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[Screamer-RSA]

Many right wingers talk about games, .

Haha OK so their not busy planing lynches and other nefarious activities, they are busy talking about games!

 

[EverydayBeast]

I thinking imposing these politics into games ruins it, especially when games like Perfect Dark and more recently Uncharted the Lost Legacy stars female characters without it being forced

 

[Cosmogony]

If you point out a problem, and the reaction towards this is complete outrage ranging from insults to threats,

Complete misrepresentation of the most prominent responses to her thesis. I can however, recollect, a specific instance where an unprovoked Ms. Sarkesian insulted one of her most ardent critics in public.

then this functions as evidence that you correctly pointed out a problem.

That it does not. This shows your poor understanding of epistemology.

There is no necessary correlation between the kind of reactions she got and the validity of her own thesis. She could have been 1. Right and gotten A) welcoming responses or B) harsh responses or she could have been 2. Deed wrong and gotten C) welcoming responses or D ) harsh responses.

That this has to be explained to you is simply baffling.

If you are simply wrong, you don't invoke emotional responses like that.

What an absurd statement. Throughout history, truth has been met with a staggering range of responses. There is no correlation between the two. The reaction one gets is not evidence for the validity of one's arguments.

No they are not more prone to bigotry, but they are less experienced and less used to feminist perspectives than other groups.

No, I might argue quite the opposite. Both mainstream media and contemporary campuses are drenched with intersectional feminism. If anything, these young adults have probably been more exposed to it. But because of your gratuitous refusal to even fathom the possibility that some significant segment of young gamers have consciously rejected her thesis knowing full well what it entails, you are forced to conjure up a fantasy for which you provide neither empirical evidence nor a convincing argument.

This also isn't exclusive to young people.

Which would make one wonder why on Earth you decided to bring it up.

Take for example this one Youtube guy called Thunderf00t. As far as I know he even is a scientist, but he completely misses the point of Sarkeesians media criticism

He is a scientist. But that you are not sure speaks poignantly about how well-acquainted you are with his work.

and subsequently tries to refute it without having understood the point of it. Its like reading Freud and thinking that the fact that we don't all kill our fathers somehow proves him wrong.

He understands it. He debunks it.
Deal with it.

What is condescending about that?

Gaming slowly tapping into its full potential as an emotional and impactful story telling medium is a pretty obvious and uncontroversial observation.

"Pretty obvious and uncontroversial"? Ah, the tentative language.
What you describe is limited to a segment of the spectrum. Entire genres remain what they have always been, which is not anything lesser than a "cultural medium".

The shift from gameplay as a focus, to characters, story

Limited to one or two genres and seemingly increasingly criticized on gaming forums.

and world building as a focus is also largely driven by technical advancements and simply wouldn't have made much sense 15 or more years ago when performance capture wasn't at all ready to convey the kinds of emotions and details in performance necessary.

That doesn't change the root nature of videogames.

Some genres are composite, a mix of storytelling, which is not intrinsic to videogames, with gameplay, which certainly is. In that regard, the core nature of videogames hasn't changed. Because some genres have taken on board non-videogame componentes, such as storytelling, that hasn't changed the nature of videogames.

I will have to be condescending here: Half retarded right wing Youtubers who haven't got a clue about anything, but think they are qualified to talk about this stuff and rejoice in the circle jerk of equally unqualified viewers who like their content because it supports their preconceived believes and rids them of the unpleasant thought that something isn't right with their favorite medium - they can't be described as "sound rational objections".

Sorry, I'm not up for session of intelectual masturbation.

What Sarkeesian did was in no way scientific.

Bang!
And, naturally, deprived of substantiation.

There are scientific works evaluating the effects of gaming media on consumers and society, but these works are in the line of media effects studies and that means that you'll read 100+ pages of interpretation of some data based on certain societal theories. In other words, nobody is going to read that and even if someone would read it, it wouldn't mean much to them if they don't know the theories on which its all based on.
Sarkeesian opted for a different approach:

Indeed, the approach to assert but not substantiate, to claim but not prove, to mischaracterize but not address her opponents.

She tried to visualize norms and ideals games convey without reflecting much on them and argues that these examples are negative.

She asserts it.

The point of it all was to make creators think about the messages they are sending with their design decisions.
And that worked really well.

Laughable.

But the point that came across to many people was: Games are bad because they are sexist and here are a few examples of sexism in games.

Would it be too much to ask for people who won't tire of using the terms sexist and sexism to finally understand what the terms mean and apply them properly?
Would it kill them?

And as a result many people tried to "disprove" her by explaining the context of the design decisions in question. But to actually disprove her they would've needed to prove that portrayals in the media do not affect the concept of reality of consumers.

No, Sir!
You've got this the other way around!

She makes the claims. The burden of proof is on her. I can simply reject her claims on lack of evidence. I am not burdened with disproving her. This is epistemology 101. If I make a counter-claim, then, I will bear the burden of proof.

In other words: They needed to disprove the very principle one of the largest industries in the world is based on: The advertising industry.
The science behind the ad industry and the science behind feminist media criticism is the exact same.

No, they are not.
You actually have to show the impact is that which you assert it is.
Got that?

Just that the ad industry uses this science to sell people thoughts, desires, feelings etc, while feminist media criticism focusses on objectionable values that being conveyed by media, whether the creators are aware of it or not.

For the sake of argument, let's accept this fantasy of yours.
What's objectionable about these values?

