Damsel in Distress (mouhaha)


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What do you mean with one-sided?

If you mean that it focuses on one specific aspect, sure. I don't see what's wrong with that.
Well it's called bias by design. If I take out something of every game that kinda looks similar, put them right one after the other in a video, completely out of context, then you can say any kind of lie about it. It's extremely easy to do.

That's usually what media does to manipulate public opinion these days. Very effective but very dishonest process.
 
I see these YouTube videos as a medium to express an opinion and present some arguments, not as something that needs to uphold the degree of scrutiny and methodological correctness of scientific research.

You are free to make your own YouTube video in which you "demonstrate", by stringing together a series of out-of-context game video fragments, that the mainstream video game industry is actually a female-centered feminist stronghold in which males are consistently objectified.
 
Try me. I'm always logical even in front of bullshit arguments. :)
Nah sorry, I realized my time is too valuable to be spent arguing about such things on internet forums, I would much rather have a conversation about it (preferably real life, though Skype often times is fine, too), but I don't see the point either.

Your effort to drag the matter into ridiculousness isn't very appealing to me and I don't think we could have a good conversation about this.

I share some of your points, for example I don't think there has been a good female protagonist in games, but that does not mean we should stop trying or think about the matter.

Sure, this is not the biggest problem the games industry currently has, but it directly feeds into one main problem, which is games being mostly male power fantasies.

Anyway, I think the video achieved what it was made for: a discussion and no matter how it goes, this is a good thing.

EDIT: Also please realize this is the second video of a three part series. It is one sided, but hopefully she will look at some positive examples in the third one (as she promised), so any discussion about one-sidedness and bias are kind of mute.
 
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^ There have been numerous critique vids on youtube  , some went through a list of games with female protaganists - look them up.
As ekianjo already pointed out, more is needed than just a female shaped/voiced protagonist in that context.
Also, there have been numerous critique vids of female feminists that rip into her crap - again look them up. 

As for Lego, You need to watch all her vids as I mostly have - I'm surely not going to go through them again to find that quote for you..
I watched some of the answering videos too, and while some made valid stakes against her most of them just did not understand what she was trying to tell.I'm (honestly) too lazy to look through her videos, but I don't think thats necessary. I have no reason to not believe you, she said something undifferentiaed about Lego, I just gave an (on context) example that she has the ability to have a more analytic view on things.

thatgui, ever seen the quote function before? :)
I know that "thing" I'm just to stupid to use it right
Then the same can be said about 99% of movies made before. Very few have strong female characters. And you know what? I dont really care. In case you have not noticed we live in a Men's world, where Women try to get more power progressively. Obviously everything we see around is still strongly influenced by the centuries behind us. So what's surprising that everything being produced reflect that fact? Nothing, really. Should we fight to have more strong women representation ? Meh, why don't women make their own games and show us the examples, then ? As far as I know, many women who play games are fine with the games made for guys and don't care so much.  

And its very obvious why games are the way they are: most game developers are guys and therefore have no idea (or probably very little) on how to write an interesting female lead (and no, Samus or Lara Croft aren't really strong female leads, you guys are totally wrong - these characters are just guys with breasts - there's nothing much female about them). Even Lara Croft was written to be a male lead in the first place, I don't invent anything.
What effect should this have on your discussion ? No one ever doubted that, sure it always the best solution if a "struggeling" person is able to help itself, but why not "lend a helping" hand now and then ?

Mouhaha (sorry) - because I don't think that's relevant to make games more interesting. Stories and character development are often just secondary in game. There are very few games where I genuinely manage to care about the characters - Most games are written by geeks who have no idea how to write characters in the first place and they barely manage to make good game mecanics already, so complaining about the storyline and characters is like telling you that there's a scratch on your windshield when you completely wrecked your car already. 

It's just hilarious to focus on that.
 So your basically saying that if something is boring don't start trying to change it unless you are certain there is a positive outcome ?

I do not want to imply that having self reliant, strong, confident, "not male with mammaries", etc. female characters will automatically lead into a bright gaming future. But I think it is worth a try, what could we loose in the attempt ?

