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I agree with Blue somewhat, her diction seems stilted. Maybe it's a purposeful attempt to sound clinical or maybe she just isn't that great of a public speaker, but I can understand why it could be found off putting. Me, I just wanted to stop watching every time she moved her weirdo eyebrows.

On topic, a resounding meh from me, once again. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in video game writing, sure. I can even see that maybe we have more male leads than are really necessary. I generally prefer open world RPGs where you can choose your gender/race/ethnicity what have you over linear action adventures with a set lead, so maybe I don't see it as much.

But I will say that when she was on about the whole damsel in an icebox or whatever the hell - apparently a woman being willing to sacrifice her life to accomplish the mission is misogyny now? That I think is a bit silly.

I think her main problem is more of the fact that when it happens, it's almost always the girl

I don't think that is the case. Countless male characters fall by the wayside to get the mission done, she is simply attributing greater significance to the female ones.

 Bromsy wrote:
I don't think that is the case. Countless male characters fall by the wayside to get the mission done, she is simply attributing greater significance to the female ones.

I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying what she had in her video

Though you do have to admit, whenever there is a escort mission/game, it's usually a gal whose helplessly holding your hand. In the Mainstream, at least.

 Slarg232 wrote:

cerbrus2 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

cerbrus2 wrote:
A few names for this women.

None of that comes even close to a counter to her point.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
In my experience, Their denial is just that that, Denial, they will refuse to accept it because it doesnt conform to their view.

And people in denial need to be brought out of it in order to change their behavior. I fail to see a point to your objections.

Her point was that women are being brutally killed in Video games. And that they are being portrait in such away that they are "Damsels in Distress". That list of names are all female characters that Brutally murder men, Hell Sarah Carrigan pretty much commits genocide. And in the later expansion does it again in, because she thinks Her man is dead. Chun Li kicks everyone ass in street fighter all males I might add. So she can get to M.Bison and Kill him in order to avenge her dead father, who is male by the way.
And don't even get me started on the countless Male AI's I have had to watch Lara croft slaughter over the years. Alyx Vance? In HL2 EP1 she pretty much kills everything for one of gaming's best known characters Gordon Freeman. Ada Wong? a complete bad ass that doesn't mined helping release a few deadly viruses once in a wile too, oh wait for it, to avenge her dead husband.


There are just as many Kick ass female characters in gaming as there are men, and normally the women tend to have the most kills to there name as well, lets be honest the males in Video games are always seen as the protagonists, the bad guys. Hell maybe i should make a video stating how its a bad thing to always portray the man as the bad guys. And how the countless Killings of male Characters in Computer games is giving the "wrong" impression.

All she is doing is creating a problem that is not their, in order to generate Google add sense.

How many of those are playable characters?

In the MAIN story section.

The thousands of men that dies or The Majority of the women I listed, What where you referring too? because if its the women I listed then all but two Elaine Marley, and Alyx Vance. But then don't forget that;s just some names off the top of my head that I thought of on the spot. If i wanted to create a Video as this women has. I could come up with a list 10 times that long, but honestly this really is not worth the effort to do so. And yet I still don't see your point about the playable Character though. Playable or non playable they still portrait females in gaming Differently than the stereo typical female examples given to us by the video.

cerbrus2 wrote:
Snip.

I think the concern is that the majority of characters in control of the story are male and the women are often dependent on males in order for something to be accomplished but as you've pointed out there's exceptions but they make up a minority of characters in video games, many people would like to see more video games go away from gender stereotypes.

 Slarg232 wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
I don't think that is the case. Countless male characters fall by the wayside to get the mission done, she is simply attributing greater significance to the female ones.

I don't disagree with you, I'm just saying what she had in her video

Though you do have to admit, whenever there is a escort mission/game, it's usually a gal whose helplessly holding your hand. In the Mainstream, at least.

Yeah true enough, I my self have wanted to cause violence against EE in MGS2, when you have to drag her through those bloody underwater sections.

Generally, I think this chick is falling into the same category as the people who think violence in video games leads to real violence for me. Basically, someone who should not be listened to.

