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 DoctorZombie wrote:
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.

Other than maybe effecting change by shining a light on the problems for others (who may be writers) to see and understand.

I attended a panel at a convention I was at recently, and this kind of thing has had a huge impact on other industries already. Its only a matter of time until games fall in line.


Also, that is a really poor way to look at anything.

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

I thought about this for awhile and in the end decided I am a little emotional. And I should be. I find Anita Sarkessian's entire methodoloy insulting.

What I see is an individual with an uninsightful at best and poorly framed at worst view of gender bias. She seems to revel in sending mixed messages either through poor wording or an intent to confuse and she got paid a ridiculous sum of money to make twelve videos about a subject where I'm not sure she even really knows what she wants. It's been nearly a year and she's only produced two videos of 'meh' quality with a shallow level of research. While seemingly able to perform basic research, she still makes errors that someone who researched the subject honestly should have noticed and makes sweeping generalizations par for the course (but more than happily backs away from them when they go to far). It permeates her work, but now that she's in the spotlight she's toning it down and being as basic about the subject as she can and being as subtle about what she really thinks as she can. She makes it worse by beating it into you after she's already made her point.

That's insulting both because she's as dishonest with the viewer as she is with herself by portraying her shame as intellectual, and she doesn't even hide it well. It's insulting to me, you, and anyone whose ever watched her videos and made more insulting when it is ignored because shes right in principle if not in her method. Call me pedantic I guess. It seems plain as day to me. That's a very frustrating place to be.

 Ahtman wrote:
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.

It's not recent. It happened nearly twenty years ago. I don't even dismiss it. I find her presentation inaccurate and the outcome bewildering because a useful and insightful point could have been made but was not and was instead replaced with "*points finger* this is wrong." Golf clap everybody she pointed out something was wrong joining the club of everyone who bothers to care.

The most often the rebuttal I see on this subject is that video games aren't any different from the rest of culture, and here she's stumbled into the very example the shows how wrong that notion is. Steve Rogers, Jason Todd, Damien Wayne (hell Bruce Wayne), Uncle Ben, Cyclops, Kitty Pryde and Colossus have gone back and forth on this several times have all been Stuffed in the Fridge. It happens in books even more. Ironically for Sarkessian its common in books by female authors about female characters especially in juvenile fiction, see Kelly Armstrong (she actually does it several times), Claudia Gray, and Rachelle Mead, Jessica Shirvington, Courtney Moulton, and Suzanne Collins and that's just off the top of my head! And the kicker? Most of the victims were men. After <Person> in Distress Stuffed in the Fridge might well be the second most commonly used motivation in fiction.

Narrowing that trope down to just women was pointed out as fallacious when it was first named because in media it happens all the time to both genders but not in video games! Because of the common trends of narrative in video games it happens nearly exclusively to women (I can only think of two male examples both from Elder Scrolls Oblivion off the top of my head). It's the perfect point to stab at the problem of how women get treated in video games and directly attacks the most common argument used to brush the issue aside but she doesn't make it even though she should have seen this if she were really researching the subject rather than just finding examples to support her misdirected view of the material.

Instead she misrepresents the trope as being exclusive to women (while also arguing the video games don't exist in a bubble) and ignores this while babbling on about insidious tricks that deceive players like video games have some hive mind and their out to get us. It's bizarre. Making that argument would have been hook line sinker and she completely passed it up for something only slightly right.

 LordofHats wrote:


Instead she misrepresents the trope as being exclusive to women (while also arguing the video games don't exist in a bubble) and ignores this while babbling on about insidious tricks that deceive players like video games have some hive mind and their out to get us. It's bizarre. Making that argument would have been hook line sinker and she completely passed it up for something only slightly right.

There is a hive mind alright, and it continually feeds us terrible narratives is games!

You'd think all those brains together could come up with better stuff.

 LordofHats wrote:
It's not recent. It happened nearly twenty years ago.

That is recent in the history of narrative storytelling.

 LordofHats wrote:
I use the common definition

It's not the one that comes to mind for me.

Really your point, such as it even exists in the first place, is nonsense. You misinterpreted her statement. Perhaps unintentionally. Perhaps not. But either way, you misinterpreted it.

