[QUOTE=AcidGravy;45432741]Lets just all be honest and establish that most "youtube feminists" are talking out of their arse to take advantage of all the tumblr teenagers that think they're making the world a better place by having a certain biased viewpoint.
And the main problem is that the actual issues feminism stands for isn't being taken seriously because the only feminists that are noticed are the utter twats that spurt shit like this one.[/QUOTE]
So in other words, internet feminism is all a bunch of crap.
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;45436573]consistantly wrong[/QUOTE]
She's not wrong all the time, she is totally correct, for some reason video games are the only media where the portrayal of women is just awful and can never be discussed because the fans think games deserve some kind of special protection or some shit. She's correct that the sexualisation of women, and use of women in most games is needless and totally sexist.
However her understanding of how and why tropes work needs work, some of the tropes she's pointed out can be considered inherently sexist (damsel in distress has a heavy implication that women cannot do anything for themselves and need a man to solve their problems), but the examples she picks are shaky at best, flat out missing the point at worst.
I'm not a fan of her, or the series, but to call her "consistantly" wrong is pretty wrong it itself. She's hella misguided.
[QUOTE=Sailor Mars;45435566]We can either win this war or lose it, Amito drew first blood, but we don't forget. We don't forgive. Watch out Arnita Starkissian.[/QUOTE]
That's not what I was saying, but okay.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=hexpunK;45437672]She's not wrong all the time, she is totally correct, for some reason video games are the only media where the portrayal of women is just awful and can never be discussed because the fans think games deserve some kind of special protection or some shit. She's correct that the sexualisation of women, and use of women in most games is needless and totally sexist.
However her understanding of how and why tropes work needs work, some of the tropes she's pointed out can be considered inherently sexist (damsel in distress has a heavy implication that women cannot do anything for themselves and need a man to solve their problems), but the examples she picks are shaky at best, flat out missing the point at worst.
I'm not a fan of her, or the series, but to call her "consistantly" wrong is pretty wrong it itself. She's hella misguided.[/QUOTE]
Are you kidding me? The portrayal of women is piss poor in almost every form of media, both in its creation and in the story themselves.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45434976]I agree with you on the Hitman thing but I think Jenny in The Darkness is sort of a trope, maybe not a damsel in distress, but definitely a woman used to further the plot and not much else.[/QUOTE]
Characters exist to further the plot. That's their entire fucking point.
This is on par with complaining about Star Trek using female red shirts; they exist to die, provide some extra tension, and that's it.
[QUOTE=Swilly;45438121]Are you kidding me? The portrayal of women is piss poor in almost every form of media, both in its creation and in the story themselves.[/QUOTE]
But criticism of film, literature, theatre, etc. is usually actually accepted by their respective communities. Music is an exception still, but the portrayal of women in music being so shit can still be openly talked about for the most part (I'll direct to you to Robin Thickes' "Blurred Lines", there was a lot of open debate, with a number of people on both sides who were actually trying to prove a point). When video games are attacked however, the community just curls up into a ball and shouts "no gurlz alloweded!!" at the top of their lungs. The industry is a sausagefest still, with the only notable women being writers normally, who don't tend to last long in their positions because of the community (as awful as some of Mass Effect was, the woman who wrote the shit bits does not deserve the amount of shit she was getting, it was full on harassment).
Considering a significant portion of people who play games today are women now, is it unfair to actually ask for people to discuss this shit without diving straight into dumb canyon? Anita is not the mouthpiece needed for this discussion, but the amount of shit the whole thing has caused has brought it to the attention of a lot of people, awareness is a pretty important part of social issues, we just need people who actually know what they're doing to finish the job.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45434976]I agree with you on the Hitman thing but I think Jenny in The Darkness is sort of a trope, maybe not a damsel in distress, but definitely a woman used to further the plot and not much else.
This I have to totally disagree with you on, it's a valid complaint in GTA because there simply aren't any male prostitutes in the game world. That's a decision someone had to actively make at some point.[/QUOTE]
No. You're wrong on this one friend.
Jenny in the darkness is the most powerful woman in existence.[sp]She''s the Angelus, the opposite of the darkness, the light[/sp]. So she certainly isn't any sort of weak woman, and even when she's simply Jenny, she's a well fleshed out character. In the Darkness 1, you can sit and watch that ENTIRE film on the couch with her near the beginning of the film. She'll fall asleep on your chest, and it's a really touching scene in my opinion.