Is life perfect? No. Are video games violent and possibly misogynistic at times? Sure. Is the real world becoming more violent and more misogynistic as a result? No, because people don't let fething video games set their moral and philosophical compasses, and can differentiate between reality and crap happening on screen.

 Bromsy wrote:
Generally, I think this chick is falling into the same category as the people who think violence in video games leads to real violence for me. Basically, someone who should not be listened to.

Is life perfect? No. Are video games violent and possibly misogynistic at times? Sure. Is the real world becoming more violent and more misogynistic as a result? No, because people don't let fething video games set their moral and philosophical compasses, and can differentiate between reality and crap happening on screen.

"And so say we all"

This is the third time I've posted this on a forum and I'm gonna post it again because I'm starting to see it come through here.


From the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Kickstarter page

Positive Female Characters! - Video #11


So let's stop with all the she's being biased ignoring good female characters because she fully intends to address that.

We also need to take into account that this is a multi-part series of which this is just a small part. Not every female video game character will fall into the Damsel In Distress issue, and that is what this section covers. It even says it in the title and everything. It isn't supposing to tackle every issue all at once, and in only 25 minutes. It also isn't unusual to start with a simple subject and then build to more complex issues that require a foundation in the basics. 2+2 is fairly basic, but if you don't go over it you can't get to Algebra, and if you don't get Algebra you can't do Calculus.

Some of the characters listed may not be Damsels in Distress, but they sure will come up in other areas. I don't know the trope name for it, but some are 'men with breasts' for sure.

Counterpoints in here are bad, also kind of miss the whole point of the series.

"This character in this game is a female and does this so none of that other stuff matters"

She literally says individual games don't exist in a vacuum in the video itself... so uh, don't use that as your counterpoint.

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Counterpoints in here are bad, also kind of miss the whole point of the series.

"This character in this game is a female and does this so none of that other stuff matters"

She literally says individual games don't exist in a vacuum in the video itself... so uh, don't use that as your counterpoint.

This is off-topic but is daedalus your other account?

I think there's another category of gaming that's being forgotten here. We have games with strong male leads, and we have games with strong female leads (admittedly far fewer). The games that get the gender level right, however, are unfortunately the ones that have typically no story at all, or where the story isn't necessary or part of the gameplay. Sports games -especially things like Olympics tie-ins - now have male and female events, fighting games if you ignore background have female characters capable of pounding male characters into the dirt... then there are games that don't even feature humans at all and where gender is either not present or ambiguous, like Tetris or Angry Birds.

The issue is, storytelling in games is a good thing. So you need things like strong lead characters and motivation - and as it stands, there are still a lot of male gamers out there. The number of female gamers is rising but it's not exactly on an equal footing yet. The biggest thing I think is that action games appeal to men more, and these are the games we find developing a story to compliment the action.

Don't really care about the actual topic anymore at this point. I know it's there, I know it needs to be fixed and would like that to happen.

I'm mostly just wondering how she is taking this long to get these tiny videos out, and where all that money was actually spent.

There's plenty of people on youtube who don't even have 5% of her budget but get better quality and longer videos out daily.

Yeah this thing really didn't want to load for me last night XD

But yeah. Nothing really new that I think can be added her. I still think she has a horribly misguided view of exactly how and why these issues persist. Constantly throwing out the word 'insidious' and framing everything like a purposeful conspiracy to keep women down really isn't helping madame. I actually don't even think she thinks that but her videos all come off to me that way because of her poor word choice. What I do think is that she picks those words purposely because she wants to shock people which is kind of ironic given the way she criticizes the use of women characters to shock players XD. Then she played the "oh but I know they aren't evil card" to absolve herself of criticism in contradiction of her entire framing of the videos content. So pro tip: If you don't think there's an overt conspiracy to keep women down, maybe you shouldn't speak like there is one for the other 20 minutes of your twenty-five minute video.

I find her application of violence against women to be absurdly broad honestly. Her video makes it seem like she'd consider any scene depicted a woman being attacked as misogynist which is to me overly broad. But oh wait, the last five minutes are the opposite?

The weirdest part of the whole video is that it could have been five minutes long, because the last five minutes are the only part of the video worth watching and contradictory to the rest of the video. It's almost like she's just waiting for people to rage quit the video by loading the beginning with a poorly framed narrative and then bringing out her A game at the end XD I think that's called intellectual dishonesty or something fancy like that.

