course they can. The problem starts when they are degraded to sexual objects for men. That has been the case for pretty much for anything ever. Don't dehumanize a person/character in sake of a trait. Make a person with traits. Being a sexy men/woman/transgender can be one trait.
I was essentially called anti-feminist and regressive in the thread that I'm talking about, and if you can believe this, by men. Funny how that works.
FF Seraphim
Member
In my humble opinion: A woman can be sexy in a video game even if she is just there to fill all the tropes. Developers make games how they are and market them a certain way due to the money it brings them. Would I like more diverse characters in a game? Yeah, who wouldn't? But we all got to understand not every developer is going to make a game marketed towards everyone. The main issue right now is sex sells, and since it sells so well developers would be foolish not to make such games. Just got to support the games that deviate from that path and make it known that it can make money as well.
You can make sexy characters without objectification. There isn't a issue with sexiness.
...why is that an issue? Anyways I PM'd most of you to keep the derail to a minimum. Enjoy your evening GAF.
"Objectify men too!" is not really a solution to the issue that's being discussed. It's just pushing troublesome issues in one direction or another.
FF Seraphim
Member
I totally agree with you. What I am saying is due to how the market demographic is working right now people will still make said games due to how they sell. If they stopped selling well there would be less of them. It is a damn good thing women are making up half the market even if people want to argue that its only on mobile. Hopefully that will make developers try to produce games that appeal to both... even if it is only a mobile game...
Getting back on point and using Bayonetta, Anita may sometimes have a different read on a story or character. Anita has said that Bayo is sexist, and there's certainly evidence there (close ups on her butt, her finishers involve her getting naked). But when there's a different, other well founded interpretation, that's used against her.
There was some kind of hateful annotated video that brought up some decent arguments against her points, but it was filled with the rancid misogynistic bullshit of the anti-Anita brigade before it became gamergate.
There was some kind of hateful annotated video that brought up some decent arguments against her points, but it was filled with the rancid misogynistic bullshit of the anti-Anita brigade before it became gamergate.
FF Seraphim
Member
Its not an issue per se more like one of the main reason why there isn't much deviation from the norm.
Speaking only for myself, I don't see how I'm a puritan because I think fanservice is off-putting. I'm not a puritan because I don't think it's morally wrong, and I don't think you (or anyone) is bad for enjoying it. And I do think its prevalence could create an unwelcoming atmosphere in gaming for people who don't find it appealing - which is why people are asking for diversity, and not for DOA to cease existing.
...Scatter...
Banned
So what's to stop a game designer from making games that empower females? Are we saying that there are no game designers that do this or are we saying they can't be successful because they wouldn't make as much money due to the game consumers themselves? Who area we trying to change? It seems like this would be easy enough in big corporate game companies like EA or Activision or MGS or Sony.
I'm a guy so basically catered to , but what would be the desired end game? I believe in inclusiveness, but I also don't want to jeopardize the art and make everything too boring and PC.
I'm a guy so basically catered to , but what would be the desired end game? I believe in inclusiveness, but I also don't want to jeopardize the art and make everything too boring and PC.
I disagree with her interpretation of Bayonetta (because concepts within feminism are not set in stone or a uniform set of rules) but that certainly doesn't put me in league with the frothing libertarian Mr. Hydes within Gamergate.
Well, we do know developers have been told to make their (originally) female protagonists male, it happened with Remember Me. That's one of the things stopping developers from more diverse games, and that's why indies are unsurprisingly more diverse. Now, let's get real, just like with any other medium, games will never be "too boring and PC". There will always be room for all kinds of games.
Partial Gamification
Banned
The internet can be unfairly foul.
My partially informed take on this:
She's been doing the tropes in videogames for three years and started it with a community fundraiser. I think the majority of the people giving her shit are jealous, at least in the beginning. I've seen the criticism of her "not being a gamer." How many of those critics are just stupid kids?
As time went on, there became camps that setup as pro-Femfreq and anti-femfreq. There became a shit flinging contest that gained in popularity, simply because too many means of communicating on the internet cater toward foul behavior. People mimicking the behaviors of those they surrounded themselves with on various websites and friends lists.
I don't know her or what motivates her but if she wants to make change then she should make the game she'd like to see, or find people willing to do it. There are so many underrepresented groups and stories that have yet to be included in videogames, it is a shame when the audience has such diverse backgrounds.
Where I do take issue with how all this is handled, is how the gamergate boogeyman recently became the manifestation of this harassment and not a critique of bullshit in the media. It has many facets, and one's perspective will determine how it looks. I saw the harassment and don't deny it but to call it the totality of what gamergate was doing is a lie.
