I think you knew absolutely what you were doing when you made the thread, and knew what to expect in response to your comments and views. All in all, I think most of the responses you've gotten have been incredibly tempered, all things considered.

I think you got it wrong, he was expecting a circlejerk of how Sarkeesian is the devil, definitively.

As Motor Momma (Borderlands 2) famously and ironically said, "I understand and respect your wishes. I will also completely ignore them."

All I want is a game to be fun. In games like Borderlands, the only part of NPCs I care about is whether they make me laugh or not. Tiny Tina is great. Tannis is OK. Moxxi is a lame one-trick innuendo pony. Motor Momma is memorable in a very disturbing way. The rest of the female cast aren't very memorable. Jack and Torgue are the only male characters that even try to be interesting.

But 99.9% of the time when I'm playing Borderlands, I'm not thinking about the NPCs. I'm thinking about gunning down that bandit who is yelling about how I'm going to be his new meat bicycle.

BHX, did you ever stop to wonder why that 48% statistic is the way it is? I'll give you a hint: most women are not interested in mainstream or AAA games because of the specific points that Anita is raising. If more games took into account the points you cite in your original post, more women would play "hardcore" video games. Clearly, if we want more women to play video games, we need to make games that don't come across as sexist and objectifying.

Can you back this up, in any way? The 'BECAUSE' part, I mean, because that's a pretty authoritative claim.

I hadn't put much thought into it (despite reading some of the Anita debacles), but when discussing it with my sister in the recent past, my theory was basically that since it was socially considered "nerdy" to play games up until the original XBox and Halo broke into dorm rooms and made gaming 'cool', and since most those nerdy kids (myself included) were male, most games were designed targeting those audiences and designed by those audiences.

People want to be loved, respected, and admired. You don't have fantasies about doing something heroic and saving the day? I do.
You don't want to win the admiration and love of someone of the opposite sex?

So games where the protagonist is a male who, through heroics, intelligence, athletics, or strength, manages to overcome dangerous situations and save the day, while also happening to win the girl's heart (by rescue or as a side-effect of saving the day), seems perfectly natural to me, given the social climate and stereotyping of gamers in the 80's and 90's and even early 2000's.

This is armchair theory on my part, without much thought put into it.

To me, the damsel in distress is actually a combination of two separate desires: Heroics (and recognition of said heroics), and 'winning the girl'.

If you separate out the heroics for a moment, I don't see how it's any different from Otome games, designed for women, and very popular with young to middle-aged women, where you play a female who chooses and wins the male. Apparently, these games, popular with women, are frequently sexualized or even pornographic (but aren't always). That's to say, they sexualize the males. Romance novels, also targeted at and popular with women ('Twilight' is a recent more mainstream example targeted towards teenagers) are a similar idea. Even my grandma reads romance novels - literally about twelve or more a month. Since she's increasingly house-bound, I've made trips to the library for her and picked out romance novels to bring back - an interesting experience, especially when checking out the books at the register ("Um, yea, I'd like a dozen female romance dramas. But they're for someone else, honest!").

The idea that any one specific game needs to appeal to everyone isn't realistic. It makes for bland games. On the other hand, it makes business sense not to unnecessarily alienate a potential segment of your audience unnecessarily. There's a financial balance between niche targeting and broadening the appeal to widen the target audience - widen it too far and you risk no longer making it appeal to the niches you originally were targeting.

As others have pointed out, the 48% of "female gamers" aren't mainstream gamers. We don't know the number of female gamers playing mainstream games. My guess is it's 40% - which is still huge. In 2003, it was 30%/70% console gamer split, when you separated console games out of computer games (computer games include alot more casual games, atleast until the Wii and Nintendo DS came along). They no longer break out "console games" from "computer games" when it comes to gender, unfortunately, so it's harder to get a gauge on the "mainstream gamer" audience. The reason why I'm obsessing over the "mainstream" games, as those games are the real issue of debate. Casual games already have alot more variety, being cheaper to produce and so more financially viable for targeting niches. Casual games even include games targeting demographics like 'single mom' and such like that, so we don't really need to work to get casual games to cater to female gamers. It's the >$100 million budget games that appear to be more male-targeted, but are harder to get to take (larger) perceived risks.

As more and more female gamers get into mainstream games (creating economic incentive), and also into game development (creating artistic output), any actual hunger for more female main roles will naturally be met on its own.

