Anita Sarkeesian's gaming series opens with Damsel in Distress

Top Comment Really interesting first episode!
I think a major problem is not the deliberate dis-empowering of women as an excuse to advance the plot line but the fact that this is rarely equal. Fair enough, show a woman being dis-empowered to advance the plot here but why not show the same of a man to advance the plot of a female character there?

I think ideally we need to create stories and characters that reflect the kind of equality we'd all like to see in the real world, strong male and female characters, weak male and female characters. In fact, let's not focus on gender at all and just create some really deep and interesting characters with intertwined stories that don't rely so much on stereotyping. Personally I play as female characters in every RPG that allows me (Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, etc.) because I find the idea of a kick ass female protagonist just as interesting as that of a male one. I don't have to be the same gender to relate to a heroes journey if it's delivered well enough and therefore I feel like I'm along for the ride.
Can't wait to see part two.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

The issue is that in Japanese culture women are submissive, docile and relegated to possession status due to centuries of history of this.

To be fair to Japan, this is not a uniquely Japanese attitude and is present, to a somewhat lesser degree, in Western culture also.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I don't see anything worth $150K here. Not to mention the money she'll make off YouTube ads as a partner from these videos. Hope everyone who donated feels this is even remotely worth it.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I donated, and I do, so thanks!

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Prince of Persia is the only non-Japanese game mentioned. After watching the video, i feel that she did not say anything new and it was repetitive.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment $150,000 for a blog with an added intro, more makeup, and a different background. This is quite a Snake Oil sale here. Also the disabling of ratings and comments just shows how she's not confident in her opinion because if she was, and if she cared, she would be actively looking for a discussion, even on youtube, and she would try to convince skeptics of her opinion through discussion. She could use that Kickstarter money on developing or producing her own game, but what happens instead? An intro and months of delay for a blog. I wish I could have conned people like that and be defended by journalists by showing them a handful of hateful and trolling comments in a sea of constructive criticism and logical disagreements, thanks to the comment pending approval button in the Video Manager Advanced Settings. Anything else I want to say can be found in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpFk5F-S_hI

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Wow, there sure are some people upset about a successful project funding drive here! Comments from us backers are all pretty positive so far, and the rest of you get a free video series you are welcome to not watch if it offends you, so questioning the 'worthiness' of Sarkeesian's funding comes off as more than a little envious. Nobody was conned here.

And Matt, Anita received more than 'a handful' of trolling comments - she got hundreds of rape and death threats, some sick jerk made a game devoted to punching her in the face, her websites were hacked and defaced, she received hundreds of thousands of obscene, hateful and horrendously misogynistic comments and emails, she was photoshopped into degrading and awful pornographic images - and all for what? Questioning the way women are depicted in videogames and viewed by pop culture? The gross overreaction to her project just highlights the undercurrent of vicious misogyny so many women are subjected to for having opinions on the Internet, especially when those opinions touch on a male-dominated industry like this one.

I think she has every right to disable YouTube comments, considering what a cesspit they are normally. Even a supposedly professional site like this apparently can't escape indignant dudes moaning about a woman daring to shine a light on their hobby.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 8th March 2013 11:23pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

when there is so much disproving it

Disproving what, the torrent of abuse she got? The fact that women get horrible abuse every day on the Internet because of their gender? I would love to see your proof that either of these things are false. Go on, disprove me.

It's as if you're offended for the sake of being offended.

Believe me, I am quite tired of being insulted, sickened and upset by the stuff I read online every single day. I don't go looking for it, but I'm not afraid to call it out when I see it.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 8th March 2013 11:58pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment None of the comments above refute anything I said regards the abuse Sarkeesian recieved for her project nor the reality of being a woman on the Internet, and if you're relying on random YouTube videos to make your point for you - well, I'm not sitting through 25 minutes of badly-edited video to find where they support whatever point it is you're trying to make.

Seriously, if Sarkeesian's work upsets you this much then I suggest you don't watch her videos. Rageposting about what other people spend their money on and enjoy is a bit weird, dude.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment You are so thick-headed it's hilarious. But hey, it was my privilege talking to a wall.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Nice refutation! Thanks for engaging me in an intelligent and polite discussion.

(I am rolling my eyes so hard right now)

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment This first video falls into the same routine as every other Sarkeesian video. Even when she's just talking about the type of game or the features of it she sounds disgusted, like living in the same worlds as Mario Bros keeps her up at night.

