@FringeNerd asked me to respond to his response to my article generally praising Anita Sarkeesian’s work. As mentioned previously, I agree with a lot, but not all, of what Anita has to say. I do definitely think she has an important voice, and that she was a worthy recipient of the GDC Ambassador’s Award. Even if I still like boobplate. (Note, I cut out a couple places in order to shrink this down)
> Games should show more women capable of strength, agency and power in your game world, instead of being relegated to simply being background props or quest objectives that could be replaced with a sock monkey.
Same could be said for male NPC characters. Yes, I’m whatabouthemen-ing, but only to point out that there’s a distinct lack of context in her videos. A significant number of the criticisms she levels at video games and developers apply also to their treatment of male characters, and gendering and/or ignoring half of the context of those points is disingenuous and misleading. This circles back to your remarking that she doesn’t understand the constraints of development; but it’s more than that. She doesn’t have a firm grasp of the topic she claims to be an expert in, either.
Not really. There are only so many strong characters in most games, and in most games (much like most action movies) they go to men. And in many games, it goes even further – for example, in Far Cry 3, there are no women at all that hold a gun. This is pretty significant in a world where guns are the expression of power, control and liberty. (Yes, that article does make a feminist point based on Anita’s work that you should be able to shoot more women).
> find ways to depict more female characters in more interesting and unique roles.
I’m not convinced this isn’t already happening all the time. Tropes exist for a reason. One could even call them archetypes.They’ve been used since the beginning of time, and each generation has brought something a little different to its interpretation of the roles. Granted, I no longer play a lot of “AAAs” because most are poor excuses for games (and I’m a Linux user), but those I have played seem to be making a concerted, if calculated, effort to stretch beyond the way women have been portrayed in the 90s– and the 90s made an effort to move beyond the 80s, too. Archetypes aren’t going away, sorry. But the industry changes. There’s something about Anita’s laser-focus on proving misogyny and sexism and patriarchy and victimhood that pisses people, including me, off like very few other critics manage to do. She’s in the “rarified” company of the likes of Patrica Hernandez.
Those tropes do exist for a reason, and Anita is the first to say that she doesn’t expect these tropes to go away. However, while the tropes for men tend to be empowered: the hero, the supervillian, etc, the tropes for the women tend to be about being an object. See Princess Peach and Zelda in most of the platformers Nintendo makes.
Also, there is a massive variety in the kinds of roles that male characters have, vs. a tiny variety of roles for the female characters. Her Ms Main Character video really described this clearly. Now, there are some caveats here: there are more men than women in most male-oriented films, just as there are more women than men in chick flicks, and clearly Sucker Punch shows that you can go too far in the other direction into panderland. But right now, most female characters just fall back into a handful of very familiar roles.
And to be honest, I’m less bothered by the percieved sexism than the SLOPPINESS. The clip that Anita showed of a string of a dozen games where your wife dies and you have to rescue your daughter made me feel guilty about all the times I’ve just been party to a design team that just ‘phoned in’ its character design.
> Game designers should keep in mind that a lot of people (and not just women) have a viscerally negative reactions to scenes showing violence against women (particularly as many have first-hand experience with it), so maybe we shouldn’t just throw these scenes in casually.
And here I’m going to whataboutthemen again, because there’s something seriously fucked up about a world that doesn’t mind men being tortured, killed, and generally abused but gets up in arms the second a woman suffers the slightest harm. That Anita doesn’t address this in her videos at all is a HUGE failing. The lack of context is, again, disingenuous and misleading.
Let me make this more clear. How often have you seen a man raped in a video game? Very fucking rare. In fact, I can only think about it happening in Far Cry 3, and even then, it’s purely offscreen and implied. Why? Because men find this shit icky as shit, and men make the games.
>Seriously, all the dead, spread-eagled naked women in games are kind of creepy.
And what of it? Art and entertainment has long been a way for society to grapple with its psychoses and fears and the darker aspects of itself. It’s good that you think it’s creepy. It says something about you as a person. At the same time, it’s deeply worrying to me that the West is so paternalistic when it comes to the way women are treated in video games.