The Darkness two makes her a good character as well so I disagree heavily with you about Jenny just being a plot point. She's anything but.
As for no male prostitutes in GTA, I both agree and disagree with you. There aren't a load of male prostitutes in LA anyways, so running into them would be hard and the game does try and go for a wacky but realism view. But I agree with you because I see no reason why there shouldn't be male prostitutes in the game
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438148]Anyway, i'm looking forward to 300 replies telling me i'm a filthy mysoginist who supports rape culture because I don't think all video games need amazingly well written men OR women. Men being masculine to appeal to women, and women being feminine to appeal to men is nothing new. [/QUOTE]
The men being masculine isn't entirely an appeal to women, it's mostly a power-trip aimed at the guy playing the game. Everyone wants to be the hero, the industry knows a majority of their demographic are male. So a buff, male, likeable (sometimes) hero-figure who saves everyone is a great escape from your dreary life of being a relatively uninteresting male (in comparison). I don't think any women would find some of the weirder designs we had for power trips remotely attractive.
I know you mentioned this later in your post, but the guy being the one who saves everyone is still largely a power trip aimed at the most-likely-male playing the game. The industry probably won't work out the equivalent for women any time soon because it's such an uncommon thought at the moment. Though DMC3 is an interesting exception, if they're a good guy they're probably hot as hell and fucking awesome, power trips and attraction all around!
She had a few alright points but a lot of what she pointed out was honestly just nitpicking rather than pointing out serious issues.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438932]So, Bayonetta:
DMC3: A strong, powerful, sexy male uses his exceptional strength, charm, and a rivalry with his brother to overcome the forces of hell.
Bayonetta: A strong, powerful, sexy female uses her exceptional strength, charm, and a rivalry with her sister to overcome the forces of heaven.[/QUOTE]
Cool, you found an exception. Good work I guess? Until the exception is incredibly common, it's still a problem. Bayonetta is a strange outlier, I still actually need to play it so thanks for reminding me it exists.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;45438641]But criticism of film, literature, theatre, etc. is usually actually accepted by their respective communities. Music is an exception still, but the portrayal of women in music being so shit can still be openly talked about for the most part (I'll direct to you to Robin Thickes' "Blurred Lines", there was a lot of open debate, with a number of people on both sides who were actually trying to prove a point). When video games are attacked however, the community just curls up into a ball and shouts "no gurlz alloweded!!" at the top of their lungs. The industry is a sausagefest still, with the only notable women being writers normally, who don't tend to last long in their positions because of the community (as awful as some of Mass Effect was, the woman who wrote the shit bits does not deserve the amount of shit she was getting, it was full on harassment).
Considering a significant portion of people who play games today are women now, is it unfair to actually ask for people to discuss this shit without diving straight into dumb canyon? Anita is not the mouthpiece needed for this discussion, but the amount of shit the whole thing has caused has brought it to the attention of a lot of people, awareness is a pretty important part of social issues, we just need people who actually know what they're doing to finish the job.[/QUOTE]
Those criticisms come from a timed honed abundance of information that has been held onto so that people who study the history of Movie/Television/Literature can correctly critique it with their informed opinion. There's a level of trust with critics that they know what they're talking about. Videogames grew up against internet so not only do we already have an echo chamber holding onto this medium but the fact that games that score well that we don't agree with suddenly spring up vitrolic response, everyone is out on their own when it comes to games.
Videogames don't have that, we don't the most informed crowd because there are no ways to really learn the history because especially during the early days, its foggy as hell.
Its also not fair to compare forms of media that have had at least a century to a form of media that had maybe 40 to 60 years to come out of nowhere. Movies and Film started out as either slapstick comedy or porn, that's how it got its start.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45439263]Remember me
Mirror's Edge
Beyond Good and Evil
Silent Hill 3
Resident Evil 1 - 3 (and Code Veronica)
Final Fantasy 13
Persona 3 Portable
American McGee's Alice
Drakengard 3
Just off the top of my head. They're all pretty good characters, with varying degrees of being sexualized, but the men in most of those games are either backup or partners to the protagonist female.[/QUOTE]
Great, I know those examples too. The FF series is pretty decent for female leads, so just throw most of them in too.
