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Well it is finally released, and I for one enjoyed watching it.

Ugh, I tried watching, and got utterly bored about 2 minutes in.

That was a fairly interesting vid, thanks for the link.

Some of the history bits were a bit "meh" at first, but when chained together create a rather sad image of society, especially when keeping in mind the power of the media in shaping people's perception and values.
I knew the "damsel in distress" was a common theme - but I did not think it would be this excessive and established in the gaming industry. The development background of that Star Fox game was surprising, in a bad way. The designers, I assume, are not even doing things like these out of malice; it's just a standard they have grown up with, adopted and continue to subconsciously propagate, neglecting their social responsibility as apparently they don't see anything wrong with it.

Fortunately, not all games have been like that - and movies/series/novels have, in general, long since become somewhat more varied regarding their portrayal.

Got 6 minutes in and said "feth this". My feminist radar broke from going off the charts while listening to her, therefore making anything else she was going to say irrelevant to my ears as she was just going to spew a giant pile of garbage. But at least on the plus side I know which YouTube channel I am avoiding like the plague

I find it interesting she didn't list any games made in the last few years that didn't happen to be Nintendo titles, so really is this a commendation of video game portrayals of women or Nintendo recycling the same plot every couple of years (while conveniently ignoring Samus Aran and hand waving away half the Mario franchise).

LordofHats wrote:I find it interesting she didn't list any games made in the last few years that didn't happen to be Nintendo titles

Apparently, more recent (and more varied) portrayals of women in video games will come in part 2, as announced at the end of the video. Part 1 was an introduction covering the early days and origins of the cliché.

Hmm dont really have the time to watch this

But I found the cover a bit ironic. Princess Peach was a bit more proactive in the Comics. One day she decided to take over Luigi's job

(And boy she sure is committed)

That Starfox change was seriously messed up, but not surprising at all. Women are second class citizens in a certain Far East nation that somehow manages to be the most sexist and racist first world country in the world and not get constantly called out on it.

Ditzy Princess Daphne was terrible.

"Use...the...MAGIC...sword!...to...slay...THE...DRAGON!"



Bioware likes this trope. They did it to Bastila and Liara, but both become useful members of your team later on whether or not you actually include them in your parties. IDR Dragon Age, BG, or NWN well enough to comment on those.

Interestingly, KotOR2 inverts this hard.



NWN2

I made it about 10 minutes.... blegh.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I made a post to show how little I respect a woman's opinion on a given subject.

I think that's what you actually meant to type.

There mustn't be an Armenian on Earth who's name doesn't end with 'ian' (or a derivative thereof). But that's not what I wanted to talk about.


I was just about let my immediate reaction of "Oh good, another feminist whining about a lack of equality when really 'equality' for them just means reversing the roles men and women play and not actual equality" let me close the window, but I decided to let the video play and see what it was and at least respect the creator and the effort she obviously put into this (and what I guess is meant to be an longer series of videos).

At its core the video is correct in that it quite obviously points out the bad habit of placing women and female characters as objects rather than active participants in the story. Sadly I think it misses a lot of historical context and economic reality in that, unlike today, the greater majority of video games were played by boys (not men), and that as a result the games were targeted at them. Yes, the example of the female protagonist scrapped for another Star Fox game is particularly egregious in how it played out, but I have to say that it might also have to do with some real world economics (lots of 10-year-old boys getting a game on Christmas where they play as a girl would not go down well with them).

Yes, things have changed. Women make up a far greater percentage of the video game-playing demographics and the average age of gamers has rocketed up into the 30's (I believe, or close enough), but you cannot look at the games of the 80's and even 90's without at least acknowledging that the majority of people playing these types of games probably didn't even know what objectification was. Most of them just wanted to fight stuff, and most of them probably thought girls were "gross" and gave out "cooties" (and, to be fair, most of the girls of the same age probably thought the same thing about the boys).

So I think that this video is a little one-sided in the way it seems to remove the games from the environment (and the eras) they were created it. You cannot detach objects of history from the history itself. History provides a context, and this video strips away that context. It doesn't make the video wrong mind you, it just weakens its stance somewhat.

As LordofHats said, the video is actually a unintentional roasting of how repetitive and cliché Nintendo has become - maybe Yahtzee's rage is justified there - and how immature they are when it comes to women in their games.


Unfortunately I fear that this video series is just going to boil down to a conclusion that "Women in video games either all need to be rescued or are warriors wearing chain-mail bikinis! All men are pigs.". I hope I'm wrong.