Are they objectively objectionable or is this just a personal opinion of yours?

So if you want to refute Sarkeesian, you shouldn't focus on the examples she chose to illustrate the issue,

I shouldn't focus on what she's said?
There's a novelty.

but rather focus on conclusions of media effects theory.

I reject post-modernist literary criticism wholesale.

Its always funny to me when non-academic perspectives

...Such as?

on academic work are conveyed in a way that assumes that they are somehow qualified to judge.
Its no different than some random US Senator bringing a snowball to the Senate to illustrate how climate change isn't real.
Yes, you can do that, its your right. But it also exposes you as someone who has no clue what you're talking about.

And I would assume this paragraph of yours of self-criticism was sorely needed.

I mean, there are certainly scientific works who would oppose someone like Sarkeesian, although their opposition would mainly revolve around the argument that its impossible to evaluate the impact of media.

Which would nullify her entire set of arguments.

But the complete refutation of the concept of feminist media criticism is really hard to argue.
Even people like Jordan Peterson realized that they positions are impossible to argue in a scientific environment, so he chose to opt for a non-scientific environments

Bogus claim.
You don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about, especially since you don't seem to know his history with online lectures and his more recent history with Academia.

(books, youtube videos, podcasts) where his opinions can still fly and reach more people, who are much less critical and more likely to agree with him. Obviously, its not science anymore at this point

Hot air.

Her thesis was that media has an effect on people.

And here we go again.
You are terribly vague and imprecise with words. Is it on purpose?

Sir, farts have an effect on people. Dandruff, gusts of wind, cancer, quarks, String theory, Vodka lemon, missing classes, staying put, Madras curry, these all "have an effect on people."

I don't think its possible to reject that thesis. There is a mountain of empirical evidence to support it.
Based on this thesis she used a feminist perspective to explore possible effects gaming media might have.

Which she failed spectacularly to demonstrate.

To do that she used examples of character designs, story arcs, portrayals of female characters(playable and non-playable).
This is obviously not scientific anymore, because she is just picking and choosing these examples. But the point of these examples isn't to prove the thesis right,

So the point of the examples she uses to prove her point isn't to prove her point?
You can't be serious.

but rather to give creators some insight into how they conscious and subconscious design decision might affect consumers later.

She must provide evidence the effects she claims exist do exist.
I can't explain myself any clearer.

So, if I understand this correctly, your main argument is that she hasn't put forward any evidence for the claim that media(games in this case) affects how consumers of said media, perceive reality.

No, Sir. Nice try.
She must provide evidence that the specific effects she claims certain design choices have do occur with statistical relevance. But not just that. If she claims practices such as alleged sexualization and alleged objectification are objectionable, she must also make the philosophical case. This includes arguing for moral objectivism. Otherwise, this will be rightly categorized as just her personal opinion and dismissed on the spot. No one would be hard pressed and have any compelling reason to adopt it. Since that philosophical debate has been going on for millennia and given her intellectual grandeur, I'd say I'm not overly hopeful.

Do you also wonder why there are ad on TV, the radio, newspapers and basically everywhere?
Do you think that all these corporations are just wasting their money selling us pictures we know are not real?
Do you also want to see evidence for the impact of ad campaigns?

Complete misrepresentation of my position.

You were so close. I put it into quotation marks because on the one hand "gamer" can mean just anyone who plays games. But many people also have a more narrow concept of being a "gamer", sometimes excluding mobile gamers, casual gamers etc. This is a result of seeing gaming as part of ones own identity. Once you do that it becomes necessary to distinguish yourself from people who aren't gamers in roughly the same way as you.

This has very little if anything at all to do with the topic at hand.

Are you kidding me? How do you explain if the emotional responses otherwise? If people wouldn't feel personally attacked, they wouldn't even begin to care about the opinions of some random stranger on the internet.

No, Sir. Your attempt to reduce the responses to her criticism as merely or even mostly temperamental is not successful.

Dead wrong.
It would be a Habermasian society. Habermas is famous for his discourse ethics. And one of the best descriptions of Habermas is his perspective on Orwell:

Do I really need to spell it out for you what Orwellian Society translates to?

The attempt to limit free speech (including but not limited to through violent means), the attempt to limit free enterprise, the attempt to regulate a growing number of human interactions, the usurpation of everyday language, the promotion of pathological egalitarianism, , etc.

"Orwell's vision of a horrible future, which was a boot stomping on a human face forever, is a utopian image because he assumed there would be resistance and human faces."

Habermas' point of reference were the 1920 and 1930s, where, through media and discourse, a relatively civilized society was convinced to fight the entire world and eradicate an entire people.
I don't know if you have ever thought about how that even worked, but if your mind comes across that question at some point, Habermas has the answers you seek.
Spoiler: They key is how people construct their own identity. Freuds Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Ego actually predicted all of this in a scarily uncanny way in the 1920s.

Off-topic. Not going to go into this here.

And just a few years later nationalism, populism and the media were used in a targeted way to change the way people construct their identity.

Group A of people use media to advance their ideas. Group B, your side, uses media to advance yours. In this regrad, you, me and everyone else is indistinguishable.

