I'm always a little baffled by the level of outrage toward people such as Sarkeesian. It can't be the approach, because she's remarkably reasoned and even-tempered, all things considered. I mean, it's a rather uninteresting baseline third-wave feminist critique of video games, presented in a dry academic style.

Not always.

Many of her ideas are good. Let us add to the ecosystem. She is right that for many RPG and action games, female characters are clothed in lingere.

She is VERY RIGHT when she says there should be more games in the genre who are fully clothed, and where women are the leads.

She is VERY WRONG when she says that should be removed from games, or that fewer games with those attributes should be made.

The first one says "Let's write more books, lets add more books to the library, let's encourage everyone to read." The second says "These books are immoral, burn the bad books."

If a player, as an adult gamer, wants to download a patch that makes their females appear nude and well-endowed, then it is their game, their fantasy, go for it. Similarly, if the player wants to download a patch that makes their males appear nude and well-endowed, then it is their game, their fantasy, go for it. If the player wants to have mods and custom clothes for The Sims to make all the females in the town dress like Victoria secret models, then good for them, it is their fantasy world, that's fine with me.

The games are their entertainment, their fantasy world. I enjoy creating fantasy worlds.

However, I don't want her REMOVING from my entertainment, from my fantasy worlds. And that's where it becomes a problem.

When she speaks against misogyny in games, when she says not just the clothes but that there should not be a damsel in distress, that women should not be weak or ever need to be rescued, think carefully what that means in entertainment. As games are new, let's be sure to include other entertainment like books and movies.

In modern entertainment, I'm sure she's mortified by 50 Shades of Grey and the series that goes with it. Porn in general vanishes if we follow this line of thinking. Also vanishing are all the cheap romance novels, the more softcore porn women seem to enjoy.

That attitude means roughly 2/3 of Jason Bourne is gone. That means James Bond loses much of his appeal as he is no longer the playboy. It also means Gone with the Wind and Casablanca go away. Pretty much every film with female stars and sex symbols (think Marilyn Monroe, Audry Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, and more). If we're gong to be fair about this, it also means losing the male sex symbol stars like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Marlon Brando.

While she may not realize it, these roles and the 'damsel in distress' theme is also common in female favorites like Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. In P&P, the entire plot begins with the damsel caught in a heavy storm, falling ill, where the women are scandalously being in the company of Mr Darcy, the young, rich, land-owning, romantic interest. Over the book the women fall into the trope of the damsel in distress multiple times. In S&S, Marianne starts as the damsel in distress getting caught in the rain and injuring her ankle. The handsome seemingly wealthy young suitor rescues her. Again later, she becomes so ill that she is not expected to survive. Her recovery is attributed in part to her two suitors, Willoughby and Colonel Brandon as she was sick from the guilt of love. If she wants a removal of the "damsel in distress" theme from entertainment, let's carry through and dump these classics as well.

Going back a few centuries, Shakespeare would need to be heavily rewritten for that world view. Romeo and Juliet couldn't happen, as the family patriarchs were there cause, and sexual gratification of men (and using women who were called out as being mentally weaker and the lesser gender) was a common theme in many parts of the plot. Hamlet as well, much was triggered over Ophelia and his love; Ophelia was driven by men's commands, and without that much of the plot falls away.

When she calls out for ADDING to the realm of fantasy worlds, yes, I am all for that.

But sometimes her even-tempered speeches call for REMOVING sex specifically and gender broadly from fantasy worlds. Gender, including portrayals of sexualized elements both male and female, is a very important part of storytelling and fantasy. That part of her talks troubles me deeply.

I'm pretty much in the same camp as TheChubu. For the most part they are fair rules of thumb, the same kind of rules of thumb that would make more movies not trashy Michael Bay crap. ;) If the argument were that all of the rules should be applied all of the time, I would be against it. Some games are not sexually motivated at all, e.g. more abstract games or mechanic-driven games. Those rules need not apply. Other games do cross the lines of good taste, which is fine in moderation. The problem we have is with the "in moderation" part. Imagine if 90% of all movies were porn and there was a massive outcry against people asking that only 70% of movies should be porn. ;) I think it's fine to apply a little pressure for what you want in the industry, as long as it's not crazed ban-hammer wielding. And I don't think Anita has got there (yet?).

