Wow, this driving trollies is so obvious I’m not even mad. I actually want to go out and buy a vintage burgundy suit and recreate the scene, just so that this comment can have its own unique derivative of the classic meme.
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Maybe I’m watching her videos wrong but I don’t think she’s against violence and or sex in videos.
More so the way women are portrayed—repeatedly. I tried to explain this to my husband…it’s not that women should not be shown in games they just want equal treatment----whore can be killed but what about showing more dude whores. Why always the victim, why always the whores who gets shanked, men fully clothed women barely clothed, why is the death of a women required to move the story, etc. etc.
Why is that so hard to see or even comprehend?
Religious game complaints on the other hand…just take everything out and have Jesus and his disciples following a maze.
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Off topic: Hey! That thing what squeaks in yer avatar is sitting on my shelf right now!!!
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Yes. Exactly this. On a very basic level, and i say this with a lot of care, a lot of the backlash comes from simple fear of change.
Extremely relevant: http://midnightresistance.co.uk/articles/shitty-toys
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I see you have drunk the radical feminist cool-aid. 
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About 85% of Freud’s work is still the basis of all types of psychology, although it’s been expanded by many people. The biggest shortcoming is Freudeans inability to explain compulsion. And it’s still the basis of psychoanalysis, while other therapies are “psychotherapy” rather than psychoanalysis. And many people contributed to the development of psychoanalysis, such as Wilhelm Reich. Freud’s work is still the best model for describing severe personality disorders and most neurosis. All that being said, if Freud had never been born, we would not have missed out on anything because psychology was progressing quite well without him.
Uh-uh. You’re making a hostile false equivalence. Modeling and explaining behavior is not equivalent to excusing behavior. If someone is intentionally provocative (aka activism) with the intention of generating discussion, and are met with hostility, it isn’t their fault, but it is predictable.
I’m getting really tired of seeing people accuse anyone who attempts to explain how aggression happens of victim blaming, we can’t do anything about things we can’t model.
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/agree. What i find most distasteful about his entire issue is the assumption from some people that anything less than full agreement with Sarkeesian’s viewpoint marks you out as a manbaby misogynist.
I like FPS games. I play them more than any other. In all honesty, I never pay any attention to what goes on in the background unless it will impact on my progress through the gaming world.
One thing of note, however. In these games, in all of these games, I have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of male characters. I have shot them, head shot them for extra points, garrotted them, slit their throats, disemboweled them. And on and on and on. But not once have I felt that I was or have been accused of being, a misandrist.
If, while playing a game, I infiltrate the enemies’ compound and rescue the ‘daughter/wife of the VIP’, I am accused of adding to the inherent misogyny in computer games. If, however, I kill two dozen men getting to the ‘daughter/wife of the VIP’? Well that’s perfectly acceptable.
If a game is built on the premise that you have to kill untold numbers of men to progress, with a subplot which involves some shady action involving women, then call it for what it is: misanthropy - not misogyny. But don’t lose sight of what it is you are doing - playing a game.
Ha! It was fun to watch, though. They are always increbibly transparent, aren’t they? From the video at the article:
Good god. The untouched, watered down whiskey glass, the cigarrette and the suit… Laughing works for a while, but then i just get depressed again.
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Related aside; has anyone been following the Zoe Quinn / Nathan Grayson / Adam Baldwin #gamergate clusterfuck on twitter?
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…so back to the rape, torture and death threats against feminists, then?
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The reason women are portrayed the way they are in video games, is because it’s mostly men who buy those titles… supply and demand.
sorry, but that’s simply not true.
for instance, i buy games based on 1) how much fun do they seem to be, and 2) how polished – good art, good graphics, good etc. – do they seem to have.
the tropes come along whether i want them there or not.
games aren’t successful because of the tropes – which are often not important to the key mechanics of the game.
instead, the tropes are instead – exactly as sarkeesian says – largely the result of lazy writing, unexamined social bias, and – i’d say – the echo chamber of block-buster movies which by-and-large have the same issues.
if it’s any consolation to you, no one seems to be proposing a trope-police. the idea is instead, by being aware of sexist tropes, that we can improve games, and maybe even ourselves.