All the intellectuals who realized what was going on where chased out of the country or straight up killed, and by the time the international community realized what was going on Germany was already busy exterminating all European jews with industrial precision and effectiveness, while at the same time working on a full blown plan for world dominance.
I know that most people don't think about all this beyond the point that Nazis were evil and did evil things because they were evil. But there are many important lessons to be learned from understand how and why this worked out the way it did.
And these lessons are, like all good science, not just applicable in one specific instance (1920-45 Germany), but universally valid.

Thanks for the history lesson. The irony, though, is how, despite the historic precedent, you nonetheless fail to notice the signs of unmitigated authoritarianism in your camp.

At the end of the day it comes down to creators and how they react to that criticism.
I would like to hear conservative or ideological right wing games criticism, actually. Just for the novelty factor.

Truth is the least of your concerns. You want to be entertained, rather than potentially shown a crack in your argiumnet, which is what truth-seeking individuals would yearn for.

I just don't think it would have much impact on the choices creators make, unlike feminist criticism.

Perhaps, but the reasons are not what you are likely to think.

Many right wingers talk about games, but the arguments always come down to complaining about "leftist/liberal agendas" being pushed or "forced down peoples throats".

That's not exactly my point, maybe because I wouldn't fit the bill.

Creators have complete sovereignty over their IPs. If they want to use them as tools to promote this or that agenda, so be it. They have every right. On the other hand, I have every right to voice my dissatisfaction and vote with my wallet.

Which is an incomplete argument because they forget to mention why thats bad. But thats a predictable mistake they make because they usually aim these pieces at their own filter bubbles, where "leftism/liberalism is bad" is a commonly held axiom that doesn't need further explanation

.

True, sometimes.
I see thee exact same thing on the radical left. Why is objectification - even if I were to accept the concept - objectionable? Objectively objectioanle? Whyt is sexualization bad? Objectiviely bad?

Radio silence.

Thats your own problem, though.

No, Sir. It's a pihilosophical probem you seem unwilling and, who knows, perhaps unequippoed to tackle.

You can do that, but you'll still have to live with games quickly evolving in a direction you don't like.

Indulge me. What is this brave new world I don't seem to like? I don't have a problem with people playing games I don't like but they do.

But if you are honest you'll probably realize at some point that its not bad afterall.

You're so charitable. If I do not agree with you, then it's because I'm not being honest? I can already tell you lack the bone marrow of a true authoritarian.

A good game is a good game, even when the cast is diverse,

Who's arguing that isn't the case?

female designs aren't unnecessarily sexualized and stories are more than different twists on male power fantasies.

And who would be calling for that exactly?
Is there any chance you will stop misrepresenting the other side?

In other words: Even the people who hate Sarkeesian and her points will get to enjoy the fruits of the conversation she started.

Do you also read palms? Some palmistry, Tarot, maybe?

 

[Fuz]

Isn’t Sweden the birthplace of the SJW however?

No, that's 'murica.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Isn’t Sweden the birthplace of the SJW however?

No, but they are the birthplace of the virtue signaling en force however.

 

[strange headache]

It would be a Habermasian society. Habermas is famous for his discourse ethics. And one of the best descriptions of Habermas is his perspective on Orwell:
"Orwell's vision of a horrible future, which was a boot stomping on a human face forever, is a utopian image because he assumed there would be resistance and human faces."

Habermas' main argument was that ethical principles do not allow for objective truth, hence why they need to be determined intersubjectively through public deliberation. Funnily enough, that is the one thing that the people you're trying to defend have continually failed to do, and quite spectacularly so.

Anita's dogmatic presentation of her purely subjective social criticism made her completely unable to deal with counter argumentation in a reasonable manner. Her refusal to even participate in public debates merely exemplifies her acute inability to defend her views against the better argument. Hence why her ridiculous penchant to confuse any form of criticism with harassment and her hyperbolic emotional reaction to counter arguments.

This is the radical antithesis to everything that Habermas stands for and I resent your blatantly misinformed attempt at dragging him into this discussion.

 

[McCheese]

I thinking imposing these politics into games ruins it, especially when games like Perfect Dark and more recently Uncharted the Lost Legacy stars female characters without it being forced

Ex-Rare staffer here.

At one point the plan was to have the game almost entirely in the first person, and then towards the end reveal you've been playing a female agent all along. *shock* *horror* etc. You have Dana Scully to thank for her being pushed to the forefront.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Ex-Rare staffer here.

At one point the plan was to have the game almost entirely in the first person, and then towards the end reveal you've been playing a female agent all along. *shock* *horror* etc. You have Dana Scully to thank for her being pushed to the forefront.

How is that shock and horror? Is there really that much of a disconnect between some developers and the real world of games?

Some of best shooters have female characters and nobody cares until one group decided to focus on immutable characteristics and make everything about IdPol, virtue signaling, and false narratives. No One Lives Forever is one of the best story driven shooters made, FWIW.

 

[lukilladog]

Some of that stuff a few posts above is weird, it´s like almost self evident that the usage of science in media advertising is not placing values since the objective is to appeal to personal own values which no one wants to change because they are perfectly exploitable, now using pseudoscience to place personal values like Sarkeesian is doing, that´s wacky. Science ≠ pseudoscience, and she is nothing but a poor representation of a sophist, wrong right from the start, just like 3rd wave feminism.

 

[danielberg]

How is that shock and horror? Is there really that much of a disconnect between some developers and the real world of games?