 DoctorZombie wrote:
Anita talks a lot, but really has nothing to say.

Or rather, you really aren't paying attention, because she had a lot to say. Too much, according to some people in this thread.

She even listed examples of waht she thought were very good games that delved in to topics of loss and coping without being exploitative.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 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.

So you will of course then point out the studies that prove that 'art' vis a vis video games change our behaviors then? The many cases where Hitman fans become brutal murderers for hire? The Postal fans who are out setting bums on fire? When someone starts espousing a viewpoint - in this case that attitudes in video games change the behaviors of those who play them to match those of the video game - which has been proven wrong, categorically, it should be a warning sign to pump the breaks and stop listening to that person. This isn't a difficult topic. There have been numerous threads on this on this forum alone, let alone in the wider world of gaming.

People can tell the difference between video games and real life. People can play a game where dubious things happen, without those things ever affecting their behaviors. Pretending otherwise is idiocy of the highest order at worst, or someone disingenuously pushing an agenda at best.



- there is merit in pointing out misogynist trends in the video game industry. When you start believing that those trends cause other people to become more misogynist because you are saving a princess and not your little brother, you stop being someone worth listening to.

 Bromsy wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 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.

So you will of course then point out the studies that prove that 'art' vis a vis video games change our behaviors then? The many cases where Hitman fans become brutal murderers for hire? The Postal fans who are out setting bums on fire? When someone starts espousing a viewpoint - in this case that attitudes in video games change the behaviors of those who play them to match those of the video game - which has been proven wrong, categorically, it should be a warning sign to pump the breaks and stop listening to that person. This isn't a difficult topic. There have been numerous threads on this on this forum alone, let alone in the wider world of gaming.

People can tell the difference between video games and real life. People can play a game where dubious things happen, without those things ever affecting their behaviors. Pretending otherwise is idiocy of the highest order at worst, or someone disingenuously pushing an agenda at best.



- there is merit in pointing out misogynist trends in the video game industry. When you start believing that those trends cause other people to become more misogynist because you are saving a princess and not your little brother, you stop being someone worth listening to.

However, there are studies that say that video game players do tend to think of the world a little more violently than those who don't. Not that they act any more violently.

Unlike her previous video, I liked this one. She presented interesting ideas and it felt like it was well researched. It did get a little too wordy at times but I'm she wanted to be thorough. Her most interesting point is that these tropes seem fine in a vacuum but represent a disturbing trend of a perceived ownership of women.

What I find amusing is that there are certain posts that dismiss her ideas based on grievances with her style and wording. Dismissing an argument just because of style is missing the point.

 Soladrin wrote:
Don't really care about the actual topic anymore at this point.

Always an auspicious start to a post.

 Soladrin wrote:
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.

This is the absolute worst meme about this whole project that occurred last thread; and it needs to die.

Her goal was $6,000. Kickstarter is not a store - if people wish to pledge more than that to support her vision and her franchise, it's irrelevant what her actual cost vs profit is. She is delivering exactly what was promised and what consenting adults chose to pay for, at the dollar amount they valued, in a free and fair open market. If she wants to spend $6,000 on the video series, DVD, stickers etc and put every single penny in excess of that directly into her pocket, she is legally, ethically, and morally in the right to do so.

Do you go into Walmart and complain to a cashier that this bag of rice cost way less than $2 to make? If not, what's the difference, fundamentally?

---


So far as the video in question, it seems like the editing is a little better, as far as the clips themselves.

I don't think the female soldier was intended to be humorous in Wreck-It Ralph, or as a parody. Rather I think it actually reflects the slow changing of gender power dynamics that she claims to crave, so not sure why she's bagging on it instead of praising it.

And yes, I'm posting as I watch it, work is sort of busy tonight.

 DoctorZombie wrote:
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.

I would be interested to see an example of an 'ideal' story with characters which showcased equal gender role and avoids all the tropes she complains of.

I cant say i am a fan of her first video (which i watched part of before getting bored and turning it off) and ive not been able to watch the second yet as i only have my phone atm, but from the comments here it doesnt seemlike things willl have improved much either in terms of style or content.