Let me make this more clear. How often have you seen a dead naked man hogtied and with a ball gag in his mouth in a video game? Very fucking rare. Why? Because men find this shit icky as shit, and men make the games.
>Times which she says that all games are problematic: zero. In fact, she frequently makes it clear that she means the opposite:
That’s really, really undermined by how she never has anything good to say about games. Why doesn’t she have anything good to say about games? My theory is she doesn’t actually know enough about games to feel comfortable being positive about them. (Cf Bayonetta. What a ridiculous video that was. Which she’s since removed, without acknowledging she was wrong or apologising for it.) Sorry, not good enough.
She has talked about games the thinks are good examples of working with the tropes, and also discussed games that she thinks tried to subvert the tropes but failed. I think the third Damsel video is where you can find that.
>This one point caught my eye in particular, about how relegating stories of trauma and sexual abuse to being crappy side quests trivializes one of the greatest crimes and fear that many women have:
And all the other crimes that are relegated to side quests? Again, there’s a remarkable lack of context here.
Here’s her point – a lot of games are very cavalier about domestic abuse and sexual abuse – rape or attempted rape. Her example is Watch Dogs, I believe. In that game, the same domestic abuse side quests are just cut and pasted across the world, in order to make the world more ‘edgy’. She points out that a lot of women, completely reasonable and not particularly feminist women, have a visceral reaction to seeing this AT ALL, and filling your world with it is going to invoke a visceral negative reaction. This is the sort of thing you should think about if you’re a game designer. You may decide ‘screw it. We didn’t want that audience anyway’. But it deserves an iota of thought.
>I’m not saying stories seriously examining domestic abuse or sexual violence are off-limits to interactive media. However, if game makers do attempt to address these themes, they need to approach these topic with the gravity, subtlety and respect they deserve.”
Why? Quentin Tarantino makes irreverent movies of horrifying subject matter all the time. Holy cows are stupid–and dangerous.
Yep, and he’s gotten a ton of criticism for it from feminists! Note: he still gets to make those films, and they still fill theaters.
Here is my biggest criticism of Anita: her perspective is distinctly American, in an industry which is increasingly without borders. Her understanding of Bayonetta, for example, betrays the sex-negativism that is the hallmark of America. There is a way to see Japanese games as sexist and misogynist, and certainly there are those games, but really the Japanese industry is more fetishist than it is anything else. Look to anime just a decade or two ago and you’ll see men treated with the same sort of lens, sexually, as women are. (Yes, the roles of that sexualisation differed, but the lens was the same.) What changed? Anime became international, and had to tailor itself to the regressive attitudes of Americans. The same has happened to gaming. It’s colonialism by economics.
I would generally agree with this, actually. Japan is its own world in terms of cultural norms, built upon a bizarre mix of fetishism and repressed sexuality. Comparing American sensibilities to that is trending close to comparing apples to oranges, and I think more often she should point that out in her videos. That being said, there are things that are the same in both sides, such as damselling.
>This is all a conversation that’s worth having.
Yes, but Anita shouldn’t be its spokesperson. She’s clearly not up for the task.
And clearly you and I disagree. Here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with her talking. As long as she isn’t advocating government censorship or legal action like Jack Thompson, there is no reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to speak. Game designers have the ability to listen and take what they feel is important, and ignore what isn’t. Movie directors have been doing the same thing to Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert for years. Stopping reading the New York Times because one critic in there cares about women’s issues in film would be a massive overreaction, and so is getting mad at Gamasutra or Polygon because they say, “hey, this woman has opinions on games.”
In closing, I’d like to note that while Sarkeesian herself might not be that important or harmful, the way the media are treating her is. She’s been reduced to a damsel in distress, a shield against criticism, a tool for clickbait. It’s just another damning indictment of how fucked up the gaming media is. Nobody’s owned up to this. Nobody’s accepted the responsibility of treating her work with the analysis and scrutiny they claim it deserves. In the greatest of ironies, the very industry which accuses its enthusiasts of being manbabies doesn’t have the maturity to treat a discussion of gender with anything beyond the maturity of a teenager.
