Idle Thumbs 173: Ridonkulous Rift

[Ozzie]

Honestly, tears were almost welling up when I saw the mere "What a week" on the front page. Because it was a terrible week, nay, weeks now. I wasn't affected by any of it personally, but it concerned me, and suddenly in that moment, but not before, it saddened me. What little things can do...thanks.

[tegan]

A)

(

©

 

I just want to say that I love that this happened by complete accident.

[DarthEnderX]

So are none of the Idle Thumbs guys aware that there is a new Bugs Bunny show currently running on television now?

 

Granted, it's nothing like the old cartoons(it's actually like this weirdly mundane sit-com, and what little

there is, is generally portrayed as taking place inside a character's head), but it doesn't really play into that image that they think the character represents currently either.

[clyde]

Listening to this episode was straight up cathartic for me. Like y'all talked about, there's just been a lot of news and happenings lately that are real bummers. My view that the three current-events I have taken particular interest in have all been cases where the aggressors are successfully manipulating the public's reasoning, to make dissent I empathize with look like an attack, has literally made me lose sleep. This month has made me feel like everything is not going to be alright which is directly opposed to my default optimism. I'm having to create a new foundation in the way I see this world, one in which I still want to encouarage compassion and capability regardless of whether or not it has a chance of success. It's emotionally draining. To hear y'all talk about the issue with clarity and confidence after seeing so much passionate confusion was very helpful. I took a three-hour nap afterwards and I feel better than I've felt since I originally heard about Quinn's harassment. I might even feel better than before I heard about it actually, new layers of realism make my sense of participation in society seem more vivid.

 

 

A subset of the ‘discussion’, if you can call it that, over the last week or so is the ethics of Patreon and games journalists directly supporting the people they cover. I’m not sure where I land on this – does anyone have any thoughts either way?

 

To me, the majority of the concerns seem like an additional attempt to find dirt on Quinn. I think that the campaign against her is attempting to intimidate game-journalists and game-critics to associate any potential coverage of her to be an invitation for the internet hate-machine to comb through anything they have ever done that might sully their reputation if explained with a bunch of red-line connections or angry vlogs. On these very forums, some members have stated they they do have a sincere interest in the possible implications of a journalist funding a developer's patreon-account, but I think they have found that trying to discuss it at a time when the reason it has come up is its use in visible hate-campaign, is difficult and leads to a lot of involuntary distrust that takes a lot of effort to assuage. 

[David]

So are none of the Idle Thumbs guys aware that there is a new Bugs Bunny show currently running on television now?

 

Granted, it's nothing like the old cartoons(it's actually like this weirdly mundane sit-com, and what little

there is, is generally portrayed as taking place inside a character's head), but it doesn't really play into that image that they think the character represents currently either.

 

Was not aware, either!

 

The discussion on the episode reminded me of 

 and A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith, made by the Spümcø (Ren & Stimpy) crew in the late 90's.

[BusbyBerkeley]

Also, hey! I finally decided to give Nature Box a try after browsing their site a couple times after hearing the ads. The free trial thing seems to be totally free, including shipping. It's set to auto renew into a regular subscription, but it looks like I will be able to cancel if I decide I don't like the snack or whatever. Thanks thumbs! 

[pkirkner]

She wanted to study a few issues, and has done so honestly. The points she makes, in the context she makes them, are completely robust.

 

And given what she's had to endure for studying these issues, the odds are much worse that we'll see similar analysis from other contexts. Among all of the other counterproductive nonsense this particular mob has accomplished, they've managed to make it far more likely that Anita's analysis will stand alone as the authoritative take. We'd all benefit from more voices applying critical analysis to games, both from a feminist perspective and others, but why in the world would anyone want to at this point? The stakes seem way too low to put up with constant threats of violence.

[gritfish]

Okay, I read through the previous pages a bit to see if anyone else brought this up, and I didn't see it. I'm sorry if this has been talked about to death in previous weeks threads - I know it's been talked about on the podcast before.

The idea you can have (or want) a "journalistic" review of something is insane.