 SilverMK2 wrote:


I would be interested to see an example of an 'ideal' story with characters which showcased equal gender role and avoids all the tropes she complains of.

Pretty much every 'make your own protagonist' RPG out there?

 Bromsy wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:


I would be interested to see an example of an 'ideal' story with characters which showcased equal gender role and avoids all the tropes she complains of.

Pretty much every 'make your own protagonist' RPG out there?

Sorry, i should clarify that i meant her idea for a script, especially in one of the genres she apparently complains there are few such stories around.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:


I would be interested to see an example of an 'ideal' story with characters which showcased equal gender role and avoids all the tropes she complains of.

Pretty much every 'make your own protagonist' RPG out there?

Sorry, i should clarify that i meant her idea for a script, especially in one of the genres she apparently complains there are few such stories around.

Well, I imagine that Splatterhouse would have been just as cool if Jen was the one who put on the mask and became the frenzied killer trying to save her boyfriend/little sister/whatever.

From what I can tell, Sarkesian is a bit of a pacifist and doesn't appear to like violent solutions to problems to begin with, even in a video game or other forms of entertainment.

Which is fair enough, but it does seem to color her thinking. I don't entirely agree with her on the nature of video game violence, but certainly the issue of objectifying women is a very big problem within the video game industry.

The main thing that bothers me abut her perspective is that she is stuck in the early 80s research-wise. She argues from the very same point extreme violence-in-video-games critics argue by claiming that video games have a direct impact on how men actually realize real women outside of games. She proves being unable to provide any actual proof for this assumption and therefore, this, as a central point of hers, is completely void. You can't just go out and claim something because you "strongly think" it is...this just shows that you lack an idea of how things *actually* work and makes you look very unprofessional.

Furthermore, she still fails to realize really basic understandings of the very trope she speaks of - it doesn't work as well the other way around because...it doesn't work as well the other way around. Men are considerably different from women in that regard, they are highly more likely to be motivated by such a situation. Men are far easier to involve emotionally by much easier devices. Women need believable, complex characters to identify with them or their motivation (2000'ish studies on emotional involvement in literatur and TV) whereas men just...need one emotional strong point. Enter damsel in distress. And what is the, by a long shot, target audience for most of the games she presents? Men. Complaining about male-centered stories in a game market where the most promiment core branches are mainly consumed by men is...naive.

Again: unprofessional research presented as being professional.

And at min 19:00 she just goes straight downhill. She presents extremely one-sided and even wrong data without a single piece of actual info to back them up and makes a direct relation between violence in video games and real life violence. Again: she pretends being on intellectual high grounds and a professional researcher but in fact is just pretentious as hell and is seemingly ok with spreading misinformation and poorly researched facts.

As others have already pointed out: where exactly is the reason for her need of the hefty amount of money she pretended to need to produce this series? There are others, similar projects on YouTube working at a considerably smaller budget and I cannot see how her videos are even close to ressemble the value of the amount of money she asked for.

In the end, all she does with this video is further increasing the gap and stirring up anger. She does not even offer constructive advice or a perspective / alternative on how to tackle story telling. She just hints at the third episode and, read it here first, will just talk about those games being very small exclusions to the rule she established in the previous two videos.

She continues to be unprofessional, pretentious, arrogant and righteous and in the end, I don't see anything good coming from a poorly researched, one-sided report on a matter.

 Sigvatr wrote:
As others have already pointed out: where exactly is the reason for her need of the hefty amount of money she pretended to need to produce this series? There are others, similar projects on YouTube working at a considerably smaller budget and I cannot see how her videos are even close to ressemble the value of the amount of money she asked for.

Her goal was $6,000. Kickstarter is not a store - if people wish to pledge more than that to support her vision and her franchise, it's irrelevant what her actual cost vs profit is. She is delivering exactly what was promised and what consenting adults chose to pay for, at the dollar amount they valued, in a free and fair open market. If she wants to spend $6,000 on the video series, DVD, stickers etc and put every single penny in excess of that directly into her pocket, she is legally, ethically, and morally in the right to do so.