And again, I think you massively overstate her impact. We are still, STILL making the same sorts of games and the games media is STILL giving games like GTA V a 97%. I do think that some feminists disagree, and I read those too. I take what’s good, and ignore what doesn’t work for me. And I’m an immensely better designer for it.
If you want real clickbait ‘feminism’, then go look at how Christina Sommers dismisses all of Anita’s stuff without actually addressing a single thing in it, and then just poo-poos it away with a ludicrous leap of logic. I’m sure you’ll reject that, right? You certainly aren’t going to cheerlead her just because her views happen to line up closer to where you stand.
Right?
As Ben Kuchera found this week, Siskel & Ebert devoted a whole “Coming Attractions” show in 1980 to the “women in danger” horror-schlock films that were coming out en masse at the time. They assumed that many were being made as poor copies of thrillers like Halloween, in which the main female character is scared to death of the killer, but she’s got a choice about what to do, and isn’t being threatened or punished with death for wandering off by herself or acting independently. As they show in the video, the trope of the audience getting to see the world through the victim’s eyes was getting shifted to the perspective of the killer — and you wonder if the audience is supposed to relate to the faceless killer more than the victim.
(And before anyone starts, Roger Ebert is actually criticizing films, here. No one was making games in 1980 that could be considered fetishizing women or gender roles.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz2N6BMOsyQ
Well, it sure is a good thing that that ended the trend of bad female roles in films!
Re: she never has anything good to say about games –
As you pointed out, she does include examples of games that should be used as role models for game writers on how to use, subvert, or avoid the tropes. The thing is, her video series is a *critique*, which means that her primary purpose is to criticise. That, in turn, means that any positive statements (examples or suggestions) are going to be found at the end of the video. If people like @FringeNerd are too riled up by all the supposed flaws and lies of her presentation, how likely is it that they will be paying attention to those positives at the end? They’re probably furiously scribbling down or formulating their poorly-reasoned “rebuttals” before they get to that part of the video, so it’s understandable that they think she “never has anything good to say about videogames”.
Re: the Japanese culture point and response –
I disagree with you both here. Japan has an incredibly misogynist media industry, and I am confident in asserting that the women in Japan do not particularly care to consume it. It is not just anime or videogames – it is their tv, (stand-up) comedy, music…I agree that it is a fetishistic culture, but I submit that fetishism is still objectification, regardless of your cultural origins.
When I lived there, I saw a variety show that featured a game called ‘Boingo’, where two teams went around Tokyo at night with huge bingo cards – but instead of numbers, the cards had bra cup sizes. The teams had to literally convince or (usually) contrive a way for the female team member to feel the targets’ breasts so that they could try to judge the size. This was a mainstream show – there was nothing ‘edgy’ about it, it was just part of comedy in Japan.
I don’t see any problem with the assumption that games like Bayonetta are a product of this widespread, routine objectification of women in Japanese media. It is likely to be the most accurate assumption.
Finally, re: all the whataboutthemen-ing –
I find it highly amusing and tragestically (majestically tragic) ironic that in a series that has been explicitly flagged as being about women, people (men) are complaining that there is no discussion about men. I mean, seriously, it takes a ludicrous lack of self-awareness to inflict that kind of idiocy on the rest of us.
>her video series is a *critique*, which means that her primary purpose is to criticise
Yes, but CONTEXTUALISE that criticism. That’s all most people are asking for.
>I am confident in asserting that the women in Japan do not particularly care to consume it.
Let’s put aside your characterisation of it as misogynistic for a moment, and deal with this part. They don’t have to consume it. They have plenty of material all their own. Boy love, girl love, etc., are genres predominantly consumed by women. Women have healthy industries with thriving subgenres all their own. What’s the problem?
>I submit that fetishism is still objectification, regardless of your cultural origins
Are people with fetishes bad people? More American sex-negativism.
As for your anecdotes: if we had to go into all the weird and wonderfully whacky stuff that Japanese game shows do, we’d be here all winter.
>I find it highly amusing and tragestically (majestically tragic) ironic that in a series that has been explicitly flagged as being about women, people (men) are complaining that there is no discussion about men
For contextualisation. See my comment below about why this is a problem.
