Kickstarter "Tropes vs Women in Videogames"

[ZeroAX]

Having more variety in game titles, and within the individual games themselves, is not a bad thing. And that is exactly what Sarkeesian is promoting. She wants to fix what's bothering your wife by encouraging the market to produce bigger numbers of high-quality, more broadly-appealing and/or diverse stuff.

Just want to say, that in the history of human kind no culture has ever "moved forward" by restricting artistic expression. I too am advocating for more games that can be enjoyed by more women/insert other miss-represented population group, but the way she's going about doing this is conservative, restrictive and counter-productive. I guess I can make my point better with examples, but I don't want to change the subject.

Also I did NOT care for all those negative gamer stereotype jokes made by Colbert, it's not exactly what I'd call "tactful". Being a better person than the gamersgate people is really easy, falling to their level takes a lot of insecurity/stupidity.

[Ack]

Have any developers taken her criticisms into account when making creative decisions?

EA. Mirror's Edge 2.

Same with the writers at Gearbox who have been considering her criticism of Borderlands 2.

[pepharytheworm]

Having more variety in game titles, and within the individual games themselves, is not a bad thing. And that is exactly what Sarkeesian is promoting. She wants to fix what's bothering your wife by encouraging the market to produce bigger numbers of high-quality, more broadly-appealing and/or diverse stuff.

Just want to say, that in the history of human kind no culture has ever "moved forward" by restricting artistic expression. I too am advocating for more games that can be enjoyed by more women/insert other miss-represented population group, but the way she's going about doing this is conservative, restrictive and counter-productive. I guess I can make my point better with examples, but I don't want to change the subject.

Also I did NOT care for all those negative gamer stereotype jokes made by Colbert, it's not exactly what I'd call "tactful". Being a better person than the gamersgate people is really easy, falling to their level takes a lot of insecurity/stupidity.

Who is restricting artistic expression? Who is asking for us to restrict art? I don't agree with everything Anita says, but I don't feel she is saying to restrict art. I would actually like examples.

[ZeroAX]

Who is restricting artistic expression? Who is asking for us to restrict art? I don't agree with everything Anita says, but I don't feel she is saying to restrict art. I would actually like examples.

Well I have a major problem with her war on sexuality.

As we can see from ancient times art focused a lot on beautiful figures:

so you can't say the hyper sexualization of the human body is a modern phenomenon.

When she complains about the way women are portrayed "too sexy" she just sounds like a conservative person who wants to restrict art because it doesn't fit her taste. You know when I have a problem with women being portrayed as over sexualized? When shit like this happens:

this image is a joke. It's the same job class and yet women are portrayed in as sexualized a way as possible (don't mind the chibi graphics) and the men are dressed normally. Now for conservative people like her the solution is to dress up the female characters. For me the solution is to give women something pleasing to look at too (namely, turn that outfit into a prince of persia/aladin style thing to show some abs).


A great series that treats women equally is Final Fantasy. There are equal amounts of male and female characters (starting with FF8) and they make hot women AND men to cover their fanservice bases.

The end result? Final Fantasy is one of the few game series I know that has a really strong female following too.

You see people who support gamersgate probably hate characters like that and call Squal and Cloud "gay and girly", but imo that's shitty and just proves how insecure they are towards women. I don't agree with those selfish men who don't like the idea of male characters being made to appeal to the sexual fantasies of female gamers too.

And the best case for this (outside games) is Twilight. Now I HATED Twilight for personal reasons,

I hated it because I only read half of the first book, and the conservative thinking of the writer got to me: "oh she's a teenager and she saw this super hot guy, but it's NOT her being horny, no that is totally not what is happening, it's just that she found true love.......and they know it's true love before they have even exchanged a single word with each other"....FACEPALM)

but all the complaints about the shirtless guys REALLY annoyed me. If straight guys can get Scarlet Johanson's ass in a tight leather suit, then I think the world's female population deserves a dodecatheon of shirtless guys, regardless of how insecure it makes you feel when you are watching that film with your girlfriend.


Anyway this woman goes on and on on a tirrade about the "sexual objectification" of women....no I'm sorry, this is art. This is what artists do. They try to represent the most beautiful parts of the world and humanity. You have the right to demand equal opportunities in the industry for women. You have the right to ask for material to be made that appeals to your taste too. But you have no right to want for the artists to restrict their vision to what you personally find appealing. If that happened we wouldn't have rock and roll, rap, piccaso.

