WARNING: DISJOINTED RAMBLE AHEAD.
I don’t understand the fury against Anita, because she’s been pretty much right about everything she’s said. I suspect that part of it has to do with the lack of a call to action; unless I’ve missed something, she hasn’t called for anyone to do anything other than to be aware of the tropes she’s identifying – which is, I dearly hope, not threatening or destructive in any way. To pick a point at random: playing the opening of Dishonoured and going “Oh, look, dead woman, have to rescue the daughter, that’s original” did not diminish any of my enjoyment of the game or the stealth genre. Perhaps I had an eyeroll there that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t watched her videos, but that’s about it. But perhaps because she’s not calling for anything in particular, people have started assuming that she wants all the games and consoles to be gathered up and burnt, or that only games that are Feminist Approved should exist. The men clutch their pearls and swoon at the thought that someone might be causing the next Call of Duty to never be made, replaced with Call of The UN. (Featuring new Talk-It-Out action! Over 20 different ways to empathize!)
I am a white male gamer, from way back with Zork and Kings Quest and Ultima and Jumpman, all the way through to today. My steam account has over 250 games on it: I don’t need to do any further research to validate that she’s right on pretty much everything she says, and the “pretty muches” (like Rogue Legacy) aren’t really taking away from her points: the video game world is pretty hostile to women, when it acknowledges that they exist.
I can’t understand how anyone who has played a lot of games could argue against that.
… it’s possibly important to note (as I believe she does) that no single instance of any of these tropes is necessarily wrong or bad or horrific in any way, particularly with the Damsel in Distress ones. It’s a matter of volume rather than that any one item is so particularly horrific that games like that should no longer be made.
tl;dr: She’s right. And she’s not trying to pry your games from your cold dead hands.