You say that now but at the time its here and there
One of the most prominent Women in gaming was lara croft from Tomb raider and she was famous for being a 13 year olds imagination of badass sexy and was marketed as such, also metroid did some similar reveal so i get that someone could still have had the mindset that this whole "omg women" thing is deep.
But at the point in time of perfect dark this was all already somewhat "dealt" with and in the past of the industry so makes sense it was scraped.

 

[Scopa]

I bought Perfect Dark day 1 and highly anticipated it long before that and I don’t remember a single example of anyone caring or discussing that the protagonist was a woman.

All we cared about were two things:

- Next Rareware game
- “Sequel” to Goldeneye

 

[EverydayBeast]

Naughty Dog features female characters in a very positive way. Developers would make a lot more money if they do so that way

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

Complete misrepresentation of the most prominent responses to her thesis. I can however, recollect, a specific instance where an unprovoked Ms. Sarkesian insulted one of her most prominent critics in public.

That it does not. This shows your poor understanding of epistemology.

There is no necessary correlation between the kind of reactions she got and the validity of her own thesis. She could have been 1. Right and gotten A) welcoming responses or harsh responses or she could have been 2. Deed wrong and gotten C) welcoming responses or harsh responses.

That this has to be explained to you is simply baffling.

When her point is that sexist elements in video games normalize sexism and misogynist behavior, and the reaction to her pointing that out is an avalanche of sexism and misogyny rolling her way, then this is as good a proof of her point as you can get.
As I said before, a collection of video essays is not science. And applying a hard science burden of proof to a sociological theory is missing the point of what a society is. The very reason why society has to be studied as its own entity rather than just the sum of individuals(the sciences of the individual would be biology and psychology) is because traditional theory doesn't apply.
This shit was hot news in the 1920s, but apparently it still hasn't made its way into the mainstream in 2018.

What an absurd statement. Throughout history, truth has been met with a staggering range of responses. There is no correlation between the two. The reaction one gets is not evidence for the validity of one's arguments.

No, but my argument here didn't talk about the validity of her argument, but rather about the circumstance that Sarkeesians conclusions triggered emotional responses in some gamers.
This says nothing about their validity, but it says a lot about the self image of those outraged.

No, I might argue quite the opposite. Both mainstream media and contemporary campuses are drenched with intersectional feminism.

The good old "academia is biased/wrong".
As always presented as a statement of fact. Backed up by nothing but personal feelings about certain schools of thought.

Which would make one wonder why on Earth you decided to bring it up.

A trend isn't undone by exceptions.

He is a scientist. But that you are not sure speaks poignantly about how well-acquainted you are with his work.

I've known his Youtube for a long time. Starting off with his videos about religion, which I enjoyed as a young atheist.
I'm still an atheist now, but I also recognize how pointless it is to apply scientific standards and logic to believe systems.
In a sense he was already missing the point of Religions here, creating this straw man he could make fun of. Ironically the straw man he made fun of actually exists in fundamentalists, so he gets a pass here. It still makes no sense to pour this amount of effort into making fun of curious but small group of idiots.

I am also sure that he does good work in his field. But sociology and media theory aren't his fields. In fact, these fields are methodically so different from the natural science that he can't even use his methodical experience in his favor.
Putting him at a point where his knowledge about what he is talking about is so limited that he doesn't even understand how little he understands what he is talking about.

He understands it. He debunks it.
Deal with it.

As I said before. Sarkeesians conclusions are just the application of the science behind the ad industry to video games.
If he would want to debunk that, his argument would need to explain and prove how basically every corporation ever wasted their money like a bunch of idiots when they advertised their products or brand.

Habermas' main argument was that ethical principles do not allow for objective truth, hence why they need to be determined intersubjectively through public deliberation.
Funnily enough, that is the one thing that the people you're trying to defend have continually failed to do, and quite spectacularly so.

One of the core points of feminism is that minority perspectives are underrepresented in public discourse.
The strong responses to these perspectives are categorized as natural reactions of a majority that is suddenly confronted with proper opposition from groups formerly absent in the public discourse.

Gaming evolved in a time in which societal stereotypes determined that computers and video games are not for girls or women. That was reflected for example in advertising. Not by deliberate choice, but by default. You can make the argument that this behavior reflects biological differences, but to claim that this is exclusively the case would fly into the face of everything we think we know about how humans perceive the world.
So gaming naturally evolved as a mostly male driven medium, but things have changed and there are voices now, among creators as well as consumers, who demand better representation, better characterization and better contextualization.
And they make their arguments every day for themselves.

Anita's dogmatic presentation of her purely subjective social criticism made her completely unable to deal with counter argumentation in a reasonable manner. Her refusal to even participate in public debates merely exemplifies her acute inability to defend her views against the better argument. Hence why her ridiculous penchant to confuse any form of criticism with harassment and her hyperbolic emotional reaction to counter arguments.
This is the radical antithesis to everything that Habermas stands for and I resent your blatantly misinformed attempt at dragging him into this discussion.

Anita is making her own argument, she doesn't claim to speak for anyone. She wanted to share her perspective to start a conversation. And she certainly doesn't have to answer to angry people who want to shut a perspective down but its not what they're used to. By attacking anything, except the core argument.

 

[Thiagosc777]

I will have to be condescending here: Half retarded right wing Youtubers who haven't got a clue about anything, but think they are qualified to talk about this stuff and rejoice in the circle jerk of equally unqualified viewers who like their content because it supports their preconceived believes and rids them of the unpleasant thought that something isn't right with their favorite medium - they can't be described as "sound rational objections".