 LordofHats wrote:
framing everything like a purposeful conspiracy

She didn't do that.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Counterpoints in here are bad, also kind of miss the whole point of the series.

"This character in this game is a female and does this so none of that other stuff matters"

She literally says individual games don't exist in a vacuum in the video itself... so uh, don't use that as your counterpoint.

This is off-topic but is daedalus your other account?

No, daedalus is daedalus

I'd probably change my account name if I could at this point, but I don't think I can.

We are not the same person though.

 Melissia wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
framing everything like a purposeful conspiracy

She didn't do that.

Yes. She did. She spends twenty minutes talking about these trends like they're part of some master scheme and then does the opposite in the last five. Talking about how developers try to 'trick' people with 'insidious' tropes isn't framing a narrative like its about a cultural stigma or bias. It's framing events like someone is conspiring against you.

In case you don't know:

Insidious

adjective
1. Intended to entrap or beguile: an insidious plan.
2. Stealthily treacherous or deceitful: an insidious enemy.
3. Operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect: an insidious disease.

The only other alternative is she's an idiot throwing our fancy words without knowing what they mean, which I doubt because the rest of her word choice reinforces this word until she does a front face heel turn in the last five minutes. Maybe she's just trying to cope with how she talks about things in all her other videos because complaining about the patriarchal conspiracy is kind of her show and she's clearly trying to be more toned back and reasonable in this series. She's just kind of bad at it.

Just because her message is agreeable is no excuse for shoddy presentation (especially with all the money she got to make it).

 Bromsy wrote:
Generally, I think this chick is falling into the same category as the people who think violence in video games leads to real violence for me. Basically, someone who should not be listened to.

Is life perfect? No. Are video games violent and possibly misogynistic at times? Sure. Is the real world becoming more violent and more misogynistic as a result? No, because people don't let fething video games set their moral and philosophical compasses, and can differentiate between reality and crap happening on screen.

Art - video games, for example - transmits culture, and culture encompasses our values. I think an argument that our views and values can't be affected by art is absurd on its face.

In taking into account whether a piece of art is promoting something, it's essential to look at how that thing is framed in the art. Video games often promote violence. The way they do this is by giving it a positive, or occasionally neutral, framing. The thing is... the violence they promote is almost always violence we, as a culture, already believe is OK. The bulk of positively-framed video game violence is probably in the form of violence by a soldier against other combatants - which our broader culture views as fine or positive - or otherwise self defense, which we also see as fine in general. Video games, like all art, help transmit and reinforce cultural views such as this one. On the flipside, violence that our culture generally sees as morally dubious is almost always framed that way in the game.

So, no, saying "video games don't promote violence!" is not true. Many do promote some kinds of violence, while vilifying other kinds. It's the same with any cultural value. I'm not sure that video games, as a rule, are particularly morally progressive.

Same thing with sexist attitudes, though they tend to be a bit more subtle and complex than ones towards violence. Art informs our world view, among other things.

The loved one turning into a monster has been a trope since forever, And is isnt exclusive to women, It could and has been guys.
The way she frames these it is like they use these tropes specifically to make violence against women ok. That is not, It shows a narrative where all hope is lost, where the hero has lost his humanity and that the world keeps taking from him and giving nothing in return.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The loved one turning into a monster has been a trope since forever, And is isnt exclusive to women, It could and has been guys.

Sure it could be, but it rarely is. The vast, overwhelming amount of times it happens, it is to the wife/girlfriend.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The way she frames these it is like they use these tropes specifically to make violence against women ok.

Or, more accurately, she frames it as if the vast majority of these tropes are used on females and acknowledges that it problematic, which it is.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
That is not, It shows a narrative where all hope is lost, where the hero has lost his humanity and that the world keeps taking from him and giving nothing in return.

You're missing the forest for the trees.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yes. She did. She spends twenty minutes talking about these trends like they're part of some master scheme

No, she didn't.

Oh, and my dictionary's definition of "Insidious" indicates:

"Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects: "the insidious effects of stress"."

