It is always, always, more than one data point in any set, Whether by inclusion or exclusion. Particularly in describing a trend or similar.
In fact, picking one data point, whether included or excluded though one point excluded is sillier, and latching onto that to define the set in question or something about that, such as the intent of the data collector/presenter is much closer to the intent of actual cherry-picking than the inclusion or exclusion of one data point by someone who troubles to assemble a set.
I have 99 bottles. I have a sidearm. I set up the bottles & shoot them. 95 break, 4 donât (but we donât know whether the bullets bounced off or missed.) Most people have 100 bottles, or at least have heard there are 100 bottles.
My data concludes that bullets break bottles when they are fired accurately at the bottle.
The criticism is that I should have had 100 bottles.
Is my conclusion changed at all?
Was I manipulating the data to deceive you into believing bullets break bottles because I only had 99 bottles, but there are more bottles somewhere?
What is âpornyâ in womenâs clothing and how they are presented in a lot of media is not the clothing so much as the camera angles. Thatâs what Saarkesian is discussing here - not just how the women are clothed but how the camera is angled in such a way as to bring your focus to the womanâs butt. She talks about how with men they bring the camera higher to completely avoid showing butts, but with women the camera is often below the butt in order to make it the centerpiece.
Iâve talked about this before on the board, but I have seen women at ComicCon dressing in the skimpy outfits and itâs surprisingly not sexy to simply see a woman running around in a bustier when they are just walking around. Itâs when you see this same getup photographed in such a way as to focus on the boobs that it feels pornographic.
I never said anything about how many people care about it, so how do you know what I think? I simply said that the people who discuss this find it worth discussing. Consider movies instead - if a billion people watch movies, but only a couple thousand are interested enough to engage in real movie criticism, is that unexpected? Should they not be movie critics, simply because nobody else is? And whose opinion are filmmakers going to be more interested in - somebody who tries to know movies inside and out and is deeply interested, or somebody looking for disposable entertainment who doesnât care? Would anybody bother reading movie critics if they only discussed the audience, and not the movie? Maybe some viewers like that critics can help them to decide what they want to see, and how to spend their money? If you think that market demand is everything, I suppose you might need to concede that there is even a market demand for critics and criticism. How do sites such as IMDb, AV Club, and Rotten Tomatoes continue to exist if people arenât interested in discussing media as well as consuming it? Even on Amazon - one of the biggest media marketplaces of the world - the reviews and criticism pretty much dwarf the rest of the content.
As for the depiction of women in video games⊠arenât most people women? So, there is automatically a huge demographic. But you are also contradicting yourself slightly. You say that games are marketed the way the have been precisely because the consumers are interested in how women are depicted.
Thatâs a lot less hyperbolic than where you were saying that a failure to leer at the female form is commercial suicide! What many donât discuss is that character models are cheap and easy to accommodate anyway, even I have made a few custom player models for Quake3 and HL2DM, and I have no real talent in making game assets. Pros could probably knock out a dozen rough models in an afternoon, and bring them each up to spec within a few days. The way I see it, choice means that everybody wins. But on the IP side, companies cling to their franchises, so even if it is trivial to offer great choices for cheap, it still runs into the need to âprotect the franchiseâ and offer a singular idealized vision of what Batman or Lara Croft should look like. There probably are some who think that there is an idealized âconventional beautyâ that is worth cookie-cuttering into everything, but the decreased choice means that it no longer matters what you buy, if everything looks too similar. One personâs âsuccessful formulaâ might be anotherâs âcreatively bankruptâ, and thatâs great because it keeps things interesting.
Critical thinking does not mean âdonât watch/read/play that, because somebody said itâs naughty, and if you donât believe me then you are a bad personâ. Quite the opposite. I see it as just being willing to think about and engage in whatever one is presented with. The nasty trend of harassing critics doesnât do anyone any favors, itâs only a refuge for poor critics who canât be bothered to justify their opinions.
You get that she isnât a soldier but an âarchaeologistâ that was caught up in a situation that unfolded around her. And the fact that you can pick up different clothing that actually offers more benefits than the one she has from running around in the jungle trying to discover ancient tombs that have not been seen by human eyes in thousands of years and study them for a few minutes before destroying them and the people that live their pretty openly (ok, MOST of that is a criticism of the previous games I was actually surprised when the trope of going into uninhabited areas meant they were only uninhabited by white people!)
The clothing she wears as a standard is exactly what youâd wear on an expedition and the other women and men on her side are wearing equally flimsy clothing. Why? Because they arenât soldiers.
Ok, I will. Fuck. Them. Fuck those whiny privileged DUDEBROS, repeatedly. Through GG and other slimy outlets, theyâve shown themselves to be interested only in maintaining the status quo. Which is tits and ass on prominent display in video games, among other things.