Ok, if being a left winger and academic is a pre-requisite for you to consider people's arguments, then here you can find a left winger feminist that destroys Anita Sarkeesian:



Or is she a "half retarded right winger" as well? Maybe anyone who disagrees with you is one, right?

There are many videos in her channel where she shows how you are wrong. This video is very old, there are newer ones, but you can search for them.

 

[Paracelsus]

Ok, if being a left winger and academic is a pre-requisite for you to consider people's arguments, then here you can find a left winger feminist that destroys Anita Sarkeesian:
Or is she a "half retarded right winger" as well? Maybe anyone who disagrees with you is one, right?

There are many videos in her channel where she shows how you are wrong. This video is very old, there are newer ones, but you can search for them.

They made it into one, because by going to college you're exposed to white guilt classes, and if you want to graduate you have to ace them all. Chances are at that point, you fell for it.

 

[nkarafo]

I bought Perfect Dark day 1 and highly anticipated it long before that and I don’t remember a single example of anyone caring or discussing that the protagonist was a woman.

All we cared about were two things:

- Next Rareware game
- “Sequel” to Goldeneye

I can confirm. Nobody cared about the sex/gender of the main character. I don't remember a single preview or review in any magazine at the time mentioning it. All everyone cared for was to play the next big FPS by RARE.

 

[Scopa]

I can confirm. Nobody cared about the sex/gender of the main character. I don't remember a single preview or review in any magazine at the time mentioning it. All everyone cared for was to play the next big FPS by RARE.

I was more talking about gamers I came into contact with, but yeah I can’t remember every magazine preview obviously, but I don’t remember any controversy over it in print mags. There was probably a few “sexy” comments though, being the 90s/early 2000s and all.

Cue someone digging up an obscure paragraph from an old mag lambasting a female protagonist now.

 

[TheDuskwalker]

Ex-Rare staffer here.

At one point the plan was to have the game almost entirely in the first person, and then towards the end reveal you've been playing a female agent all along. *shock* *horror* etc. You have Dana Scully to thank for her being pushed to the forefront.

Glad that was scrapped, would have just came off as a Metroid 1 repeat.

 

[Dr. Claus]

They made it into one, because by going to college you're exposed to white guilt classes, and if you want to graduate you have to ace them all. Chances are at that point, you fell for it.

Been in college for nigh on 7 years now. Never was introduced to "White Guilt". Is this a thing only on the coasts?

I will have to be condescending here: Half retarded right wing Youtubers who haven't got a clue about anything, but think they are qualified to talk about this stuff and rejoice in the circle jerk of equally unqualified viewers who like their content because it supports their preconceived believes and rids them of the unpleasant thought that something isn't right with their favorite medium - they can't be described as "sound rational objections".

So, your opinion/viewpoint is the right one and any one that disagrees is a "half retarded right wing" person who are unqualified to speak on this subject? That is some quality bullshit, mate.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

Ok, if being a left winger and academic is a pre-requisite for you to consider people's arguments, then here you can find a left winger feminist that destroys Anita Sarkeesian:



Or is she a "half retarded right winger" as well? Maybe anyone who disagrees with you is one, right?

There are many videos in her channel where she shows how you are wrong. This video is very old, there are newer ones, but you can search for them.

I don't know if I have watched this exact video, but I know what her argument is.
She shares some of Anitas perspectives about female representation but disagrees with her on the effects of sexualized female representation. This specific argument can be had and it is being had in a proper way at universities.
But since this is the internet where people "destroy" someone the argument was not being had in a proper way.
Kerzner disagreeing with parts Sarkeesians videos made her the poster child of one group and someone to attack for the other group.

I even think Liana would have a point if the entire argument were aimed at audiences instead of creators.
Like, yeah, I also don't see the point in tumblr-style feminists and right winger getting into shouting matches on Twitter.
But the trick is to not focus on them.

But then again, she is also equating tolerance of violence in video games with tolerance of everything else. A demented gotcha.

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

So, your opinion/viewpoint is the right one and any one that disagrees is a "half retarded right wing" person who are unqualified to speak on this subject? That is some quality bullshit, mate.

On Youtube and Reddit you might get the impression that this is the case, but in actuality if you look around at game studios you'll find that the discussion surrounding all these questions of sexism, representation and design is completely different from whats happening on Youtube, Reddit, or some forum.
It's a mature and sensible one and I can't wait to see how it transpires into future games.

 

[Paracelsus]

On Youtube and Reddit you might get the impression that this is the case, but in actuality if you look around at game studios you'll find that the discussion surrounding all these questions of sexism, representation and design is completely different from whats happening on Youtube, Reddit, or some forum.
It's a mature and sensible one and I can't wait to see how it transpires into future games.

We've seen pictures from the BFV fiasco celebration party. They're anything but.

 

[Dr. Claus]

On Youtube and Reddit you might get the impression that this is the case, but in actuality if you look around at game studios you'll find that the discussion surrounding all these questions of sexism, representation and design is completely different from whats happening on Youtube, Reddit, or some forum.
It's a mature and sensible one and I can't wait to see how it transpires into future games.

I would hardly call developers who openly insult their customers, throw launch parties mocking their playerbase, and performing historical revisionism as "mature". That is the opposite of "mature".

 

[1.21Gigawatts]

We've seen pictures from the BFV fiasco celebration party. They're anything but.