I feel sorry for her as she's clearly very sad inside to the point where in her perspective, any female character that needs help or rescuing is being objectified. I never saw Zelda or Princess Toadstool as objects (its hard for me to do so), I saw them as people who needed my (the protagonist of the game) help. Plus how fun would it be if the game was suddenly cut short because the person you were trying to help managed to save themselves off screen?

Also what if you play a female character and your sister/mother/brother/father/lover was kidnapped? I'm sure Sarkeesion would label that the "Female with a penis" trope.

Finally, Anyone who thinks that a video game character needs fleshing out beyond that for the sake of story should just stop and think if they treat people in real life the way they see characters treated on the screen. If no, well done you're a well rounded person who can separate entertainment from reality which means the video game is not a problem in your life. If yes, i feel sorry for you.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I loved the chance to care about Yorda in Ico or Meche in Grim Fandango! If done well, the damsel in distress scenario stops being about incapabilities of female NPCs and unfolds a tale of love, heroism and proweness. The result obviously depends on writers' ability of characterization. The problem is not related to female characters only, males suffer from the very same flatness and tropes: butch / brutish / bipolar / manchildish...

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Tomas Roller on 9th March 2013 7:05am

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment She calls it Trope I call it a Genre. Her argument is shot down by the mention of: Samus, Tifa Lockheart, Lara Croft(despite the New one), Bayonetta, Etna(Desgeia), Aya Brea (Parasite Eve). That was just from looking around my room. There are plenty of strong female leads in games. Picking apart the games where thery're not strong and asking why not is a bit "pedantic"

I wish her good luck on the series though. I look forward to seeing the next one.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment The Damsel trope is a lazy way of creating a sympathetic bond between protagonist/player character and hapless victim. There's a reason why the Damsel in Distress railway scene is one of the most famous silent-movie clips - it's because, in the space of a few seconds, an emotional bond is created that makes the viewer invested in the outcome. Reverse the genders - or make both characters the same gender - and the emotional impact is lost. In the same way, there's also a reason why a lot of TV shows and movies involve kidnapped children or the death of a relative - it's lazy writing that creates an almost instant emotional link.

Over and above that rant...

I do feel that Anita is preaching to the converted with all this. Indie Game: The Movie got a little under 100k from Kickstarter (covering 40% of the budget, apparently), and they created a documentary, entered the movie into competitions, and got the movie onto Steam. I'm not talking Bowling for Columbine extravagance, but certainly I think she could have reached a broader audience - and affected more views, which is meant to be the end result - with something that wasn't just her talking to camera and posting the result to Youtube. She mentions Shigeru Miyamoto repeatedly, for instance, but how much better would it have been if she had managed to interview the man himself to ask about the design choices of his games? What about interviewing Rhianna Pratchett, regarding the new TR? What about interviewing folklorists regarding the damsel trope in other cultures and artforms? (Not every reading of the Damsel scenario disempowers women).

I also think she did herself no favours by disabling comments. Yes, comments directed at her were shocking and disgraceful, but now this has appeared

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THjrjmpLJWs&feature=player_embedded

Edited 3 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 9th March 2013 5:11pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment After the negative comments by some I was a little worried, but being one to form my own opinions I was actually quite impressed.

I can also forgive that this is nothing like $150,000 worth of footage. After all, its just part of the series and the required funding for what she wished to achieve was far and beyond lower and more modest ($6,000). It will be interesting to see where this can be taken and the 'legs' the funding can give it.

A lot of good points have been raised in this analysis. Gotta say, I've always been shocked at what Nintendo did with Crystal in StarFox Adventures, its also interesting to see the use of "Damsels in Distress" across games over the decades shown in all in one place as I didn't put it in this perspective despite knowing it was present. I liked the analysis on Damsels in games being prevented from being 'architects of their own escape'. The Double Dragon part was also quite shocking and something I hadn't seen before.

Of course, there is another side to all stories and analyses so I would like to see her explore that. I've also never played a game for to live out any particular male power fantasy, but I can see how the designers have worked to 'try' and extract that from teenage boys in some of these games - but its debatable to what extent that actually makes the games more appealing, outside the fact they may have really good game play.

I would also like to see more mention and analysis on female characters in popular games who are the exact opposite of the damsel in distress.