Can we stop the crap "games are art", "games reflect culture", "games = society". It wasn't even very funny in the first place when the first arsehole online claimed this kind of thing, but now this is getting really old.

Games just reflect how lazy, uninventive the people who create the games are. Ever talked to game designers? Even seen them speaking ? Most of them may be good at what they are doing but not very smart nor interesting people otherwise. Even Kojima was just a frustrated guy who wanted to do movies but couldn't, so he wrote games instead. And it seems like he made a few good games by accident, if I trust his track record until now. The more he gets the financial means to do something else with "larger meaning", the crappier the result. I guess you understand my point, heh. 

I dont consider games represent anything. And I certainly don't GIVE meaning to games that are obviously just produced to make money.
I have the feeling your mixing up a lot of things here.

We seem to have quite different definitions of "culture". Your approach seems to be if something is "art" then it belongs to our (or the respective society you are bound to) culture . But who defines what "art" is ?

Culture (in the modern sense) is just the sum of things that a defined group of people (eg.: population of a country, an ethnic group, etc.) is producing in a formative way. This is somewhat different from its orginal meaning in terms of bringing something foward (and even more from Kants later differentiation), but thats (as aggravating as it often is) just how it is.

So games (as movies, books, painting, etc) are part of our culture, even if you (or I) don't like it, and as that reflect back to us as beeing a lazy uninventive society. But thats just one side of the coin, and by denying that a part of our gaming culture is indeed interesting, intelligent, divers, reflective etc. you do exactly what a lot of people accuse her of : beeing biased.

Games are a passtime to have fun. That's the definition of a game. Stop looking for hidden messages behind Donkey Kong, there's none. Nobody purposely thought 50 hours about whether or not to put a female character stolen by a huge monkey. It's not because what she says POTENTIALLY makes sense that it's actually true, Oh no.
We definately approach games from opposite directions. For me Games aren't just a passtime to have fun. They can be, but only in a special context - like playing with friends, but then its not about having a passtime with a game but a passtime with my friends.I need to feel that a game progresses me in one form or the other otherwise I loose interest. Donkey Kong is a good example, I played a few levels, than lost intereset as it is just an iteration of the basic principle showed in the first level over and over again.

Sure there is no meaning in Donkey Kong (other then to make money), but that does not automatically mean that every game has not more depth into it than the screen it is displayed on. Take Bioshock for example - I didn't like the game mechanics at all, but I did like its popcultural approach on Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged" so I played it to its lousy end. Is it good game ? Depends on the players view on things. Is there something more than meets the eye/ear ? Definately ! Thus worth a playthrough for me.

I'm also somewhat irritated by the thoughts you present here: On one hand you seem frustrated by the stall the gaming industry is in, but on the other hand seem to think that games are just another way of passing time while gettings some amusement out of it. But isn't that a contradiction of some sorts ? While denying games to be of any "cultural" value also moaning about games beeing not inventive and game designers beeing lazy. But how is evolution possibly if they are already at the boundaries you concede to tem ?