But they are still vastly outnumbered by games that really don't have a decent grasp of how to write decent female characters, let alone leads, hell not even male characters in some cases. It's like you're missing the entire point of what I said, the problem is deep, a few examples here and there don't show me that developers know what they're doing, it just tells me a couple have made good attempts.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Swilly;45439599]Those criticisms come from a timed honed abundance of information that has been held onto so that people who study the history of Movie/Television/Literature can correctly critique it with their informed opinion. There's a level of trust with critics that they know what they're talking about. Videogames grew up against internet so not only do we already have an echo chamber holding onto this medium but the fact that games that score well that we don't agree with suddenly spring up vitrolic response, everyone is out on their own when it comes to games.
Videogames don't have that, we don't the most informed crowd because there are no ways to really learn the history because especially during the early days, its foggy as hell.
Its also not fair to compare forms of media that have had at least a century to a form of media that had maybe 40 to 60 years to come out of nowhere. Movies and Film started out as either slapstick comedy or porn, that's how it got its start.[/QUOTE]
It's pretty fair to compare them when the older media has changed significantly in the last century or so. Music today is nothing like it was before the 20th century, etc. A media changing is not going to change how critique works. Rather the ideals that a society holds will. Currently there is a push for equal representation of minorities and women in our media, so critique is still applicable and comparable across media.
Criticism of something isn't restricted by when it began, critique is a pretty inherent thing. Critique doesn't change much. The fact that gaming is really hard to critique without being relentlessly attacked is a problem. Sure you can criticise the developers and publishers, but oh no, don't you dare talk about my games you assholes!
[QUOTE=Jackald;45439263]Remember me
Mirror's Edge
Beyond Good and Evil
Silent Hill 3
Resident Evil 1 - 3 (and Code Veronica)
Final Fantasy 13
Persona 3 Portable
American McGee's Alice
Drakengard 3
Just off the top of my head. They're all pretty good characters, with varying degrees of being sexualized, but the men in most of those games are either backup or partners to the protagonist female.[/QUOTE]
there are lots of games with good and bad important female characters but you really can't compare it to the amount of male ones
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438148]
But if you raise these points, people will flip flop and say what's important is she's "raising awareness".
So it's like the youtube feminism equivalent of "1 LIKE = 1 PRAYER FOR AFRICA". Great.[/QUOTE]
The fundamental difference is that it's YouTube. The entire point of Youtube is to share viewpoints. Again, I kinda agree with what you are saying here about her not getting all of her points right but it's still better than nothing.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438148]She's a clever woman. She disabled comments on all her videos for months and months, creating this bottled vitriol of hatred that all got unleashed on her kickstarter video. Then she said "Look at how disgustingly misogynistic the video games community is, i've been getting so much hatred." and justified her own actions with it. Anyway, equality in video games is always an issue, but I say the issue is poor writing. Some games don't need amazing 10/10 writing, some games sell themselves on it, and poorly written characters are the problem.[/QUOTE]
Uh, what? She didn't release videos with comments blocked. It wasn't even a big deal when she first asked for money. $6000 on Kickstarter is peanuts compared to some of the dumb things that get millions. She only started blocking comments [I]after [/I]the hatred. It takes some insane mental gymnastics to somehow say she created that.
And yeah, I think that should go down in internet history as the time that a bunch of angry children lashed out against something they didn't like and accomplished the exact opposite of what they wanted to do. Maybe next time just ignore it instead of proving the exact thing she wanted everyone to see.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438148]Anyway, i'm looking forward to 300 replies telling me i'm a filthy mysoginist who supports rape culture because I don't think all video games need amazingly well written men OR women. [/QUOTE]
It's pretty funny because if this was just about video games the reply "Well I don't think games need to be written well" would be skewered but because it's about representation it's acceptable losses.
You're entitled to your opinion but personally I'd like to see the media aim a bit higher.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438148]Also, thinking that a strong man is just male power fantasy fulfillment is silly. It wasn't men who wrote the hundreds of trashy romance novels about strong but sensitive muscular men who fall head over heels for the everyday woman and take her away from a life of monotony to an exciting world of spy/fireman/fishing/vampires/whatever.[/QUOTE]
You are kind of shooting your own argument in the foot as it were because the characters in those romance novels are nothing like the brutish Space Marine/regular Marine bald headed badass archetype that we are currently inundated with.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45438932]So, Bayonetta:
DMC3: A strong, powerful, sexy male uses his exceptional strength, charm, and a rivalry with his brother to overcome the forces of hell.