>Are people with fetishes bad people? More American sex-negativism.
Holy projection, Batman.
There is no sex-negativism here. There is anti-objectification which is a completely different thing. I am a 100% sex-positive feminist; if a woman wants to celebrate her sexuality then full speed ahead, cap’n. But nobody should have a celebration of their sexuality forced on them for the benefit of others.
Also, to address the point others (if not necessarily you) have made about BUT WHY ISN’T IT BAD WHEN MEN ARE KILLED?–
Men in games are almost always killed and hurt as part of combat. That is to say, it is shown as a consequence of their character agency/strength/ability to fight. If I mow down cops by the score in GTA, it’s because they’re trying to kill me.
Women in games are usually killed and hurt to advance the storyline of the main male characters. This isn’t a role of any character agency or strength. It’s exploitative in a way that the killing/injury of men isn’t.
If a cop attacking me in GTA is a woman, and I shoot her, there is literally no difference than if it’s a male cop and I shoot him. Both of them, in that case, have strength and agency, and are equally capable; they’re just part of a fight (and losing, because I’m a vidya protagonist). Dom’s wife dying in Gears of War or the ridiculous shit that goes on in Duke Nukem Forever is way different.
Fringenerd: Do you think games are important for their ability to be fetishized?
Do you think it’s possible for a fetishization to be a reason why someone wouldn’t try to play a game, because of the way it appears?
Is this something that anyone should be concerned about, to any degree?
In context, Japan’s entertainment industries are often characterized by those in the West as indications of Japanese culture being comparatively sexually repressed. And then we get reports like this from last year, and we may as well be amazed at how right we were.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/7281-japanese-millennials-not-having-sex-at-least-not-enough-but-why
My conclusion: Individuals have the right to apply any mode of criticism to any piece of art and entertainment presented generally. Either the criticism holds up, or it doesn’t, but it only becomes a problem if the critic is actively advocating censorship.
Let me put it this way re: Japan – it’s an entirely different ball of wax. I don’t think that Anita shouldn’t cover Japan. I do think that it is SO different and SO much more bizarre and extreme that Japan should be its own video. I do think that American audiences could learn a lot from a video in this style about Japan’s relatively bizarre fetishism culture.
Re “what about the men” – I agree. It’s as if someone responded “What about World War II? That was awful too!” as a rebuttal to Ken Burn’s Civil War miniseries.
But can we critique the popularity of certain Japanese titles in the west?
That said if we get into cultural relativism, blackface is more accepted in Europe than the US, , largely due to a lack of shared history (minstrel culture) should that not be looked at?
Put blackface in a video game and try to market it in America. Yes, every piece of art could be potentially scrutinized through a cultural lens for the sake of finding the market as well as avoiding any backlash. In the North America port of Mother 2/Earthbound, Ness is wearing PJs in a dream sequence, but in that same sequence in the Japanese version, he’s naked.
Popularity is not a good yardstick to judge cultural significance, at least not all by itself. You have to use more than one axis.
Thanks for taking the time, Damion.
See, it’s not that I disagree with Anita (although I do, in places) so much as it is that the series is so poorly executed. Most of her criticism is valid, but it’s so poorly presented that it takes on a significantly different character than it should have. This is part of what’s getting people’s backs up. (The other part is the media’s role in spreading this material, and their insistence on cranking the Clickbaiter3000 up to full juice.)
Let’s make an example of domestic and sexual violence as portrayed in games. Yes, it deserves an iota of thought. So does every other act of violence in a game. By ignoring the context, this paints games as domestic violence and rape machines. Which, of course they’re not. Now let’s say a CNN news anchor comes across the video and watches it. What are they going to think of games? That’s a problem that could be cleared up with a few sentences in her videos.
>Yep, and he’s gotten a ton of criticism for it from feminists! Note: he still gets to make those films, and they still fill theaters.
But, and here’s the rub, not every news outlet lambastes his movies as [bigotry X]. There’s a very worrying trend where gaming sites all speak with one voice. There’s no plurality of thought, and very little nuance. As evidence: Anita Sarkeesian’s videos are still to be critiqued or criticised at all on anything but the most minor or niche of gaming sites. As a thought exercise: imagine if every news outlet was CNN. That’s a problem, yes? Yes.
