I'd like to counter this by saying that Gender Stereotypes != Sexism. I think all of us are aware that games like Zelda have gender stereotypes at play. Sexism is a much stronger claim than "reinforcing gender stereotypes".

Uh, by definition, It kinda is. Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.
What we can argue is that there's degrees of sexism -- that a gender-stereotyped trope isn't the same as a professional prejudice or an outright slur; that sexism in the cliches of a story is way less harmful than direct sexism against an specific individual... but that's way off topic.

If someone says they're going looking for sexism, and there aren't many big major things for them to find, then they're going to deal with these "minor" cases...

It's much like the violent video game controversy of the past (and still somewhat today, unfortunately). No, violently murdering people left and right and getting cool brutal finishing moves done does not make me a violent psychopath, or even condition me to be more as such. Likewise, playing games where men are in positions of power over women does not lead me to believe it should be the case.

Who's suggesting that sexist games make people sexist?
The examples that people usually give about why these stereotypes are harmful are quite different -- not that boys playing Mario will be so affected by them, but that people tend to identify with role models of their own gender, which means that girls playing Mario will only have the useless damsel as the present role model. These critics are just pointing out that it would be nice for Princess Peach to take an active role in more of the Mario games (like in Mario Kart).

These stereotypes are like McDonals - it's ok if you have a balanced diet, but if you entire diet is this junk, you're not going to be healthy.

Having princesses being rescued by white knights is fine... but if every childhood story is based around the same stereotypes, then they're going to sink in and not help to produce a well rounded person. You need a balanced diet of media consumption.
McDonalds themselves tell you not to live on their food - that you should mostly eat good stuff and occasionally eat their products... but it's still ok to criticize McDonalds food for being full of preservatives or cheap/reclaimed meat or whatever.

Such criticism against McDonalds isn't a demand for them to desist or change, but a checklist of improvements that you would make (unless of course, if you accompany your criticism with a protest movement...).
Likewise, when someone specifically goes hunting for subtle sexism and writes a critique based on it, it should be taken as a checklist of improvements that they would make, or that you can pay attention to if you want to address subtle sexism in your work.

That kind of critique is not something that we need a "movement" or "consumer backlash" or outright hate campaign to protect us poor developers/gamers from. If someone makes a checklist that you don't need, you simply ignore it, not grab your pitchfork and join a lynch mob...

Ironically, we're seeing a protest movement that seems to be aimed at crushing critique and discussion, while claiming to be about exposing bias... :(

It's much like the violent video game controversy of the past (and still somewhat today, unfortunately). No, violently murdering people left and right and getting cool brutal finishing moves done does not make me a violent psychopath, or even condition me to be more as such. Likewise, playing games where men are in positions of power over women does not lead me to believe it should be the case.

I wanted to address this. As an adult, no it won't make you violent. The arguments I normally see is that children playing those games (pre-18) will think it is cool and attempt to imitate the violence. Just like during the 90s when kids imitated wrestling moves that resulted in hurt children and a few deaths. I think this concern is what prompted the ESRB rating system to be put in place. Unfortunately, ESRB does little good if parents ignore it and buy games like GTA for underaged gamers. Children's minds haven't fully matured (apparently our minds don't fully mature until ~25 years old) and may try some crazy things just to imitate them even when your conscience should be screaming not to do it.

Uh, by definition, It kinda is. Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.
What we can argue is that there's degrees of sexism -- that a gender-stereotyped trope isn't the same as a professional prejudice or an outright slur; that sexism in the cliches of a story is way less harmful than direct sexism against an specific individual... but that's way off topic.
If someone says they're going looking for sexism, and there aren't many big major things for them to find, then they're going to deal with these "minor" cases...

Sort of. Stereotyping is sexism, but there's two different kinds of stereotyping -- beliefs of a person and arbitrary representation in a story. I'd argue the former is what that definition has in mind. If anything, it's a shame the word represents both when the meaning is very different. This is why I draw parallels to violent media. The word has a sort of embedded assumption that the two are linked, which like in the case of violent media, is only true in very small children.

Again, videogames are absolutely inundated with violence, sometimes even to the point of absurdity. Why then do people have so much trouble coming up with data to support the idea that violent videogames cause violence, yet gender role identification is everywhere? I'd say the difference is reinforcement. Schoolyard fights get spankings. Girls in dresses get smiles. Media is what people want to see, not what they want to be (usually).

I don't see it as a problem, people should be allowed to be sexist, racist, ignorant, bigoted and ageist if they please. Thinking or saying the entire industry is sexist is the exact same thinking that leads to sexism, racism etc and if people want to have these misconceptions they can and there isn't much you can do about it.