Bayonetta: A strong, powerful, sexy female uses her exceptional strength, charm, and a rivalry with her sister to overcome the forces of heaven.[/QUOTE]
Bayonetta still has the same problems as literally every female character in this medium has: Pandering to white straight males.
You know the gender standards are awful in this medium when Bayonetta is held up as a good female character.
[QUOTE=Devodiere;45434651]Many people do understand that relationship, and they understand that if one in a relationship has agency, it does not automatically mean the one being acted upon is lacking in agency as a subject-object relationship is not the only kind of relationship. That's the issue, she tells the basic idea of the subject-object in a simple way, but then leaps to examples which are arguable at best. It results in the basics being explained poorly and examples given that require the audience to put it in context when they may not even have that context.[/QUOTE]
This is what I meant when I said she gets earlier examples right and later examples wrong. For example, for the older Mario games (and, lets be honest, some of the pretty modern ones (disclaimer: Have not played anything past Gamecube)) it's very hard to argue that Peach has any sort of agency whatsoever. She is entirely an object. Mario wasn't the only game to do this of course, a lot of 80's and 90's platformers used women avatars as a sort of football between the good guy and bad guy.
I do agree that she tends to miss the context when it comes to modern games though. That's why I give her half credit.
[QUOTE=Devodiere;45434651]Tropes aren't a good method for critique, they assume that works are constricted by tropes and adhere to them rather than using them for the works own purposes. The tropes and patterns are more a constant to see how each work changes them and the entire point is subverting or modifying them to create something new rather than playing them straight every time.[/QUOTE]
Who is "they"? Sarkeesian's videos don't portray individual games as being constructed out of tropes, just that tropes are a part of games so lets point them out and see how writing could be improved. She doesn't always get it right but you seem to be misunderstanding the basic reasoning behind her content. Especially starting off with "Tropes aren't a good method of critique". She isn't criticizing games for having tropes; she is criticizing tropes for being simplistic.
[QUOTE=Devodiere;45434651]The logic of those examples is that obviously killing people is bad, but in certain circumstances such as war or euthanasia it can be justifiable or even a good thing. When you take a trope such as Damsel in Distress on its own in a sterile environment, it is easy to say it's bad and sexist or whatever. But when you put it in context, it can be nothing compared to a larger childhood fantasy theme such as in Mario, or completely subverted in all but the base act. Because of this it's an incredibly unreliable way of analysing works and is bordering on a logical fallacy, it's no wonder there's so much criticism with such a massive flaw in her methodology. [/QUOTE]
Again, you seem to be misunderstanding what a trope actually is. Tropes don't become not-tropes (and thus, not valid) because they happen to take place in a childhood fantasy story.
If you are viewing Sarkeesians videos as a criticism against video games and not as a criticism against bad writing in video games, then that is you misinterpreting it.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45434268]She tends to miss the point of very basic plot points or gameplay elements by a wide margin and does so very frequently, when she doesn't just outright ignore certain elements of a game to focus on what's convenient to her.
[/QUOTE]
This was what I was referring to in my earlier post. I am enthusiastically nodding for the first half of the video which is explaining tropes that might be in other games or past games (when video games were in their infancy) then she attributes a trope to a modern game and it seems like she never played or even watched someone play the game enough to get a grasp on the characters or context.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;45434976]I agree with you on the Hitman thing but I think Jenny in The Darkness is sort of a trope, maybe not a damsel in distress, but definitely a woman used to further the plot and not much else.[/QUOTE]
She was fleshed out incredibly well for a secondary character in a shooter game, you just don't see that part because the Lets Play footage Sarkeesian ripped from another channel just goes to the part where she gets dead.
The point isn't that Jenny should be interpreted as Jackie's property, like Sarkeesian describes the trope, but that Jenny was Jackie's only tenuous link to humanity. He lived a very fast and violent life surrounded by backstabbing murderers and liars. His own family tries to kill him. Every day for him is perpetuating a street war between rival Mafia families. Amidst all this he can go home to a friend and feel some measure of peace. Then that is suddenly ripped away from him in violent circmustances that he himself is responsible for putting her in. Watching her die and not being able to do anything just pushes him over the edge. He doesn't shoot himself because his life sucks. He shoots himself because the one ray of sunshine in his life was killed while he was powerless to do anything. What follows in the second game isn't Jackie trying to free his girlfriend, it's trying to grab a crumbling handhold on reality as contemporary horror (Mafia wars) and supernatural horror (the Darkness) try to rip him in two.