I'm always a little baffled by the level of outrage toward people such as Sarkeesian. It can't be the approach, because she's remarkably reasoned and even-tempered, all things considered. I mean, it's a rather uninteresting baseline third-wave feminist critique of video games, presented in a dry academic style.

Not always.

Many of her ideas are good. Let us add to the ecosystem. She is right that for many RPG and action games, female characters are clothed in lingere.

She is VERY RIGHT when she says there should be more games in the genre who are fully clothed, and where women are the leads.

She is VERY WRONG when she says that should be removed from games, or that fewer games with those attributes should be made.

The first one says "Let's write more books, lets add more books to the library, let's encourage everyone to read." The second says "These books are immoral, burn the bad books."

If a player, as an adult gamer, wants to download a patch that makes their females appear nude and well-endowed, then it is their game, their fantasy, go for it. Similarly, if the player wants to download a patch that makes their males appear nude and well-endowed, then it is their game, their fantasy, go for it. If the player wants to have mods and custom clothes for The Sims to make all the females in the town dress like Victoria secret models, then good for them, it is their fantasy world, that's fine with me.

The games are their entertainment, their fantasy world. I enjoy creating fantasy worlds.

However, I don't want her REMOVING from my entertainment, from my fantasy worlds. And that's where it becomes a problem.

When she speaks against misogyny in games, when she says not just the clothes but that there should not be a damsel in distress, that women should not be weak or ever need to be rescued, think carefully what that means in entertainment. As games are new, let's be sure to include other entertainment like books and movies.

In modern entertainment, I'm sure she's mortified by 50 Shades of Grey and the series that goes with it. Porn in general vanishes if we follow this line of thinking. Also vanishing are all the cheap romance novels, the more softcore porn women seem to enjoy.

That attitude means roughly 2/3 of Jason Bourne is gone. That means James Bond loses much of his appeal as he is no longer the playboy. It also means Gone with the Wind and Casablanca go away. Pretty much every film with female stars and sex symbols (think Marilyn Monroe, Audry Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, and more). If we're gong to be fair about this, it also means losing the male sex symbol stars like Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Marlon Brando.

While she may not realize it, these roles and the 'damsel in distress' theme is also common in female favorites like Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. In P&P, the entire plot begins with the damsel caught in a heavy storm, falling ill, where the women are scandalously being in the company of Mr Darcy, the young, rich, land-owning, romantic interest. Over the book the women fall into the trope of the damsel in distress multiple times. In S&S, Marianne starts as the damsel in distress getting caught in the rain and injuring her ankle. The handsome seemingly wealthy young suitor rescues her. Again later, she becomes so ill that she is not expected to survive. Her recovery is attributed in part to her two suitors, Willoughby and Colonel Brandon as she was sick from the guilt of love. If she wants a removal of the "damsel in distress" theme from entertainment, let's carry through and dump these classics as well.

Going back a few centuries, Shakespeare would need to be heavily rewritten for that world view. Romeo and Juliet couldn't happen, as the family patriarchs were there cause, and sexual gratification of men (and using women who were called out as being mentally weaker and the lesser gender) was a common theme in many parts of the plot. Hamlet as well, much was triggered over Ophelia and his love; Ophelia was driven by men's commands, and without that much of the plot falls away.

When she calls out for ADDING to the realm of fantasy worlds, yes, I am all for that.

But sometimes her even-tempered speeches call for REMOVING sex specifically and gender broadly from fantasy worlds. Gender, including portrayals of sexualized elements both male and female, is a very important part of storytelling and fantasy. That part of her talks troubles me deeply.

With all due respect, I totally disagree.

For starters, as was mentioned earlier, it's simply her opinion, and she doesn't, in face, wield a banhammer of any sort.

Claiming that sexist things shouldn't be made is a totally valid opinion to have. You'd probably agree with the opinion that racist things shouldn't be made. Not that racism shouldn't exist in fictional works, but racist elements of fictional works are a bad thing and probably ought not be made, especially going forward.