Are you talking about this?
https://wccftech.com/ea-mock-battlefield-v-genderfield/

They are mocking shitposts. This is your proof that the debate at EA about representation in video games is not mature?

I would hardly call developers who openly insult their customers, throw launch parties mocking their playerbase

Why would your expect them to respect shitposters?

and performing historical revisionism as "mature".

Who is the authority on historical accuracy in video games and why did they draw the red line right between zombies and women? Seems arbitrary, almost like someone was looking for a bullshit reason to complain about a female character.

That is the opposite of "mature".

Someone doesn't care or respect your opinion and chooses to exclude your from the argument.
You will have to deal with that, or become a creator yourself and make your own point. Then you'll experience what its like to have to defend that point and maybe you will decide as well that some of the criticism coming your way is not worth wasting any time on.
Thats not a sign of immaturity.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Are you talking about this?
https://wccftech.com/ea-mock-battlefield-v-genderfield/

They are mocking shitposts. This is your proof that the debate at EA about representation in video games is not mature?

Why would your expect them to respect shitposters?

One, multiple of those posts were taken out of context completely, such as the "White men! White men! White men!" post which was mocking the term that was banned on the beta, not promotion of only having white men in the game. Two, why do you immediately assume they were shitposters? Many of those posts, when given their complete context, were perfectly valid opinions to have, especially for those who wished to have a more authentic experience. Not everyone wants that, and that is fine - however you are doing what the developers did: ignore context and push this disingenuous idea that they wanted women out, just as you did below. This has been talked about in great lengths in this thread which I suggest you actually read.

Who is the authority on historical accuracy in video games and why did they draw the red line right between zombies and women? Seems arbitrary, almost like someone was looking for a bullshit reason to complain about a female character.

It has nothing to do with women, as has been stated multiple times throughout this thread, other threads on GAF, the subreddit of Battlefield itself, and other communication hubs. It is about the rewriting of history to push very specific modern socio-political agendas. I would go more in-depth, but I already did so multiple times (as did many others) in this thread. Go read it.

Someone doesn't care or respect your opinion and chooses to exclude your from the argument.
You will have to deal with that, or become a creator yourself and make your own point. Then you'll experience what its like to have to defend that point and maybe you will decide as well that some of the criticism coming your way is not worth wasting any time on.
Thats not a sign of immaturity.

Telling someone that they are uneducated. Telling someone that they are "sexists" or "misogynists". Telling others to not purchase your game because you don't want to listen to valid opinions. Purposefully taking phrases out of context to mock them - those are indeed the signs of immaturity.

 

[Supreme Allah]

 

[hariseldon]

Can I just say that 1.2Gigawatts is posting some of the most patronising self-superior bollocks I have ever read on a forum. Congratulations on that.

 

[MilkyJoe]

Battlefield sucks as a general matter but who cares if chicks are in it.

I don't think many care that chicks are in the multiplayer. It's the gender switching and lies told in the single player, for sjw brownie points.

 

[hariseldon]

One of the difficulties I have with the agenda to rewrite history to make it look like the past was inclusive etc is that it actually does women and minorities a huge disservice, effectively erasing the hard work done by generations to reach a point of relative equality in the modern era. If we pretend that the past was perfect we have a problem, because then one can paint the present as a dystopia (which to an extent is happening with the Trump hysteria) in which we're not doing so well - by reinventing the past it becomes easier to claim that we've gone backwards when in fact we've made huge forward strides, which has the effect of insulting those past efforts and enabling a more regressive push to a weird SJW utopia.

Consider that s/he who controls history controls the future and we have a problem.

 

[Cosmogony]

That it does not. This shows your poor understanding of epistemology.


When her point is that sexist elements in video games normalize sexism and misogynist behavior,

I reject the idea that there's any sexist, let alone misogynist elements in mainstream videogames.

and the reaction to her pointing that out is an avalanche of sexism and misogyny rolling her way,

Your attempt to mischaracterize the overall reaction she got as sexist and misogynist might come from either not having an idea of what the terms mean or not having an idea of what the usual reactions were.

then this is as good a proof of her point as you can get.

It isn't. You show your poor understanding of causation.
Accepting, just for the sake of argument, that she got mostly sexist and misogynist reactions, that still would not have established a causal link between the existence of alleged sexist and alleged misogynist elements in videogames and sexist and misogynist behaviour of gamers. There are alternative explanations and you would need to rule them out first and with good reason.

As I said before, a collection of video essays is not science. And applying a hard science burden of proof to a sociological theory is missing the point of what a society is.

You may have just explained why the social sciences might potentially benefit from a renaissance. Sociology is not hard science but that's not enough to excuse it from having to substantiate its claims. You want a free pass? You want to make claims and be unburdened by the obligation to present evidence, hard data? You really want to label any contrary viewpoints as all the evils of the world ending in -ist and -ny as a way to dismiss them?

The very reason why society has to be studied as its own entity rather than just the sum of individuals(the sciences of the individual would be biology and psychology) is because traditional theory doesn't apply.
This shit was hot news in the 1920s, but apparently it still hasn't made its way into the mainstream in 2018.

Nothing of that refutes the need for data, evidence and methodological rigueur.

No, but my argument here didn't talk about the validity of her argument, but rather about the circumstance that Sarkeesians conclusions triggered emotional responses in some gamers.

Poor behaviour is inexcusable, but It might have something to do with being characterized as sexist and mysoginist.