>And again, I think you massively overstate her impact. We are still, STILL making the same sorts of games and the games media is STILL giving games like GTA V a 97%.
Only because they have to, as they rely on the advertising revenue of the big publishers. However, look at the way they treat indie and Japanese games, and you’ll understand where the industry really is right now. The big boys get to make what games they want, and the little guys have to kowtow to cultural ideologues.
That’s not my only concern. How many women are going to watch Anita’s videos and be turned away from gaming because they think that’s all there is to video games?
As for Christina Hoff Sommers: I have my issues with that video, but it was really meant as a rebuttal to the awful stuff about gamers that’s going around during GamerGate.
Finally, as to my stating that Anita shouldn’t be the industry’s spokesperson: I don’t mean that she shouldn’t have an opinion, and that it shouldn’t be shared. What I mean is: we can do better, so much better, so why is she still the leading voice? Why hasn’t TFYC been approached about their opinion, for example? I think I’ve covered the reasons.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to share the Damsel in Distress video that TFYC did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KszuGqKxTk8
See how much more nuance there is? See how all the context is there? See how much more academic it is? THAT is a quality video. I hope they do more.
I’d encourage people to look around on Youtube for interviews Matthew has done. That’s the kind of feminism I can get behind. Anita’s? Nope. It’s shallow.
No, I really don’t think that’s it. I think that a lot of people are scared that somehow it will end up with the games they love changing or going away. And I can assure you that market forces make this unlikely. GTA V still reviews well, and it still sells well.
I think that’s a misconception, but I could be wrong. I did a search yesterday and found out that most stories about Anita’s stuff, even on ‘great evil’ sites like Polygon, pretty much said nothing beyond “There’s this video here. What do you think?” I.e. as neutral as possible
And there are a fair number of people who care about and write about violence in games a lot as well! That’s not the focus she wanted for her work.
But some do. Different critics are allowed to have different opinions on a work of art. That’s okay.
Given that the TFYC has an integrity problem right now, I don’t think I’d be jumping on them as a replacement for this point of view.
>If you don’t mind, I’d like to share the Damsel in Distress video that TFYC did:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KszuGqKxTk8
>See how much more nuance there is? See how all the context is there? See how much more academic it is? THAT is a quality video. I hope they do more.
I don’t find this at all better than FemFreq. It’s decent, sure, but it’s not anything special.
But the narrator is a man, so I guess that helps.
If that was the case then why isn’t FemFreq hosted by Jonathan McIntosh? It’s clear that they both share the same views. So if it’s so much easier for a man to get his point across than a women then why don’t they use him. Ohh that’s right because if they did then he’d get torn apart just like Jack Thompson.
Watching Anita’s vidéo made me realize a lot
And the only consequence it had in my gaming experience? I’m enjoying it more!!
It makes me notice the tropes when they happen
And it makes me notice how some dev make a real effort to avoid them
Anyone playing ESO here?
Started at launch, way before watching Anita’s video. Loved the game. But after watching “Tropes vs Women”, I began to notice the effort they put to avoid those tropes. Numerous quests of a wife saving her husband. Numerous strong female characters. Numerous, NUMEROUS female soldiers to fight. Definitely shows how you can make a AAA game (ok, the reviews were tepid, but it’s still a great game for storytelling), avoid the tropes (or at least overusing them), put some SGR stuff, and it all feels natural. It doesn’t feel like a feminist playfield at all: Just a living world.
A WoW blogger I know of (Redbeard) noted a while back that apparently Blizzard’s creative development is split into two parts: the quest-level team and the executive team. The executive team handles the bigger story, the headline questing experience, and the major players in the zones/patches/expansions. It is at this level that the Tropes that Anita talks about are most apparent and most visible. As with ESO, at the micro level WoW is pretty good with quest npc variety, the smaller stories, and things like an even distribution of male and female guards in settlements. The quest-level team is doing fine, it’s just the boy’s club at the top that can’t stop Troping around.