Every example you cite, you're simply providing examples of media that has sexist elements, and saying that without sexism, those things wouldn't exist, which is misleading. What we'd perhaps have instead is media that isn't contributing to a society that has systemically oppressed women. We'd still have great works, people would still make emotionally moving books, films, and games. Going forward, there will certainly be otherwise great games that have problematic portrayals of women. I'm not saying that great games shouldn't be made in the future, perhaps just hoping that those great games are made without the sexism.

I don't really follow her closely, and certainly can't speak to every point she's every made, but I'd be rather surprised if she was advocating for removing gender and sex from fantasy worlds entirely, just changing the way in which gender and sex are portrayed, which is wholly different. I'd also be surprised if she was advocating for any sort of scorched-earth removal of these things. Mostly I see her illustrate how prevalent they are in games.

ignoring the fact that the largest percent of that 48 is casual gamers who play Bejeweled and Farmville

And you just revealed your own sexist bias: "girls only play casual games". Ok, sure. You got sources for that, or just prejudice?

The 48% of people who play games are women thing and the small narrative that followed annoyed me as well, although probably not for the same reason it annoyed the OP it would seem, because the stat was useless.

In a world where people play all kind of games it was about as useful as saying 48% of people who drive cars are women or 48% of people who watch films are women. So around half the population does an activity? SURPRISE!

The reason it fell down is because people took that number and held it up as proof that women made up 48% of gamers (true) and that this was true of ALL genres (true? false? we don't know...) and thus game design should be tailored towards them.

My problem with it was the second assertion made because the data didn't tell us that. It told us 48% of women played games, it told us what percentage of what genre people played but no where did it say that, for example, 48% of FPS gamers are women. People saw '48% women' and (making this number up because the precise detail doesn't matter) '48% play fps' and concluded that means half of that 48% are women playing fps game - unfortunately stats doesn't work like that and nor does the real world.

If the report had a nice break down of male/female split for the game types it would have been useful; my own feeling on the matter is that would be some games genres which are dominated by men and some which are dominated by women (I'd also like to see an age break down as well).

The positive of that is we, as an industry, could have looked it and gone 'huh, only 15% of fps players are women, yet 48% of gamers are women; I wonder why and how can we get more of them playing?' (because, lets face it, more gamers = more $$$ and that's the bottom line here).

Instead we now live in a world where we know that half the population does a thing but little beyond that; it's like saying 48% of car drivers are women and then concluding because of that 48% of Bugatti Veyron drivers mush also be women.

As industry we can't have a sensible conversion about things if we don't have the data; heck if you run with the assumption that because 48% of women are gamers and thus 48% of all genres are played by women then we don't need to change anything because they are already making all the money from them in all the genres so bikini clad women warriors in fantasy fps games must be ok by them!

Of course the downside of releasing a gender based split of who plays what genre is that the group of trolls would get hold of it and find some way to hold up a '15% of fps players are women' as proof that there is no point in changing because the numbers are too small or that some women, somewhere, was trying to ruin their experience for a minority or something.

Personally, right now, I have no trouble believing that women dominate certain genres (yes, like casual games) and aren't major players of others (like fps games) but for me that is a question of 'why is it like that?' and nothing more...

(The only problem with this "debate" in the wider internet is that unless you fully support one side or the other you'll get set upon by one side or the other - I largely stay out of it as do others because end of the day it just isn't fucking worth the hassle of getting involved or noticed by either side.)

But sometimes her even-tempered speeches call for REMOVING sex specifically and gender broadly from fantasy worlds. Gender, including portrayals of sexualized elements both male and female, is a very important part of storytelling and fantasy. That part of her talks troubles me deeply.

Others have the same view point and I find it just as worrying; the other day I described the future of story telling as ending up with a non-descript person (no gender allowed; if you had one why not the other?) sat in a box (although I dare say some people will be offended by the box-centric nature of the story) of some bland unspecified colour (if a colour was specified it could marginalise someone after all) without any sort of reflective surface (because that would force a character description) doing nothing. The End.

The video game of the same would be set in a first person perspective; the wall colour could be configured pre-game.
No movement allowed. (Walking implies able-bodied which marginalised disabled people. View height might marginalise the short or tall.)

Sounds fun...

Again, I can't speak to what Sarkeesian has said, as I've only watched a couple of her videos, but I think there's some misunderstanding about some basic principles here.

