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Roderick

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Imagine how much time this must take. To get the perfect footage from all these games is a full time job. Anita Sarkeesian has a full-time job playing video games and somehow this means she hates video games.

 

One of the routine accusations hurled at her is that at least a chunk of her footage is just taken from YouTube videos and uncredited.  Which, so what, you don't have to play and record through the entirety of a bunch of games to provide good criticism of them.  There are at least a couple of instances of her using uncredited fan art, which I do find distasteful, if for no other reason than you should always give credit to an artist even if you aren't legally required to.  I'm more ambivalent about crediting the creators of LPs.  Unless you are discussing something truly unique (the Spelunky eggplant run), or specifically addressing the creator's play or commentary, then it's really just background footage and not art itself. 

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Scenes like the ones depicted in the video are part of the reason I don't play shooters much any more.  It felt like every single game I played had some bit in the beginning where a woman was either killed or hurt, each new game being more graphic than the last but somehow treating the event more casually than before.  I can't even imagine what is going through the developers' heads spending day after day implementing that stuff.

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So adult women are now the largest audience for games.

 

Delicious dudebro tears.

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Ugh, some of these games, eg Dishonored and Bioshock, are on my backlog to play but now my anticipation for playing them has been mixed with trepidation.

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So adult women are now the largest audience for games.

 

Delicious dudebro tears.

 

That's something people were also saying when GDC lost its shit over facebook or maybe casual games in 2009. It might the new "Games are bigger than Hollywood".

Not that dudebro tears aren't delicious though.

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So adult women are now the largest audience for games.

 

Delicious dudebro tears.

 

Pretty sure that's F2P mobile games though. Not sure if dudebros care about that.

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First they came for the Facebook games, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a girl.

 

Then they came for the Mobile games, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a girl.

 

Then they came for the F2P games, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a girl.

 

Then they came for the AAA Games—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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If we're all referencing the same thing, I think that stat doesn't include steam sales. Not exactly more dudebros but more like more manbabies.

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First they came for the Facebook games, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a girl.

Then they came for the Mobile games, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a girl.

Then they came for the F2P games, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a girl.

Then they came for the AAA Games—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Can you please explain your meaning behind this holocaust allusion? I'm feeling a bit impatient lately and I find myself defaulting to unforgiving assumptions when left to my own interpretations.

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Imagine how much time this must take. To get the perfect footage from all these games is a full time job. Anita Sarkeesian has a full-time job playing video games and somehow this means she hates video games.

What strikes me is that she has a skill for incredibly clear and convincing essays whose points all reinforce each other to give me kaiser-sose moments. It's hard for me to see systemic devaluation of a group whom I am not part of until I see succinct arguments like hers. Then once my brain is introduced to the idea, I begin to see it everywhere.

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The Tim Schafer thing hammers home again what I think is one of the strangest things about this - the guys who viscerally loathe Anita Sarkeesian, and who have been led to believe that she is the enemy of video games, just don't seem to get how far away they are in belief and method from people who actually make video games.

 

Like, what made them think that Tim Schafer - fortysomething Berkeley graduate, Northern Californian, father of a young daughter for whom he made a casual Kinect game, head of the studio that made Costume Quest - would hate Sarkeesian the way they hate Sarkeesian? It's weird.

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I've felt for awhile like there are certain behaviors that our society has gendered (being emotional, complaining and gossiping) and that the gendering of those behaviors contributes to men (some men, #notallmen) being relatively blind to those behaviors when they or other men engage in them.  In the reactions to Sarkeesian, or the mob going after Quinn, you can see men (manbabies) just being emotional as fuck, like complete temper-tantrum freakouts, but they accuse other people of being too emotional, seeing their own emotions as calm, rational behavior.  They complain about women like Sarkeesian criticizing gaming, viewing her work as being nothing but one big complaint, without being able to see their own behavior.  And a lot of the stuff around Quinn is similar to very traditional gossip, and you can see people dig on Sarkeesian to try and get gossip material on her.  And the gossip even fulfills a similar purpose, of identifying those who violate the shared group norms and punishing them.

 

It's not a thing I just see online, I see it all over in my regular life too.  I feel like its a really pervasive attitude that runs through our culture.

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The Tim Schafer thing hammers home again what I think is one of the strangest things about this - the guys who viscerally loathe Anita Sarkeesian, and who have been led to believe that she is the enemy of video games, just don't seem to get how far away they are in belief and method from people who actually make video games.

 

Like, what made them think that Tim Schafer - fortysomething Berkeley graduate, Northern Californian, father of a young daughter for whom he made a casual Kinect game, head of the studio that made Costume Quest - would hate Sarkeesian the way they hate Sarkeesian? It's weird.

