Trops vs Women in Video Games - Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 - General

she says it as if it's like, a state of being, or some kind of verb "hey jim what'd you do sunday night?" [I]"i went out with the dudes for a couple of rounds of misogyny"[/I]

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45804739]Max I want you to take a step back and realize you are trying to defend a person who actively scammed people out of 160,000 dollars to make a half-assed series on a subject she CLEARLY doesn't understand whatsoever.[/QUOTE] She just asked for the money, [I]nobody had to give it to her.[/I] It's not a scam. And half the reason she got any of it was people posting hateful shit about her. It's hilarious people on Reddit/4chan/Facepunch constantly whine about that when they pretty much caused it. And there's plenty of shit that gets money on kickstarter that's way more outrageous than criticizing video games. If people didn't pull a tantrum like a bunch of children she'd have probably not even made her money and gone back to making the niche unknown videos she had been. But instead you did, she got a butt load of money (and every dollar of that is the rest of the internet giving you the finger).

[QUOTE=Shugo;45799755]I really can't wait until this all blows over. I won't deny the inequality between men and women portrayed in a lot of media, but I really, really hate how this social justice bullshit has tarnished my favorite hobby. It's a noble cause to highlight inequality in our society, but when people like Anita overanalyze and make it look like every game from the beginning to the present is horrible 'misogynistic' crap, it starts painting outsiders' views of what the gaming community is like. I finally realized just how bad this has all gotten when this girl I met had a weird reaction to me casually mentioning a video game in conversation. She said "Oh, you're a gamer...". I was weirded out, but I didn't say anything at the time. Later down the line, after we'd been friends for a while, she confessed that my 'gamer status' gave her the preconception that I was potentially a violent, sexist bigot. Like, wow. What the hell? Is that really what some outsiders think about this hobby now? I thought maybe she was just an odd case, but I've seen a lot of Tumblr feminists specifically refer to "gamers" as a problematic group. It's absolutely ridiculous. It was one thing to not wanna talk about video games for fear of being labeled a "nerd", but it's another to be labeled a fucking sexist.[/QUOTE] I've had similar experiences when trying to get women friends into videogames. They think all we do is do all these brutal violent acts and its always men. I immediatly showed them Minecraft and then Skyrim. Minecraft to show that games aren't brutally violent and skyrim to show that you could be brutally violent [B]and female.[/B] My biggest problem is that whenever we talk about male protaganists, especially in games like Gears of War, 40k or Resistance that its a power fantasy. Yes there is a power fantasy behind but if you look at the context of the games, literally everything you do in those games is for nothing. Humanity is either still on the verge of extinction or into a brutal war that would destroy humanity and no matter how much you pull off your choices and actions don't matter. Wanna know where they do matter to an extent? [B]IN FUCKING GAMES WHERE YOU GET TO MAKE THE CHARACTER.[/B]

can't we just accept that both men and women can be equal just because we like our men BIG, BURLY AND SEXY and our women SEXY AND LUSTY doesn't mean that all characters must be like this

