You have a point, but that error rate would seem to suggest that you shouldn’t be surprised at anomalies, rather than that external genitalia are a completely unreliable indication of the body.
I do wonder about the overlap. There are a LOT of people playing games and many people in that group don’t give a crap about games as an artistic medium. “Games should be fun”, you will often hear, and many in that crowd actively reject anything that doesn’t fit their idea of what a game is–e.g. Gone Home, Dear Esther, really any of the recent narrative-first games.
On the other hand many of the creators and passionate enthusiasts do believe that games are an artistic medium and appreciate real critique. Let’s not forget that Sarkeesian actually got a TON of funding to make these videos. As an enthusiast and sometimes-creator I think these videos are invaluable as a conversation-starter and a way to introduce a easily-accessible way to start talking about feminist issues in games.
I would hazard a guess that the group of gamers who wish the haters would grow up is larger than the group of (very vocal) haters.
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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.
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So I kindly disagree here. Most video games pass the reverse test when their characters actually have conversations. You’re talking about a few subcategories of video games:
Extreme Simulator Games
These are games where people aren’t important at all and are at best poor 2D textures. See most: Racing simulators, Flying Simulators, Train Simulators, Bus, Trucking, Farm Equipment etc.
Empty World
For some reason the world is completely devoid of everything but you and maybe an omniscient narrator, a few silent NPCs, or just stuff to murder or run away from. Some examples include: The Stanley Parable, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, and various horror games.
Silent Protagonist has no Friends
Many games employ a silent protagonist that for some reason never talks. Other characters tend to talk at you. I suppose you could argue that this isn’t really a conversation and that games should fail because of this. A lot of video games still pass due to the number of side characters that have discussions with each other (sometimes as background chatter).
Most Games Still fail the Bechdel Test due to Lack of Female Characters
This really isn’t a high bar.
There are still way too many video games that still have LoTR gender ratios. If a game happens to have multiple female characters, in many cases there just isn’t a reason for them to talk to each other. They aren’t important enough.
Personally, I love playing the few video games that actually appeal to me. I’ve probably logged a couple thousand hours on Starcraft, Diablo II, Bomberman, a bunch of old arcade titles, and a few Wii games I’ve picked up. I had a blast with GTA, although I didn’t actually play, just ran around causing mayhem- Which was totally worth the rental. I’ve given PopCap more money than I care to admit. I’ve got a couple Star Trek games I go all geeky over, even though I can admit the game itself isn’t that great- I just love being in that world.
That said, as it is, I just happen to hate first person shooters and PVP anything. Sports themes completely turn me off, and I just can’t justify paying a monthly fee for a game I already paid for. Out of a randomly googled list of “top 100 PS3 titles”, exactly four appeal to me, and only two of those are appealing enough to spend money on. As much as I really want to, I’m really hesitant to play something like The Last of Us, because the last time I got completely engrossed in a story-based game, I got stuck on some stupid FPS segment and ended up having to give up on the whole thing.
So, yeah- I can completely understand how someone can love playing games but still hate the ones that are available to them.
As to whether they call themselves a “gamer”, well really, what the fuck kind of pedantic, insecure douchebag gives a shit? Seriously- What the hell is wrong with people that they get that bent out of shape over how interested somebody else is in their hobby?
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Also failing the Bechdel test: pretty much all puzzle games, facebook games, and mobile games, which is basically the majority of games that are being played.
I play lots of video games. This past June I started a weekday blog on games. I went back and looked at every games I’ve talked about in my blog. Two passed the test, one passed if you choose to play a female character and didn’t if you choose to play a male, two failed despite having characters that actually talk to each other, and fourteen failed because the games did not include conversations. Of the two that failed, one failed because it had a gender imbalance (three male characters and one female character) and one failed because it has only two characters who engage in conversations and one of them is not human.
I also watch people play video games on the internet. Of those I have watched in the last few months, six I can think of have no conversations, and all of the rest pass the test if the protagonist is female and fail if the protagonist is male. From memory (I don’t have a handy record like I do on my blog) that one had a female lead, two had a choice of male or female lead and six or seven had a male lead.
I think what I said above is completely justified. But the majority of video games I play and watch are going to fail the test simply because, unlike movies, they really aren’t about conversations. For the majority of games that have conversations the Bechdel test only tells you whether the protagonist is male or female. You can make what you will of the fact that more protagonists are male, but you don’t have to invoke Bechdel to point it out. One game I can think of that I have played/watched is a real, legitimate failure of the Bechdel test because it really does have multiple characters who have their own storylines and somehow the female characters never even talk to one another (I think they did once but it was purely about the whereabouts of a male character).
The bechdel test is just a tool that tells you exactly what it does on the tin: if there are two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Yes, once you have a female protagonist that helps a lot.
You can still have perfectly horrible games that pass it and great games that fail it. It’s controversial because so much material fails it, and that the test should be trivial to pass. Also keep in mind that movies are just ~2 hours long and story driven games have around ~8-60 hours of gameplay.