Historical context is almost important, although I'd say it isn't really false to point fingers, depending on how crass the individual case is. As you said, things have changed - but why? Or why did they not change sooner? The entertainment industry, or indeed all media, play a crucial role in helping to shape the morale, virtues and perceptions of the next generation of people. And although that may be a naive view to hold, I'd say that's a bit of social responsibility right there. Even when commercial interests are at play, there are enough examples to show that compromises are always possible, and I have a feeling that it was mainly compromises (not just extending to entertainment) that actually allowed the issue to slowly move forward at all, instead of becoming deadlocked between conservativism and extremists from both sides. One step at a time, as they say.

And really, that Zelda TV spot alone ...

"Wilst thou get the girl ... or play like one"

But it was a different time, and I don't think anyone actually did any of this out of malice. That is perhaps the saddest thing - that a lot of people back then did not even perceive it as a problem, as "normal" meant different things.

Who knows what will be regarded as "normal" in another 50 years from now.

 Lynata wrote:
Or why did they not change sooner?

Oh that's easy. Entertainment industry change is glacial. Look at the music and film industry. Look how slow they are/were to adapt to the internet. Look how their response wasn't to embrace it but to block it (SOPA/PIPA). Look how the one company that embraced change (Apple) jumped ahead. iTunes may be a virus summoned from the depths of hell, but it was revolutionary and is influential still. Look at how internet-based television systems are coming into their infancy just now. Digital distribution of games (and how utterly fethed up that is, even Steam, the best of them). The music industry finally started making money again last year as they got a handle of the new ways people approach purchasing music. Just this year the folks who do the Nielsen Ratings finally decided that their method of determining ratings might be a bit out dated. Is it any surprise that the gaming industry followed suit and took such a long time to shift their own practices to an ever-changing and increasingly older and more diverse (and connected) audience?

 Lynata wrote:
But it was a different time, and I don't think anyone actually did any of this out of malice. That is perhaps the saddest thing - that a lot of people back then did not even perceive it as a problem, as "normal" meant different things.

I would never try to use "it was a different time" as an excuse or as a way of explaining away something, but it must be used as a context for why these things were the way they were.

 Amaya wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I made a post to show how little I respect a woman's opinion on a given subject.

I think that's what you actually meant to type.

No I mean the video was trite and boring. The Starfox thing was interesting but the rest of it had me nodding off. I also don't see what her gender has to do with gak content.

 Ahtman wrote:
Well it is finally released, and I for one enjoyed watching it.

Why "finally"? It sounds like there is a backstory here, which I am interested in hearing enough to make this post, but not enough to google it and find out for myself.

So far as the video, I found it interesting if perhaps a bit overlong. The video clip usage was very good, but the... I'm not sure exactly how to say this, her diction? Was a little monotonous. It felt a little like a student in a speech class reading a paper to the class. I wish I could articulate my sentiment a little bit better here. It's the first one though, so perhaps it will improve.

I certainly didn't know the origin of the "lady tied to a train track" meme, and had liked how some of the analogies worked to explain things (explaining that in objectification"she's the ball").

 Amaya wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I made a post to show how little I respect a woman's opinion on a given subject.

I think that's what you actually meant to type.

I think this was a wildly unreasonable thing to have said. I watched all of it, but as I said above, I think the presentation was fairly dry. While I'm reasonably confident that this thread will become a festering, locked cesspool just like every previous thread in recent memory thread that's discussed women's increasing involvement in what are traditionally male pastimes; I don't see any reason to speed that process along by making such a hyperbolic statement in response to a relatively innocuous post.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: please disregard where I asked for the backstory. I didn't realize that was Anita Sarkeesian; I definitely remember that kerfluffle a while back.

 Ouze wrote:

 Amaya wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I made a post to show how little I respect a woman's opinion on a given subject.

I think that's what you actually meant to type.

I think this was a wildly unreasonable thing to have said. I watched all of it, but as I said above, I think the presentation was fairly dry. While I'm reasonably confident that this thread will become a festering, locked cesspool just like every previous thread in recent memory thread that's discussed women's increasing involvement in what are traditionally male pastimes; I don't see any reason to speed that process along by making such a hyperbolic statement in response to a relatively innocuous post.

If you're referring to that last objectification thread that was in DD I thought it went reasonably well. We got through two entire responses before someone cried femi-nazis. The amusing thing is I spent that entire thread getting called a feminist and femi-nazi, and I'm pretty sure Amaya is implying I'm a chauvinist pig in here. Oh how the wheel turns.