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Yes, claim any valid criticism is a troll. Have you won anyone over?
If nameless badguy is male or female - and you kill 100’s of them - that’s not sexist. If namless bad guy is all male and the only killable females are either helpless, or not enemies - that’s sexist.
If nameless badguy is male or female - but the females sometimes come in bikini’s or less - and the men do not - then that’s sexist.
If you drop into an orgy and everyone is nakid - and the goal were to kill everyone - that is not sexist.
The difference in these examples - isn’t the sex of the person you are killing - it’s the following:
- Do the females get sexed up while the males do not?
- Are the females empowered to defend themselves - or are they meant to be helpless?
- Do the female characters get a story arc that doesn’t revolve around another man - that is are all the female roles sidekick status or do they actually get a real role on occation?
It’s not really that hard to figure out - I’ve not seen one argument from Anita that says ‘you can’t do this in games’ - nor has there been a point made that female characters must be untouchable - the point is that they should exist for more than window decoration.
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The interesting thing was, the whole Explicit Lyrics thing was always voluntary. You could put the sticker on and sell at Walmart, or Target, or one of the big chains - which still require you to do this regardless of gov’t intervention – or you sold at Music Land or Virgin or a hundred other places.
The most interesting thing about this being voluntary – in the case of Zappa, he specifically requested this label to prove a point, and included song titles like G-Spot Tornado as example of why he should be ‘censored’. Personally, I feel that these sorts of things SHOULD be on an album. If you are a parent, you should be allowed to know if something you are buying for your child meets with standards you and your community have deemed appropriate. I also think that if you want your kid to listen to it, good for you. However, parents should be able to make educated choices, even if the educated choice is a yes / no “Does it have bad words in the lyrics”.
[quote=“sfrazer, post:17, topic:40229, full:true”]You should maybe actually read the rest of the article, then.[/quote]I shouldn’t bother, but I have to ask: is it really so impossible for two people to read the same article (or watch the same video, or whatever) completely and comprehensively and draw different but equally valid conclusions?
Also you might learn something about art critiquing along the way.
Indeed.
Correct - in fact women buy more games than men almost half of the time. It might explain why Nintendo franchises still sell better than Halo.
Quote from article:
[quote]The report also found that adult women (31 percent) represent a
“significantly” greater portion of the gamer population that boys 17 and
younger (19 percent). In addition, according to the group’s findings,
women are 46 percent of the time the most frequent game purchasers. [/quote]
emphasis mine.
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I do think it’s interesting that @xeni posted that article, essentially agreeing with Breslin that “the shock ‘n’ horror [by none-other than a feminist blog] over the sex ‘n’ violence” in Grand Theft Auto was “overwrought.”
(And even linking the line “Jesus Christ, if this is what degrees in gender studies hath wrought, polysyllabic bloggers still carping about the patriarchy, please fucking stop handing them out.”)
I don’t think, in this atmosphere, Xeni would be publicly agreeing with that sentiment now.
But honestly, people’s past views are neither here nor there in this discussion. Is Sarkeesian wrong just because Breslin made fun of the outrage, and Xeni lined to it? Should BB not post about it?
several people mentioned gamer-identity. i’m starting to wonder if it’s also identity with some of the tropes in the games themselves.
being moved ( slightly old skool ) by aerith’s death, or even just the porn effect of seeing pixelated naked people.
the game provided a tangible experience, and now some people feel like they are being told – that scene, that experience, that feeling, was wrong.
then, to make matters worse, perhaps there’s a fear “social justice warriors” ( can i change my name to this now, please? ) want to take all future experiences like this away as well.
there’s enough in the world it feels like people can’t control, games are supposed to be an escape, and now maybe that’s feeling potentially out of their control too. if they can bully and threaten sarkeesian, then maybe they feel they can get their control back.
not to mention, the trolls like their turn in the limelight more than under-bridge-dwellers should.
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