And literally all the other comic book films aren’t?
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I didn’t even suggest that, if you read the thread. The point is the oppoite, that literally all the other comic book films are.
The point was that for a company that makes games about shooting people, making a game with an entirely different mechanic,that’s not about shooting people, is a vastly bigger departure from what is already making them money, and thus a vastly bigger risk, than a movie studio doing something that is exactly what’s already making them money, but with a female lead.
I think I said as much in the comment you’re replying to:
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Fine. We agree that women being the lead characters was no hindrance to their success.
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Men are trash may not be entirely accurate, but its a pretty good first approximation.
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Sort of like a default setting.
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Despite being told for years and years that it would be. So no one ever made those movies. Just like how we’re being told that only ultra-violent games sell. So no one makes the others. Or if they get made, they don’t get marketed, so no one who isn’t a gamer even knows they exist. Why is that important? Because our current definition of “gamer”, the people who are active in that community are the (majority) white male monolith that isn’t interested in those “other” games. It’s a feedback loop. The same ones we’ve seen thousands of times before. Those movies succeeded because they weren’t given the normal treatment the industry gives movies led by women. They were marketed like any other blockbuster instead of being relegated to limited markets and little to no advertising.
And my point about authors isn’t that those two succeeded, it’s that despite their success, POC authors are still being told that their work won’t sell. It can be as mainstream as McDonald’s, and if you’re Black, Hispanic (or worse) Native American/First Nations, you can count on being told it’s too hard to market. That your work won’t sell because works by POC authors don’t sell. Same feedback loop, that ignores any evidence to the contrary.
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I respectfully disagree. While they may not have started the fire, these things are both interrelated accelerants — and dangerous ones.
It is odd, because I went into this discussion thinking “how dare someone criticize Doom for being too violent”, and I came out the other side … agreeing with them. It is one of the first lessons you learn as a parent; your children become the people they hang out with. If you hang out with people who play Stardew Valley you are going to have a profoundly different experience than if you hang out with people who play Call of Duty Thirty Five: Black Modern Ghost Warfare Ops.
I had a day off this weekend from shooting Supernatural, and I was walking around downtown Vancouver on Saturday, sampling all the artisan coffee I could get my throat around. At one point I saw a pair of guys walking towards me wearing gamer shirts. Black short-sleeved, one Halo and one Call of Duty.
Now in my life up until this point, that kind of outfit has meant one thing: Potential comrades. I love games, I love gaming. If it’s Friday night, I’m not out hanging at a club, I’m diving into a new game I downloaded on Steam. And I am blessed with the fact that my career is largely built upon that love, which I channeled into fiction so many years ago with “The Guild”. If there’s anything I’m proud of in this world, it’s the fact that I’ve had people come up to me on the street and at conventions over the years to tell me that they feel confident to call themselves a gamer because of my work, where before they were ashamed. Hearing that kind of stuff has kept me going, against the mainstream, against all odds.
So seeing another gamer on the street used to be an auto-smile opportunity, or an entry into a conversation starting with, “Hey, dude! I love that game too!” Me and that stranger automatically had something in common: A love for something unconventional. Outsiders in arms. We had an auto-stepping stone to hurtle over human-introduction-awkwardness, into talking about something we loved together. Instant connection!
But for the first time maybe in my life, on that Saturday afternoon, I walked towards that pair of gamers and I didn’t smile. I didn’t say hello. In fact, I crossed the street so I wouldn’t walk by them. Because after all the years of gamer love and inclusiveness, something had changed in me. A small voice of doubt in my brain now suspected that those guys and I might not be comrades after all. That they might not greet me with reflected friendliness, but contempt.
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But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make critical assessments of them, much like Sarkeesian has done over the years. That is likely what makes them such a rich landscape for human story telling…
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I believe this had more to do with Felicia Day being doxxed and harassed by Gamergators than it did about which games they played.
And I think you missed the most relevant part of her article:
So I write this to urge any person, male or female, who now has the impulse to do what I did, to walk away from something they loved before, to NOT.
Don’t let other people drive you away from gaming.
Games are beautiful, they are creative, they are worlds to immerse yourself in. They are art. And they are worth fighting for, even if the atmosphere is ugly right now. A small minority are putting up barbed wire walls between us who love games. And that is sad. Because odds are 99% certain that those guys on the street who I avoided would have been awesome to talk to. I realize that letting the actions of a few hateful people influence my behavior is the absolutely worst thing I could do in life. And not an example I want to set, ever.
So to myself and to everyone else who operates out of love not vengeance: Don’t abandon games. Don’t cross the street. Gaming needs you. To create, to play, to connect.
To represent.
More:
I have lived a large part of my life ruled by negative emotions, mainly fear and anxiety. From my experience of working through those issues, I have this to say: Steeping yourself in the emotions that you’re surrounding yourself with, of hatred and bile and contempt, is ultimately not destructive to others like you want it to be. It’s destructive to yourself.
I know it feels good to belong to a group, to feel righteous in belonging to a cause, but causing fear and pushing people away from gaming is not the way to go about doing it. Think through the repercussions of your actions and the people you are aligning yourself with. And think honestly about whether your actions are genuinely going to change gaming life for the better. Or whether they’re just going to make someone cross the street away from you. And away from something, ironically, that we both love.
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Gee, it’s almost like she’s calling out particular behaviors that some people engage in rather than games themselves…
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Exactly.
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From its effect on the world, 8chan could be ranked as one of the internet’s most dangerous sites. Some have even compared it to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS. The pattern is similar: men – and it is always men – find their way there, and get radicalised into an extreme ideology which drives some of them to violence.
https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/06/29/8chan/content.html
And what brought him there? Gaming.
But he wasn’t yet interested in much other than gaming. “Because we were poor we didn’t have many different games,” Brennan tells me. “So we used to play the same one over and over.” One had a little online forum for players. Brennan made friends there; they swapped tips. It was there that Brennan first stumbled across chan culture. In fact, it stumbled upon him.
And @nightflyer I think this misses the “games as alcohol” subtext (fun, but tends to make everything around it worse), as well as the observation that certain violent, hyper competitive games generate statistically high levels of toxicity. I mean I agree nobody is going to (or should) cross the street from two guys wearing Stardew Valley tshirts, but Halo and Call of Duty t-shirts? Hell yes, even I’d cross the street to avoid those dudes. Did I tell you about the time I was playing COD Blackout and some guy found out another person in the squad was a black person and started saying the N-word over and over in voice chat? This is a thing that I experienced. I don’t play that game any more.
Does Felicia Day still even do videogame stuff? Her website goes mostly silent by 2016 http://feliciaday.com/blog/ and her wikipedia entry lists no videogame projects after 2015 Felicia Day - Wikipedia
Not all videogames, like not all men. But too many. Far too many.
You really have missed the entire point.
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Took me a second… I’m not always so smart! 
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I figured it was time to ‘upgrade’ the meme of Bill smashing the alarm clock.
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I like it… very 80s!
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the problem isn’t games.
the problem is that men feel entitled to the time, attention, and bodies of women.
EDIT:
edited to comply with community guidelines.
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