I hadn't seen that, or at least the part you're referring to, anyway. I was thinking of that one (10 minutes of searching later) ironically, you started about sexism in the modelling hobby.

Fairly solid video, although this really served as little more than an introduction. Hopefully the later ones in the series will expand to cover much greater depth.

I don't really know why her videos are seen as so controversial. I haven't seen many of them, but from what I have, the points she does make are quite reasonable.

It was a completely unnecessary post that reflected only a negative opinion of the video and the subject of discussion.

He then reinforced his original post by making a further negative statement. Please explain why it is gak content. If you're going to insult something and don't want to be considered a "chauvinistic pig" state your reasoning or don't bother to post.

I stopped at "woman are not weaker, its a myth"... Actually sweetheart it's a biological fact, woman are as smart as men etc.
But they are weaker...
And "woman dont need to be protected by.men"
Ok thats bull too, because men are stronger, woman do need to be protected by men, from other less scrupulous men, if that suddenly stopped happening.. Well bad stuff happens in those countries.

I dislike feminists...

Not evening going into cultural and economic backgrounds for the games in the video, maybe we should also consider the stories themselves. I mean, in effect even today, almost all video game story lines are just excuse plots. By its very definition the plot is irrelevant. It's not the point. Princess Peach could easily be a giant delicious mushroom that will make Mario the size of the galaxy (PUN!) and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the game.

Setting the issue of women in games aside, why is anyone wasting their time examining 'critically' a plot device that effectively means nothing outside of it's simple existence? She's certainly right that in the cases mentioned the woman is a object (though I STRONGLY disagree that being a damsel in distress automatically = being a disempowered object to be won by a 'typically' male protagonist. She's smoking her own farts a little strongly to be making that claim) but ultimately, why should anyone care? The plot is meaningless beyond simply giving the protagonist a reason to take action. The damsel is simply a place holder with no thematic meaning (Look up the term MacGuffin).

I'm not really sure that's something worth getting up in arms about. As H.B.M.C. at least in these older games, men were pretty much the sole demographic. Particularly young adolescent men. When looking for an excuse to have a plumber go on a rampage through the mushroom kingdom taking a bunch of coins and stomping on the wild life, 'save the princess' is just something tacked on to provide a context to the action. No one is going to walk away from that game and think 'women are weak and must be sheltered by us strong manly types.' The suggest such a thing is kind of stupid. Who thinks that when playing a Mario game? Someone who should be ignore for more reasons than that most likely.

EDIT: In essence I'm saying that the anyone who concludes Mario is about how men must protect women is also probably the kind of idiot who concluded Pokemon is about how we need to find the nearest two animals and train them to kill each other. It's just reading into the lines so much that I can only shake my head at the idiocy being displayed.

What's really shocking here is that she apparently got Kickstarter money to make this video. What did she do, opening up Microsoft Media maker throw together some clips and then ask people to pay her for what anyone can do in a weekend?

Bioware likes this trope. They did it to Bastila and Liara, but both become useful members of your team later on whether or not you actually include them in your parties. IDR Dragon Age, BG, or NWN well enough to comment on those.

That's because as a trope Damsel in Distress is really just a plot point. It can appear almost anywhere in the plot an author wants it to be, and ultimately what it means is quite varied. Equating all damsels in distress to disempowered objects to be won shows a remarkable lack of experience. I can think of at last a half dozen female characters off the top of my head that had DoD moments, and none of them are by any means weak characters in need of big strong men to protect them 24.7,

 Formosa wrote:
I stopped at "woman are not weaker, its a myth"... Actually sweetheart it's a biological fact, woman are as smart as men etc.
But they are weaker...
And "woman dont need to be protected by.men"
Ok thats bull too, because men are stronger, woman do need to be protected by men, from other less scrupulous men, if that suddenly stopped happening.. Well bad stuff happens in those countries.

I dislike feminists...

See KalashnikovMarine, this is how you make a legitimate complaint.


@LoH, it's only an issue when it is intentionally abused constantly. Such as in Nintendo games.

It was interesting as an introduction but I'm reserving further judgement until later in the series.

LordofHats wrote:

What's really shocking here is that she apparently got Kickstarter money to make this video. What did she do, opening up Microsoft Media maker throw together some clips and then ask people to pay her for what anyone can do in a weekend?

It was in the news a while ago, she started this kickstarter then a she got a handful predicable idiot responses from 4chan types.