(by 'mainstream', I guess I mean 'hardcore', for a terrible lack of a better term. I mean big-budget "traditional" games. Traditional doesn't sit well either)

As far as sexualizing and stereotyping women in movies and games (and stereotyping men), I think it does actually contribute to the problem. I think it's a feedback loop, not the cause of the problem, but a contribution to it. If it was racism, subtle or non-subtle stereotyping and mockery in games and movies, it would definitely contribute to a culture of racism - but it wouldn't come out of a vacuum, it'd come out of a racist culture, and help reinforce the racism in that culture.

How sexism in games should be addressed, I'm not sure. I don't think outright censorship (or book-burning, as frob put it) is the solution. That hides the problem, or drives it underground, instead of addressing it.

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.

This. Mostly it comes down to whether or not someone agrees that the ideas are harmful.

This is the major difference between frob's view and my own. I agree with almost everything frob said, including his "very right" vs "very wrong" statement. The big difference is a more core issue, the assumption that all fantasy is healthy and good, and that anything done in private is perfectly fine. I definitely agree that the government shouldn't invade people's privacy or legislate morals with too heavy-handed a fist, except where it causes direct immediate or obvious damage to others.

But the major difference between Christian morals (i.e. that morals that the Bible teach, even if most Christians are unaware of that teaching) and more secular morals, is that while both groups (usually) agree that we shouldn't damage other people through our actions, the Biblical view is that we also shouldn't damage ourselves with our actions (some other religions and philosophies recognize this as well), because it'll eventually inevitably cause us to be unable to prevent ourselves (or to care about preventing ourselves) from damaging others.

C.S. Lewis describes it by analogy: (a tad long, but if you want to understand where I, and some others, are coming from it describes it well)
[spoiler](from the book 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis)

There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another's way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other.

If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order they will not be able to avoid collisions. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player's individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others.

But there is one thing we have not yet taken into account. We have not asked where the fleet is trying to get to, or what piece of music the band is trying to play. The instruments might be all in tune and might all come in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing but Dead Marches. And however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.

Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.

You may have noticed that modern people are nearly always thinking about the first thing and forgetting the other two. When people say in the newspapers that we are striving for Christian moral standards, they usually mean that we are striving for kindness and fair play between nations, and classes, and individuals; that is, they are thinking only of the first thing. When a man says about something he wants to do, "It can't be wrong because it doesn't do anyone else any harm," he is thinking only of the first thing. He is thinking it does not matter what his ship is like inside provided that he does not run into the next ship. And it is quite natural, when we start thinking about morality, to begin with the first thing, with social relations.

For one thing, the results of bad morality in that sphere are so obvious and press on us every day: war and poverty and graft and lies and shoddy work. And also, as long as you stick to the first thing, there is very little disagreement about morality. Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on to the second thing 'the tidying up inside each human being' we are only deceiving ourselves.

What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly.

It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual.

But I do not think we can stop there either. We are now getting to the point at which different beliefs about the universe lead to different behaviour. And it would seem, at first sight, very sensible to stop before we got there, and just carry on with those parts of morality that all sensible people agree about. But can we? Remember that religion involves a series of statements about facts, which must be either true or false.

If they are true, one set of conclusions will follow about the right sailing of the human fleet: if they are false, quite a different set.[/spoiler]

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...

Obviously I can't speak for others' personal views, and personally her words don't anger me. I think the fear is more that, through social pressure, people with views similar to hers will force change on the industry and take away their toys. It's happened before.

I don't think The Prohibition was a good idea (yay for hindsight!), because it was dealing purely with the symptoms and not the cause (or rather, it was trying to eliminate one set of symptoms {domestic violence, some forms of crime, and poverty}, by removing the perceived cause {alcohol}, but the cause itself was a symptom of other causes {human nature}).

I think the fear and anger is that, to some extent, real change might actually occur (perhaps not on the federal level, but on the social-pressure level). I personally don't think any such censoring will occur, socially or legally, but that's my guess at others' unease.

Just to be clear, I don't agree 100% with Anita either, but have watched very few of her videos. From what little I have watched/read, I think she is a bit too extreme in her views, and is also trying to fix the problem by addressing the results of the problem rather than the problem itself. But also I think she makes broad proclamations and fails to properly qualify her statements, which feeds some of the fire unintentionally.

When I see the definition of censorship according to ACLU:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

If I hadn't taken part in the whole GG controversy I probably would have said "oh these are just silly critiques of games", but due to taking part in GG three names immediately jump out at me from Feminist Frequency's credits: Anita Sarkeesian, Jonathan McIntosh, and Katherine Cross.