For Ms. Sarkeesian on one specific example, she canceled a talk in Utah due to concealed-carry being allowed on campus and it got spun into "death threat from gamergate forces women in to hiding." That narrative is a little warped (and my telling simplified) as it hides some of the criticisms being raised behind a faceless scapegoat. The online threat came from a guy in Brazil I.D.'d by gamergaters. She gets ushered onto the Colbert Report and the harassment became without a doubt a vehicle she used to gain celebrity. "If videogames don;t cause violence then how do they cause misogyny?" Its a little sensationalist but maybe she was caught up in the limelight and honestly thought she could make a difference with this approach.
I wouldn't go talk in a theater where concealed guns would be allowed but to blame the "online harassment campaign" was damned insincere, at least to me. She's had obsessive harassers for three years? That predates gamergate. Is the narrative that these harassers are the ones that orchestrated gamergate? That I do not believe.
She does not deserve the hate and abuse but I'm not sure that she's doing much to stop it, so much as she is willingly -or unwillingly- egging it on. I can empathize with the need to tell the harassers to fuck off (and respect it too -standing up and saying "fuck you," my kind of character) but its not going to help the larger problem of being harassed.
I wish her good health and sincerely wish she makes a game (or contributes to the making of one) that could serve as an example of something she thinks is done right.
Ban me, its okay. Will still love NeoGAF.
My partially informed take on this:
She's been doing the tropes in videogames for three years and started it with a community fundraiser. I think the majority of the people giving her shit are jealous, at least in the beginning. I've seen the criticism of her "not being a gamer." How many of those critics are just stupid kids?
As time went on, there became camps that setup as pro-Femfreq and anti-femfreq. There became a shit flinging contest that gained in popularity, simply because too many means of communicating on the internet cater toward foul behavior. People mimicking the behaviors of those they surrounded themselves with on various websites and friends lists.
I don't know her or what motivates her but if she wants to make change then she should make the game she'd like to see, or find people willing to do it. There are so many underrepresented groups and stories that have yet to be included in videogames, it is a shame when the audience has such diverse backgrounds.
Where I do take issue with how all this is handled, is how the gamergate boogeyman recently became the manifestation of this harassment and not a critique of bullshit in the media. It has many facets, and one's perspective will determine how it looks. I saw the harassment and don't deny it but to call it the totality of what gamergate was doing is a lie.
For Ms. Sarkeesian on one specific example, she canceled a talk in Utah due to concealed-carry being allowed on campus and it got spun into "death threat from gamergate forces women in to hiding." That narrative is a little warped (and my telling simplified) as it hides some of the criticisms being raised behind a faceless scapegoat. The online threat came from a guy in Brazil I.D.'d by gamergaters. She gets ushered onto the Colbert Report and the harassment became without a doubt a vehicle she used to gain celebrity. "If videogames don;t cause violence then how do they cause misogyny?" Its a little sensationalist but maybe she was caught up in the limelight and honestly thought she could make a difference with this approach.
I wouldn't go talk in a theater where concealed guns would be allowed but to blame the "online harassment campaign" was damned insincere, at least to me. She's had obsessive harassers for three years? That predates gamergate. Is the narrative that these harassers are the ones that orchestrated gamergate? That I do not believe.
She does not deserve the hate and abuse but I'm not sure that she's doing much to stop it, so much as she is willingly -or unwillingly- egging it on. I can empathize with the need to tell the harassers to fuck off (and respect it too -standing up and saying "fuck you," my kind of character) but its not going to help the larger problem of being harassed.
I wish her good health and sincerely wish she makes a game (or contributes to the making of one) that could serve as an example of something she thinks is done right.
Ban me, its okay. Will still love NeoGAF.
...Scatter...
Banned
What I find weird about this is is how its juxtaposed against how many males make female NPCs in character creators even in games like Destiny.
I can admit though that if my protagonist was female and had a male love interest with romantic scenes I would be a little put off. So I can see how some women feel about always having to be a male protag.
No I can believe that.
Sort of unrelated, I just remembered about a forum I used to post on where one of the posters whose ambition was to be a 1950s housewife and got shit for it. I can understand the desire to "liberate women from their indoctrination", but here's the way I see it. Yes, sometimes what appears to be women wanting to do things that happen to fall in line with what men want out of them might stem from a lifetime of societal pressure and they might not even notice it. But, there comes a point (pretty early on) where continuing to "inform" them of that is incredibly patronising (and hopefully I've managed to avoid that with this post 'cause otherwise that would be awkward). Sometimes people can take that information, look at it and decide that that's what they want to do, and that's okay.