You want an example of good characters that aren't one-dimensional? Telltale's The Walking Dead is one of the best examples out there, not only on the dimension of gender, but also of race. This is what people are asking for.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806318]She just asked for the money, [I]nobody had to give it to her.[/I] It's not a scam. And half the reason she got any of it was people posting hateful shit about her. It's hilarious people on Reddit/4chan/Facepunch constantly whine about that when they pretty much caused it. And there's plenty of shit that gets money on kickstarter that's way more outrageous than criticizing video games. If people didn't pull a tantrum like a bunch of children she'd have probably not even made her money and gone back to making the niche unknown videos she had been. But instead you did, she got a butt load of money (and every dollar of that is the rest of the internet giving you the finger).[/QUOTE] She asked for money in exchange for a product. Whether you like it or not, what she did was sell a product, and the product that was delivered was sub-par to people's even most realistic expectations, because she lied about her qualifications and actual interest in the subject matter. Because this was funded via kickstarter doesn't change the fact it is a product that people paid money for. This isn't charity, this is crowdfunding - and crowdfunding is nothing more than giving money to someone to help them develop a product they described beforehand to you. If the project fails to be the thing the person described, or if the person fails to describe themselves and their ability to create said product, then it's a scam. You can twist this around any way you want, the fact is Anita Sarkeesian got 160k to release twelve videos on youtube, and after two years, only five of these videos were released, the footage was for the most part stolen, the subject matter is poorly treated by someone who outright lied about their knowledge and interest of video game - not to mention that her videos were supposed to be retrospectives on certain tropes through gaming history : [quote="Kickstarter Page"]With your help, I’ll produce a 5-video series (now expanded to 12 videos) entitled Tropes vs Women in Video Games, exploring female character stereotypes throughout the history of the gaming industry.[/quote] And it ended up being a mess of various video games most of which were released in the late 2000s or current 2010s thrown in at random (and not in a chronological order like a proper retrospective would).

Maybe there would be less fuss if she made a Triops vs Women series instead

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806318]She just asked for the money, [I]nobody had to give it to her.[/I] It's not a scam. And half the reason she got any of it was people posting hateful shit about her. It's hilarious people on Reddit/4chan/Facepunch constantly whine about that when they pretty much caused it. And there's plenty of shit that gets money on kickstarter that's way more outrageous than criticizing video games. If people didn't pull a tantrum like a bunch of children she'd have probably not even made her money and gone back to making the niche unknown videos she had been. But instead you did, she got a butt load of money (and every dollar of that is the rest of the internet giving you the finger).[/QUOTE] I really like how Ganerumo's disagreement with how she used her money and his use of Facepunch somehow means that he himself was also one of Anita's tatrum-throwing haters. How do you even come to a conclusion like that?

[QUOTE=Shugo;45806644]I really like how Ganerumo's disagreement with how she used her money and his use of Facepunch somehow means that he himself was also one of Anita's tatrum-throwing haters. How do you even come to a conclusion like that?[/QUOTE] because having any opinion that's not pro sarkesian means you're a raging mongoloid, right?

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806581]You want an example of good characters that aren't one-dimensional? Telltale's The Walking Dead is one of the best examples out there, not only on the dimension of gender, but also of race. This is what people are asking for.[/QUOTE] Wow good job you just showed that what it takes for characters to be interesting in a video game is proper writers. All it took was a single sentence. So explain to me why exactly Anita Sarkeesian needs to release six hours of videos to whine about how women in particular are badly portrayed without actually giving any solution (hint : the solution is hire better writers) and without mentioning that men are also poorly written AND subjected to their own tropes (sometimes the same as women). I'll tell you why. It's because Sarkeesian wants to boost her fame and followers by demonizing video games, plucking footage of games right out of their context to forward her fabricated, highly exaggerated points, and she wants to get rich in the process. She went from a mostly obscure vlogger making videos on youtube to one of the most hated figures on the internet, and she has gathered a healthy number of subscribers and followers in the process, because some people just don't know any better. It sickens me that some people out there are actually getting mislead by her widely misinformed and manipulative videos and are getting thrown off games because their own source of info on the matter is a person that doesn't know any more than they do, but pretends otherwise. I didn't give a shit about Sarkeesian when she first started her kickstarter. I thought the idea was basic enough and didn't need money, but I believed her when she said she knew what she was talking about and followed my better judgement that she was probably going to release a bunch of videos about these issues, from her point of view. Then it turned out she lied about basically everything in her kickstarter page, that she was suspiciously slow at releasing content, and that her aim wasn't actually to criticize video games sensibly but rather to blindly bash them. Then and only then did I started actively hating her, not because she's a woman and not because she's trying to put out game related content, but because that content is grossly manipulative and misinformed.

Ugh. She makes me want to vomit. She could be using all that money to point out actual flaws in the gaming industries, namely the jobs and stories and whatnot, but all she does is cherry pick a few examples of sexualized characters, call it bad, and makes a profit.