I think that @FringeNerd’s points fail to recognize two major differences between violence against men in games and violence against women in games. These differences are the primary reason why “whataboutthemen-ing” is not a particularly strong argument. (Damion, you pointed both of these out, but I feel the need to rephrase for emphasis):
1. The first difference is in-game. Generally speaking there are many fewer women portrayed as being capable of defending themselves. While the (often-male) hero does rescue men sometimes, more often, he encounters men who do not require his help (and who sometimes help him) and do not seem like they would, should they run into trouble. It is far less common, however, for women to be portrayed this way, so they are mostly represented in-game is as a victims. The problem is not inherent in the fact that games contain violence against women — it’s in the fact that a large number of games portray women primarily as victims, where men are portrayed primarily as heroes. And when the violence is sexualized, that emphasizes the gender difference even more.
2. The second difference is in the real world. A very large percentage of women have experienced sexual assault in some form. Most men have not, nor have they experienced the sort of brutality (shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning, torture, etc) that is commonly portrayed in video games. The violence in video games is meant to be immersive, not to drag someone out of the story and remind them of a real traumatic experience. This is particularly a problem for sexualized violence and female players. (This is not, of course, to say that there aren’t men who have had these experiences — just that they comprise a smaller amount of the general populace, which is why this has primarily been a women’s issue.)
When you look at the state of video games with these ideas in mind, it’s not surprising that a great number of people would like to see the industry shift the idea of “normal” when it comes to violence against women. It’s not about being “paternalistic” (an odd choice of words, given that many of the people pushing for these changes are women), it’s about increasing the audience for your game and doing a better job of taking into account the mental state of your players. It’s about making your game better and more enjoyable for your potential players.
What she said.
#2:
Yeah, just no:
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2006/11/ptsd-rates.aspx
Point of order. Don’t just offer a link without explaining why it furthers your argument. Make your argument. Why does the link about how women get diagnosed with PTSD more often than men answer “no” to the previous assertion?
My argument is that it’s wrong to discuss PTSD and PTEs of men and women without actually consulting informations on such – as we should with a lot of psychological issues.
Also her whole narration borders the implication of male living through less PTEs and having less reasons for PTSDs. For which i wanted to give a counterpoint.
Last but most certainly not least, handwaving other traumatic experience away as non-issues within gaming is utter and complete bullshit.
So, if we really and meaningfully want to discuss how games need to consider mentally unstable persons, we need to do this based on real data and with real analysis and not with some kitchen sink psychology without using any real data.
The previous post included the phrase, “A very large percentage of women have experienced sexual assault in some form. Most men have not, nor have they experienced the sort of brutality (shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning, torture, etc) that is commonly portrayed in video games.”
And then,
“The violence in video games is meant to be immersive, not to drag someone out of the story and remind them of a real traumatic experience.”
How does what you just said, or said previously, address either point at all?
If there was another part of the post that you meant to reference, could you please point it out?
That said, I think you might be misinterpreting what the article you cited actually says.
Let me paraphrase what i read in the two passages you qouted:
“Lots of women suffered from things depicted in video games, while men don’t.”
Which has two parts.
a) What problematic situations are depicted within video games.
b) Who suffers what possibly traumatic events and might be prone to have a real ‘episode’ because of a game.
She offered data for none of it.
I offer Data or better said a summary of data for part b).
Saddly i have no Data for part a). I though might point out that we’ve got a lot of scences that depict traumatizing events within games, be it fire infernos, warzones, the loss of loved ones and most likely anything else from a PTE list.
“Only the type of stimuli i want to discuss is really problematicly depicted within video games.”
Which i adressed by pointing out that this is handwaving as long as no real analysis is brought up. And which actually lead me to being quite angry when replying and making a real shitty first post.
The article naturally makes no point about games, nor does it solely concentrate on voilence.
But if we want to discuss voilence, and problematic triggers within games, we can’t have such a discussion without an entry point, i wanted to somewhat provide this by that link.
It’s also noteworthy that leaving the critique of measures for PTSD aside, one could make a point about women actually needing special attention as they’re seemingly more prone for such psychological problems.