These elements are problematic as a whole, not necessarily on individual levels. It's not that game A has this trope and is thus a bad game, and game B has this trope and is thus a bad game. But, when you look at the medium as a whole, women are portrayed in very sexist ways in video games (I have actually seen Sarkeesian make this very point, and explain that many of these games she does enjoy and thinks they are great games). Yes, that whole is made of individual games that have those tropes, but pointing them out doesn't mean that "the game shouldn't have been made" or anything to that effect. It doesn't make them bad games.

The problem isn't that a game has a sexy woman in sexy armor, it's that most women, in most games have sexy armor, and this reinforces notions society already has regarding women and their roles in our culture.

Again, with all due respect, the example Phantom cites strikes me as a little ludicrous. I've encountered literally no one who would straight-faced argue any such idea that color/gender/sex/walking, etc should not be portrayed in games (I do recognize it's meant as an illustration of the outcome of these ideas, and is supposed to be ludicrous, but I think it's woefully misunderstanding the argument people are making). It's the way that these things are portrayed (again, especially as a whole) that people object to, as those portrayals contribute to a society that is actively oppressing these people.

No reasonable person is arguing for the removal of sex, or gender, or color from media. They're decrying the way in which these things are presented, over and over and over again, and the way they're presented is usually upholding harmful ideas.

I'm inclined to agree with Misantes here (although I'll confess that I haven't watched Anita Sarkeesian's videos, I have been involved in a few discussions of gender in video games).

Looking specifically at the matter of "damsels in distress", the problem isn't that one specific game has a woman being rescued by a man, but rather that there's a broader issue in that the trope of "a character held prisoner for the protagonist to rescue" is--if I'm not much mistaken--more often than not female, and the rescuer more often than not male, and further that when comparing male prisoners with female in our works, the men are more likely to be shown as proactive in their rescue than the women. All of which, quite frankly, seems a little silly. (Note for the sake of clarity, however: I'm not saying that it's silly that a man rescue a woman. I'm saying that it's silly that our stories generally have men rescuing women, rather that women rescuing men, or men rescuing men, or women rescuing women--or indeed intersex people in either role.)

I don't feel that it's a problem that Super Mario Bros. 3, specifically, features a damsel in distress, nor do I say that Super Mario Bros. 3 is a bad game. Super Mario Bros. 3 may be held up as an example of the trend, but that doesn't mean that it should be removed from shelves and burned in the street, nor does it mean that people shouldn't play or enjoy the game.

And I don't think that the problem necessarily stems from developers intentionally making victims of women; in at least some cases (I have no data on how frequent this is, and prefer to not guess at it; it could very well be the majority) I daresay that it's a matter of unconscious associations that the developers hold.

I will note that there's a better argument for such a gender disparity for works that take place in a historical setting in which such disparity would be expected--unless the setting is just an excuse for having said disparity. When looking at fantasy or sci-fi settings (in general, not specific), however, and arguably when looking at modern ones, I feel that this no longer applies.

The whole discussion about not including tropes wont get anywhere, because its impossible:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TheTropelessTale?from=Main.TheTropelessTale

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools?from=Main.TropesAreNotBad

I don't think that anyone has argued that there should be no tropes in a work... o_0

The argument, I think, is more about how and whether certain tropes are used, and what forms they take.

I view most of these items as a form of censorship to be honest.

Good for you.

Most people think that if you can't tell the difference between censorship and criticism then you're a fucking moron.

My opinion is that honestly

WHOA WHOA WHOA! STOP. STOP!

STOP CENSORING ME!

HOW DARE YOU HAVE OPINIONS AND CRITIQUE OTHERS!
CENSORRRRSHIIIIPPPPP!!!! CALL THE PO PO!!!! GET THE UN IN HERE, I'M BEING OPPRESSED BY OPINIONS!

Why are you feeling so incredibly threatened by a critic having opinions?

Is it because she's a she? C'mon, you can tell us.

You know she's not actually kicking in doors and censoring games, right?

You know that if you don't want to be influenced by her opinion, you can just, you know, not go to her talks...

For the most part, I agree with the sentiment: Anita is not forcing anyone to do anything.

However, this is the angriest response in the whole thread. If I was going to choose anyone here who seems incredibly threatened, it would be you.