EDIT: Of course the dark counterpart to this is the people that take that look at their lives, decide that they're fine (which you can quite rightly do) and then decide that everyone else's is also fine and they should shut up about it.
What part about me laughing at mansplaining on NeoGAF bothers you?
The Sarcastic Dude
Banned
Men are already objectified in the media a lot.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Oh I'm definately not saying you are or anyone who disagrees with her is! It's just awful that constructive, alternative feminist readings are used against her, which stifles good discussion. I also don't completely agree with her on Bayonetta either.
DoktorEvil
Banned
sensui-tomo
Member
Get rid of these and well, thats a side of things i'd love to see, but its a pipe dream.
...Scatter...
Banned
So there's no market for it? Then were looking to change consumer behavior? That's what I'm trying to understand.
Is there a parallel in the objectification of men in Romance novels? Even if you change it, men won't flock to them all of a sudden. (I don't think)
Your post doesn't come off as you laughing at "men explaining. . ." (and I'm not sure why THAT would be fine either); it comes off as you being dismissive of a posters response to you (we can only ascertain because we don't actually see the comments) because they are male.
FF Seraphim
Member
It is a pipe dream since big publishers would never do that. Lucky for us the indie scene is building up more and more.
Rather get them to see that there's money to be made. "Because girls are nerds, guys, and they want to buy your stuff."
I'm kind of dismissive and bemused by a man calling me, a woman, an anti-feminist for flimsy video game-related reasons, yes. Sorry if that bothers you.
SolicitorPirate
Member
Yeah, because the 95% of games with straight, white male leads were all done for artistic reasons, and trying to ensure that AAA games don't all basically have the same lead is what will make them boring.
A Link to the Past
Banned
No. Can you elabourate upon how or why Anita has impacted your ability to play games?
Who is stopping you?
Tired, fallacious argument. Why don't game critics make their own games? Because that's not what literary analysis is about. There are games that Sarkeesian has identified as games she enjoys. Furthermore, one can be mindful of the problematic parts of a media form and still enjoy it!
Making the best of infamy is not a bad move, and it allows her viewpoint to get out to a larger swath of people. However, your insinuation here seems to be that Anita was purposefully egging on harassment in order to gain more fame. That's a fucked opinion. Would you rather live in constant fear, with death threats clogging every avenue of social media, or be able to live a nice, quiet life? People who raise controversial opinions tend to draw ire, so should Anita have just shut up and waited for the controversy to die down? That's the only way she could have not "profited" from the infamy.
Oh, I see. You want people to not associate hatespeech and actions with #gamergate. That's a community problem. Movements get their priorities out of order all the time (e.g. #OccupyWallStreet, politically). To onlookers, #gamergate is, and will be, a reactionary push against feminist critique in videogames. Sarkeesian's harassment beforehand was bad too, but she has said that the abuse rose alongside the formation of #gamergate. Correlation does not mean causation, or course, but a cursory glance into #gamergate's politics and interests reveal that it definitely promotes an anti-Sarkeesian slant.
Definition of victim blaming, right here.
Jathaine
Member
Not that I'm saying you are, especially since I have no idea what the context was (having not read the original thread) but its not like a woman can't be anti-feminist.
Feminism is an ideology fundamentally separated from who you are. Men can be feminists, women can be anti-feminists and its not like it really matters what label you take on since feminism is a pretty much useless label anyway since there's more flavors than Baskin Robbins.
Context. It rules.
I'm not bothered at all. This is the internet after all; we're all allowed to be as careless with our words and (unknowingly) hypocritical as we want to be.
No. Now if you're saying you just don't care about the current climate that has brought discussion here. . .
She hasn't but everyone arguing about stuff is lame. I'm just kinda sick of the arguing. I never really followed gamergate and still don't really know what it's all about.
Anita Sarkeesian is a videogame critic, not a videogame director. Videogame critics critize videogames, videogame directors direct videogames. Anita Sarkeesian as videogame critic, does the former, not the latter. And she is not the only one. Jim Sterling, Kyle MacGregor, Brittany Vincent, Angry Joe etc etc. If you wish, I can continue the list. They all have in common that they critize videogames and not create videogames. These people make trough their criticism public discussion possible. Discussions which offer the possibility for customers to reflect and react. Due to that, videogames the way they want them to be, are more likely to happen.
You neither to follow Gamergate, nor argue about stuff. But since videogames are a existing medium, you have to expect that people argue about videogames.
Cool.
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