The argument leads to... "why do you care if you are not fed with it in the first place?". It's all about Freedom. If people like games where women are viewed in this way, well LET THEM. If people like eating cheeseburger everyday well LET THEM. This attitude of wanting to correct every single wrong on the planet is very much alike to being oppressive and disrespecting other people's tastes. Example: People like the XBOXONE ? Great for them, for me it's not so hot. So I don't expect to buy one. End of story as far as I am concerned, and lost opportunity for Microsoft, as a previous client of their consoles. I am not going to post videos explaining why the XBOXONE is (probably) crap. I'm done already.
Leaving aside the fact that no one said that this sort of games should be forbidden or outlawed, you seem to have a rather selective definition of freedom. While the freedom to create/consume games of "any" kind (I guess we all agree there are some kind of games that should not be made) is something very precious, the freedom of critizing the current state of the gaming industry seems somewhat exclusive to its form (text is ok, video is not) and context ("gameing industry is lazy" is ok, but saying "it is sexiest" (please forgive me the "buzzword") is unnecessary).
So for this person we are talking about: you don't like video games portraying girls like that? Well good for you, there's a very easy way to avoid it ! Don't play games! Problem solved. And honestly if she really cares about the conditions of women in the world, there are SO MANY OTHER PRODUCTIVE things she could do right now instead of complaining about that super-minor-minuscule issue of women representation in games. As we speak there are women being literally enslaved in many countries around the world, and that has nothing to do about video games because they said countries don't even have money for games in the first place. Why not fight for that, instead ?
Hmm, people are dying around the world because of war, hunger, indifference every day. Which seems more important to me than human rights, privacy, environmental problems, beeing a victim of a crime, personal losses, having complaints about people making videos about super-minor-minuscule issues, etc. So we should put this all on hold till the bigger problems are solved ?
Of course she is perfectly entitled to have her opinion, and I am perfectly entitled to disagree with her as well. And being laughed at is always a risk when you go out in public. I guess you know what you face when you put a controversial video on youtube. If you don't feel comfortable with feedback, don't do it.
I don't remember her complaining about negative feedback in general, so this  passage seems rather superflous to me
I can imagine, how big the difference is between Northamerica and Europe, especcially my area.
I highly doubt that (at least in that regard)
 
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Sorry, that I did not read the whole thread, so this might have been brought up already,, but shouldn't media be designed for the people who enjoy it?


If there was a huge market for females who want to play videogames, shouldn't there be a lot of those games, where the protagonist is a strong woman?


Why are there so many games where you run around shooting stuff and rescue the princess? Because games that have reversed roles don't sell that well, what leads to the conclusion that women don't like to play videogames or better, don't see the need to design, program and publish those games themselves?


You could argue that this is because of women being told to not like videogames and rather play with Barbie dolls, but that is no excuse in our century, I think.


So, women who like videogames enough to found their own studio and make games for women seems to be nonexistend.


Maybe someone should bring up a Kickstarter and see if such a game would be founded successfully...


Or otherwise, women may REALLY like to play dolls and feel like princesses, while men like to run around with big guns and feel like actionheroes.


Edit: I guess if you would do a survey on what videogames are the womens favorites, you may have Nintendogs and The Sims on top of that list.


Edit2: Just to clarify: I'm actually tryIng to say, that you should just let everyone play with what they want.
 
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The thing that stands out in my mind, is that for a very influential female game designer (Williams as I mentioned earlier) such a storyline was not the least bit offensive, in fact she made more than one game based on the damsel in distress premise.

The words sexist and racist are thrown about a lot these days,   and while sexism and racism are certainly real problems I also believe that a lot that is called sexist or racist is in fact,  just stuff that some individuals have taken offence at and labelled that way for the purposes of rallying others to the cause of also taking offence.  I happen to think this falls into that category.

- Neelix
 
Edit: I guess if you would do a survey on what videogames are the womens favorites, you may have Nintendogs and The Sims on top of that list.
Add World of Warcraft, League of Legends, The Movies and Knights of Honour and you got the list of games my ex-gfs played all the time but yep, The Sims was always Nr.1 - seems to be the digital version of playing with dolls and watching soaps.

Except the half japanese one, there it was Doraemon on SNES all the time.
 
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shouldn't media be designed for the people who enjoy it?
"Should be" doesn't necessarily mean "is". The video game industry has become increasingly formulaic in the last decade, they make the same type of game because it sells but it sells because that's really the only type of game there is. Indies take chances and these occasionally take off, but for the most part the big names which get the big sales don't want to stray too far from what they know works.But just because something works one way doesn't mean it wouldn't work better a different way, and there-in lies the problem. If a LoZ game were released where Zelda was the protagonist, would that sell as well as the traditional games? No one can say because no one has put any serious research into it. Can't even make a reasonable guess without a lot of research because there are just too many variables involved.
 
I am a human and I object to games sometimes having cute furry characters as their lead (or even having to rescue cute little fuzzy-wuzzies). This is anti-human and as such these games should all be banned!!!!!! ;) :p
 
iprice, If you're trying to be satirical you should first be aware that no one with a coherent argument actually wants these games to be banned in any way, they just want game developers to take the time and do some real research, discover the market that they've been driving away, and take a chance on appealing to that market. The only people that say "these are anti-woman and need to be banned" are crazy people who have difficulty putting two logical arguments together.
 