There's this huge dischord with people arguing there's not enough curation in systems like Steam, the Apple App Store and Google Play, and then turning around and arguing that reviewers/critics aren't impartial enough.

The whole reason I read reviews for games or movies is because I want to know someone's opinion and perspective on it. "Edge of Tomorrow" looked terrible from the trailer, but EVERY person/reviewer who I know enjoys the same science fiction movies I like loves that movie. I missed it at the cinema, but I plan on grabbing on dvd when it comes out. The trailers for "Stranger than Fiction" made that movie look like Will Ferrell screaming for 90 minutes - the movie is anything but that. From the outside, Spec Ops: The Line looks like a typical bro-shooter with nothing to say. People with opinions I value found more in that game than I could imagine.

Media criticism, for me, is like an escape valve for good things to get noticed despite terrible marketing / business decisions the creator likely had no part in. Objectivegamereviews.com is a fantastic joke/experiment, but if we lived in a world where only "objective" reviews exist, none of this could possibly happen. Without critics telling me it wasn't the horror game it was dressed as, Gone Home would probably still be "that game about a ghost or something".

What's worse is that the argument that reviews and criticism should be treated as journalism takes away from the need for more "real" journalism in games though, to cover things that AAA studio employees under NDA's can't say without getting blacklisted in the industry. What was going on inside Irrational during Infinite's development? Who at Capcom was responsible for the continuing cancellation of every Megaman game? Which studios have unfair hiring practices / abusive "crunch time" / discrimination? Those stories can only come out of "anonymous sources" and journalistic protection.

When it comes down to it:
The people who make games do it because they care about games.
The people who write about games are people do it because they care about games.
The people who read about games do it because they care about games.
The people who care about journalism? They're probably paying more attention to Ferguson or Iraq or Ukraine.

The games industry isn't limited to a bunch of studios in Tokyo, San Francisco and Montreal. It's happening in bedrooms and basements and garages. It's happening online. People trying to make a living writing about games can't be everywhere to cover it and those developers can't afford massive marketing campaigns to demand press attention.

I'm pretty disappointed in Kotaku's pulling back from Patreon in response to the backlash over all this. Exclusive access for indie games is more and more happening through mediums like Patreon and Kickstarter. If anyone in the games press wants to spend their money (or publication's money) on those to get a scoop, and share the stories and good things they're privy to because of that investment: Good. That's what I want.

 

 

Also - some really good insight into the gamer outrage from Dan Golding:
http://dangolding.tu...e-end-of-gamers

[Codicier]

Despite being kinda silly honestly this made me smile Leigh is kinda great

[gritfish]

There is a twitter thing now with lots of press/indies doing anime avatars.
It's great but totally throwing off my ability to recognise anyone while scrolling through it.

[tegan]

speaking of good tweets

 

 

[TheYoungCato]

Three, you can't compare violence against women in games to violence against women in other media because context matters and 99% of the execution of this trope in games is conceived of and implemented thoughtlessly, artlessly and meaninglessly.  Instances of worthless and manipulative violence against women in film *is* attacked the same way except it can be handled on a case by case basis because it is, unlike games, not perpetrated in the majority of its content.

 

In this case, what is the line between exploitation and art? What are some examples of works handle this subject matter maturely, and what distinguishes them, substantively, from the merely manipulative? 

[sclpls]

I'm not sure how useful listing specific movies will be necessarily because there will often be these gray areas between something that is exploitative and something that is handled in a mature and thoughtful manner. Lars von Trier springs to mind as someone whose work is controversial because audiences will arrive at different conclusions about where he is on that spectrum. The important thing though is that reasonable minds can differ on that question, that it becomes a question at all. This is in contrast to this depiction of violence in video games where it is a throwaway side quest. That's what is specifically objectionable. Anita specifically mentions Papa & Yo as praiseworthy because the subject is about a child dealing with abuse, and that is entirely what the game is about.

[Damian]

Hi,

 

I watched the latest Anita Sarkeesian last night, and have since forwarded it to various people I know, non-gamer or gamer, female or not, as I think both that specific video, and the series, highlights an important aspect of video game culture that has largely been overlooked until recently.