This says nothing about their validity, but it says a lot about the self image of those outraged.

Not to excuse any uncivilized behaviour, but It might say some people get pissed when they're called nasty names.

The good old "academia is biased/wrong".

You ned to pay closer attention to what I write. I did not say Academia is biased/wrong. I said nowadays feminism permeates mainstream media and Academia, so, if anything, it is indeed likely these young adults would have been thoroughly exposed to the kind of body of work Ms. Sarkesian aspired to add to. As such, the notion that her thesis was rejected because of widespread ignorance of feminist theory doesn't seem to hold water.

As always presented as a statement of fact. Backed up by nothing but personal feelings about certain schools of thought.

I did not say what you say I did. Repeating it a thousand times won't make it true.

A trend isn't undone by exceptions.

Which doesn't relieve you from having to show the trend exists in the first place.

I've known his Youtube for a long time. Starting off with his videos about religion, which I enjoyed as a young atheist.
I'm still an atheist now, but I also recognize how pointless it is to apply scientific standards and logic to believe systems.

Off-topic.

In a sense he was already missing the point of Religions here, creating this straw man he could make fun of. Ironically the straw man he made fun of actually exists in fundamentalists, so he gets a pass here. It still makes no sense to pour this amount of effort into making fun of curious but small group of idiots.

Off-topic.

I am also sure that he does good work in his field. But sociology and media theory aren't his fields. In fact, these fields are methodically so different from the natural science that he can't even use his methodical experience in his favor.
Putting him at a point where his knowledge about what he is talking about is so limited that he doesn't even understand how little he understands what he is talking about.

Off-topic. You are hereby invited to create a thread on Jordan Peterson.

As I said before. Sarkeesians conclusions are just the application of the science behind the ad industry to video games.

Science, by definition, necessitates evidence. Please refer back to Karl Popper. If it ain't falsifiabnle, it ain't science.

If he would want to debunk that, his argument would need to explain and prove how basically every corporation ever wasted their money like a bunch of idiots when they advertised their products or brand.

That's not the usual contention.

One of the core points of feminism is that minority perspectives are underrepresented in public discourse.

Underrepresented? You mean to tell me that in western liberal democracies these groups are actively being prevented from voicing their points of view? Do tell.

And do tell how you reached the conclusion that minorities have one identifiable common perspective on anything of relevance. Notice the disparity: according to your side white straight males can and do have a multiplicity of viewpoints, which can be attested. But now the concept of a minority perspective, a perspective that is shared by the majority if not the totality of the minority has been introduced.

Really interesting.

The strong responses to these perspectives are categorized as natural reactions of a majority that is suddenly confronted with proper opposition from groups formerly absent in the public discourse.

This is how it works in free open societies. Feminist groups get to voice their point of view, anyone else gets to voice his or her own. Does that bother you? Would you rather have feminist groups put forth their opinions enjoying the unprecedented privilege of not having to face scrutiny and criticism?

Gaming evolved in a time in which societal stereotypes determined that computers and video games are not for girls or women. That was reflected for example in advertising. Not by deliberate choice, but by default. You can make the argument that this behavior reflects biological differences, but to claim that this is exclusively the case would fly into the face of everything we think we know about how humans perceive the world.

With a few nuances, I make none of the argument as you present them.
If the demand for videogames now includes a significant portion of female gamers, I would expect nothing different from companies actively trying to meet the demand with appropriate supply. That's not the issue. That's the market working healthily.

So gaming naturally evolved as a mostly male driven medium, but things have changed and there are voices now, among creators as well as consumers, who demand better representation, better characterization and better contextualization.

And I reject the concept of representation, the idea that a fictional character going about his fictional life in a fictional setting is best and primarily viewed as the representative of arbitrary groups of real-life individuals often numbering in the billions.

And they make their arguments every day for themselves.

They don't.

Anita is making her own argument, she doesn't claim to speak for anyone.

Really? I could have sworn she saw herself as one of the sporkespersons of the victims of the Patriarchy.

She wanted to share her perspective to start a conversation.

She has every right to do both. She would have been well-advised to expect criticism, though.

And she certainly doesn't have to answer to angry people who want to shut a perspective down

You mean the way she did by insulting one of her critics in public and suggesting she and her female colleagues shouldn't have to face criticism?

but its not what they're used to. By attacking anything, except the core argument.

By and large, that's not what happened.

 

[lock2k]

I try not to follow "conspiracies" too much but I've been seeing lately actual SJW agendas being pushed on game developers.

Barf...

Someone please invent the time machine so we can go back and "correct" the mistake that allowing Marx to exist was.

 

[lock2k]

Get woke, go broke.

 

[The_Mike]

No, that's 'murica.

It is Europe’s SJW central.

I don’t think America is shown as a SJW country. However in Sweden they have a self proclaimed feminist government and they are busy banning anything that’s Swedish, and proclaiming anything Pro SJW-feminist garbage.

 

[lukilladog]

...One of the core points of feminism is that minority perspectives are underrepresented in public discourse.

Females are not a minority, feminists definitely are

 

[Mooreberg]

The game is now faltering in so many directions, that nothing productive or positive for consumers is going to be learned by EA. Look at the scramble to keep non-diehards playing with the TTK changes. They keep inventing problems that didn’t need to exist, then have no idea how to adequately correct it.

 

[Shmunter]

It is Europe’s SJW central.