Again, having a meaningful discussion about triggers within video games, can only take place when we gather facts and maybe even find someone who’s wanting to take a deeper look into this subject.
As long as that doesn’t happen, there’s no reason to reject also talking about voilence against men depicted in video games.
I’m sorry if my initial comment left you with the impression that I think we should ignore the impact that video game violence has on men who have been through traumatic experiences. I thought I made it clear that these experiences are not isolated to women, but that this has primarily been a women’s issue simply because of the numbers. I still disagree that your initial link does anything to refute that claim, as it explicitly says that women are more likely to be the victims of sexual abuse, and the list of PTEs that men experience is very broad. I would be surprised if it turned out that more men are involved with video game style violence than are in accidents.
(Also, these days, anybody can find a study to support anything, so I believe it’s no longer sufficient to provide a single study as evidence of a widely accepted fact.)
My second point meant to articulate that the type of violence that we see in video games does matter. Specifically, rape and sexual assault are far more commonplace in contemporary society than beatings, shootings, or other PTEs. This is not to say that real people don’t experience these. America has been at war for 15 years — of *course*, our troops (and the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and now Syria) have gone through some horrific experiences. I was not alluding to how games affect women *or* men with PTSD, however. That is another issue.
I do not meant to hand-wave these issues away. They are important, and we should discuss them. The only reason I didn’t go further into my thoughts on those (and I would be happy to, when it’s not derailing from the topic at hand) is because it’s not the issue we are currently discussing. The problem with violence against women in video games goes beyond its impact on women with PTSD. It is about how women are *primarily* represented as victims and pigeonholed into a few roles designated for females where men are represented in a wide variety of roles, as long as those roles aren’t considered “feminine.”
I would be happy to talk about violence in video games more generally at another time, but that’s not what this discussion is about. It’s specifically about how the portrayal of women in video games compares with that of men and about how games (mis)handle issues like sexual assault and rape.
@Maitland
The problem is i don’t see your numbers, nor does your narration match my experience of games.
And because of experiences not matching, i point out that we need to gather real data to be able to have a good discussion about these things.
Towards your second point it’s again not matching my experience of society, but that’s fine. The problem though arises when we see statistic speaking somewhat against your experience, which i think crime statistics and even the study i mentionend do (the study only if we’re just speaking about PTEs on general). But naturally the study and the statistics might have shortcomings which paint a different picture then reality.
The whole matter though, is again that we need to identify who gets offended by what, how big the problem is, and how we should handle the problem – which really depends on the first two points.
And i took data on PTSD, because that’s at least something we have some data for and is a group which actually might have huge problems with triggers. I don’t think there’s well researched data for people overall feeling offended by games.
I know that you’re speaking about female roles in media. And the whole point about lacking female protagonists and other female roles within games is something i agree upon. That’s why i didn’t try to discuss your #1.
Then again i think that’s a point in itself quite seperate from voilence against a certain group. As a game without any woman and only voilence against male isn’t helping female depiction, while it totally tackles the depiction of voilence against them.
>2. The second difference is in the real world. A very large >percentage of women have experienced sexual assault in some >form. Most men have not, nor have they experienced the sort of >brutality (shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning, torture, etc) that >is commonly portrayed in video games. The violence in video >games is meant to be immersive, not to drag someone out of the >story and remind them of a real traumatic experience. This is >particularly a problem for sexualized violence and female >players. (This is not, of course, to say that there aren’t men >who have had these experiences — just that they comprise a >smaller amount of the general populace, which is why this has >primarily been a women’s issue.)
This is simply just not true. Men are actually slightly more likely to be victims of violent crimes. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv13.pdf
(6.2%) of men have been penetrated or forced to penetrate vs (18.3%) of women who have been raped.
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
And 1 in 4 men (28.5%) are victims to violence by a domestic partner vs 1 in 3 women (35.6%)
I think people are generally receptive to analysis of games and their gender implications. It becomes tainted when people push unproven assumptions, mental gymnastics to justify double standards and a general desire to prove biases rather than looking for objective truth.
What’s worse is that it obscures more nuanced issues, for example the fact that female characters a so overly scrutinized that you basically can’t do anything with them without offending someone.