Edited 2 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 9th March 2013 6:01pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

I don't see how its unacceptable its a game after all its not the developers point of view on how women should be treated, and of course it should be rated accordingly.

I didn't say it was unacceptable, but that it makes it seem 'more unacceptable'.

I find that Anita always seems to take things out of context in her videos, The whole purpose of princess peach is to be kidnapped so the Mario games actually have some sort of plot, its simple and effective. She just looks for sexism in games and of course she finds it.

This is where it gets interesting.

In isolation, of course there is absolutely nothing up with Mario's story and Princess Peach being saved. But when she looks into the wider context of the damsel in distress being used almost as the default story and how it has become a norm that 'the weak woman is saved by the male protagonist' , and how the said company seemingly repeated this throughout their biggest titles, going as far as to remove a woman from the lead role to make her a helpless object of desire, then we have another discussion.

Of course, whether or not that is what we call 'sexism' is debatable. But it throws up a lot of questions about what we thing is 'acceptable' or 'unacceptable' or 'normal' and why.

We shouldn't forget that this is ultimately an exploration into the subject, regardless of any deep opinions the host or any of the resulting viewers actually hold. By the end of it I'm sure many more of these discussions will have happened. You'll have people with the same views they've always had and some people changing their views, after all its what tends to happen when a different perspective is offered for our brains to process.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 9th March 2013 10:13pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Cool, sorry I misunderstood.

So, just so I have this clear, You're shocked that she used this as an example to the extent shown in the video? Or shocked that Double Dragon uses the girlfriend getting kidnapped as the reason for the quest?

My point with the GTA and Heavy Rain examples where to show that there are actual examples of mistreatment/disrespect towards women both in a game area (GTA, optional through players actions) and as part of a key part of the narrative (Heavy Rain). These are of course mature rated games which should be played by people who know that what they're playing isn't indicative of reality and that they shouldn't act as they have in the game.

When watching Sarkeesion's Video the whole vibe was pretty much "look at how horrible all this is"/"This isn't how it should be" without really talking about how it could be better, maybe that comes in part 2 of this but I'm not holding my breath and the only question her video raises in me is what has happened to this women to fill her with so much contempt towards pop culture and women in it.

As I said earlier if the role was swapped and Mario was Marion and had to go rescue Prince Peach, Sarkeesion would most likely call this "female with a penis" trope as the damsel in distress genre/motivation so far has been primarily men saving women (cause god forbid we would want to save someone from imprisonment) and call it unoriginal. Sarkeesion, in my opinion, sets out to point out how wrong everything else is without really suggesting alternatives which almost anyone could do.

Good back and forth we have here.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Ken McFarlane on 9th March 2013 10:31pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

There are two ways (or more) of looking at everything. Maybe there is more to it, maybe there isn't. Its actually quite difficult for anyone to have the right answer there.

It's impossible to have a right answer as this is all observation and opinions. I think Sarkeesion's are massively one sided/warped as opinions are stated without thinking of alternatives.

You can nit pick at anything really but I think the fact that the majority of people don't mind peach getting captured shows it's really a non-issue.

This method of analysis can be applied to The Hobbits in The Two Towers, they were damsels in distress and they were saved by men, if we really wanted to we could talk about homosexual undertones of the author because of this plot as it's big strong men rescuing weak and defenseless ones. This re-enforces the 'camp' lifestyle of the hobbits making them outright gay through observation, which then re-enforces homosexual stereotypes of being weaker, lesser beings that need the strong heterosexual men to save them. You can even say that the elf and dwarf in the lord of the rings are super hitting on each other when they're counting how many orcs they've killed to impress each other.

You can read what you want into anything and form your opinion based of that, Sarkeesion's just seems to always end up negative and she's going to back herself in a corner where no female character is going to be a good role model.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Ken McFarlane on 10th March 2013 1:23pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment The lack of self awareness in the game industry strikes again in this comments section. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that most of the comments are ad homenim or about the amount of money she made on kickstarter. Clearly none of you know how to take a hint. I used to think the problem with sexism in games stemmed from 12 year old boys on Xbox Live too young to know any better. The reaction to this video proves to me that the problem is adult men with the minds of 12 year old boys inside the industry.

Edited 2 times. Last edit by Bill Garrison on 11th March 2013 4:11am

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment @ Bill

I guess it shouldnt be surprising that most of the comments are ad homenim attacks about the amount of money she made on kickstarter.