I am of the thinking if a person wants to make video games enough they will do it without being coerced into it by companies specifically trying to entice them and will do it despite any hate they receive and lets face it male, female, lgbt or anything else you will receive hate and you should of-course deal with any libel or death threats in the proper legal manner according to your country.

Just a quick note on the "historically accurate" portrayal of women as victims, sexual decorations, etc:

Why is it that any other deviation from historical accuracy (health regeneration, fantasy elements, implausibly accurate weapons) are perfectly ok, but if women were to be portrayed as anything other than whores or victims that would completely destroy immersion?

Like Hodgman, I'm not saying we should NEVER have these kinds of representations, simply that they aren't 100% necessary. Or maybe if you're making a game with a female character, she could have actual CHARACTER?

I still don't get why this is so controversial.

That kind of critique is not something that we need a "movement" or "consumer backlash" or outright hate campaign to protect us poor developers/gamers from. If someone makes a checklist that you don't need, you simply ignore it, not grab your pitchfork and join a lynch mob...

Ironically, we're seeing a protest movement that seems to be aimed at crushing critique and discussion, while claiming to be about exposing bias...

Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree that we should have both criticism (of games), and criticism of the criticism without resorting to virtual pitchforks or death threats. On the internet it seems that's unfortunately easier said than done.

I also find the "Tropes vs Women" analysis highly beneficial, up to a point. Overall, games still have some catching up to other forms of media in terms of avoiding lazy writing and unnecessary stereotypes. Some time ago I went back to some rather old games to check how they would fare in modern analysis. Some of the results were surprising. For example Turrican 1 + 2 (on the C64 and Amiga!) manage a compelling if formulaic scifi story, which only have the usual male supersoldier stereotype, while Turrican 3 adds a "damsel" for very little added value. On the other hand, the very first Monkey Island game does some interesting inversion of the damsel trope, and was kind of ahead of its time in offering a story on par with films or TV.

What I hope is avoided is over-analysis to the point where it becomes stifling to creativity. I don't even know if that's a real threat overall, but if I go far enough I can recognize it in my own thought processes. This is not an example from a game, but actually from one of my NaNoWriMo (write a book of 50000 words in a month) stories: Hero and heroine (both gun-wielding agents) get captured by the enemy. While the hero manages to escape due to some outside help, the heroine is implanted with a mind control gadget and is turned to the enemy side. Later, when they meet again and engage in lethal combat, the hero's only chance is to try to knock her out cold to get a short window of time in which to remove the thing, before it explodes. Oops, did I just condone and allude to domestic violence?

Also, because in today's climate it would seem that a female character in a work of fiction will be scrutinized more closely than a male, a cynical game producer might want to avoid female characters from a pure economical viewpoint: less design and writing resources needed, while possible controversies are avoided. That I personally hope not to happen, but rather for the progress of all kinds of characters in games to go on.

Without doubt, there are some parts in these games where they did it just for the sake of satisfying male fantasies, and discredit women. There are others, however, that do reflect realities in life, past and present. How can anyone make any game that takes place in ghetto neighborhoods (e.g. GTA), without including strip clubs? Or, make games based on historical events in the past when women were actually social victims. They were 'whences' back in pirate age, but that doesn't mean you can't make any references to whences in your pirate game without being labeled sexist or misogynist.

That's censoring history because it becomes politically incorrect. That's not right. What some of the feminists like to do is to broaden the context of their agenda that it includes things that we can no longer change like history. That's when their arguments fall apart, and put us where we are right now. Don't bring back old games like Mario and Zelda, or even games that have been released, as if asking the developers to recall and change. These games have sit well in many people's hearts. Attacking and labeling these games as sexist won't make a convincing argument.

Censoring history is something that's already happening quite a bit with videogames. There were loads of famous pirate women. But good luck learning about them from a videogame.

I don't see it as a problem, people should be allowed to be sexist, racist, ignorant, bigoted and ageist if they please. Thinking or saying the entire industry is sexist is the exact same thinking that leads to sexism, racism etc and if people want to have these misconceptions they can and there isn't much you can do about it.

Yeah... let me guess you're not someone who has to deal with the receiving end of any of that? No one has said the entire industry is sexist, but it doesn't take much to make an environment hostile. If you work with one douchebag, it can ruin your entire experience working at a company.