I don’t think America is shown as a SJW country. However in Sweden they have a self proclaimed feminist government and they are busy banning anything that’s Swedish, and proclaiming anything Pro SJW-feminist garbage.

I believe in Sweden even a Man tax was floated as reperations to Women for all the suffering at the hands of men. It never went through, and probably too late now with the left grasp slowly eroding after making a nightmarish mess of the country.

 

[ToughestSoul]

How you can use a game that is ultimately about war and human atrocities as a place to promote these modern social issues I will never understand.

It's like having some insane horror movie and then turning around to say "but see, the black guy was transgender while he was sadistically murdered and tortured and the killer was a woman, isn't that great? It's for everyone, for the whole family! We make society better!"

The cognitive dissonance is just too much for me.

 

[Dunki]

Who is the authority on historical accuracy in video games and why did they draw the red line right between zombies and women? Seems arbitrary, almost like someone was looking for a bullshit reason to complain about a female character.

They made the people who in reality did destroy Dark Water as incompetent and idiots. They painted the whole french soldiers as racist and they fabricated terrible lies to make the black African solder brigade as a way more superior race especially in morals and values. And they did this all to push heir agenda. Honestly they should be sued just like people not believing in the Holocaust.

 

[Ogbert]

That it does not. This shows your poor understanding of epistemology.

Watch out lads. We've got a badass on our hands.

I think he's read the introduction to Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy'.

 

[LegendOfKage]

Take for example this one Youtube guy called Thunderf00t. As far as I know he even is a scientist, but he completely misses the point of Sarkeesians media criticism and subsequently tries to refute it without having understood the point of it.

I don't think you're missing the point when someone is making generalizations, and your point is that they shouldn't make generalizations. "I'm not saying ALL women aren't funny." "I'm not saying ALL women are bad drivers." I'm not saying ALL women are emotional, so they make bad leaders." "I'm not saying ALL women care about is how much money their man makes for them to spend" I'm sure you can understand generalizations when they apply to women, so why not when they're applied to men?

And as a result many people tried to "disprove" her by explaining the context of the design decisions in question.
But to actually disprove her they would've needed to prove that portrayals in the media do not affect the concept of reality of consumers.

No, people with your opinion would have to prove that sexual portrayals of women in video games causes male players to think less of women as people, or causes women emotional harm not based on their ideology. *

In a world that has seen study after study determine that video game violence doesn't cause real life violence, you would have to prove that video game sexism causes real life sexism.

* Why not based on ideology? To use an admittedly extreme example, I'm sure you can make the case that even LEGAL immigration causes certain nationalists emotional harm and stress, but that doesn't mean we change things to accommodate them. They just have to get over it, and learn that not everyone thinks the way they do.

You'd have to prove that most women who don't even think about feminism are being emotionally harmed by female video game portrayals before I would begin to think about supporting morality judgments to alter media.

In other words: They needed to disprove the very principle one of the largest industries in the world is based on: The advertising industry.
The science behind the ad industry and the science behind feminist media criticism is the exact same.
Just that the ad industry uses this science to sell people thoughts, desires, feelings etc, while feminist media criticism focusses on objectionable values that being conveyed by media, whether the creators are aware of it or not.

And you would need to prove that not only does "sex sell" but it's harmful for all women, not just secular ideologues who have been raised to find sexual characters offensive and harmful, in the same matter that religious ideologues were raised to view sexuality as offensive and harmful throughout history. And the really difficult part (for your proof and my acceptance) is you'd have to have several studies that legitimately set out to find factual answers, not confirm pre-determined judgements, using participants who were not feminists*, and who were not guided to specific responses in any way.

* In the same way you wouldn't go to religious people to determine if something offensive to their faith should be removed from media for causing emotional harm.

And good luck getting any of that in this day and age.

 

[Ogbert]

How you can use a game that is ultimately about war and human atrocities as a place to promote these modern social issues I will never understand.

In short, because we no longer have any concept of genuine human suffering. The great boon of stable liberal democracy is that war and terror has been exported to different countries. When it occassionally appears in our midst (terrorism), we have no real ability to deal with it, hence it being ignored or dismissed. We are all snowflakes, and we should consider ourselves lucky for being so.

Dostoevsky, or some similar Russian dead chap, suggested that a society has lost all value when it treats trivial things seriously and serious things trivially.

The conversation we are having now about blue haired women in World War 2 video games is a perfect example of the former.

 

[hyperbertha]

Get woke, go broke.

 

[hyperbertha]

Having multiple Quantic Dream games in the top 50 of all time is pretty absurd.

I bought a PS4 at launch, not that it even matters. I finished Heavy Rain, the best thing about that game were the "shaun!" videos.

Sure you did. Heavy Rain was amazing for its time and I can give you multiple websites that nominated and even awarded Detroit goty. Guess how many gotys battlefield 5 got? lol. Quantic Dream is one of the very few studios that warrants having multiple games in top 50. Games with minimal yet meaningful gameplay are infinitely better than games with tired gameplay tropes.

 

[The Elite]

Ex-Rare staffer here.

At one point the plan was to have the game almost entirely in the first person, and then towards the end reveal you've been playing a female agent all along. *shock* *horror* etc. You have Dana Scully to thank for her being pushed to the forefront.

I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. The right decision was made.

 

[McHuj]

I’m curious to know if BF5 has ended up on any end of the year top 10 list from gaming sites that are on the right side of history? Was it worth it?