I don't mean to antagonise, but there's a difference between "Ad Hominem attacks" and "the amount of money she made on Kickstarter". The former is a personal attack, obviously stupid, and does no favours to anyone (least of all the human race). The latter is a valid point, raising the question of whether she could've spurred a greater discussion if she had done something different. Especially when you take into account that she's doing the same talking-head set-up as she did before she got 150k in donations, and some full-fledged documentaries have been made for less.

Also, your use of the word "most" isn't particularly correct, either. :/

Edited 2 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 10th March 2013 9:20am

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Heheh - @Bill Garrison pretty much.

I think the video seems to get folks backs up because the industry is predominantly a male run industry aimed at male gamers. In that environment you're not being sexist - you're just being 'normal' as the prevalent viewpoint defines it. Possibly why this all got such a hefty reaction is simply because it effectively is going 'actually your normality? It's not exactly right' which people hate.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Exactly, Angus. People get defensive when their privilege and problematic attitudes get called out - especially when it's a member of the marginalised group doing the calling out.

Damsel in distress is in itself just a lazy way of coming up with a motivation for a male protagonist. The enduring popularity of the trope points to greater problems than laziness though.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment According to MCVs yearly surveys, the percentage of women in the UK games industry has halved in recent years.

Maybe that has something to do with the dismissive reactions we get when we bring up concerns like this. If you think privilege doesn't factor into the equation at all, I think you're missing something important.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I'm kind of staggered that people would come to what is ostensibly an industry-focussed site, frequented mostly by people in the business, and speak to each other in the way you see in this thread.

Is that really how you want to come across to your peer group (and potentially the next person who will be in a position to offer you work)?

Crazy.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I should really be working right now and I feel like I've spent the past three days talking/arguing/getting shouted at about this, but since it's a polite request! :3

"what if you play a female character and your sister/mother/brother/father/lover was kidnapped?"
If the above was an example of a game it would still fall into the 'Damsel in Distress' trope, dispite the protagonist being female.

Simply by virtue of the protagonist being female and the kidnapped character not necessarily being female this no longer falls into the strict deinition of the 'Damsel in Distress' trope. I'd be okay with it, caveat being that the kidnapped character isn't pointlessly sexualised like many damsels often are. I'd also like to see the kidnapped character not being totally helpless, but many people apparently find that kind of vulnerability compelling so whatever, that's just my personal preference.

The thing some people tend to miss about objections to female tropes is that when something happens once or twice it's not a trope, but when it's as widespread as Damsel in Distress, or the way female characters are so often portrayed with exactly the same pneumatic supermodel-esque appearance, then it's problematic. When you get to the point that 'oh, she got kidnapped, guess I need to save her like in all these other games' is just eye-rollingly tired writing, you have to wonder why designers keep hopping to that particular brand of motivation and why players keep responding to it.

As to why privilege comes into this - first, I hope that we're all on the same page regards what privilege is, so just in case I'll quote the excellent feminism101 primer on male privilege:

Privilege is: About how society accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom of the deck on your behalf.

In the case where we're discussing how tropes in games can harm women, men have the privilege to be able to brush off any criticism or concerns as 'not about me, not really a problem', which I see happen a LOT. When something hurtful doesn't target your gender/race/sexuality, it's easier to ignore or dismiss it. When that hurtful thing is so often portrayed as something that benefits your gender somehow - and I'm not saying that every guy likes being the big strong hero who rescues the helpless maiden, or ogling the skimpily-clad women presented to them in games, but those are specifically presented for the enjoyment of heterosexual men - it's easy to get defensive about it and ignore how and why it can be hurtful to someone else.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Ken McFarlane's comment nailed it dead center. Her ideologies are something to take seriously in the entertainment industry overall, but she expresses it incorrectly, looking for things that aren't there to begin with.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment If I was in Sarkeesian's place, doing what she does and getting the shit she does for it(and I have little doubt that no matter how carefully she worded her videos she would still get a complete shitstorm over it), I would probably have offed myself by now. Not even joking. I have personally experienced a comparatively tiny amount of what she has and I still have nightmares about it.