 

I'm actually relatively in the dark about the Tim Schafer part, but to hear that people are somehow surprised that he'd support Sarkeesian is kind of baffling.  If you look at Broken Age alone, half the story is about a girl who's trying to change a society where women are literal sacrifices and the other half is about a boy who gets tired of playing with toys and learns to grow up.

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What strikes me is that she has a skill for incredibly clear and convincing essays whose points all reinforce each other to give me kaiser-sose moments. It's hard for me to see systemic devaluation of a group whom I am not part of until I see succinct arguments like hers. Then once my brain is introduced to the idea, I begin to see it everywhere.

 

I don't know that I agree with this, because I actually feel like some of the points she makes actually weaken the overall essay. I haven't seen part two yet, but the first part of the Women as Background Objects series actually spent a great deal of its middle portion kind of losing me. She spent a fairly significant amount of time leaning heavily on a small handful of games' treatment of women while completely neglecting to mention that they treat men identically (in terms of the things she was pointing out, not overall) and actually often mock the type of person who would do such a thing, and the society that would allow it. It bothered me because those games DO treat women problematically, and even the points she was discussing (largely centred around the ability to use and abuse NPCs with relative impunity) are problematic as well, it just felt incredibly rhetorically strange. Reaching strenuously for examples of mistreatment isn't necessary; there are plenty that are readily available and it weakened the entire (very valid) argument for me.

 

That said, Sarkeesian is still quite new to this, I believe, and beyond that no piece of criticism is ever perfect, nor does it ever affect everyone the same way. This is still a very important set of issues to talk about, and using clear examples and explaining them in a way that makes sense even for people who are not particularly deep into the industry is a worthwhile cause. I also don't want to imply that I actually think these videos are bad. In fact, I've only seen one group tackle similar problems better - Extra Credits (perhaps because the main writer is actually a game designer himself). If I'm disappointed, it's only because I want more people to do an even better job of this.

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I don't know that I agree with this, because I actually feel like some of the points she makes actually weaken the overall essay. I haven't seen part two yet, but the first part of the Women as Background Objects series actually spent a great deal of its middle portion kind of losing me. She spent a fairly significant amount of time leaning heavily on a small handful of games' treatment of women while completely neglecting to mention that they treat men identically (in terms of the things she was pointing out, not overall) and actually often mock the type of person who would do such a thing, and the society that would allow it. It bothered me because those games DO treat women problematically, and even the points she was discussing (largely centred around the ability to use and abuse NPCs with relative impunity) are problematic as well, it just felt incredibly rhetorically strange. Reaching strenuously for examples of mistreatment isn't necessary; there are plenty that are readily available and it weakened the entire (very valid) argument for me.

 

Are you talking about the part where she is explaining how games are different than other mediums because the player is encouraged to play with the objects in the world to see how they react? 

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Men cannot be treated identically because the society in which we live is not equal in it's treatment of genders or race. Media cannot truly objectify a man.

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I've felt for awhile like there are certain behaviors that our society has gendered (being emotional, complaining and gossiping) and that the gendering of those behaviors contributes to men (some men, #notallmen) being relatively blind to those behaviors when they or other men engage in them.

Kind of tangential to this, but I recently caught myself thinking that, when raising my daughters, I found myself hoping that they won't get into 'girly' things so much. Mainly because I can't relate to it very well, but also because I noticed that when I didn't think about it, I saw them as inferior to more 'boyish' things.

It's really scary how deeply this kind of garbage is ingrained.

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I think it's important to note that while in a quantitative sense we can say that men and women can be treated equally (ie, women and men are portrayed in the nude in a game) there is absolutely no qualitative equality when you consider that women have been systemically treated differently from men for practically all of recorded history and the same act doesn't apply in the same way (using the same example, female and male nudity are nowhere near comparable considering the shame women are taught to feel regarding their bodies and the pride men are supposed to have in their bodies).

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Men cannot be treated identically because the society in which we live is not equal in it's treatment of genders or race. Media cannot truly objectify a man.

 

Yeah I realised as soon as I wrote that that it was just as off base and rhetorically suspect as the stuff I was trying to highlight. We hear the "but that happens to men too" excuse used so much in so many ways that are total bullshit that it should have set off bigger alarm bells in my own brain. Let me try again.

