Kickstarter "Tropes vs Women in Videogames"

[Gamerforlife]

Did you miss the whole episode where she was trying to get that dress because she wanted to go to that fancy party? She's a bit tomboyish, sure, but she's very clearly feminine.

A bit tomboyish. She embodies the very definition of the word. I remember the dress episode. Sure, there are moments when she acts feminine sure, but they are the exception to the rule. Again, look at Inara. Inara is like Kaylee's polar opposite.

[Gamerforlife]

To be fair though, a lot of the differences between Kaylee and Inara are due to their stations in life, which brings up a whole other topic

[jinx]

Really? Kaylee never acts like a girl? Did we watch the same show?

Aside from being really emotional sometimes, no she doesn't. She's the mechanic. She's sexually aggressive. She never wears anything feminine. Even the way that she talks is not exactly feminine. She's a tomboy in every sense of the word. Were you watching the same show I was? If you want someone who is more traditionally feminine, you can just look at Inara

Did you miss the whole episode where she was trying to get that dress because she wanted to go to that fancy party? She's a bit tomboyish, sure, but she's very clearly feminine.

She reminds me of an awful lot of girls I've known, and I wouldn't call any of them masculine.

Um... This ^

Most girls I grew up around and were friends with were a lot like Kaylee. Granted, they hung out with the boys instead of the girls, and brought gamer magazines to school instead of make-up, but that's the point here...

Not all women are the same, just as not all men are the same. Outside of Japan, feminine men don't seem to be accepted too well, and those are my favorite types of characters (Feminine men and Masculine Women). I can understand what you're saying about Zoe, but isn't that the point here? We're trying to break those stereotypes, even if it means we have to go to the other extreme, because some women ARE like that in IRL.

Breaking stereotypes is one of the hardest things to do, and I would agree that the stereotypes set for women has to be one of the hardest, because it's been around for so long. I often dress "punk" or "goth" (different things. I dress "me"), but I've found that I'm much more accepted now than I was growing up. Even with a kid, I don't get all the glares and people going out of their way to dodge me as they did a few years ago. Although this stereotype has only been around for a few decades, and had the help of media to break it.

Meh... I suck at these sorts of debates. It's all a matter of opinion, and I can agree with what most people say, while still holding my belief.

[Key-Glyph]

Not all women are the same, just as not all mean are the same. ...We're trying to break those stereotypes, even if it means we have to go to the other extreme, because some women ARE like that in IRL.

This. Not enjoying a certain type of character on a personal level is one thing, and feeling that a character type doesn't belong in a fictional work is another.

When people baulk at stock characters in a significant, "I-want-them-ousted" kind of way, it's often because they're more annoyed at their cliché-ness than their intrinsic traits. The reaction is frequently less one of "that's totally inaccurate and offensive!" than "ugh, this again?"

At least, that's the case initially. When you've said "ugh, this again?" to a particular stereotype millions of times with only a handful of contrasting examples in sight, you might get to wondering if it's turned into social commentary -- and that's one of the moments were people can start getting offended.

But even if there weren't masculine females or feminine men didn't exist IRL, it wouldn't be a good argument against their appearing in fiction. I mean, vampires are really hot right now, and let's hope they don't exist.

[Menegrothx]

She got $150,000 dollars to do that.... REALLY?!?! There are youtubers out there who are doing the same thing as she for free, and are a lot better at it. Errant signal and Extra credits for example. Yet her video already has 800 000 views while ES and EC episodes usually have between 20 000 and 40 000 views....
NOTHING she said was in anyway new or revolutionary. The harping on those two franchises (Mario and Zelda) is incredibly inane. Who cares about the story in Mario games? Majority of the examples she used are games in which the story doesn't matter at all really, arcade beat em ups and platformers. Zelda on the other hand is a more legit example, but first of all it's an incredibly stale franchise. Most Zelda games are pretty much copies of each other story wise, and since the original game is from the mid 1980s, it's not really a very well written or complex story. Second of all she is a princess. If she was a commoner, she might very well be a more capable character. Oh and Zelda is a playable character in Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure.

Oh an why are the comments and ratings disabled? I can understand that she's tired of trolls and such, but if you aren't willing to have an open discussion and defend your views points, you're delegitimizing your own content.

She did say that she'll talk about more modern games in the next part so it should get more informative in the future. But if that's all she will do, show examples of where certain tropes are being used, I don't see the point of this all. If the whole video series will just list a number of games that use this particular trope, and after that a list of games that reverse/avoid it, what do you really accomplish by that?

[AppleQueso]

Well, she'd never asked for $150k. You'll have to blame the people who kept pledging money to her kickstarter long after the goal was met if that particular part of it bothers you so much.

[Menegrothx]

The question is why did she ask for money in the first place. Most of youtube/internet game reviewers are commiting a lot of their free time (20-100 hours/video, depending on content, script and length) for no compensation because they have a genuine passion for video games. I'd understand asking for money if she was trying to develop and publish an indy game. Based on what I saw in the first video, there's nothing in it that really couldn't be achieved with a zero budget. Sure the video is well polished and edited, but I'd rather see more poorly edited videos with better content, like Errant Signal (which has better "production values" these days btw).

[AppleQueso]

I don't know, I just kinda feel that the only people who should complain about how much her videos cost to make are the people who pledged their money to it.

Are there people making videos that are more polished and doing it for less money? Sure. There are also indie game developers making extremely polished products without asking for a dime, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong or bad for people who are developing other indie games to ask for money for it.

I think most people pledging to kickstarter campaigns know exactly what they're getting into. That's the thing with crowd funding, if you don't feel a project deserves the money they're asking for, you can simply not pledge to it.

This is kinda a tangent though, and probably not worth derailing the thread over.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Based on what I saw in the first video, there's nothing in it that really couldn't be achieved with a zero budget.

To be fair, you could make this argument about nearly every YouTube-related Kickstarter.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

What bothers me is that she doesn't say anything that didn't come from TVTropes.