Do you go into Walmart and complain to a cashier that this bag of rice cost way less than $2 to make? If not, what's the difference, fundamentally?

 Ouze wrote:

 Soladrin wrote:
Don't really care about the actual topic anymore at this point.

Always an auspicious start to a post.

 Soladrin wrote:
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.

This is the absolute worst meme about this whole project that occurred last thread; and it needs to die.

Her goal was $6,000. Kickstarter is not a store - if people wish to pledge more than that to support her vision and her franchise, it's irrelevant what her actual cost vs profit is. She is delivering exactly what was promised and what consenting adults chose to pay for, at the dollar amount they valued, in a free and fair open market. If she wants to spend $6,000 on the video series, DVD, stickers etc and put every single penny in excess of that directly into her pocket, she is legally, ethically, and morally in the right to do so.

Do you go into Walmart and complain to a cashier that this bag of rice cost way less than $2 to make? If not, what's the difference, fundamentally?

---


So far as the video in question, it seems like the editing is a little better, as far as the clips themselves.

I don't think the female soldier was intended to be humorous in Wreck-It Ralph, or as a parody. Rather I think it actually reflects the slow changing of gender power dynamics that she claims to crave, so not sure why she's bagging on it instead of praising it.

And yes, I'm posting as I watch it, work is sort of busy tonight.

I guess I'll just disagree with you on that then. I don't see how this is a meme either, that doesn't even make sense. She collected money only for the purpose of creating this series, looking at what she's putting out I'd say she isn't even using the 6000 she asked for. Taking 2 months to make a video like this is a disgrace.

She collected the money and then people kept giving her money afterwards-- they were not coerced . They knew she already had everything collected that she asked for, they knew she didn't promise to do anything else with the money they were giving. Once she fulfills all pledges, what she does with the remainder is up to her. That's how Kickstarter works.

And she is in the process of fulfilling the pledges by producing the videos she said she would produce. Anything beyond the 6000 USD she asked for was, effectively, a gift, and she was under no obligation to up the ante, as it were, just because people kept giving her more gifts

 Melissia wrote:
And she is in the process of fulfilling the pledges by producing the videos she said she would produce. Anything beyond the 6000 USD she asked for was, effectively, a gift, and she was under no obligation to up the ante, as it were, just because people kept giving her more gifts

Seeing as the high level backers were supposed to receive DVD copies of the series by December 2012 I'd like to think that she isn't still "producing the videos", and that the backers have the items they were expecting to receive.

As far as I'm aware, anything beyond the $6000, unless there were stretch goals added indicating higher quality/extra features based on how much extra was raised, is basically a donation. I can see there is a very small number of stretch goals, but no idea on what their worth was. Aha, it seems the production quality one was $20,000.

I think it's a side show that people debate over to distract from the issue. Keeping to the content of the videos would be nice.

Estimated Deliveries are now concrete I guess.

Just had a look at her LEGO videos; what a load of gak. She sits there pointing out the "problem" with LEGO marketing to boys, yet provides zero evidence why LEGO should do the contrary. Could it not be the case that in the 80's demographics shifted, young girls wanted to play with the plethora of cartoon tie in toys and other exclusively girl toys MLP, Polly Pocket and other stuff that vaguely claws at the surface of my mind.

Her problem is that girls don't want to buy the "boys" stuff, but how is that LEGO's fault? It's not LEGO's job to take on gender stereotypes at the risk of it's business. Then when LEGO tries to include girls she gaks on them and says that they aren't trying hard enough. I don't think she knows what she wants... oh no wait I do, it's to blame companies for the decisions that parents and society as a whole make.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Estimated Deliveries are now concrete I guess.

Pointing out that a delivery has no been made 5 months after it was due to be completed =/= saying delivery dates are concrete.

But it is nice to know that you yourself are sticking to the content of the video after critiscising others for not doing so

Believe it or not, I actually agree with you, I find it slightly absurd that these are taking so long.

However I thought the main point of all this is to debate the points she's trying to put across.

 Melissia wrote:
You misinterpreted her statement. Perhaps unintentionally. Perhaps not. But either way, you misinterpreted it.

That it could even be misinterpreted is enough to prove my basic my point; Her work is shoddy in quality.