Upon seeing pics of Anita with Colbert I noticed Cross is reflected in the mirror behind Colbert. At the GX panel where Anita calls for the attendees to pressure devs to make games more inclusive, Cross is on the panel too.

Watching their tweets I see them communicating with Leigh Alexander, Ben Kuchera, Jason Scheier, Arthur Chu, and other journalists in the game industry. Sure I could just say I'm paranoid except one of them (think it was Alexander) proclaimed journalists control the game industry and the devs in it. Again I could pass it off as paranoid, but with AAA devs and veterans in the industry stating that game journalists definitely have more power than they should, it becomes harder for me to pass it off as nothing.

McIntosh, when accused of censoring games simply replies that only the government has the power to censor. Not a smoking gun, but makes it clear that even if he was calling for censoring games he wouldn't view it as such. He even goes on to give the example that if every retailer in the world voluntarily refused to sell GTAV it wouldn't be censorship. He even insulted gamers recently for liking upcoming Mortal Kombat X and not be repulsed by the violence or gore.

It may not be a private group, but it is definitely a group calling for people to pressure developers to remove, change, or suppress what they find "offensive" in games.

I admit I do find it extremely intriguing to be called a moron by people who confess they haven't paid attention to Anita or GG, but seem to have accepted the angle the media give on GG as well as Anita's claims that she is only critiquing video games. I mean I'm confused about how can you be so defensive and volatile on something you haven't paid attention to. Who knows though, maybe I've just become so saturated in the past seven months of watching them claim games are sexist, makes gamers misogynists and sexist, and block every user that makes any counter claim to them that I've just gotten tunnel vision on the matter and need to just step back from it all.

Okay BHXSpecter, I've lost my sympathy for you. You only seem to reply to people who take the strongest positions against you, or just reply as a platform to restate your position and favorite talking points. If you were interested in a conversation you'd be willing to talk to the people in the middle, do some give and take. This looks more like flag-waving, finding out who's for and against you and yelling your defiance from the battlements. I expected better on gamedev.

Obviously I can't speak for others' personal views, and personally her words don't anger me. I think the fear is more that, through social pressure, people with views similar to hers will force change on the industry and take away their toys. It's happened before.

You're comparing a critique with the prohibition? Really?
On one side, you've got a critic, saying if they were making games, they'd try to make them more inclusive -- and that if you're a dev, they think you should make your games more inclusive, and if you're a player, they think you should ask for games that are more inclusive.

On the other side, you've got a group that are actually organizing censorship campaigns via actual boycotts, which are actually doing real financial damage to industry groups who's crime is facilitating discussion.

Not only is the prohibition a rediculous analogy, but you're applying it to the former group instead of the latter? Dear lord!

When I see the definition of censorship according to ACLU:

Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.

Do you have any game developers on record saying they feel like they're being censored? Because it really sounds like you GG folk are inventing an enemy who doesn't exist, and then rushing to defend a victim that doesn't exist.

Because you know what? In the Melbourne gamedev scene, when someone links to a site showing the the infamous, dangerous, plotmaster-critic Sarkeesian is going to be speaking in Melbourne in the near future, the reaction is not of fear and loathing. In fact many devs in my building are curious enough to go and actually listen to the blaspheming critic's words in case they might perhaps find something of interest they can take away from it. The horror!


On the other hand, earlier in this thread you linked to a GG blog where someone (who's opinion you apparently value) has decided that it's offensive for Intel to care about the diversity of their workforce, and are actually calling for a boycott of Intel products because of this. They're actually attempting to inflict financial damage on a company -- not just sway their opinion, but actually hurt them -- because said person is offended by their policy of inclusiveness.

GG has also ran boycott campaigns against numerous games websites, even ones as well respected as Gamasutra -- not because of any allegations of corruption -- but simply because they found a particular article on there to be offensive.

There's no reasoning with these people. It's complete doublethink!

I've left sites for insulting me and quite a few for insulting my wife and son. I'm done with industry because I'm not going to sit around wondering what next dev or programmer will insult me or my family just because they don't like my concerns or views. I refuse to subject myself or my family to that.

feeling towards not joining the industry is probably the right instinct. This isn't the place for someone so easily threatened.

Your claims that Anita is censoring anything are laughable, and your bringing Wu into the discussion reveals that you're not even trying to be honest.