 

It would be more relevant and accurate to say that many of the behaviours player are allowed to engage in with female NPCs are not necessarily indicative of a male devalued interpretation of women.* This is because they are already so deep in another gaming trope - disposable, interchangeable non-story-related NPCs. Being able to be randomly murdered and dragged around in games such as GTA, Deus Ex and Hitman are not attributes of female characters, they're attributes of any character that isn't a participant in the story, and more broadly any character other than that the player is inhabiting. This isn't to say it isn't a problem, or even that it doesn't also merit social scrutiny and worry about whether it's reducing empathy and subtly changing viewpoints (just in this case the victims would be anyone the player doesn't know or anyone who doesn't have value to them - something our community does often seems to have trouble with), it's just that Sarkeesian's assertions that this is about sexism specifically felt somewhat unsupported.

 

Again, though, this kind of wouldn't matter if there were more people creating the sort of content she does - any flaws would be covered by other commentators. What I really want is people who are even more knowledgeable and experienced with the industry creating even more incisive commentary about these things, not for her to stop.

 

*Note: I really am saying not necessarily. Unconscious sexism probably DOES play some part in it, but the point I was really trying to make in my first post is that a lot of part 1 felt like it was somehow trying too hard to find fault once Sarkeesian got on a roll with a few games, and how that is not necessary because there is SO MUCH SEXISM to criticise totally legitimately. I think I am particularly sensitive to any overreaching of this sort because I am always worried about MRAs latching on to it as proof that the whole topic should be ignored.

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(Looks like I'm a bit late to the discussion here, but that's how I usually am.)

I dug a pothole when the Quinn controversy started, and I've been observing the carnage from a distance. I've seen the expected overreactions and misbehaviour from 4chan and the likes, but I've also seen some disgusting things from the Quinn supporter side. While I would probably never put myself completely in either one camp, at this time I would be more comfortable in moving my defensive position closer to the "4chan side" and face the "Quinn side". Or maybe I should say I'm on The Fine Young Capitalists's side, which 4chan also supports, since that has had the most influence on my position.

A project where women pitch their game ideas, people vote on their favourite one and the winning idea gets made into a full game. The winner gets 8% of the net profits from the game and the rest goes to charity. They're also free to leave the contest at any time if they feel they'd rather try it on their own. Apparently this project was worth torpedoing and shouldn't happen because ZQ (and her followers) decided that it exploits women. Also there was apparently some misunderstanding about the rules regarding transgendered participants.

Pardon my tone, but who the fuck is she to decide whether or not other women should be allowed to take this opportunity? Maybe other potential female game developers are not in a position where they can tweet "help I'm being oppressed" and receive $2300 / month of sympathy money. Maybe not everyone has such close ties to tons of people in the video game industry. I think someone needs to check their privilege (could this be the day that I finally fully understand the meaning of that phrase?! Maybe not).

As a result of this, in my book, Zoe Quinn is at least a Grade B asshole. I guess I'm fine with that because she got 4chan to donate to a feminist cause AND colon cancer research, and /v/ even designed a female character, but unfortunately it was a half-nude gross misogynistic sexi- oh wait no, it's a young woman in jeans and a hoodie.

Maybe I should've just linked to this instead, since it's more clearly written, calm and reflects my views very well, but I felt that I should maybe try using my own words as well. That's my 2 cents.

Removed my 'obvious out'.

Edited by Security_Tubbs

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A project where women pitch their game ideas, people vote on their favourite one and the winning idea gets made into a full game. The winner gets 8% of the net profits from the game and the rest goes to charity. They're also free to leave the contest at any time if they feel they'd rather try it on their own. Apparently this project was worth torpedoing and shouldn't happen because ZQ (and her followers) decided that it exploits women. Also there was apparently some misunderstanding about the rules regarding transgendered participants.

 

It was several pages back, so easy to miss, but I'd ask you to read my interpretation of the FYC and their...thing, and explain to me why the project is credible to you. 

 

In the comments of that NG article, there was also a person claiming that Quinn single-handedly orchestrated (image of a now deleted Reddit post) a conspiracy to try and bring down a women focused game jam.  That led me to the FineYoungCapitalists and this audio explanation.  The whole thing screams scam to me.  It's not a game jam, it's a contest with 5 anonymous people we are told are women.  We are told that it has to be a contest, and not a game jam, because Canadian law would prevent a women only games jam but not a women only contest.  Wut?  The women won't be making games, because they have no experience, because women with no experience making games were recruited.  They'll just be providing ideas to the people who actually know how to make games.  The women will own the work, but will only be allowed to keep 8 percent of the profits, and the rest must be donated to charity, all of that after the professional designers are paid, of course.  There's an indiegogo to fund the making of the game.  And of course, if the game never turns a profit, no money will go to charity and the winning designer (if she exists) will never see a dime.  Apparently Quinn was calling shenanigans on them, and now they've jumped on the bandwagon of attacking her in various places, giving all the haters another bullet point to add to their ever expanding list of proof of how evil she is.