Alessio1989, you're not considering any cultural/childhood issues that might affect the way that people make choices. If a girl gets teased at a young age for being a tomboy for playing with computers, she'll grow up thinking that they're not a girl thing. If on the other hand it was often said "ha, only girls write code!", then your son would feel shame about coding and avoid that career by his own choice. Our culture affects our decisions.
The majority of coders used to be women, because configuring a computer to run an algorithm was culturally seen as a clerical task "which women are good at". From 1984 onwards, the trend has reversed, which is about the time that home computers appeared and were marketed as a great toy for your sons.

I was born in 1989 (damn I start feeling old D:) and I never had a PC until I was ~14 yo. Before I had only the N64 and the GB Color, but they were just "toys" and not even my favorite (nothing can beat LEGO!). I started interesting in computer science & engineering only in the last year of high school (18/19 in this country) after some translation mods of that crappy game called "TES4 Oblivion".
I have a sister, 2yo younger than me, she played with the N64 too and she had her own GB Color too (she had even more GB games than me!). She starting using the PC at the same time (and she was 2 years younger) but she never get interested in coding or generally STEM and when I asked her, she just answer "I don't care and enjoy about it", nothing more nothing less.
Of course this is my personal experience.

Today boys & girls start using PCs and other electronic gadget even younger (and sometimes even at too much young age, seeing 2-3-4 yo kids playing videogames for hours instead foolish around in a park is quite depressing and creepy.. IMO). Everyone today in Europe, North America (and I can guess in many other many countries) can approach at least to PCs at a very young age, so everyone has the same opportunities (more or less)...
I never heard that "coding is only for men" or things like that, maybe in other countries is different (here they say something similar about women and motors.. but I have an aunt that manages a auto part recovery!).

Probably I'm to young or in the wrong country to see this gap between men and women in STEM.

Suddenly we have a generation of boys leaving high school who already know how to code quite well, employers starting to want computing degrees rather than training their own coders, and colleges developing the attitude of "if you don't already know how to code, why are you here?", which just makes those kids who didn't grow up coding feel stupid and drop out, or not even make it this far after being excluded during their school years (who thanks to marketing are mostly girls).

I thing that's the same more or less for a lot of jobs type, not only programmers&co. Or at least, the entire job-market is screwing in my country (guess what country? Hints: if we fall we make a "tango down" in the entire UE).

I don't see it as a problem, people should be allowed to be sexist, racist, ignorant, bigoted and ageist if they please. Thinking or saying the entire industry is sexist is the exact same thinking that leads to sexism, racism etc and if people want to have these misconceptions they can and there isn't much you can do about it.

I am of the thinking if a person wants to make video games enough they will do it without being coerced into it by companies specifically trying to entice them and will do it despite any hate they receive and lets face it male, female, lgbt or anything else you will receive hate and you should of-course deal with any libel or death threats in the proper legal manner according to your country.

I don't think anyone is advocating for the PC police to start kicking down doors, but I don't find much satisfaction in the "boys will be boys" argument -- yes the PC stuff can go overboard sometimes, and yes sometimes the stupid things people do are relatively harmless to others to the point where "boys will be boys" is sufficiently strong to *dismiss* the behavior. But other times the boys'-club enshrines exclusionary and harmful behaviors into their unwritten bylaws and not at all ok. Over time, the unwritten bylaws become so normalized that people forget that some person or circumstance just made them up one day, and become accepted as "Obvious" or "Just the way things are." and that same process leaves in positions of influence those that benefit from the status quo, who in turn are disinclined to question it, much less change it. We ought to always be questioning and making progress though. The bar for what can be dismissed ought to have an inverse relationship with maturity, professionalism, influence, and simple time. Part of the problem is that today its easier than ever for a person to achieve influence with neither the maturity, professionalism, or perspective that a simple passage of time lends one.

But you're right to point out that these issues are not simply feminist issues. The recent attacks directed at women are one specific instance of a group of campaigns to discourage, destroy, and discredit game designers (indeed, all creative types) whom someone decrees has sold out to selfishness or to one disagreeable cause or another. The childish, violence-filled threats and screeds are not new and probably won't be the last. What's notable about GamerGate is that it targets women primarily (Though, I believe, not simply because they are women, but are women who have rocked the man-boat) and has clear misogynist undertones; and also the fact that it continues on as an effort for "journalistic integrity" while wholely ignoring the fact that it arose to prevalence on the back of the Quinn affair, which has been roundly debunked as the efforts of a jilted former lover.

I recall someone started a thread here when the Quinn story first broke -- and despite everything at that point being speculative, it went on and on about integrity and such. I didn't comment because the facts were very much not in, but I recall thinking to myself "Boy, are you going to feel stupid when this turns out to be some unhinged former boyfriend making the whole thing up." Maybe I just missed it, but I'm relieved and thankful this community didn't really engage the matter.