Dismissing an argument just because of style is missing the point.

When an argument is made up of poorly repeating the thoughts and insights of others who came before you, it should be dismissed (and she doesn't even offer much insight). And Sarkessian was dismissed before the Kickstarter controversy for this very reason. Sarkessian has offered nothing I haven't already heard and she doesn't even offer it well.

A person can learn more about gender bias by reading this for an hour than they will watching her point her finger at all the bad things for forty minutes.

No one on KS has ever been behind on their estimated date for projects before. She is the only one. Surely she must be a con artist that forced people to hand over money.

Out of curiosity, how many here are backers of the project and get backers updates?

 MrDwhitey wrote:
Believe it or not, I actually agree with you, I find it slightly absurd that these are taking so long.

However I thought the main point of all this is to debate the points she's trying to put across.

No worries, your last post I may have mis-read then.
My own personal take on it is this;
Her delivery is still not particularly engaging. Her listing examples in a monotone voice, and her actual facepalm came across as stilted and insincere. She also seems to labour her points a significant deal.

She trots out the "women in the refrigerator" as a trope, and fails to tell the audience that the trope has evolved "stuffed in the fridge" after it was found that both genders were affected by it in significant numbers. Withholding this fact from her audience is a clear example of intellectual dishonesty. She used this trope in a prior video too and there were numerous responses along the same lines that I have raised.

She rails against the trend of games becoming grittier and women suffering more because of it. Maybe she missed many examples of games were the male characters are tortured, maimed, murdered etc. To say that women are more affected by this trend in gaming is twisting the facts to suit her argument.

I take issue with her claim that romance in games only stems from captive females. Especially when she lists examples (Max Payne Infamous 2, etc.) were there is a pre-existing relationship. Her own personal view seems to be that women are only desirable when dis-empowered, she does not consider that other factors may be at play here, that people thrown together in high stress situations often develop close bonds from the danger faced and the shared experience. Also she does not account for the fact that some (like Princess Peach) are essential to the running of a kingdom or the like and that having order restored is a desirable result, regardless of the gender of the captive.

Anita seems quite happy to take any act against a women out of context to fit her agenda, and then tell her audience that because of said agenda context does not matter anyway. If a man harms a woman its bad, if a woman is cursed/grafted onto a monster and wants to die then "she asked for it" which sends out the wrong message. It's showing that even when female characters make a choice (i.e. they are acting and not being acted upon) that is not good enough for Anita.

She spends a significant portion of the video telling us how video games are helping spread misogyny across the world (omitting that countries with the worst violence against women don't have a lot of access to video games), and then contradicts that by saying that there is no direct cause and effect relationship between violence and depictions in media. To say that she is being dishonest and framing facts to suit her agenda is being generous.

Is there a problem with how women are portrayed in media - yes, that being said the media has a significant problem in many cases with creating characters that have more than two dimensions (and the occasional plot twist) and writing original compelling plots. For the most part screenwriters seem to play to the lowest common denominator.
Should it be changed - yes
But she seems to be overstating her case somewhat, and trying to make this a much larger issue than it actually is, especially when she tries to tie video games to a wider assault on women and as a reason for violence against them. It seems to me that she has taken existing research on the portrayal of females in other media and simply applied it to video games, and found examples. To date there has been little critical analysis, and this seems to me to be a series that seeks to document the issue rather than examine it in such a way as to suggest ways to change the issue. It's money for old rope, but good on her for spotting a gap in the market and filling it.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Just had a look at her LEGO videos; what a load of gak. She sits there pointing out the "problem" with LEGO marketing to boys, yet provides zero evidence why LEGO should do the contrary

This applies to all of her videos. She never uses actual evidence to back her theories up. She does use a, admittingly, well-fitting load of videos to portay an issue, but she is stuck at a very poor argumentation level by showing the examples and then immediately going straight to a stimulus - reponse model...child gets input, child does the same in real life. She's stuck in the alte 80s / early 90s with her set of mind.