[QUOTE=TheWindow;45806680]Ugh. She makes me want to vomit. She could be using all that money to point out actual flaws in the gaming industries, namely the jobs and stories and whatnot, but all she does is cherry pick a few examples of sexualized characters, call it bad, and makes a profit.[/QUOTE] Kind of funny how 4chan is doing more than Anita in advancing gender equality in gaming now with that recent indiegogo games project.

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;45806735]Kind of funny how 4chan is doing more than Anita in advancing gender equality in gaming now with that recent indiegogo games project.[/QUOTE] What project is that? I haven't heard of it.

TheFineYoungCapitalists

[QUOTE=Shugo;45806742]What project is that? I haven't heard of it.[/QUOTE] The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) have started a crowdfunded project to help women enter the video game industry by making them create games for charity. The biggest funder is /v/, which allowed them to design a character that'll be present in at least one game. This is the design they came up with : [t]http://38.media.tumblr.com/e45032faf5e387a2a586fea2edb3e12f/tumblr_naqgntSfNj1sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t][t]http://38.media.tumblr.com/87d20378a654b360a016c93b3d5ac92e/tumblr_naqtkpeMdX1sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t][t]http://33.media.tumblr.com/f6d84ef77be11944a33c890833adf45b/tumblr_narhgtfUT31sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t] Of course some retarded tumblrites immediately started bashing the thing, someone demanded that TFYC refuse /v/'s funds because "4chan is the cathedral if misogyny" (it was later confirmed that person had close to no idea what 4chan really was), then TFYC got hacked and someone edited the project's page to make it seem like Indiegogo themselves had shut down the project because they disagreed with /v/ funding it. It's back up and I strongly recommend you [url=https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-fine-young-capitalists--2]give it a look[/url].