There is no amount of money in the world that would put me up in her place, and I think she does a decent job of getting across her ideas. I have no idea how she not only weathered that torrent of hellish abuse but kept on trucking and used the experience as a talking point at TEDx.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment The problem with discussing the content of the video is that it's a very... difficult thing to do on the internet, where things can be misinterpreted, but let's try it. :)

I agree that the Damsel trope is bad, but to me it's less a signature of the Male Patriarchy, and more to do with a combination of bad writing, bad timing and the immaturity of the industry. The whole Dinosaur Planet thing, for instance, is just a bad combination of business concepts - the N64 was dying. A flagship IP game was needed for the Gamecube. A game had been made by Rare that suited the Starfox characters, but that meant shoe-horning Starfox and co in, rather than leaving a female character in. Poor story-telling meant that it was just a simple Damsel in Distress story. That's bad, sure, no denying it, but when that Starfox game was released, the games industry was barely 20 years old. Look at Hollywood films in the early '30s - they're not great paragons of story-telling, and film has the advantage of being a visual story-telling medium like theatre and opera, rather than an interactive medium that's reliant on technology.

A second issue I have with her video is that the majority of examples are old. She tries to spin HD encodes of old games with the Damsel trope as a love of that story-telling conceit. But, honestly, there's HD encodes of most things now - it's simply a business decision to cash-in on nostalgia with the least monetary cost. Does JSR HD mean that people suddenly love cheesy graffiti again? Or is it just some easy cash on the part of Sega? Do people who play Damsel-trope games like the story? Or do they just play to play a good game? The Mario games are a case in point: Who played Mario 64 for the story? Come on, hands up. :) They didn't. They played it because it was an excellent game, that had a god-awful story inside it. That doesn't mean they agreed about the subtext, or are willingly letting the Damsel trope live, or don't care about one-dimensional female characters in games.

Thirdly, her video was, as pointed out in the comments above, Japanese-centred. Western examples of the Damsel trope abound, I'm sure, but culturally, the Japanese love of something like pantie-shots (like Chun-Li's in SF2) is not something that's particualrly shared by Western developers. And, honestly, do Japanese developers even care for that nowadays?

I'll end this by saying I have no doubt that this industry aims games at boys/men. It has for years. And that the Damsel trope is a bad thing. But a proper examination of the Damsel trope required, I think, more examination into writing techniques and cultural values and perceptions of women than this video provided.

Edited 4 times. Last edit by Morville O'Driscoll on 10th March 2013 7:10pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Generally I thought it was a good vid. I liked the discussion of tropes, her examples were interesting and while I agree they focused on a lot of 80's and 90s stuff the core franchises of Zelda and Mario are still relevant and played today.

On a general level - the fact that this thread (on a reasonably intelligent website largely frequented by professionals) has had this much reaction (some of it negative) flags that something is... wrong or sensitive with issues of how women are portrayed in games. I'll go out on a limb here and say that generally my experience working in several games companies was that they were very much 'boys clubs'. If what she was saying was utterly irrelevant or misguided I'd find it hard to imagine the level of vitriol tied so closely to, well, her gender. When Jack Thompson made an ass of himself by representing games as 'evilz' you didn't get a campaign of people offering to sexually molest him. The fact that this happened here does sort of flag that the games culture she's commentating has a level of sexism to it. If I said the mildest version of what she got in a normal office? I'd expect to be fired. Instantly. :)

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Anita Sarkeesian doesn't 'speak for' anyone but herself. She is not supposed to be some kind of perfect infallible feminist gamer mouthpiece, she is just a critic making her own analyses of games and the tropes they employ. I think people are expecting a bit too much of one woman and her video editing team - they're making a series of informative and interesting videos about a topic that concerns a lot of people(as evidenced by the unexpectedly massive funding they ended up receiving), not passing some kind of Eternal Feminist Judgement upon the games industry.

It really drives me crazy that there's more bickering over Sarkeesian herself and whatever positive or negative traits people are ascribing to her than actually discussing(rather than dismissing) the topic she's trying to raise.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Jessica Hyland on 10th March 2013 10:03pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

It really drives me crazy that there's more bickering over Sarkeesian herself and whatever positive or negative traits people are ascribing to her than actually discussing(rather than dismissing) the topic she's trying to raise.

Completely agree, I do think people are focusing too much on her and not so much an important topic and issue. To an extent that she's being used in cases to dismiss the points being raised.