 

I will say that I was shocked when I watched the snippet taken from God of War 3.  Shocked.  I don't play AAA games generally, and had no idea that such things existed inside them.  Whether contextless or not, there is no way that the scene with the half-naked princess could ever be considered okay.  It was brutal and horrific, and the achievement served to give weight to the idea that what had happened was an inherently good thing, something to be charmed by, or humoured by, or pleased by.  Horrific - I honestly had no idea that mainstream games had such things in them.

 

The most compelling aspect of Sarkeesian's video was, for me, the discussion where she mentioned that the princess in a Mario game (and from that extrapolating to all such thematically similar games) is the ball with which the protagonist and antagonist play their game, and that the dead/maimed women in other games didn't even rise to the level of a ball (these poses and such also horrified me, as I had not come across this before in a game either).  I think the metaphor of "game" and "ball" is an extremely valuable one in order to easily and quickly convey the subtleties of normalised minimisation of women in games.  When the metaphor is used it becomes immediately clear exactly what is trying to be conveyed as an idea, and forms an excellent base from which to delve further into the concept.

 

On the idea of violence against women in video games, I would say (and Anita does say this) that violence against women (or anyone) can be an effective tool for... well, anything.  I would point everyone toward the great Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño's masterpiece 2666 as an example where violence, and in this specific case, violence against women, can be used to achieve a higher artistic goal without succumbing to the temptation to relish in the violence itself.  Briefly, 2666 has a roughly 400page section which outlines in clinical, police-report-style language the brutal rape and murder of hundreds of women in a Mexican city over a decade.  This section is harrowing and difficult to read, but the most overwhelming part of it is the administrative evil of the murders.  The murder of these women become normalised within the mind of the city, and though some people remain vigilant in trying to find the killer/s, most everybody simply adjusts to it as the "new normal" (particularly the police), and once something has become sufficiently ingrained as "part of what the city is", then it becomes virtually impossible to stop it.  This evil - and it is unequivocally presented as evil - eventually pervades every aspect of the novel until it feels while reading that one is gazing into an impenetrable, endless abyss inside which is contained the worst and most horrible of man's deeds. 

 

Anyway, back to games.  I appreciate the idea that some people have that they don't want their daughters to grow up playing games where women are only (primarily) the ball and never the participant, but I think that doesn't quite hit the mark.  I don't want to play games like that.  I have women in my life with whom I have the utmost respect and whom I admire for qualities that they possess that are sometimes similar to mine and sometimes utterly different, and I don't want to participate in activities where women are reduced to balls, or to artfully arranged dead things, or to naked breasts.  Abstracting things out to a "daughter" or "wife" or friend releases some level of responsibility to the person making that statement, and I will have none of that.  It's not good enough now, it's not good enough to participate in such things, and I will not do it. 

[sclpls]

I agree 2666 is a powerful novel, but part of its power comes from the fact that it's based on real events. That's in contrast to most games that lack that sort of specificity to real events. It's ironic to mention Bolano too. His writing is full of machismo and a lot of his women characters are kind of one dimensional. But compared to most games? No contest he is way better.

[Damian]

I don't think that the power of 2666 comes from the fact that the city, and the problems, are real.  I learned that afterward, and the power of the novel was clear without it.

 

I chose Bolaño for exactly that reason - he does a similar thing to what games are accused of, but he does it well, and his literature is undeniably high and important art.  

[Golden Calf]

In this case, what is the line between exploitation and art? What are some examples of works handle this subject matter maturely, and what distinguishes them, substantively, from the merely manipulative? 

 

I'll offer up Tyrannosaur. It includes violence against women. But it's not set dressing. It's not there to make the world seem 'edgy'. It's not a random a random scene thrown in to break up monotony. It doesn't occur and then ignore the victim for the rest of the story. It's there on purpose, to serve a specific role in the story. And the story in turn can be read as in part a commentary on that abuse.