No statement of intent in this definition of insidious, and it's also very, very accurate. It's telling that you chose to use a different definition.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The loved one turning into a monster has been a trope since forever, And is isnt exclusive to women, It could and has been guys.
The way she frames these it is like they use these tropes specifically to make violence against women ok. That is not, It shows a narrative where all hope is lost, where the hero has lost his humanity and that the world keeps taking from him and giving nothing in return.

Except the vast majority of times in video games, its a female.

Bad/sloppy writing and story development, something that plagues video games. Supposedly we have some real writers on these now... but it sure doesn't seem like it most of the time.

I use the common definition (the common definition is pretty much Websters bread and butter and theirs is: awaiting a chance to entrap). Hell the origin of the word is "insidiosus 'cunning', from insidiae 'an ambush or trick', from insidere 'lie in wait for'."

I guess its certainly passable if you don't care about the English language and how words exist in both a specific context and common context at the same time. But if I were to combine the word 'insidious' with the phrase 'tricking players' like she does I really shouldn't have to explain it. Its not even subtle.

You can plug your fingers in your ears and say "no" but her message is split in two different directions by poor word choice and one of those directions is silly and makes up the majority of the videos content.

Except the vast majority of times in video games, its a female.

The weird part is that 'Woman in the Fridge' isn't even a trope. It's a website. Gail Simone was called out within weeks of naming her 'Trope' by people pointing out that it is not exclusive to women. It happens to men all the time. Jason Todd anyone? Heck Batman gets the triple whamy cause it just recently happened to Catwoman and Damien Wayne too (actually this happens to Batman a lot). The trope is Stuffed in the Fridge, because it does happen to men all the time. It's practically the go to trope whenever a comic book wants to be shocking to drum up readership (Human Torch, Super Boy, Dona Troy, several Teen Titans and multiple X-Men boys and girls).

But the kicker is that it that's in other media. In video games it really is almost exclusive to women, and she doesn't even bring this up. It's kind of a damning point to be overlooked (especially since she talked about games existing in a larger cultural context for a little bit).

 LordofHats wrote:
I use the common definition (the common definition is pretty much Websters bread and butter and theirs is: awaiting a chance to entrap).

The fact that there are other definitions beyond the common would seem to mean that the others are used, and have a time and a place. If we never used them we wouldn't need to differentiate between the common and uncommon usage.

 LordofHats wrote:
I guess its certainly passable if you don't care about the English language

You can't complain about someone being smug and insidious and treat other posters in such a manner. Get it together, you are better then this. On the other hand I am not, so if you have me telling you that you might be getting a bit to emotional in your language and phrasing, you might want to step back and take a breath. You can make you point without being insulting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:
You can plug your fingers in your ears and say "no"

Do you not see that you are coming off exactly that was as well?

Quite interesting. I think that for all that people like to hold games up as equally valid alternatives to films, literature etc a lot of their storytelling is still facepalm-worthy. Basically simplistic, unoriginal plots with, by extension , simplistic and unoriginal characters. I can't really remember when I last cared about a video game character.

I'd certainly agree that a lot of video games' depictions of women are hopelessly stuck in the past, but I also agree with what was said in the video about how the same can easily apply to men in games (i.e. the sheer amount "space marine" types who solve problems by shooting them). I say this as someone who does think that games should be called art...it's just that I think that when it comes to storytelling only a few are truly noteworthy.

 LordofHats wrote:
The weird part is that 'Woman in the Fridge' isn't even a trope. It's a website.

It can be both. All tropes start somewhere and got there name from something. Just because something got a title recently doesn't mean we can automatically dismiss it.

Honestly, the only thing I hated in the video was how she kept repeating herself when she was going over the different tropes; Girlfriend is Murdered, Hero must save her soul. Girlfriend is Murdered, Hero must save her soul. Girlfriend is Murdered, Hero must save her soul. Girlfriend is Murdered, Hero must save her soul.

Got annoying after a bit.

I can see why she did it, but still.....

Anita talks a lot, but really has nothing to say. If she wants to affect some kind of change, maybe she should become a game/television/film writer and then write the stories she sees as acceptable. Otherwise, her message is basically lost in the shifting electrons of the Internet.