5 ms·

The 'Women as Background Part 2' video was very well-made, and utterly disturbing. I've seen terrible videos and images - it is the Internet afterall- but it wa

The 'Women as Background Part 2' video was very well-made, and utterly disturbing. I've seen terrible videos and images - it is the Internet afterall- but it was painful to watch. There's a number of games on there that I no longer care to revisit, or even play for the first time. (Also, what were the makers of God of War 3 thinking? Staggers the mind.)

archagon 12y ago
Yeah... and the worst part is, you kind of grow to ignore these tropes as you play these games. (And of course, this makes developers try to amp up the grit more and more.) Seeing them all at once is quite shocking. This is one of the reasons why I think these videos are very valuable.
mturmon 12y ago
I agree, it is painful to watch. I wonder about my gender sometimes -- it's not like misogyny is isolated to video games. Boys' clubs seem to allow it to blossom.
sebular 12y ago
Your comment provoked me to go and watch that video, and watching it clarified this whole issue for me. As someone who's done a reasonable amount of undergraduate-level film and literature analysis, I felt that the video fell quite nicely in line with that style of presentation, and it's clear that Ms. Sarkeesian has a strong background in that area. If this were for an assignment, she would've gotten a perfect score. However, watching the video as a gamer, not as a student, there is one thing about her video which stands out to me as the reason why she inspires rage in a subset of gamers. Ms. Sarkeesian doesn't highlight anything positive about gender roles in the games that she critiques. While she is under no obligation to do so, the indignant gamer might accuse her of cherry-picking her facts, forgetting that her video series is about "Tropes vs Women", not "when games do justice and injustice to women". Her series really is like a homework assignment for a college class, where the professor has asked for a list of tropes. If she'd included a "full assessment" of each game, her paper would've been ten times as long, and the professor would've given her a lower grade for including a bunch of irrelevant information. In other words, her series is so single-minded in its purpose (to identify tropes) that it bothers gamers who feel that it's unfair that she only talks about "Tropes vs Women in Video Games". They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes." They're enraged not by what she says, but rather by what she omits. And as far as games journalism goes, the fully-fledged "feminist game ratings" YouTube series/website is a void still waiting to be filled.
- DanBC 12y ago
  You make calm, reasonable, critiques of that video. You claim other "gamers" will not like her video for the reason you give. Can you explain how someone moves from "I disagree strongly with some aspects of the video you made" to [insert death threat here]?
  - dfxm12 12y ago
    Because it is easier. It's easier to be heard by making grandiose threats. It's easier to scare your target with such threats. FWIW, I've been getting death (and other) threats in my PSN inbox for as long as I've had my PS3 (just for winning games of Street Fighter). Threats are kind of a social norm for "gamers". I know that doesn't make it OK though, and I'm glad this behavior is finally getting exposed & chastised. It's how immature people act. They feel threatened & don't really know why, so they threaten back. I wish it was just children engaging in that type of behavior, but I know that's not the case.
- vec 12y ago
  > They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes." Except that I don't think she's even doing that. She seems to take pains to avoid implicating any single game, and including so many references actually serves to blunt the criticism of each individual example. Instead, the message seems to be that the conventions of storytelling in interactive media have some deep, fundamental flaws. The entire medium, therefore, must change dramatically for these flaws to be addressed. I can understand a reaction of "I like my games just like they are, thankyouverymuch" (though such a response obviously does not justify the behavior Ms. Sarkeesian has been subjected to). Speaking for myself, though, I enjoy games in spite of, not because of, these tropes, and I can't imagine that removing them would do anything other than make future games more enjoyable.

archagon 12y ago

Yeah... and the worst part is, you kind of grow to ignore these tropes as you play these games. (And of course, this makes developers try to amp up the grit more and more.) Seeing them all at once is quite shocking. This is one of the reasons why I think these videos are very valuable.

mturmon 12y ago

I agree, it is painful to watch. I wonder about my gender sometimes -- it's not like misogyny is isolated to video games. Boys' clubs seem to allow it to blossom.

sebular 12y ago

Your comment provoked me to go and watch that video, and watching it clarified this whole issue for me. As someone who's done a reasonable amount of undergraduate-level film and literature analysis, I felt that the video fell quite nicely in line with that style of presentation, and it's clear that Ms. Sarkeesian has a strong background in that area. If this were for an assignment, she would've gotten a perfect score. However, watching the video as a gamer, not as a student, there is one thing about her video which stands out to me as the reason why she inspires rage in a subset of gamers. Ms. Sarkeesian doesn't highlight anything positive about gender roles in the games that she critiques. While she is under no obligation to do so, the indignant gamer might accuse her of cherry-picking her facts, forgetting that her video series is about "Tropes vs Women", not "when games do justice and injustice to women". Her series really is like a homework assignment for a college class, where the professor has asked for a list of tropes. If she'd included a "full assessment" of each game, her paper would've been ten times as long, and the professor would've given her a lower grade for including a bunch of irrelevant information. In other words, her series is so single-minded in its purpose (to identify tropes) that it bothers gamers who feel that it's unfair that she only talks about "Tropes vs Women in Video Games". They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes." They're enraged not by what she says, but rather by what she omits. And as far as games journalism goes, the fully-fledged "feminist game ratings" YouTube series/website is a void still waiting to be filled.

DanBC 12y ago
You make calm, reasonable, critiques of that video. You claim other "gamers" will not like her video for the reason you give. Can you explain how someone moves from "I disagree strongly with some aspects of the video you made" to [insert death threat here]?
- dfxm12 12y ago
  Because it is easier. It's easier to be heard by making grandiose threats. It's easier to scare your target with such threats. FWIW, I've been getting death (and other) threats in my PSN inbox for as long as I've had my PS3 (just for winning games of Street Fighter). Threats are kind of a social norm for "gamers". I know that doesn't make it OK though, and I'm glad this behavior is finally getting exposed & chastised. It's how immature people act. They feel threatened & don't really know why, so they threaten back. I wish it was just children engaging in that type of behavior, but I know that's not the case.
vec 12y ago
> They misinterpret this as a video series on "games that fail women and are therefore terrible", when she's just doing a series on "games that have these tropes." Except that I don't think she's even doing that. She seems to take pains to avoid implicating any single game, and including so many references actually serves to blunt the criticism of each individual example. Instead, the message seems to be that the conventions of storytelling in interactive media have some deep, fundamental flaws. The entire medium, therefore, must change dramatically for these flaws to be addressed. I can understand a reaction of "I like my games just like they are, thankyouverymuch" (though such a response obviously does not justify the behavior Ms. Sarkeesian has been subjected to). Speaking for myself, though, I enjoy games in spite of, not because of, these tropes, and I can't imagine that removing them would do anything other than make future games more enjoyable.