I've accepted I've been overreacting to her list. Watching a 30 minute video has made me start rethinking a few things.

Well, it was inevitable. on.msnbc.com/1KyMFIP "Do you think there's a connection between violent games and violent crimes?" At the time of posting, 472 people have voted and 74% saying "no".

Well, it was inevitable.

What was inevitable? All I see at the linked url is a simple poll question asking if people think there is a connection between violent games and violent crimes -- a subject matter that pops up as a news story, new study, or pop-polling question at least several times every year for at least the last decade. There's nothing surprising about the question appearing, not really anything surprising about the results, and there's no apparent relation between the poll and the topic we've been discussing.

@ Servant

I will reply by your quotes, otherwise this post will be a nightmare to read:

1) Yes, that is correct and there are many reasons for that, men being more physical than woman and a woman being forced to have sex being a very common sexual fantasy (50 shades of gray success anyone?) are some I can think of.

But that is not my point. My point is that she claims that the games are violent against women and EXCLUSIVELY women, when they are clearly not.

2) Here I will disagree for two main reasons:

First is that there are a lot of feedback that is pure whining and should be ignored, simply because those people will never be pleased, even if you turn the game into a paradise for their perspective they will still complain. It is very easy to spot those guys on the forums (currently playing WoW, and i can tell it also holds true on Ragnarok Online and DotA).

Second (and most important), people like Anita are not the market of the games she criticize, she will never buy those games, as most of people who support her.

3) My point here was that her own game idea doesn't pass her own test to define if a game is sexist.

4) What I meant here is (and I must say that I worded it poorly): she says she is a gamer and a member of the gamer culture, but for someone who loves gaming she has never said a positive word about a game being fun or having fun playing one.

5) It kinda speak against her ethics, if she promissed people the videos and they payed her a lot of money to do something, she shouldn't be around giving talks and interviews while she doesn't finish her first project.

Grim Fandango or Loom don't really lack in any department compared to many quality films, in my humble opinion.

I'll confess that I haven't played Grim Fandango, but I have played Loom, and the adventure genre is perhaps my favourite amongst the genres--but I'm not sure that I agree. As to Loom specifically, it is a beautiful, interesting game, and I very much like its story, but I'm not sure that it's of the same sort as I'm describing. Indeed, I think that there are some types of story that have been represented very well in video games--for example, I'm not sure that something like Planescape: Torment would work well at all in a non-interactive medium.

Come to think of it, perhaps I was a bit harsh in my criticism of narratives in gaming. Nevertheless, I think that there is a lot of space for improvement, especially in representations of women, but also in how often and how well deeper stories are implemented, and in the range of stories presented.

In a way, we've gone backwards since those PC gaming days, ever since the Doom guy with his BFG entered the picture(ironically, we've even gone backwards in FPS design compared to DOOM, but that's another story).

Actually, I feel quite the opposite, on both counts: I think that things have gotten better, and more diverse. To start with, adventure games are still very much around--Memoria, Dreamfall Chapters, Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse and Life is Strange are all pretty recent releases, for example. As to narratives, while I think that there's still progress to be made, we seem to be seeing more games (especially from indies) that are willing to take on new subject matter--This War of Mine comes to mind as an example.

Here is a recent study that shows women appear to be flocking to video game degrees more than STEM degrees. http://www.higheredgames.org/content/pdfs/2015%20HEVGA%20Survey%20Results.pdf



Opinion: Maybe women really do find STEM boring and are more interested in game development.

Althea already provided a fairly good counter-argument to that conclusion, I think, but even without that, I don't think that your statistics give much support to that conclusion. As before, the question would be that of why the statistics are as reported there: as a counter-opinion, perhaps those video game degrees (ironically, given the topic of this thread ) seen as less unwelcoming than the non-gaming STEM degrees--I note that they include both STEM and non-STEM degrees in the "video game" category, so what we see here may simply reflect the findings that I linked to previously regarding the issues in STEM fields, rather than an inherent preference.

Additionally, there may well be (and I strongly suspect that there are) broader cultural issues that disincline women to pursue STEM fields; I think that at least some of these are being addressed to one degree or another (pun not intended, but gleefully accepted ) in one or more parts of the world.

on.msnbc.com/1KyMFIP "Do you think there's a connection between violent games and violent crimes?"

As I said previously, I really don't think that the purported linked between violent games and violent crimes is quite the same as the claimed connection between representations and cultural perceptions: the proposed connections are of a different sort, I argue.

Sorry I should have gave some context when I posted it, but at 4am I was exhausted. I was going to link to it, but apparently they have removed the tweet now. Groups like Families Against Games and Moms Against Games have been chomping at the bit to ban all games for years now. What I was saying was inevitable was that one such group was proclaiming the events around Anita was proof that games made gamers sexist and misogynists then tweeted that link saying a new study needs to be done to prove that games make gamers violent. It's inevitable that when something happens in gaming, the anti-game groups start calling for games to be abolished.

1) Yes, that is correct and there are many reasons for that, men being more physical than woman and a woman being forced to have sex being a very common sexual fantasy (50 shades of gray success anyone?) are some I can think of.
But that is not my point. My point is that she claims that the games are violent against women and EXCLUSIVELY women, when they are clearly not.

She doesn't say that at all. She has nothing to say of violence against men because A) she isn't looking at games for the way they treat men, and B) the kinds of violence against women often are not the simple violence of "kill all nazis", but often relates to the roles that the targetted women play in the sexist tropes she talks about -- Woman as a reason for revenge, women as the damsel in distress, women treated as property, women raped.