A lot of these points and analyses could really have been raised by anyone and still very much stand regardless or whether or not this particular woman speaking about them is liked... Its worth a discussion.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 10th March 2013 11:51pm

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Let\s give 150k$ to an insecure fame chaser, who would spill "femenistic" banalities on youtube, pretending to tear off covers, but actually just moaning at simple plot devices, and not, for example, donate to the charity of some sort. Because it is important to bitch about "rights" on the internet. For me, according to popularity of Sarkeesian motion, woman have no rights, they're discriminated in game industry, and every man, who played Zelda, thinks low of women.

How about not bitch about, and become an actual professional? I never heard, that woman got fired, or didn't get a job in game industry, because she's a woman. I know that happened, when she was just a lazy ass worker. And I'm pretty sure that happens in every other field of work.

People just love to play victims, because it gives an advantages.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Kirill Kozyrev on 11th March 2013 10:33am

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment So basically, she just doesn't like the plots of the games. Why not to moan about movies, or books then? It would be pretty much the same, the difference is - someone already moaned about women portrait in those medias and moved on, and videogames are not touched yet.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment And goddamit but women are genetically less stronger, than men. This is how we are designed - women are built on the DNA level to keep the fire and nurse the children, when men are hunting and protecting them. Because it is in nature. Yes, there are women, which stronger, and than some men, but it's just exceptions, and trying to force it as a rule, is just going against natural order of the things. I'm not saying it is bad, to have strong women, I'm saying stop acting, like it's not the thing, established by thousands of years.

Yes, roles are washed out with our so called modern civilization. But still, men are men, and women are women, stop saying that it's bad this way. Because now I'm feeling, that I'm supposed to feel bad about me being a man.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment Kirill, I can't say I agree one bit that resourceful, intelligent or even strong women are exceptional - and this is going from my life experiences not some kind of modern ideology.

I also don't see it as a justification for them to be forced into submission by a society that should now know better about the capabilities of the individual, not simply 'the man' or 'the woman' and their so-called 'role', you know humans evolved and extended their life-cycles for education and achievement, not just continuing the re-production cycle and regulation of nature.

It doesn't mean you should feel bad or any less secure about being male.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Adam Campbell on 11th March 2013 11:27am

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

Resourceful, intelligent and strong persons are rare, regardless the gender. Those are exceptional qualities in the society.

Though I don't want to go into too much of an off topic discussion about humanity, how are you defining rare? If only a few people had any one of those qualities or a combination, I don't think we would be anywhere near what we are or where we are today.

Its not to say we can all be wonderful at everything, afterall we are individual with different skills of different levels, but when it comes to gender and the idea that one must rarely possess these qualities over another, well, that's just ridiculous.

How many people in society can be labelled as 'intelligent', 'strong' or 'resourceful' is debatable and you probably won't find conclusive statistics, though most people possess some level of this such that they can survive and progress. Of course, more in the context of this discussion the earlier comment I called out does once again raise questions about how certain people are percieved in society and if there is an issue in how games reflect that society.

To me, even if its just a minority of people in the industry or consuming its output feel that women in games should be rarely strong, resourceful or intelligent because that's how they see women in society, well, I think its a problem.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment It is also a scientific fact that women have higher pain tolerances than men and can multi task better, and those are skillsets required in games, but writers do not use those as justifications to cast women over men in games with problem solving that focuses on those two aspects.

Let´s face it, games are fantasy. Average strength differences aside, no man on earth can wield magic, carry 12 guns and their respective ammo while jumping over chasms and running for miles at a time without tiring. We re-write reality in the hopes we can suspend disbelief in order to have an engaging game. The idea that people would turn their brain off because it was a woman wielding a sword the size of a telephone pole to cut a dragon in half instead of a man is just silly hand waving.

I also see far too many people miss the point of kickstarter. You cannot donate the money to charity, you *must* use it for the stated purpose. As far as "make a game or be quiet" it is very likely that she enjoys theory, criticism, and analogy. We have professional film critics, and we actually have professional game critics as well, they are employed mostly by magazine and website writers. When a game we have worked on gets a negative review, brushing it off because the critic is not out making better games robs us of a chance to do some introspection on their criticism. Anita did her master´s thesis on this topic, not game design or programming, which makes it a good guess she would prefer to do these videos than design a game.