Jenny is arguably the third most important character in the series, second if you don't count the Darkness itself.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45434498]As far as the video goes it addresses a side of feminism I especially don't like. The side that wants to ban prostitution because of how it exploits women and somehow reinforces some kind of vague idea of patriarchy , refusing to even acknowledge the probability that a woman might find opportunity, enjoyment and even empowerment from [I]choosing[/I] to make a living by providing sexual services.[/QUOTE]
Devils advocate (I support legalization): There is a good argument that current and future prostitutes who might be encouraged by legalization aren't exactly given a choice and the concept of empowerment is very subjective.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45434498]I honestly have never found a good youtube channel dedicated to feminism. Good channels from people who identify as feminists but no good youtube feminists.[/QUOTE]
This applies to almost every topic. It's rare to find a political channel that isn't obviously very left or very right. People make channels for things they are interested in.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45434498]Her videos inspire some good discussion but she's without a doubt a fraud catering to a tumblr feminist audience. The type that throw money at stuff like Dashcon.[/QUOTE]
Either she is a fraud or she is making content but very slowly. You can't have it both ways.
[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;45438607]Characters exist to further the plot. That's their entire fucking point.
This is on par with complaining about Star Trek using female red shirts; they exist to die, provide some extra tension, and that's it.[/QUOTE]
Coincidentally the "Red Shirt" was one of the very first television tropes.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440390]Sorry, I meant she disabled comments on all her videos leading up to her kickstarter.[/QUOTE]
Who cares? The "Youtube comment censorship" point is a complete red herring. The people who use it don't have plans on intellectually debating Sarkeesian in her comments section and know that almost no one else will either.
All this without going into how poorly wrought the Youtube comments section is for having a discussion. Reddit is better for that shit and even it has a terrible layout.
Just talk about her videos on FP when they are posted and stop worrying about Youtube comments you only care about when you can use their blocking as ammunition.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440390]A little discussion in the comments about Kanye's true intent would be really insightful. [/QUOTE]
Yeah in the imaginary world where Israel and Palestine create lasting peace and access to chocolate milk is seen as a human right we could have an insightful discussion about Kanye West's music lyrics in the comments section of a Youtube creator who is intensely controversial.
Are you reading the things you type?
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440455]
In short, I want a series looking at gender representation in video games with academic source and a fair and balanced way of assessing things.[/QUOTE]
Not what the mainstream wants though.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440455]
In short, I want a series looking at gender representation in video games with academic source and a fair and balanced way of assessing things.[/QUOTE]
Make one by raising funds on Kickstarter. As far as I can tell asking for a few thousand to make a video series can get people mad so throw in some concept art of space ships and rake in the millions.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440455]You're always going to get some vitriol and jackasses on the internet. Censoring everyone is a childish solution; it's putting your fingers in your ears and going "la la la la la".
Besides, maybe if she produced a balanced and academically sourced video, people wouldn't be calling her out.[/QUOTE]
She isn't censoring everyone, she just isn't providing a soapbox for people to "criticize" (there aren't big enough quotes on my keyboard) her content.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;45440516]Not what the mainstream wants though.[/QUOTE]
Clearly evident from the sheer amount of bad counter-videos that have been produced, which seem wholly incapable of simply criticizing her methodology (as I and some people in this thread have) and must go over the top with the ad hominem
[QUOTE=hexpunK;45440077]Great, I know those examples too. The FF series is pretty decent for female leads, so just throw most of them in too.
But they are still vastly outnumbered by games that really don't have a decent grasp of how to write decent female characters, let alone leads, [B]hell not even male characters in some cases.[/B] It's like you're missing the entire point of what I said, the problem is deep, a few examples here and there don't show me that developers know what they're doing, it just tells me a couple have made good attempts.[/QUOTE]
That's the important part.
Games are generally shit at telling a story, period. Male or female character, whatever, games tend to have shit characters in shit stories with shit turns and shit aspects.
You can't run around crying about games having shit female characters like it's somehow exclusive to women when the exact same thing applies to men.