The sad thing is that I kinda appreciate what she does in general - she takes a closer look at video games and how they are designed and how poor story telling is nowadays. That's really awesome and I'd appreciate any serious attempt at such a move. The problem is that she immediately jumps to conclusions whenever she can and that's what tears her video's quality down by a long shot. If she was able to take a step back and try to have a more objective view on the matter, she might make some really good videos. The proper way would be to portray the Damsel in Distress as typical for video games, then go on and show that video games are a central part of our culture, then make the relation to how movies / TV work and what effect studies on those proved, then show up possible (!) effects of consuming media with debatable content.

Video 1: What is Damsel in Distress?
Video 2: Video Games in pop culture
Video 3: Practical implications

Leave out propaganda bullshat, add in properly researched facts and tadaaa, you got a really good web series, precisely portraying a (possible) problem.

But I guess her "HERP DERP SEXISM IS EVERYWHERE LOLOL" approach attracts much more viewers and, of course, requires MUCH less effort.

About the "She only asked for 6000$!" argument: let's just for one second, assume that this was true. 6000$. That's 2000$ per video. 2000$. Now, tell me, where did this money go? High production quality? Where? Did she use proper studies (they cost a lot)? Nope. Did she have some interviews with people from the video games industry? Nope. Did she start an own study? Nope. Even if she only used those 6000$ (not counting ad revenue from YouTube btw), where did those go? Her video are, as of now, at a low quality level content-wise. She did the very same thing anyone on Youtube could do without any additional funding at all. She just cut some clips together and commented on an issue using only herself as a source. How is that even borderline professional?

 Ahtman wrote:
No one on KS has ever been behind on their estimated date for projects before. She is the only one. Surely she must be a con artist that forced people to hand over money.

Out of curiosity, how many here are backers of the project and get backers updates?

I don't recall anyone saying that she was a "con artist". Unless you wish to substantiate that it reads very much like a deflection.
Many kickstarters have, often for issues with suppliers, raw materials, transport, quality control etc. Her project was comparatively small in scope. It didn't require a product to be manufactured, other than copies of a DVD to be made. It is 11 months after her kickstarter concluded and to date only two videos have been released. For someone who wants to be taken seriously this is not an encouraging sign.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:
About the "She only asked for 6000$!" argument: let's just for one second, assume that this was true. 6000$. That's 2000$ per video. 2000$. Now, tell me, where did this money go? High production quality? Where? Did she use proper studies (they cost a lot)? Nope. Did she have some interviews with people from the video games industry? Nope. Did she start an own study? Nope. Even if she only used those 6000$ (not counting ad revenue from YouTube btw), where did those go? Her video are, as of now, at a low quality level content-wise. She did the very same thing anyone on Youtube could do without any additional funding at all. She just cut some clips together and commented on an issue using only herself as a source. How is that even borderline professional?

Even though I am critical of the work produced I don't think that it is fair that there is constant commentary concerning where the money invested went. She proposed a kickstarter, and it was funded. People contributed what they felt was a worthy amount (in part due to 4chan's 'contributions').
If I was to speculate on where the money did go then it may have gone on academic reading and research. In some fields publications are protected by subscription and paywalls which are often prohibitively expensive for a layperson with only a passing interest in the subject.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
stuff[

I don't want to point by point your entire post, but I did agree with some criticisms you said.

Her delivery is poor, especially for someone who has done quite a lot of projects similar to this.

She often uses words she should not. I say this not to imply she's stupid, as been done here, but because many of her viewers will not understand at least some language of that complexity. Most professional speechwriters try to keep their complexity to 9th or 10th grade at most.

So far as the other stuff, I'm not so sure. To say whether or not video games influence real world violence is one of those fool's errands, where each side of the argument can easily produce tons of studies supporting them. I'd have to rate it "indeterminate" and would neither agree with nor disagree with either camp.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
I don't recall anyone saying that she was a "con artist". Unless you wish to substantiate that it reads very much like a deflection.

This isn't the only place anyone has ever discussed this, and this isn't even the only thread we have had on dakka about it. Also the 'no one used those exact words' argument is pretty thin. It isn't that hard to get to 'con artist' from constant complaints that someone took a bunch of money from people under false pretenses. If the best you have is a semantic argument, then perhaps accusing others of deflection is the least of your concerns.