That ignores the fact we have had good games in the past with strong female characters, and it has not turned the industry on it´s head. Hundreds of thousands, and possibly eventually millions of people have watched these videos, many of which are gamers and game developers. I have noticed quite a bit of discussion around gender recently on all popular videogame websites, and I think it would be amiss to dismiss her contribution to this trend. It is very likely that her efforts on this video series will have a much further reaching influence on gender portrayal in games than even a perfect 100 metascored game made with a strong female lead.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I am seriously disappointed by these comments.
I expected a lot of these defensive "Who the hell paid her 150k for that?!", "Yeh, screw that bitch, should've donated the money!", "How dare she disable the comments!" and "Well, it's biology!" comments from YouTube. Heck, from any near-anonymous discussion. But definitely not from here.

The money was given to her. There was no scheme. There was no con. People believed in her cause - fuelled even more by the massive abuse she received - and backed it. I honestly believe, if there hadn't been a ton of people complaining and attacking her, this wouldn't even have reached the funding goal. Instead, she got more than she probably ever expected.

As for disabling comments - that does not block any criticism. There is nothing wrong with posting a blog post about it, or discussing it on the news sites that feature it - including this one. But there is something wrong with using the comments section of the video to throw insults at her - which YouTube comments simply are known for, especially when it comes to controversies.

And I'm definitely not getting into the "It's biology" argument. For god's sake, video gaming is largely a fantasy genre, no matter how much you twist it.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment The backlash against this mystifies me. Most people here are missing the point entirely, focusing on irrelevancies and minor quibbles, including resorting to ad hominem attacks and strawmen. In an attempt to get back to the actual point, I think this is a fair summary of Sarkeesian's video:
1. Many games feature a male protaganist rescuing a helpless female victim and 'winning' her as if she is some kind of trophy
2. This is common enough to be considered a 'trope', and a sexist one that is detrimental to women
3. This is not a good thing.

Do you disagree with any of these points? If not, you agree with the video. Anything else is an irrelevant distraction.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I LOL at people bitching about what she has spent her $150k on, who cares? She's delivering what she promised, how could you possibly give a shit, especially if you didn't even make a pledge supporting the campaign. Given the known quality of your average YouTube comment then disabling them is obviously the way to go.

I think any intelligent person would have trouble arguing that this issue getting some attention is a bad thing. Without a doubt the portrayal of women in games is very one sided in general and indicative of the traditional games audience of young men. I don't like the idea of female gamers being upset when playing these male targeted games with their uneven portrayals of women, I want more women enjoying games not less.

That said I think the discussion needs to be deeper than "Women are not portrayed the same as men and this is wrong and needs to be changed". Women as a reward or being shown to be weak and helpless goes a lot deeper in western culture than just video games. It goes across all entertainment media and is a reflection of our culture as a whole.

The lack of a balanced perspective to my eye is the biggest problem, there is little acknowledgment of female gamers as a market in general, there need to be more games made that cater to their tastes, I don't have any easy answers to this problem.

I don't think male gamers should be made to feel bad for being entertained by games where you rescue helpless women or get to see a sexy female in a skimpy outfit, thats not the problem here.

There are many films etc that I've begun to watch that I found unpleasant or offensive and I just choose to stop watching them, there are plenty of alternatives for me to do that, I'm spoiled for choice. For female gamers though, their options in this regard are much more limited, and that in my opinion is what the games industry need to work at changing.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment I'm just perplexed how anyone can disagree with her? I'm not surprised by the uneducated masses raging online, but the industry reaction in this thread alone is just disappointing.

Does no one have any background in media studies? Feminism is constantly being explored in academic journals, game studies, cinema studies, literature... This is pretty common, and a pretty accepted field of study? Why isn't anyone here attacking any one of the literally 1000's of publications produced each year exploring feminism in games and other media? I'm sure many of you would disagree with many of their results as well?

Is it because she dared to try and make a video cast of her perspective instead of writing an article or journal? Or was it that she used KickStarter as a vehicle to fund her perspective? Although this is the first time I have ever heard criticism of "over-funding", it just all smells of prejudice.

Who cares if you agree with her or not? Shes publishing her ideas via a medium she personally chose, funded by people who personally chose to fund her? Geeze, Google "feminism as explored via Buffy the vampire slayer" and randomly pick on an author, makes as much damn sense.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment At nearly 100 comments later, hopefully we have established that people are allowed to pledge money however, and to whomever they want. That people creating a Kickstarter have the freedom to create whatever project within Kickstarter's guidelines they wish. And, as several people have already mentioned (and been ignored), Anita is not allowed to donate any of the pledged money to charity.