What she then did was publish them on her blog, blow it all out of proportion and tried to make out that these guys where somehow representative of men in general and they where evidence that society was misogynistic, as opposed to just being a few idiots on the internet.

The usual tumblr feminist bloggers and the left wing media picked up on it, ran the story and before you know it she had something like 100K in her kickstarter.

I watched some of her videos on other subjects and quite frankly they are full of hyperbole. There is even one where she tried to prove that Christmas songs are misogynistic.

@LoH, it's only an issue when it is intentionally abused constantly. Such as in Nintendo games.

Ignoring that pretty much half of Nintendo's marketing and business model relies on nostalgia from the first generation of gaming. They're not abusing women they're abusing fond childhood memories.

It was in the news a while ago, she started this kickstarter then a she got a handful predicable idiot responses from 4chan types.

What she then did was publish them on her blog, blow it all out of proportion and tried to make out that these guys where somehow representative of men in general and they where evidence that society was misogynistic, as opposed to just being a few idiots on the internet.

The usual tumblr feminist bloggers and the left wing media picked up on it, ran the story and before you know it she had something like 100K in her kickstarter.

I watched some of her videos on other subjects and quite frankly they are full of hyperbole. There is even one where she tried to prove that Christmas songs are misogynistic.

She's also apparently terrible at research. Dinosaur Planet originally had a male protagonist alongside Krystal named Sabre, who was later replaced with Fox McCloud after Miyamoto's comments and during development Krystal was set aside as a playable character which is a strikingly different story from the one she tells and it can be found in a google search in about 5 minutes: http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/01/27/dinosaur-planet. Frankly the game reeks more of executive interference wanting the game to be available for the Gamecube's launch with a popular brand name in the title than some conspiracy to rob the world of a heroine (Krystal being playable was hardly the only thing that seems to have been cut from the game).

@OuzeRight that's the thread I was clumsily trying to refer to. Lack of sleep over here sorry.

But yeah in that thread to my recollection the first response was "Hurr it's a guy thing" then "Derp femi nazis"

We did actually get some decent discussion out of that thread but there was so much derp... honest opinion I think the first step to having a real conversation about feminism and nerd culture at large, and any form of gaming in particular is we need to get everyone to take a step back from being so sensitive. I remember a lot of comments to the tune of individuals feeling they were being "attacked" or put upon in some way, just by having the conversation. Judged maybe. Even though I don't think any one in the thread arguing for "feminism" as it were was saying anything against a lot of the mainstay of the hobby. Kingdom Death's KS came up a lot because of it's cheesecaketastic miniatures, and also because it's what set off the writer of the article I linked in the OP, but I don't remember any one saying anything against cheesecake.

Jumping back on topic, this really is becoming an geekdom wide pressure, the negative reaction to this KS, followed by the "fake gamer girls" controversy and some issues with cosplayers at cons of all types have been flaring up more and more as more women get involved in various hobbies and fandoms. Again, no idea for a fix, but the tension's mounting.

@Amaya, congratulations, you've proven yourself to not be worth engaging with! Have nice day!

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Jumping back on topic, this really is becoming an geekdom wide pressure, the negative reaction to this KS, followed by the "fake gamer girls" controversy

Did you see the strip PA did on the latter? Good stuff.

 Ouze wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Jumping back on topic, this really is becoming an geekdom wide pressure, the negative reaction to this KS, followed by the "fake gamer girls" controversy

Did you see the strip PA did on the latter? Good stuff.

Hah! I hadn't seen that actually, that's pretty much my position on the whole situation neatly summed up into two panels.

 LordofHats wrote:

@LoH, it's only an issue when it is intentionally abused constantly. Such as in Nintendo games.

Ignoring that pretty much half of Nintendo's marketing and business model relies on nostalgia from the first generation of gaming. They're not abusing women they're abusing fond childhood memories.

I didn't say they were abusing women, I said they were abusing a trope.

Much longer discussion on the subject. NSFW uncensored language

http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1252259

 Amaya wrote:


http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1252259

About half the comments on that page are mocking her. I like it already The other half are just plain low class which ruins the moment though.

On topic, I fail to see how abusing a trope is relevant to anything except a lack of originality in writing narrative (aka being a one trick pony). Have you read Dean Koontz lately? Or Tom Clancy? Or most authors, film makers, and game designers? They always use the same tropes. Over and over and over again. Hell look at Bioware. They just took KotOR's plot and recycled it into Mass Effect 1 (Not to mention how nearly every Bioware game contains the Carth).