The absence of male rape, relative to female, is particularly stark if you think about where male rapes are most common: prisons and war zones. Not exactly places that video games have hesitated to explore.
Outlast has goredongs galore.
Andddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd just when you though this thing was going to die out…. Intel pulls it’s shitty move.
GG Intel
Before I explain why I don’t find Anita’s criticism useful, let me bring out a couple of examples of critique from a similar viewpoint that are being widely mocked right now, but I think are “doing it right”:
Kissing vs. Killing: http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/1/6880061/shadow-mordor-kissing-design
In this one, Zach Gage points out that using the same stealth mechanic for a kissing action early in the game as is used for a “stealth kill” at all points afterwards effectively conflates kissing with killing, something that they find to be an objectionable mix of sex and violence. I see their point, but as a designer and player I feel that the innovation of finding a new way to do a “tutorial” for stealth actions that doesn’t fall back on the old trope of “You wake up in a training yard” outweighs it.
Shadow of Morder (same game and site, different author) reviewed:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/26/6254177/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-review-lord-of-the-rings-ps4-xbox-one
Phillip Kollar points out, in an inset box that is not part of the main review, that the treatment of mind control is “problematic”:
“After spending so long humanizing the Orcs — compared to most fantasy standards, at least — and focusing on the horrors of the humans who are enslaved by them, the game forces you to turn around and enslave Orcs yourself. There’s a difficult moral question here — is it okay to enslave them because they enslave others? — that Shadow of Mordor hints at but never really tackles in a satisfying manner.”
As a designer, I find this very interesting, any time that a game can create an internal conflict in the player, we as designers should sit up and pay attention. What *could* be done with an exploration of the morality of enslaving “evil and ugly” races in a game? How could a game push a player to confront this question without forcing his decision? How memorable an experience, and “interesting choice” would that be for the player?
Now, what both of these have in common is that they examine the moral and cultural weight of *gameplay*. They do not “flatten out” the game, ignore the gameplay in order to read it as a flat text, like any other narrative. Contrast this with Anita’s “critique” of killing the strippers in Hitman. In the game systems, this is a “bad move”, the proper play is to avoid attracting attention or killing anyone but your target, and you will take a hit to your Professionalism for doing it. Perhaps the game could weight this penalty according to how dangerous the victim is to you? Maybe there are other ways to simulate the morality of the player’s gameplay?
But Anita ignores this in favor of a flat “Bewbz + Death = Misogyny” feminist reading of the “text” that any sophomore English Lit major could do just as well. She doesn’t inform the subject as a critic, she judges it as a scold. Even your example above speaks to that, she *shames* you with her critic, she doesn’t tell you anything you couldn’t have see immediately yourself, if you had looked at it through a feminist lens (I’m speaking of the literary sense of feminism here).
I don’t like Anita’s criticism because I think she’s a bad critic for games.
Please ignore the spelling errors above. I was trying to eat while typing and should have proof-read it more before hitting “post comment”.
WAIT A MINUTE… You think that female characters…in a video game… are treated as objects while men are treated as heroes? First of all, you are pathetic. The fact that you acknowledge this BS just shows me what kind of game dev you are (Hint: Not a good one! But then again, you work at Bioware so that might just be a reason)
But you are pathetic as a game developer if you honestly care about how a literal “object” in a video game is being treated. There are plenty of strong female protagonists that Anita even skimmed over in video games. Lara Croft is one of the most famous names in video gaming! But instead of taking into account that Lara is independent, intelligent, agile, and wealthy, Anita attacks the character model. Because her boobs were too big.
As a game developer, you should be ashamed of yourself for even paying attention to this tripe. Video games are not people! Objects (everything from characters to weapons and environments in video games) do not have feelings! You should get back to work and actually make a good video game instead of getting involved in all of this. It does not pertain to you! GG is for Kotaku, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, etc.
You disappoint me, Damion. You work in an industry that thrives off of creative integrity. You didn’t just decide to be a game dev for a paycheck, did you? How can you bash video games that do not give “females” more prominent roles when you are in an industry (and work for a company) that strongly stands for creative freedom?