With that in mind, is anyone interested in talking about the content of her first video? Did anyone recall that she did, in fact, offer solutions to avoid the trope? That she advised you can still put forward criticism on elements of a video game whilst praising and acknowledging its success? That she actually enjoys (a number of) the games she is talking about? That she says, yes, this trope was set in place long before video games? That this was one part of the 'damsel in distress' and that more current games will be discussed in her next episode? Or is everyone exhausted by now? I am.

Frederic Eichinger, well said. I think you have summarised my feelings towards the comments here better than I can. It is with a heavy heart that I express my opinion at all given the lack of effort and tact shown by some. I have actually really enjoyed talking about Anita's video to a number of friends and colleagues, in particular, use of the 'damsel in distress' in one of my favorite games of all time, Shadow of the Colossus. I'm looking forward to her next video, I'll be very interested to see if she covers this particular title.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment

At nearly 100 comments later, hopefully we have established that people are allowed to pledge money however, and to whomever they want.

Apparently not. As Paul Trillo writes just a few posts above yours,

The reason she had so much hate with the kickstarter was because she was asking money for something she was already doing for free...

This general idea seems just absurd to me. Nobody in this forum complains when someone takes a game that's already had a lot of preproduction or even production done and starts a Kickstarter campaign to get money to finish it, though they'd done the work up to that point for free. Nobody complains when a game project requests $100,000 and gets a million. I doubt anybody would complain if Mike Stephenson started a NetHack improvement Kickstarter and got a large pile of money from fans, though he's released many complete versions of the game for free. We'd all most likely say, "it's great that he got a large financial reward for doing what he did."

So why is it different for Sarkeesian's project? She took her passion to the Internet and found an audience of fans willing to reward her well for doing what she likes doing. Yet a bunch of people are running around yelling that there's something terrible about her and her fans both doing something they want to do and getting something they want for that. It looks like it's the subject matter of the project that's the issue here, and I don't think you need to be a feminist of any kind (I don't think I'd be considered a feminist, though I have sympathy for their general aims) to say that this smells strongly of misogyny.

In her video itself she didn't make her argument with the level of rigour I'd prefer to see, being a bit of an academically-oriented person myself. But she did it at a level probably more appropriate to her audience and aims. And watching it, I think I do agree, yes, that the "damsel in distress" trope is used widely enough, and so much more often has a female in that role rather than a male, that there's probably some sexism going on here. I don't know if we agree on how bad this is or what should be done about it, since she didn't really get in to that, but that I realize there's something going on here that I didn't really see before is definitely a good thing in my opinion.

Where the real point was made for me was not in her video, but in the reaction to it, particularly in this forum. That the damsel in distress trope is widely used and puts females far more often than males in the role of the object to fight over seems highly likely to me, almost indisputable. Whether this is sexist or not, and to what degree, seems to me a perfectly reasonable question to be considering. That there's such a strong reaction from some people here against admitting that the trope is probably widespread and that the question is reasonable to consider came as quite a shock to me. So I'm now convinced that, yes, there is a lot more sexism in the video game industry than I'd ever thought. The irony is that I was convinced not by Sarkeesian but by the people who most strongly believe that there isn't sexism, or it isn't a problem. Congratulations; you guys did a great job of making her argument for her.

My eyes have been opened, and I'm not particularly pleased with what I see.

Posted:2 months ago

Top Comment FTL Faster Than Light is the perfect example. A game that was 90% completed, design set in stone, with a team of two + sound engineer. They requested $10,000 and collected $200,000 and have gone on to even after that go on and sell the game to many non backers to good financial benefit.

The additional funding didn't expand the game play, or expand the range of supported platforms (iOS which would be awesome, remains another revenue stream when released), nor did it give the game a graphical overhaul, however no one remotely criticizes FTL for over-funding (nor should they!) On the contrary it's a KickStarter "success story" and an indie darling especially after being nominated for an IGF award!

How dare they!?!? Where is the industry or gamer back lash? Oh wait, their is none. People are searching for problems with Anita because she is treating video games how academics have treated all other art forms for decades. How dare she right? People can continue to wrap their closed minds with a retrospective "over-funding" justification, but it's pretty damn transparent.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Shane Sweeney on 14th March 2013 7:01am

Posted:2 months ago