[Merus]

There is a part of me that thinks that if we were more able to be visibly critical of whatever aspects of Sarkeesians videos we disagreed with, while still visibly & explicitly supporting her, then some portion of these people would see that it's actually okay to disagree with her while still supporting what she is doing. That you don't need to internalize absolutely everything she is saying 100% uncritically and still be able to think she is doing something valuable and admirable.

The other, more cynical, part of me thinks that this could never work & people would misinterpret any kind of disagreement or criticism as endorsement of their harassment & permission to continue shut her down however they can.

 

The trick, I think, is that her videos are grappling with difficult issues that take time and self-reflection to really understand, and so the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play. The two groups who are most likely to have objections to it are people who are particularly insightful about feminism and knowledgeable about games, and people who don't get it but think they do because they don't even understand that there's something there to get. People in mainstream gaming discourse are probably not going to be in the first camp.

[sclpls]

I don't think that the power of 2666 comes from the fact that the city, and the problems, are real. I learned that afterward, and the power of the novel was clear without it.

I chose Bolaño for exactly that reason - he does a similar thing to what games are accused of, but he does it well, and his literature is undeniably high and important art.

We'll I did say part of its power. But I think we're in agreement. If someone wants to depict that sort of violence they ought to be thorough in the treatment rather than using it as window dressing for some hero's journey BS.

[Gormongous]

The trick, I think, is that her videos are grappling with difficult issues that take time and self-reflection to really understand, and so the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play. The two groups who are most likely to have objections to it are people who are particularly insightful about feminism and knowledgeable about games, and people who don't get it but think they do because they don't even understand that there's something there to get. People in mainstream gaming discourse are probably not going to be in the first camp.

 

There's also just the general problem in the humanities (and really, in non-STEM disciplines in general) that specialist knowledge is viewed as just common knowledge dressed up with jargon. So many people with non-misogynist problems with Tropes vs. Women complain that it's mostly just a list of obviously sexist clips from different games put together in one long video, as if the basic act of finding them, putting them all together, and explaining exactly what they are doesn't take an incredible strength of head and heart, more than most of us have.

[WaterlooVodka]

I just listened to the latest episode and I felt compelled to make an account and post on this. Did I hear them right? Did they say it was literally impossible for a man to be a victim of sexual assault? It certainly seemed like they implied that Chris received abusive tweets with rape threats without going into specifics and followed that up with saying that would be impossible.

[Gormongous]

I just listened to the latest episode and I felt compelled to make an account and post on this. Did I hear them right? Did they say it was literally impossible for a man to be a victim of sexual assault? It certainly seemed like they implied that Chris received abusive tweets with rape threats without going into specifics and followed that up with saying that would be impossible.

 

I thought that for a second too, but I think they mean that it's impossible for the threat of rape for a man to mean the same spectrum of things, even to that man, as the threat of rape for a woman, because one has millennia of violence and oppression backing it up and the other is just an unspeakably terrible act one human being does to another. So yeah, both are bad, but only one gender has to live in fear of it, so yeah.

[Problem Machine]

I think what Sean was saying was that threats of sexual violence against women have the weight of thousands of years of history behind them in a way that similar threats against men don't, but I don't want to put words in his mouth.

edit: Oh, Gormongous got there first. For once.

[Gormongous]

Oh, Gormongous got there first. For once.

 

I'm the fastest feminist in the West! Anyway, your explanation is shorter and clearer.

[anthonyRichard]

There's also just the general problem in the humanities (and really, in non-STEM disciplines in general) that specialist knowledge is viewed as just common knowledge dressed up with jargon. So many people with non-misogynist problems with Tropes vs. Women complain that it's mostly just a list of obviously sexist clips from different games put together in one long video, as if the basic act of finding them, putting them all together, and explaining exactly what they are doesn't take an incredible strength of head and heart, more than most of us have.

 

That doesn't seem like that big a deal? A community where anyone, regardless of actual expertise, felt like they could take critical discourse seriously and engage with it without fear or anger actually seems like a huge step forward from where we are now. I wish that were the big problem we had to solve.