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Now to see how much I'll regret getting into this.

If you're going to make statements like this, don't end them with this obvious out. Stand by your accusations.

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Now to see how much I'll regret getting into this.

 

I hope you don't regret getting into it at all, but I'm not exactly clear on what you mean when you talk about "sides." You say you agree with the 4chan side, except that you've ignored all but the best behavior by them and all but the worst behavior by Quinn in order to make that decision. I think you have to take all the actions of a given "side" in sum if you're going to define them that way. Accordingly, I can see how an (alleged) attempt to shut down a game development competition could make you view Quinn as something of an asshole, but I don't really see how that compares to having an eight thousand-word rant divulging (and possibly inventing) your personal life in the most unflattering light possible, experiencing systematic harassment and death threats, and generally being made into a strawman for everyone's pet gripe against games journalism for weeks on end. Is it just that you don't have a name and face to attach to all of that assholery that makes Quinn's behavior feel more egregious? This is what I mean about how the internet could make any of us look bad if it wanted to do so. I'm just lucky that I'm not successful or female enough to attract its toxic gaze.

 

And, like Bjorn, I am also unimpressed by people come out of the woodwork to profit by economic or cultural capital from all the hate against Quinn and other small indie devs. Basically, I'm really going to have to see TFYC take the high road in some way, shape, or form before I'm willing to privilege their accusations over the documented experience of human suffering at the hands of their supporters.

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(Looks like I'm a bit late to the discussion here, but that's how I usually am.)

I dug a pothole when the Quinn controversy started, and I've been observing the carnage from a distance. I've seen the expected overreactions and misbehaviour from 4chan and the likes, but I've also seen some disgusting things from the Quinn supporter side. While I would probably never put myself completely in either one camp, at this time I would be more comfortable in moving my defensive position closer to the "4chan side" and face the "Quinn side". Or maybe I should say I'm on The Fine Young Capitalists's side, which 4chan also supports, since that has had the most influence on my position.

A project where women pitch their game ideas, people vote on their favourite one and the winning idea gets made into a full game. The winner gets 8% of the net profits from the game and the rest goes to charity. They're also free to leave the contest at any time if they feel they'd rather try it on their own. Apparently this project was worth torpedoing and shouldn't happen because ZQ (and her followers) decided that it exploits women. Also there was apparently some misunderstanding about the rules regarding transgendered participants.

Pardon my tone, but who the fuck is she to decide whether or not other women should be allowed to take this opportunity? Maybe other potential female game developers are not in a position where they can tweet "help I'm being oppressed" and receive $2300 / month of sympathy money. Maybe not everyone has such close ties to tons of people in the video game industry. I think someone needs to check their privilege (could this be the day that I finally fully understand the meaning of that phrase?! Maybe not).

As a result of this, in my book, Zoe Quinn is at least a Grade B asshole. I guess I'm fine with that because she got 4chan to donate to a feminist cause AND colon cancer research, and /v/ even designed a female character, but unfortunately it was a half-nude gross misogynistic sexi- oh wait no, it's a young woman in jeans and a hoodie.

Maybe I should've just linked to this instead, since it's more clearly written, calm and reflects my views very well, but I felt that I should maybe try using my own words as well. That's my 2 cents.

Removed my 'obvious out'.

I'm reading this as "She deserves it."

What am I doing wrong here?

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In addition to what Bjorn said, a "game jam" such as that one exploits women in the same way that artists are exploited in various avenues by people potentially "giving them a chance for people to see their work". There are any number of examples, but one of the most immediate that comes to mind is when a tech startup decides to post a "contest" on social media - design us a logo and the best one gets $100 (or whatever, just imagine this is a fair rate for designing a logo in that industry)! If they manage to sucker 10 artists that each spend two hours designing them a logo, they basically get 20 hours of work for the price of 2 hours. One artist gets paid while nine did a lot of work for nothing.

 

In this case, there's not even a promise of $100 at the end. There's a revenue share agreement that pays a paltry 8% of profits. That's generous if you assume the game even makes a profit. Who are the Fine Young Capitalists to promise that the game will be a success? A massive majority of indie games break even or make a very small profit, particularly if you're talking about a small team with a small scope game.

 

/v/ designed a female character that was tasteful. What is your point in mentioning that? Because honestly, /v/ is so wildly vitriolic that literally the only reason they developed that character is so that suckers who believe that they're being earnest can use it as ammunition to defend them. Or in other words, they did it to piss off their critics and make it so a surface level survey of their intentions reveal "feminism" instead of "attention-whoring scam".

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