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;45806800]TheFineYoungCapitalists[/QUOTE] Ah, thanks. I forgot about that.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806581]You want an example of good characters that aren't one-dimensional? Telltale's The Walking Dead is one of the best examples out there, not only on the dimension of gender, but also of race. This is what people are asking for.[/QUOTE] And we didn't need Anita to do that, we never needed her for something like this. The Walking Dead was already being written and developed before she did this shit. What we need is better writing conventions for games. There's literally nothing out there specifically for games so we end up having to use TV and Movies as a basis which leads us to follow those tropes and such.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806318]She just asked for the money, [I]nobody had to give it to her.[/I] It's not a scam. And half the reason she got any of it was people posting hateful shit about her. It's hilarious people on Reddit/4chan/Facepunch constantly whine about that when they pretty much caused it. And there's plenty of shit that gets money on kickstarter that's way more outrageous than criticizing video games. If people didn't pull a tantrum like a bunch of children she'd have probably not even made her money and gone back to making the niche unknown videos she had been. But instead you did, she got a butt load of money (and every dollar of that is the rest of the internet giving you the finger).[/QUOTE] You're not even a Facepuncher anymore, you're just a toxic parody of SJ posters. No one takes you even the slightest bit seriously anymore. Just get perma'd already. [QUOTE=Shugo;45806742]What project is that? I haven't heard of it.[/QUOTE] And I'm late but whatever, I'll keep the post here anyway: The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC or FYC) is a game jam designed to get women into game design. Women come forward with ideas (literally no technical skills required) and they make it into a game. The woman whose idea wins gets their game published, she gets 8% royalties, rest goes to charity. 4chan has raised thousands every day and the fund continues to grow. There is more to this story though: basically the reason 4chan chose this particular organization is because Zoe Quinn did everything in her power to crush it. Is this partially vindictive? Maybe. But it doesn't change the fact that 4chan is raising a lot of money for a feminist, pro-lgbt organization with only 2 goals: 1. get women into game design and 2. give money to charity.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45806842]The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) have started a crowdfunded project to help women enter the video game industry by making them create games for charity. The biggest funder is /v/, which allowed them to design a character that'll be present in at least one game. This is the design they came up with : [t]http://38.media.tumblr.com/e45032faf5e387a2a586fea2edb3e12f/tumblr_naqgntSfNj1sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t][t]http://38.media.tumblr.com/87d20378a654b360a016c93b3d5ac92e/tumblr_naqtkpeMdX1sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t][t]http://33.media.tumblr.com/f6d84ef77be11944a33c890833adf45b/tumblr_narhgtfUT31sk31cyo1_1280.png[/t] Of course some retarded tumblrites immediately started bashing the thing, someone demanded that [B]TFYC refuse /v/'s funds because "4chan is the cathedral if misogyny"[/B] (it was later confirmed that person had close to no idea what 4chan really was), then TFYC got hacked and someone edited the project's page to make it seem like Indiegogo themselves had shut down the project because they disagreed with /v/ funding it. It's back up and I strongly recommend you [url=https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-fine-young-capitalists--2]give it a look[/url].[/QUOTE] FYI, this was Sarkeesian who said.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806318](and every dollar of that is the rest of the internet giving you the finger).[/QUOTE] To whom SHE then gave the middle finger, saying "thx for giving me all this money, now here, have these shitty videos I made up with 10 minutes of thinking" And then the people that complained about her laughed at the face of the people who supported her.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806581]You want an example of good characters that aren't one-dimensional? Telltale's The Walking Dead is one of the best examples out there, [B]not only on the dimension of gender, but also of race.[/B] This is what people are asking for.[/QUOTE] It's like you don't have the slightest clue of what people mean when they refer to a character as "one-dimensional". Here's a hint: It has [I]nothing[/I] to do with gender or race.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;45806678]Wow good job you just showed that what it takes for characters to be interesting in a video game is proper writers. All it took was a single sentence. So explain to me why exactly Anita Sarkeesian needs to release six hours of videos to whine about how women in particular are badly portrayed without actually giving any solution (hint : the solution is hire better writers) and without mentioning that men are also poorly written AND subjected to their own tropes (sometimes the same as women).[/QUOTE] But nobody cares about men because men are all evil. And everybody knows every single male person likes to roleplay as a muscle abomination instead of someone more realistic.

[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;45806581]You want an example of good characters that aren't one-dimensional? Telltale's The Walking Dead is one of the best examples out there, not only on the dimension of gender, but also of race. This is what people are asking for.[/QUOTE] Im not asking for that at all, why would I want every game with characters like that? Asking for characters like that in all games is just stupid, thats wanting everything the same without ever going outside boundaries and maybe making something with style? Sometimes I just want something like this. [video=youtube;0gpAr5d_ykE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gpAr5d_ykE[/video] Characters can be good regardless of race/gender, they can even be racist and be good characters. They can say and do the most crude and awful things and still be an great character. A one dimensional character can still be written well and be a perfect asset to a game, hell it doesnt even need to say anything and it could still be perfectly fine and better for the game.

[QUOTE=G-Strogg;45807037]FYI, this was Sarkeesian who said.[/QUOTE] I think it was someone who was using the feminist frequency logo as their twitter avatar (I searched Anita's twitter really quickly and there are no recent posts of her saying "4chan is a cathedral of misogyny" or something similar). So it was someone who supports Anita not Anita herself.

Just gonna duck in under the whole debate here and just pint out that when the watch_dogs clip at 14:50 comes up where the protagonist blatantly says "I've got to stop him now" and it says "Intervene" in the UI and they just stare as the woman is beaten I had the best laugh of my life when she suggests, seriously, that there should be some kind of option to call an EMT for the shadow-puppet-civilian-NPC. This stuff is just too silly to get mad at in all honesty. She should try to make real arguments against the real issues rather than point out these things in environmental NPC's that are just trying to portray life as it is in the game-world.