FFS. Get a life. It was supposed to be a joke. I wasn't saying that this woman (or any other) wants these "sexist" games banned or speaking for or against her in any way shape or form.
 
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just want game developers to take the time and do some real research, discover the market that they've been driving away, and take a chance on appealing to that market.
Ok, I am a bit old fashioned sometimes, but my concept of art says, that the artist should do whatever he likes and has inspiration for.

This whole industrialisation of everything including videogames just makes it strange for me,

you do not find much love for the project anymore in it coming from the designers.

But well, many of the games I love were a financial disaster and some of them simply killed the studio... so I get the point.

It is nearly the same in my craft.
 
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The words sexist and racist are thrown about a lot these days,   and while sexism and racism are certainly real problems I also believe that a lot that is called sexist or racist is in fact,  just stuff that some individuals have taken offence at and labelled that way for the purposes of rallying others to the cause of also taking offence.  I happen to think this falls into that category.
Exactly. Using strong words for things that should not be covered by them.

Then you end up with people losing the real understanding of the words in the first place, and misusing them everywhere. It's fucked up.
 
The depiction of Princes Peach in most Mario games as a helpless damsel in distress is in my opinion not sexist in itself (rather it's just an example of poor plot writing, but who cares, nobody plays Mario games for their plot), but it does not seem implausible that repeated usage of such a trope does contribute to the propagation and reinforcement of sexist stereotypes.

There are other video games that are sexist by themselves (most typically by reducing women to sexual objects with the aim of improving sales to an audience with a large proportion of hormonal, single, heterosexual males).

Obviously sexism itself is more problematic than having a story that employs some tropes that can be interpreted as contributing to the propagation of sexism. Imagine a cover box for the next Super Mario which features a picture of a naked big-boobed hi-res Princes Peach - that would be worse than just a "damsel in distress" Peach.

But it's not because there are worse things, that nothing is wrong at all with it. Yes, there are video games that are way more sexist than Mario. Yes, many advertisements are much worse in terms of sexism than video games. But there is no reason to reserve "bad words" only to describe the worst offenders.

If someone is shouting insults to a black person just because he or she is black, that's racism. Even if there are others who are not just using words but use physical violence as well.
 
If someone is shouting insults to a black person just because he or she is black, that's racism.
Yeah, but even if it's not because that person is black, it would still be called racism. Because people tend to see an attack on a person of a different color/race as racism, no matter if that attack was purely personal.
 
The idea of having a princess in a patriarchal society, OK

What that entails, NOT OK

Its both or none, you don't get to pick. Seems everyone picks what they want from European folklore. Unless you go back to a time when queens ruled, thats what it was.

And so long as it is that, why would it be something else. Make your own game and stop complaining.

Those classic games represent an era just as much as what they depict. There might be problems, there might not be problems. I don't see how that documentary changed any of it.

Complaining about what the nintendo universe is with that poor of an understanding is disregarding technical difficulties, and that it was a selection of entirely different games at first. The way i always saw donkey kong was that peach had employed a monkey to guard her from commoners, so that one would have to prove oneself to get to her. In that respect the only one who is being sexist is the documentary author with her view on it. I could be wrong though.

IMO those games had way more character than what we have now. Up until about ~1998. Back when wario was wario. He wasnt just some egomaniac, he collected all those coins and collected treasure for peach to build her a castle, because he knew mario had the better looks, and she still turned him down. Where were the modern-feminists then?

Our problem isnt japanse or european culture, its the judeo-christian / american counterpart of side 1 100% good vs side 2 100% evil. Everything is getting dumbed down, you cant fight dying, you have to win, there has to be a unison happy ending to everything. And your hand is being held all along the way.
 
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I did not want to revive this topic but just post something about this fake PR-Queen Anita Sarkeesian, but anyway:

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equal_rights.jpg


oppression.jpg
 
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