[isiolia]

Anyway this woman goes on and on on a tirrade about the "sexual objectification" of women....no I'm sorry, this is art. This is what artists do. They try to represent the most beautiful parts of the world and humanity. You have the right to demand equal opportunities in the industry for women. You have the right to ask for material to be made that appeals to your taste too. But you have no right to want for the artists to restrict their vision to what you personally find appealing. If that happened we wouldn't have rock and roll, rap, piccaso.

I don't think that's really the underlying motivation. She set out to make a series of videos about tropes, which, as TVTropes states, are devices and conventions for writing.

Some of those trends aren't exactly great for female characters in general (for example).

At least in some cases, when she or others are talking about objectification of women, they literally mean making them interchangeable with objects with regard to narrative. Something to save, something to win. Could be a jewel encrusted gold skull, could be a can of Coke, could be a character, probably a woman.

Pointing out overused, if not potentially negative or damaging writing mechanisms that might be getting used simply because that's how writers have seen it done before...isn't necessarily bad at all.

[ZeroAX]

Yes I agree. the prolem is she doesn't understand art. There's a huge difference between when a trope is used because of laziness and when it's used as a narrative tool. But either because she's too lazy to do the full research, or not smart enough to understand art, she doesn't always understand the difference (like with Bayonetta).

EDIT

Just wanted to share this article which better explains how I feel about the subject:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2 ... re-if.html

Not that I agree with EVERYTHING it says, but I do with most of it

[opethfan]

I haven't read all 39 pages but I wanted to give my thoughts.

The Assassin's Creed Unity debacle shows that art can be an excuse for many of the decisions made in representing groups in gaming, providing that the game is seen as a work of art. Unity couldn't pull it off because it's a yearly commodity. It isn't art, it's a product, and should therefore be inclusive.

The Last of Us is deeply paternalistic - it's about a man protecting a young woman as she becomes a surrogate for his lost daughter. Feminists should be raging over the subject matter, but they're not, because it's artistic and justified within the context of the story.

The biggest issue we need to overcome, though, is "gaming" being such a niche that it becomes an identity, a subculture. That's bullshit. We play games, we watch movies, we read books, we have sex, we eat food, we sleep in beds, we use the washroom, we play with our pets, we drink coffee, etc. but only one of these actions has a subculture you're automatically enrolled in for enjoying it.

Reject "gamer." Reject any attempt to pidgeonhole your interests into a niche that excludes you from the general public. Games have come too far, have too much appeal to be only for middle class white males 13-35 anymore. And sure as all hell reject notions or suggestions that you are responsible for what some other POS has said or done just because they share an interest with you.

And that's why this is so controversial - people with nothing to do with these issues are being lumped with assholes who are making people's lives terrible.

[Erik_Twice]

It isn't art, it's a product, and should therefore be inclusive.

I find the idea of someone deciding that a work is not "art" but a "product", henceforth understood to be lesser and less important than the first to be critically disgusting and nothing but an excuse for censorship and moral control of human expression.

But even then, even if there was such a thing as "art" and such a thing as "product", who is going to decide what's what? Game journalists? A self-selected elite of moral critics? The vote of the masses?

It's dumb. The designers of Assassins Creed have as much of a right to make the game they want to as any other designer. It's their prerrogative as artists, as workers to decide what their creative output should be like and under which concerns it should be released, not yours.

But hey, I already got tired of this debate when it was about how illustration wasn't actually artful.

Reject "gamer." Reject any attempt to pidgeonhole your interests into a niche that excludes you from the general public. Games have come too far, have too much appeal to be only for middle class white males 13-35 anymore.

I would rather reject an American-centric elitist point of view that assumess a certain subculture is relegated to "middle class white males" and attempts to shame me into saying the culture I chose to participate in and identify with is "excluding me from the general public" in an ugly, patronising tone.

[Ack]

The biggest issue we need to overcome, though, is "gaming" being such a niche that it becomes an identity, a subculture. That's bullshit. We play games, we watch movies, we read books, we have sex, we eat food, we sleep in beds, we use the washroom, we play with our pets, we drink coffee, etc. but only one of these actions has a subculture you're automatically enrolled in for enjoying it.

As a bookish cinephile with a foodie girlfriend, I'm not entirely sure I agree with this statement.

[oxymoron]

I think he means that just liking food doesn't make you a foodie or how just liking movies doesn't make you a film buff. Where as with games if you even just like them, you're a gamer.