Brianna Wu is a rad game dev.
She’s not an art director, though.
4 Likes
This Gelatinous dingbat is clearly a total fedora, and Brianna Wu is plainly an actual game dev, but these screencaps do look like total arse, to a surprising degree.
12 Likes
Oof. I was willing to grant that the game might actually have been good despite the eye-gouging art direction, but that review indicates there’s really an emperor’s new clothes situation going on here.
Maybe someday we’ll get a Sarah Palin moment when people can dismiss a particular game by a woman when it’s no good, and then move on. It’s kind of amateurish and seems to fail at a number of its main goals, but that’s ok. I’ve seen plenty of other games like that. It doesn’t represent the potential of women in game development, and it doesn’t have to be defended as such. It’s a shame, but no reason to lower our standards.
6 Likes
I apologise for making it seem as though I was defending an idiot troll. Nor did I intend to make it seem as though the term “insidious oppression” was about anyone expressing views here.
Put it this way - do you have anything to say about the content of my argument, rather than the way I put if across?
EDIT
OK re-phrasing all this because it’s caused some misunderstanding…
In totalitarian societies, dissent is often dealt with by labelling it as something it isn’t. Rioting in the streets over lack of food? Counter-revolutionary. Opposed to a one-party state? Enemy of the people. Don’t want your children’s’ genitals mutilated? Blasphemer. This is effective in shutting down the debate about the real issues because the average time-poor person finds it much harder to understand the issues around food distribution, democratic systems or how religion is immoral.
So if we get ourselves into a situation where a man criticising a woman is automatically labelled a misogynist, then that is very bad.
The way to avoid this is to use independent thought - in this case to ask ourselves whether we know the attack was based on the fact that Wu is a woman. I don’t think you can reasonably say that it was in this case.
And more to the point, we can and should have the same debate about it without having to deal with any misogynist angle. Let’s be progressive. This is BoingBoing - boing.
1 Like
But the newsworthy item here is not the game; Boingboing is not a game review site. The post is about a game dev pwning a trolley. Why should we debate whether the game is any good, except insofar as it pertains to how clueless the trolley is?
10 Likes
I’m going to say that insomuch as the troll sought to elicit a reaction that taxed the respondent, he succeeded.
Aww. I’m disappointed, so you probably are as well. Would you say you’re disappointed? In BB, and Cory? Go ahead, you can say it.
Breaking News: Context and nuance are a thing!
12 Likes
Feh. We’re social animals; eliciting a reaction is a paltry prize when we’re programmed by evolution to react to our fellow apes. I can elicit a reaction by walking through the wrong door, or wearing my pants on my head. That’s two-year-old stuff.
Maintaining a measure of self-respect by enumerating just how lazy this particular troll is being? That’s priceless.
8 Likes
You don’t seem to realize which side of this equation you are on. We are pleased that a woman who has to face misogyny every day (we’ve heard of her before) has pushed back against some asshole. You came here to label that “moral tyranny” because you don’t approve of the words we are using. You are on the side of those with power, trying to make it impossible for anyone to point out what is obviously going on in the video game industry and in the world by applying an insurmountable standard of proof to each individual case.
You want to make grandiose comparisons, so here we go. Police kill people in the US at an alarming rate - much, much higher than any other civilized nation, and yet they are virtually never held to account. Each individual police officer in each individual situation can’t be proven to have acted inappropriately. So the systemic problem continues because our response is entirely focused on the individual scenario. This is the kind of relabeling you are talking about: A crisis of police killing is relabeled as a series of unfortunate incidents and we are told not to draw conclusions by looking at those incidents as a whole.
At least in that case you can argue that the very high standards to prove criminal responsibility are necessary to protect individuals from abuse. In this case, what would motivate us (us being people commenting on a forum on the internet) to apply such a high standard of proof before we say, “Well, that walks like a duck.”
We’ve heard the argument you are making before. It is usually made by people who actively cheer misogyny as a way of trying to discredit the entire concept that women may face discrimination or hatred. By the same “walks like a duck” standard, probably a lot of people here have assumed that you are a misogynist trolley because whether you intend to be one or not, you are functionally playing the role of one. You are more worried about men who criticize women being thought of badly than you are about the fact that women leave the profession of game development because the atmosphere is too toxic. That’s not objectivity, that’s prioritization.
19 Likes
She was heckled for supporting women interested in game development. I don’t think this misogyny is going to come out with Woolite™
19 Likes
Report those, we can remove them — the URL especially is important.
15 Likes
Steam, maybe?
When I first read her response I actually got the same gut feeling, like if someone says your game looks like shit you aren’t really showing them by talking about polygon counts. But the thing is, the guy didn’t just say, “Your game looks like shit” he said, “You aren’t a real game developer.” Whether you think her games are shit or not, her response was “Actually, I am a game developer, you moron.” The PS1 thing was just a launching point to make that point.
Realistically, I doubt Wu is terribly troubled by the fact that people think her games are garbage, if you create anything some people are going to think it’s trash.
19 Likes
So, women should just shut up and take harrassment, because… free speech?
13 Likes
So I am going to be called a gamergater/misogynistic woman hater if I call her game out for looking like shit? After 4 years and a budget of over 400k this is the end product? I have seen amazing Indy games being done on half the budget and half the amount of staff. Wu’s diverse team of 8 people was able to produce this abomination. Brianna seems to think that this game is perfection itself and that any possible criticism is just hatred against HER. It’s amazing how massive her ego is. Not exactly empowering for women when you’ve got people who claim to represent them with skin about as thick as a sheet of paper. I thought they were AGAINST damsels in distress but then they turn around and act like damsels the second they’re faced with any kind of critique.
1 Like
Well, I think it looks terrible (artwise, I know nothing about the game).
The tweet directly said she wasn’t a real game developer. That is most definitely an attack against her.
Someone said something mean to her, she told them off. That’s being a damsel in distress? If someone tells you they think you are shit at what you do, what reaction wouldn’t be acting as a damsel in distress?
16 Likes
I mean, I don’t like the way Metal Gear Solid looks. Everything’s the same shade of gray-green. Ergo, Konami are not “real game devs” right?
14 Likes