2) Here I will disagree for two main reasons:
First is that there are a lot of feedback that is pure whining and should be ignored, simply because those people will never be pleased, even if you turn the game into a paradise for their perspective they will still complain. It is very easy to spot those guys on the forums (currently playing WoW, and i can tell it also holds true on Ragnarok Online and DotA).
Second (and most important), people like Anita are not the market of the games she criticize, she will never buy those games, as most of people who support her.

Again, she is a critic aligned on the axis of feminism, not a critic aligned on the design quality of games. She is not trying to convince anyone to buy or not buy games for their qualies. She is critiquing them for how well or poorly they portray women.

3) My point here was that her own game idea doesn't pass her own test to define if a game is sexist.

I haven't looked at it, so I can't comment specifically. But still, it is irrelevent whether her you feel her proposed design is better or worse than what's out there -- it stands independently of her criticisms.

4) What I meant here is (and I must say that I worded it poorly): she says she is a gamer and a member of the gamer culture, but for someone who loves gaming she has never said a positive word about a game being fun or having fun playing one.

Again, she is a critic aligned on the axis of feminism, not on the quality or design content of games. It is not her role to say this game is or is not fun/good/awful. It is not her role to speak about whether the level design or soundtrack is stellar. It is her role to speak about how specific games, and the games industry more-broadly, treat women. Full Stop.

5) It kinda speak against her ethics, if she promissed people the videos and they payed her a lot of money to do something, she shouldn't be around giving talks and interviews while she doesn't finish her first project.

Ad Hominem. Whether or not you think she's behaving ethically in this regard is entirely a separate issue as to whether her critiques have merit or not; and specifically, this is one of the charges that people who smoke-screen for the GG crowd makes, and was indeed entrained to make by those who are attempting to assassinate her character, rather than address her points directly. That's what this is -- Character Assassination.

Furthermore, as long as she does deliver what was promised on a timeline that those who gave her the money are satisfied with, you have no authority to challenge her timeline.

Sorry I should have gave some context when I posted it, but at 4am I was exhausted. I was going to link to it, but apparently they have removed the tweet now. Groups like Families Against Games and Moms Against Games have been chomping at the bit to ban all games for years now. What I was saying was inevitable was that one such group was proclaiming the events around Anita was proof that games made gamers sexist and misogynists then tweeted that link saying a new study needs to be done to prove that games make gamers violent. It's inevitable that when something happens in gaming, the anti-game groups start calling for games to be abolished.

I don't agree with everything Sarkeesian says and my initial reaction to watching her videos was the same as many games. "She's attacking this thing that I love and she's trying to ruin/censor/take away my toys." But the more I watched, the harder it became to justify my position. There are a significant portion of games that use women in a lazy objectified way and it is far more prevalent and toxic than the lazy objectification of men (which certainly does happen). If you deny that, you're simply not facing reality.

There is certainly plenty of FUD around games.

Last year, a friend of mine posted on facebook that he was "concerned" that his son was getting into Minecraft. Of all games, I would have thought Minecraft would be one of the most positive experiences for kids. It's essentially lego without limitations. A bunch of other people warned him about the dangers of videogames, how they would lead to his son being a social outcast with no job etc. In real life, almost all the adult gamers I know are well adjusted people with good jobs.

I just sent him this video

The problem is not videogames.

The problem is twofold. On one side you have a bunch of puritanical luddites who don't like people enjoying things they don't like or understand. And on the other you have a bunch of misogynistic assholes who think it's funny to threaten or harass women and who provide the first group with the ammunition they crave.

Take away video games and both those groups still exist. But it would be really nice if so many games didn't explicitly cater for the latter group.

Not to many videos make me pause and think, but these two made me think after listening to them. I'm just going to link to both so others can see what has made me pause.

[30:33]

[11:10]

I've since started muting people on Twitter that are volatile and fear mongering.

Sorry I should have gave some context when I posted it, but at 4am I was exhausted. I was going to link to it, but apparently they have removed the tweet now. Groups like Families Against Games and Moms Against Games have been chomping at the bit to ban all games for years now. What I was saying was inevitable was that one such group was proclaiming the events around Anita was proof that games made gamers sexist and misogynists then tweeted that link saying a new study needs to be done to prove that games make gamers violent. It's inevitable that when something happens in gaming, the anti-game groups start calling for games to be abolished.

There will be always people that will yell "X form of art/expression is responsible for evil things". Hell, according to Christianity and the Church Fathers, *all forms of art* are evil, because, when enjoying them, the viewer surrenders his mind to the creator.

It is worth noting that Illiad describes a war that started over a woman, and the plot is kickstarted by the rage of one warlord(Achilles) because another warlord(Agamemnon) stole his sex slave. Talk about women being the ball in a game of patriarchy! What would be a responsible - and feminist - position to that? "It's 2015, isn't it time to stop teaching our children that this misogynist piece of filth is one of the greatest epic poems ever written"? I think not. But standing critical against *all* forms of expression is a *good* thing. Despite all the flaws in her analysis, Anita is doing just that, so gamers shouldn't be all up in arms against her. That said, I do wonder if she will feature Brianna Wu's game "Revolution 60" in her future "fighting fuck toys" or at least "lingerie is not armor" videos, if she ever gets around to making them, that is. If she doesn't, the GG crowd would indeed be justified in pointing out some hypocrisy and "corruption" on her side, that is, letting games "getting away with it" just because they're made by a female friend of hers, even if they feature female characters with the body of a Barbie dressed like pornstars for no reason.