[QUOTE=zizzleplix;45807161]I think it was someone who was using the feminist frequency logo as their twitter avatar (I searched Anita's twitter really quickly and there are no recent posts of her saying "4chan is a cathedral of misogyny" or something similar). So it was someone who supports Anita not Anita herself.[/QUOTE] Yeah, it was someone else. [img]http://i.imgur.com/stbCheQ.png[/img]

[QUOTE=Shugo;45805891]I'm not sure what your point is here. You rated disagree on my post and then posted someone else's similar experience? Yeah, a lot of people who aren't gamers have misconceptions about what gamers are actually like. And those misconceptions are fueled by media that perpetuates negative images of gaming, like those who decry violence and those who call sexism. Not that doing either of those things is [I]bad[/I] on its own, but major influential people like Anita give skewed, one-sided presentations that make gaming seem like a terrible thing and by extension makes gamers look like terrible people.[/QUOTE] That's a really shitty way to look at discussion of gender and it kind of pidgeonholes and patronizes gaming as a result. Like, when someone writes about an 'issue' in literature or film, no one has this daft, kneejerk response that it will somehow make the medium 'look bad'. On the contrary, looking at things critically (especially if your audience aren't sending you death threats, I guess) is a mark of a medium's maturity. For example: the best critics of literature can create thoughtful critiques of race or gender or class and no one feels the need to defend 'literature.' It isn't somehow worse because someone's written something critical of a part of it; on the contrary, it's enhanced. It's stunning that no one feels the need to defend 'great works' of literature like [I]Middlemarch [/I]when people like Edward Said point out dodgey depictions of the Near East, but when it's a game people are up in arms that videogames are 'ruined.' Every other artistic medium is critiqued in a way that can maturely look at issues presented but somehow videogames are above it? I don't think Anita's videos are to that standard, but they're a beginning.

[QUOTE=Shugo;45807389]Yeah, it was someone else. [img]http://i.imgur.com/stbCheQ.png[/img][/QUOTE] Thanks for the info :v: I was just replying to G-Strogg as he made it seem the "Cathedral of Misogyny" tweet was by Anita herself which that's not the case.

[QUOTE=Luafox;45808441] also her last point is probably the best one to take away from this. people can accept that there's infinite lives, regenerating health, dragons etc. but somehow games are too unrealistic without a whorehouse[/QUOTE] The fact that people get angry just because theres a whorehouse in the game, but don't get angry with anything else you could throw a fit about is laughable. Screams "special snowflake" from the top of the mountains where said dragons live. "Hey, lets just look at something I don't like and ignore everything else that also might be bad, or that might be good, and brand the game shit just because of it!"

[QUOTE=Rocâ„¢;45808653]The fact that people get angry just because theres a whorehouse in the game, but don't get angry with anything else you could throw a fit about is laughable. Screams "special snowflake" from the top of the mountains where said dragons live. "Hey, lets just look at something I don't like and ignore everything else that also might be bad, or that might be good, and brand the game shit just because of it!"[/QUOTE] Does she seem angry to you? She really has nothing to say about the quality of the game or other areas of it for the pretty good reason that it's called 'Tropes vs. Women.' It's about something very specific. If anything it's already spread too thin, and you want an even [I]wider [/I]spread. [QUOTE=Yahnich;45808683]why would i not want to tell people my hobbies, nobody fucking throws a hissy fit about people reading book or watching movies, when that kind of media has just as much questionable content but nobody cares about that shit because ohohohohoh video games[/QUOTE] I think the general point is that people who watch movies aren't 'moviers' and people who read aren't 'bookers' (though that might be neat). If you call yourself a gamer it can come off as unnecessarily defining yourself by one hobby you have. Also insofar as there's 'questionable shit' in movies and books... well, yeah. People do discuss it, I suspect you just don't follow it. That's what literally any criticism other than consumer criticism is. Moreover people don't get mad when these issues are discussed because they don't feel an attack on a videogame is an attack on them, personally. Perhaps the label 'gamer' contributes to that by making people feel part of their identity is being attacked?