Look - and this is addressed to everyone - Anita, Leigh Alexander, and others are critics. They are pundits. You are free to agree or disagree with them. You are free to listen to their views or ignore them. And other developers ALSO have the same freedom. The fear that there is "censorship" is not a plausible claim because they have no power. The extent to which they affect industry attitudes is not some ludicrous fear of their great judgment of games and themes within them - it's only that some of the devs agree with that viewpoint, once it's been presented to them. I have no idea whether they are right about their claims that These Horrible Things keep women away from games. I have my doubts. But you're going full conspiracy theory about it and it's absolutely ridiculous.

The simple truth of the matter is that these people had close to zero visibility or influence until after a group of internet thugs decided to flip out, start calling for boycotts, allegedly harass them, and generally have a full blown meltdown over their daring to say this stuff. (Which sounds more like censorship to me?) It was at the point that everything went to hell that devs suddenly woke up and said, whoa, there's something going on here that we should listen to. Some of them feel that there are fair points being raised. Others don't. That type of push-pull between critic-pundits and creators is not unusual by any stretch, in any creative industry.

If you can't handle that, then I am dead serious - find something else to do. This isn't an industry for people suffering from that sort of paranoid terror, or fear of insult, or questioning of their work and motives. That sort of writing is not new to these critics or an unprecedented threat. That is completely par for the course.

PS there are absolutely, positively, major problems with the journalists and developers in this industry. They just have no relationship whatsoever to the people you are apparently angry about. Leigh Alexander wrote a pretty good introduction, in fact, for anyone who actually wishes to understand that problem. Not that anyone believes that this is the complaint, of course. The substance of the anger is that someone else is trying to change your precious games. That is apparently horrifying to a certain group of people.

Take a look at your original statement:

I was emailed a Kotaku article yesterday. Apparently, Anita Sarkeesian has went from just critiquing games to trying to make game devs change them to how she thinks they should be done.

This is called activism. I think most people will agree that Sarkeesian has taken a heavily activist position on game design. But activism is not censorship, and it's not precisely journalism either, though often those things often inhabit similar spaces. It's an attempt to affect change and awareness, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I think discussing the substance of her claims is mildly interesting, if one can find a level honest discussion on the matter. But you decided to have a panic instead.

Oh and one more thing - you tweeted that the people here agree with Sarkeesian. (Which apparently makes you feel unwelcome in the industry?) That's a severe distortion and mischaracterization of what's happening here. See the comments by frob and Servant of the Lord in particular, which are more nuanced breakdowns of her claims. Like many people, there are points that we agree and disagree with in her writing. It would be more accurate to say that we, as a community, vehemently defend her right to say it. It doesn't matter if we agree or not. We're simply opposed to censoring her voice. Again, I am extremely happy to have a substantive discussion of her work, much of which I disagree with. But that is NOT what you started here. If you would like to have that discussion, we can open a different thread with stricter ground rules.

(Although I'm pretty

Nice of you to just throw that in there.



As for the discussion at hand, a lot of people seem to forget that just because Anita Sarkeesian has a louder voice than most, it doesn’t mean she is the harbinger of doom to your way of (game) life.

There are so many developers out there that just because perhaps one game might be heavily influenced by her it doesn’t mean it came at the cost of any other game. It’s just one more game, not this game instead of that game. Any studios willing to follow her guidelines are likely already making games you would never want to play anyway. If you believe that she is going to somehow change any of your favorite brands then you’ve lost touch with reality. By that same logic, while you’re crusading against her, better fight all those moms and dads who want better childrens’ games for their kids, since apparently you believe there can only be one or the other, not both.

It just seems strange to me that you’re okay with there being Seseme Street games for little kids, and these can happily co-exist with your hardcore Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto games, but somehow you can’t accept some new female-friendly games cropping up.
Somehow you’re perfectly logical when it comes to kids’ games: “This is not marketed towards me and I am not interested in it, so I simply won’t play it.” (Goes back to Grand Theft Auto.)
But somehow you’ve lost your mind when it comes to female-friendly games: “This is not marketed towards me and I am not interested in it, so I will yell censorship and cry.” (Goes back to Grand Theft Auto.)


Let her have her own set of games and let her be. You don’t have to get your panties in a bunch just because she wants a type of game to be made that doesn’t sexualize women enough for you. If you don’t like those games, don’t play them. Your favorite brands aren’t going anywhere. Mortal Kombat didn’t vanish just because another Seseme Street game got made.


L. Spiro