If you’re playing puzzlers/creative indie games with no story/dialog, then no, you don’t have to particularly care about the results of the bechdel test. It’s about as relevant as applying it to table top games like scrabble or a modern dance piece.
Playing as a female character helps, but still doesn’t necessarily seal the deal if no other female characters exist. For example, Heavy Rain lets you play as Madison, but she doesn’t talk to any other women. Metroid, well you can argue whether or not Mother Brain counts as a second. Other games barely squeak by: In Heavenly Sword Nariko only has Kai to speak to in her village, and No One Lives Forever happens to have a villain who is a woman.
And yes, I originally also did ask for a list of games that star a sole female protagonist, as they are incredibly rare.
That’s precisely what I was cautioning. We know the Bechdel test isn’t a really a check to see if the movie is feminist or even if it is misogynist. The Bechdel test is a thought experiment that helps you think about movies generally more than it is a test about any movie in particular. This is why I cautioned about applying the Bechdel test to games. If you apply it broadly you’d find a tiny sliver of games that pass it, but there are a huge number of games that don’t pass merely because there is no dialogue in them whatsoever - either there are no characters talking or the characters talk to the player rather than to other characters.
If you want to apply the Bechdel test to games then you can only apply it to games that try to be like movies, and even then I don’t think it carries the same kind of weight. Games are framed very differently than movies.
The Bechdel test points out two things to us: 1) that there are fewer female than male characters, and 2) that female characters are less developed than male characters. While both of these things are probably just as true in video games as they are in movies, I don’t see the Bechdel test having the same power to point that out.
I mentioned above one game I watched really explicitly failed the Bechdel test. It was Indigo Prophecy, another David Cage game. That guy’s attitude towards women is not stellar.
Finally, as for Metroid, most Metroid games are the silent character/empty world type. In that context I think they are remarkably progressive. The very idea that a silent protagonist using a variety of weapons to fight aliens in a hostile environment is a woman was surprising at the time the original Metroid was made and actually continues to be unusual (and I insist that Metroid “Other M” never happened).
indeed at the beginning she states something like “note the games, shows may still be fun despite all of this”
sorry, couldn’t read all the comments so i’m not sure if this was brought up or not.
she keeps saying at about 10-14 min mark that the “choice to use feminizing signifiers” “forces” the game/show characters to “exhibit feminine stereo-types.”
i do question the use of overly-stereotypical feminizing signifiers in games in a superficial way.
but how can she say these “feminizers” force the female stereotypes without noticing the irony?
she can’t even bring herself to ignore the signifiers.
she had some good points, and these things should be talked about and examined, but these portions almost ruined it for me. We all grew up in this skewed (and hopefully healing) society, so the cues are in-grained and hard to ignore. but most of us aren’t pontificating on their negative impact.
overall this is a very ambitious and well researched piece of work, and she should be congratulated; not least of which on angering, and hopefully educating the more shallow and reactionary side of the internets.
exactly. game players are a pretty big segment of the population. but i view this as a problem in all media and how people sub-consciously apply these learned tropes throughout their lives. she can’t help but do it herself in the video and i’m sure we all do from time to time. that’s the problem. gender equality numbers don’t lie.
That’s funny, I had the same thoughts during Dishonored as well. “Okay, okay, rescue the cute little girl, I get it. Can I go teleport from roof to roof now?” As far as I was concerned about the amount of character they had given her and how much more interested I was in the mechanics of stealthing around I could have been called on to rescue a basket of puppies.
What a piece of work is a Pacman!
How simple in code, how invincible in power-pill-mode!
In form and moving how round and cardinal!
In action how like an sprite!
in apprehension how like a wheel of cheese!
The beauty of the arcade!
The paragon of coin-op!
And yet to me, what is this quintessence of pixels?
Pacman delights not me; no, nor Ms. Pacman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.
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I have of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all my coins.
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HAMLET Then saw you not his face?
HORATIO O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.
HAMLET What, look’d he frowningly?
HORATIO A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. 230
HAMLET Pale or red?
HORATIO Nay, very pale.
HAMLET Ah, so Pinky then, not Blinky. And fix’d his eyes upon you?
HORATIO Most constantly, even after Marcellus had consumed him with his powered pill, his eyes, though travelling hither to his ghostly chamber stayed upon us.
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You know, I do not know what I was thinking their name was when I decided they weren’t aping the AB’s…
So to conclude: just the league team. Everyone else copies the rugby team.
Because then you end up with two teams with the same name, and how would people differentiate them? My money would be that we’d see: “Lady Lions”
There’s nothing inherently feminine about the color pink. Pink used to be considered a masculine color. If you had a little boy, you decorated your nursery in pink because pink was just pastel red, and red is an aggressive color. It’s the color of blood and the flag you wave at bulls to get them to charge. If you had a little girl, you decorated with blue because blue was a delicate, dainty color associated with virginity. It’s the color that the Virgin Mary is wearing is pretty much every painting of her ever. The switch in our gender color coding that made pink a girls’ color and blue a boys’ color is actually pretty recent.
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