I fucking dare you to find a single game with a good female character and no good male character, and vice versa. There isn't any, because if a video game has well written character of one sex chances are the writers are good enough to write good characters of the other.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440652]Interesting and well-thought out criticisms of Anita Sarkeesian.[/QUOTE]
I can't watch the 16 minute one at the moment but the first one is kind of what I mean about ad hominem attacks against Sarkeesian herself. Almost the entire video is an attack on her character rather than actually criticizing the Tropes videos.
I will give it credit for being rather professionally well done compared to the 9 million thunderf00t/internetaristocrat clones.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440611]This is a pretty fun sendup to Tropes vs Women that DIDN'T cost $300,000 to make. It also parodies /r/mensrights fedora tipping nerds but still.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtlIWXa3Efw[/media][/QUOTE]
idk if you're being sarcastic but that's a single video
I watched the third video. Sarkeesian has explicitly stated multiple times that she doesn't believe the vast majority of developers or writers are actually sexist or misogynistic, just that they use really old tropes in the stories they want to tell that tend to be sexist or misogynistic. I suppose it's debatable as to how much this flies when she is criticizing key parts of a games plot for being misogynistic but I'd give her the benefit of the doubt until she outright says it.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440686]
I'll give you that, but I don't think his assessment is entirely incorrect, but you're right, the ad hominem argument isn't a very good one. I think his Part 2 is much more to do with her actions, but fair enough if you don't agree with him.
[/QUOTE]
The discussion between sex positive and sex negative feminism takes place almost nowhere else outside of these threads and videos about Sarkeesian. I'm not a feminist so I can't really speak to them specifically, just a very interesting observation I've seen; namely that I haven't seen it.
As to the criticism of Sarkeesian, he is misinterpreting some of her points. It's not that she doesn't like female characters that are smart or tough or cunning or sexy when the situation actually calls for it. In none of her Tropes vs Video Games videos has she criticized tropes for being like this. She talks at length about prostitutes in GTA or strippers in HItman but not once does she actually say we shouldn't have them. She doesn't seem to be against artistic freedom (despite what one out of context Youtube comment seems to belie), just lazy or simplistic art and boring tropes.
Other than that, had a good laugh at her saying "Image macros are important to healthy political debate" and again complaining about garmes jurnalizm and Kickstarter for putting this somehow not important (but important enough for me to comment on) critic in the spotlight. It's the same sort of irrational lashing out and rationalizing people have when they realize they have accomplished the exact opposite of what they wanted to do and so have created a monster. Considering Investig8tiveJournalism is from Gather Your Party, this isn't really surprising.
[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;45440725]idk if you're being sarcastic but that's a single video[/QUOTE]
You don't exactly need 160 000 dollars for a video series where literally all you have to do that costs money is capture video game footage, capture your own voice, and edit it together. Hell, you don't even need the 5000 dollars she originally asked for.
The work she's put out so far is pretty damn unimpressive considering how much money she got. Hell, her videos didn't even need to be videos, they could have been proper articles and the result would have been similar.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440902]I think it's more that she talking about any positive aspects of female characters doesn't fit into her video series. At the core of it, she's there to have a whinge about how shitty female characters are, not to critically analyze that shit.[/QUOTE]
And that's where her videos just fall apart. If your video is literally nothing more than "here's 30 minutes of me pointing fingers at a subject without actually providing proper critical thinking" then it's just a rant like there are so many other on youtube. And the thousands of other rants on youtube weren't crowdfunded.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45440898]You don't exactly need 160 000 dollars for a video series where literally all you have to do that costs money is capture video game footage, capture your own voice, and edit it together. Hell, you don't even need the 5000 dollars she originally asked for.
[/QUOTE]
Well shit you don't need 48,000,000 to disappoint a bunch of space ship nerds but I guess the free market disagrees with us.
[QUOTE=Jackald;45440902]I think it's more that she talking about any positive aspects of female characters doesn't fit into her video series. At the core of it, she's there to have a whinge about how shitty female characters are, not to critically analyze that shit.[/QUOTE]
While it would be interesting, she has no real obligation to cover positive female characters. It's her critique.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;45440077]
It's pretty fair to compare them when the older media has changed significantly in the last century or so. Music today is nothing like it was before the 20th century, etc. A media changing is not going to change how critique works. Rather the ideals that a society holds will. Currently there is a push for equal representation of minorities and women in our media, so critique is still applicable and comparable across media.