And the scenario is in part a justification to put them in that clothing in the first place. I mean, itâs relatively reasonable compared to, say the bikini-clad sniper in Metal Gear Solid who âneeds to breathe through her skinâ so itâs got that going for it. But thatâs just another example of why itâs inane to jump on Tomb Raider (or Hitman for one of the earlier vids) that Sarkeesian gives as if refuting one aspect of one example invalidates her entire argument.
Itâs like the Bechdel test, Itâs about how the entire body of work - in this case videogames fails to pass seemingly low barriers to inclusion and gender equality. Going on and on and on about how Tomb Raider is a little bit better now is like pointing to the highest point on a sinking ship and talking about how itâs only a bit damp.
Do you really think anyone said âLetâs have the characters go on an archaeological expedition, that way we have an excuse to dress them in realistic and practical archaeologist outfits?â
If itâs getting better now, the ship isnât sinking.
Tomb Raider is a direct lineage of games like Pitfall. Whose characters dressed identically. And are male. I think you are reaching. There are other parts of the game where she is dressed in a parka and padded snow pants. That said, are you seriously trying to make the argument that khakis and a comfortable tanktop are sexist? Should she wear a burka? Because spending a lot of time outdoors, this is an entirely appropriate and neutral outfit.
I think you are mistaking my comments about a game that is getting it right for ârefuting one aspect of one example invalidates her entire argument.â In no way am I saying she is wrong. I am PRAISING a game that is trying to get it right. And again, I believe that Sarkeesian is mostly right about this. If she were ENTIRELY right about it, there would be absolutely no reason to have a conversation.
As for the Bechdel test? This is most certainly not about an entire body of work. It is about a single work. This one most certainly passes. In all aspects of the test. It has a balanced character load and split down the middle.
All Iâm saying of this is that maybe the solution is to support the games that are going out of their way to buck the trend. It was the first new game I bought in yearsâŠhell, I almost bought an XBox One for it (all the early advertising made it seem like it was a next gen console only thing)âŠbut realized $400 for a single game wasnât worth it! I think the industry would be better off if we showed financial incentives for companies providing good content.
The good news is, this version of Lara, while definitely off-balance and vulnerable, is one we can empathize with, and doesnât project an aura of needing help. Quite the opposite, in fact: The game does an absolutely superb job of balancing her between inexperience and determination. Lara might be wounded and afraid, but sheâs going to press on regardless. We do root for her, but she also demands our respect.
Lara has long been considered one of the most well-regarded characters in videogame history. Now sheâs one of the most real.
The Mary Sue review, already linked 3 times previously, so I think we covered that adequately cough
In the recent Channel 4 documentary, âCharlie Brooker: Videogames Changed the Worldâ, Rhianna Pratchett explained her motivation:
âI didnât really like the way that sheâd been adopted by the wider media as somewhat over sexualised and I felt that as a younger female gamer, I was being pushed away from the franchise, and so when I took on the role of helping develop this new, younger Lara, I really thought about what myself as a gamer when I first started out, would have liked.â
You know what else is amazing about this game? Women stood behind it. Girl gamers asked for it, bought it, played it, and mostly loved it. This is the proof the industry needs that âif you build it, they will comeâ should be their mantra! Gamers are hungry for more strong female leads in games.
Not once does Crystal Dynamics portray Lara as an object of sexuality. She has no love interest in the game and no vampish dialogue. Her primary motivation is saving her platonic, female friend, Sam.
As players, we are attracted to Lara as a character because she is a badass, not because she can cartwheel while shooting dual pistols in a tight bathing suit. There is no sheen of overt sexuality that keeps us from appreciating the humanity of Lara.
Looks to be another great game and like the 2013 entry in the franchise, a textbook example of how videogames can get better, a lot better, at representing women.
But I can understand where minimizing that might be important if it doesnât fit oneâs agendaâŠ
Dude, weâre not arguing about the progress that crystal dynamic made to Tomb Raider to make it more accessible to women. We agree that the character herself is way better now than she is years ago.
It just that there are still elements that seems problematic to feminists; you may not see them, but they do.
Yet you canât understand how harping on one data point or lack thereof in a complex historical trend is plain stupid and indicates little to nothing.
Your claim of âagendaâ is far, far more Fox News than the work that you critique.
In this game, Tomb Raider (2013) or in âvideogames in generalâ? I literally clicked through 10 different Google results for âTomb Raider 2013 feminist reviewâ and I didnât see mention of elements that were problematic to feminists in this game. Instead, I read near universal praise. Please, read the sources yourself if you donât believe me.
I agree that videogames in general, depending on where you sit on the âitâs OK for videogames to be genderedâ divide, have some way to go on representations of women. But thatâs an argument that is so general as to be useless. Focusing on specifics helps â but focusing on Tomb Raider (2013) is bizarre since itâs literally some of the best real, tangible, practical evidence in the industry that videogames can improve dramatically in the way that they represent women.
I was actually surprised when the trope of going into uninhabited areas meant they were only uninhabited by white people!)