Criticism of something isn't restricted by when it began, critique is a pretty inherent thing. Critique doesn't change much. The fact that gaming is really hard to critique without being relentlessly attacked is a problem. Sure you can criticise the developers and publishers, but oh no, don't you dare talk about my games you assholes![/QUOTE]
Its not because while writing and music have had things banned by them, they were also core parts of humans and never really had the deepest scrutiny. The best example would be the Comic Book Industry, because both Videogames and Comic books aren't seen as [B]core[/B] forms of cultural ingestion. They're not seen as important, you don't have libraries offering you to rent videogames or comic books for free(The latter actually changing).
That's the big thing holding back and creating this very negative culture when it comes to criticizing games. Games also haven't matured, its not a niche market yet. Movies, Books, Comic Books, Television are Niche Markets now.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45440924]And that's where her videos just fall apart. If your video is literally nothing more than "here's 30 minutes of me pointing fingers at a subject without actually providing proper critical thinking" then it's just a rant like there are so many other on youtube. And the thousands of other rants on youtube weren't crowdfunded.[/QUOTE]
The entire idea of criticism is that you can attack aspects of a work of art without being held to the unrealistic and arbitrary expectation that you balance every attack with an equal amount of defense for another aspect or, as you desire, an entirely unrelated piece.
I mean, she is free to do so (and did so, in the second episode, actually) but "critical thinking" doesn't come into play here just because she chooses not to run her criticism to your standards.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Swilly;45440962]
That's the big thing holding back and creating this very negative culture when it comes to criticizing games. Games also haven't matured, its not a niche market yet. Movies, Books, Comic Books, Television are Niche Markets now.[/QUOTE]
There doesn't seem to be a negative culture of criticizing games when I talk shit about Call of Duty in News Node and get 37 agrees in 20 minutes.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;45440982]The entire idea of criticism is that you can attack aspects of a work of art without being held to the unrealistic and arbitrary expectation that you balance every attack with an equal amount of defense for another aspect or, as you desire, an entirely unrelated piece.
I mean, she is free to do so (and did so, in the second episode, actually) but "critical thinking" doesn't come into play here just because she chooses not to run her criticism to your standards.[/QUOTE]
Criticism uses the basis of history of a subject to fully showcase the flaws and issues with a piece of work. If your critiques are based upon shaky evidence to begin with, then the point you're making won't hold anyway.
You cannot, go into weird fiction and criticize Lovecraft without first reading his work and works previous to his own. You need a common pool base of knowledge to go 'This is where this works, this is where this fails'. A critique can go in a full out, 'This entire thing is wrong/badly done', but you still need concrete proof not based on conjecture.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Raidyr;45440982]
There doesn't seem to be a negative culture of criticizing games when I talk shit about Call of Duty in News Node and get 37 agrees in 20 minutes.[/QUOTE]
Because it can go beyond the criticism. We have B-Movies from the 40's and 50's because film was the dominant force then, it could still sell very well without needing to be critically acclaimed. The same thing is happening with videogames, you can make a half assed game and as long as you get people to see it, they'll generally buy it.
[editline]19th July 2014[/editline]
You're also in a space where like minded individuals about that particular game exist.
[QUOTE=Swilly;45441034]Criticism uses the basis of history of a subject to fully showcase the flaws and issues with a piece of work. If your critiques are based upon shaky evidence to begin with, then the point you're making won't hold anyway.[/QUOTE]
I wasn't defending Sarkeesian's criticism specifically, I was saying that critics have no obligation to say "Here are films that I have deconstructed and criticized but here are also some films that go against what I'm arguing".
Using your example, a critic of Lovecraft can talk shit all day about Lovecraft but has no obligation to talk about how great unrelated early 20th century short stories are.
That's what Ganerumo and Jackald want; Sarkeesian to balance her criticisms of poor writing in one game with "good" writing in another wholly unrelated game. Again, it's okay for her to do that and again, she did that already in the Tropes series, but she is under no obligation to.
[QUOTE=Swilly;45441034]You're also in a space where like minded individuals about that particular game exist.[/QUOTE]
I just don't understand how criticizing a games gameplay or graphics to the absurd level FP likes to take it at times is okay but saying that a character in an old game was a poorly written trope that borders on sexist is somehow not valid.
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