Game journalism backlash - the microcosm theory

[Brad_Wardell]

Anita Sarkeesian spells out what she’d like to see change in video games. Long, rambling article about her presentation.

http://kotaku.com/how-anita-sarkeesian-wants-video-games-to-change-1688231729

tl;dr

Ok.

Let’s see:

1. Our last game, Fallen Enchantress has female leads and allows players to design female units in total equality with males with equal resource allocation (i.e. we spent an equal amount in the form of hundreds of thousands in art costs) on separate clothing, armor.

2. Same. Fallen Enchantress female armor was functional, practical.
   

3. Done.

4. Done.

5. Any color they’d like:

Of course, watch out, or Angie Gallant will review it and say that if the bad guys are blue or gray or green that it’s really racist and an allegory for immigration reform…

6. Done.

7. Done.

8. Done.

Oh, and the game itself’s had >50% of its code written by women (plural), much of the art created by women.

It’s no wonder Stardock and myself are so beloved by the social justice community… I imagine the accolades will come pouring any time now…

[Telefrog]

To be fair, you could look at almost any turn-based strategy game* and you’d get decent checks on that list. The genre overall is less “BOOYAH! High-five bro!” and more hand-on-chin-thoughtful-nod.

*Western dev

[LMN8R]

Really? Can you name one? Which game of ours didn’t deserve coverage? And have you bought or played Depression Quest?

I mean, Elemental is a pretty obvious one.

And yes, I’ve played Depression Quest. I obviously didn’t “buy” it since it’s free (which makes the whole uproar about her even more incomprehensible). The game didn’t really resonate with me since I (luckily) don’t suffer from depression. But it did help me understand the disease quite a bit better, much like Allie Brosh’s Adventures in depression comic.

Many people? What constitutes many? 0? 1?

Besides, I have no objection to Depression Quest anyway. So you’re wasting your time constructing some strawman about it. My professional opinion is that it wouldn’t normally have gotten coverage except that ZQ did a good PR job on it which I also have no problem with.

How many will actually make a difference to you? I’ve read many anecdotes, and my point doesn’t require hard data instead of anecdotal evidence. I’m merely saying that since it helped many people, it sure seems like it deserves the coverage it’s received.

It’s pretty awesome that a woman with very little experience, who released a small game for free that helped a lot of people, and she didn’t profit from it, can get up-voted by a community of gamers on Steam and get some mainstream press coverage along the way.

You’re transparently trying to play both sides of this argument. You keep pretending like you’re arguing for some other people and accusing me of constructing straw men because you personally don’t actually believe those things, yet it’s you who keeps bringing them up. Zoe Quinn allegedly sleeping with people for coverage, her game not deserving coverage, whatever.

You’ve brought up all of them multiple times and now you’re saying you don’t actually agree with them, which is fantastic if true, but it sure sounds like you’re shifting goalposts to cover your ass.

I agree. Are you attempting to knock down some strawman or something? I don’t think anyone in this thread has suggested that DQ got coverage because Quinn was sleeping with journalists.

What IS being said is that there are people who believe that is the case. I think they are wrong.

I’m glad you’ve clarified, because from your previous posts in this thread, it sure sounded like you were clearly accusing her of doing exactly of the sort rather than merely stating the arguments of others that you don’t disagree with.

For example, this:

The question was whether she received positive reviews from sleeping with journalists which she did not. No one she slept with actually reviewed her game. But she did get some media coverage that her game probably didn’t warrant from people she was sleeping with.

That’s pretty fucking scummy to say. If you didn’t actually believe this was the case, it seems pretty odd that you’re literally saying it here.

LOL.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?70349-Stardock-Sues-Former-Employee-for-1-000-000-for-Elemental-s-commercial-failure/page7

How many posts are there on this thread? Do you have any idea how many forums allowed for uncensored, unmoderated discussion on that?

Now, 2 years later, we can only point and shame those who said the vile things in those threads but the fact is, when something that appears illicit comes up, people talk about it. It has nothing to do with misogyny.

You’re not being attacked because you are a man. You are being attacked because you happen to be a CEO of a successful company, and you happen to have had more than one person accuse you of some questionable behavior leading people to believe that maybe the allegations of this former employee could be true.

Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and countless others have been attacked because they are women.

And I didn’t even need someone else to tell me what to think. I read the articles myself and formed my own opinion – colored by the fact that I personally know many of the writers and have been dealing with the gaming press for two decades as part of my job.

Except, only one side of the argument was allowed to be posted on many sites. Multi-thousand post threads were deleted off Reddit and elsewhere.

What made this unique was that a small group of gamers criticized the gaming media, the media responded by throwing a temper tantrum and made massively broad strokes accusing gamers, IN GENERAL, of having misogynistic tendencies.

The basic problem with the gaming media is that some of them don’t realize there’s a whole world outside their bay area cocoon.

What conspiracy? That like minded people tend to react consistently to a particular issue is not a conspiracy.

Please point out the articles which actually “made massively broad strokes accusing games, IN GENERAL, of having misogynistic tendencies.” Because Leigh Alexander’s article didn’t, nor did the tens of other articles that popped up that were re-blogging it, or commenting on it.

They were attacking the stereotype characterized by a small minority of gamers, that developers no longer need to consider their primary audience.

Your conspiracy is, and I quote you (again):

You can choose to believe that there was no coordination and that 10 articles spontaneously appeared on a single day on roughly the same subject.

You’re transparently playing both sides again. Try to stay consistent and pick one of the following:

1. The gaming media are pretty close and share similar opinions on many things, so when someone posts an article, others who like it will probably want to re-post it or comment on it, just like they do for literally every story on earth whether it’s about progressive social issues, shitty business practices by developers, just some stupid gameplay glitches in a game, or anywhere in between.

2. There was a coordinated conspiracy carefully orchestrated on secret mailing lists where Leigh Alexander told everyone she was going to post an article and so everyone else queued up to ensure there was a sudden deluge of articles about the topic.

#1 is standard practice for literally everything on the internet.

#2 is the conspiracy that GamerGate thinks exists, and that you’ve tacitly presented as reality.

[RickH]

To briefly way overstretch myself here, I think the way Desslock and Brad et al. brag about putting me on ignore(and then like, hilariously, hold little cheerleading parties about that) is part of the gamer psyche.

If you can’t answer the question, “What, exactly, is it that you’re angry about here?”, well, the obvious response is to throw the controller and rage quit. Blame the game, not the player. It’s UNFAIR that I asked that question.

Toldja he’d jizz.

[Teiman]

As far as video games, most are fairly sexless in most cases. Unless she means “don’t make them all have their tits hanging out everywhere for no reason” in which case it really goes back to point #2. Sex is part of what makes people people. Sure it shouldn’t be everything, or even the main focus most of the time, but to say you shouldn’t have it at all feels kind of arbitrary.

Now I’m trying to think of female antagonists who are “sexualized” and drawing a blank. I mean there must be some out there.

Well, I agree with you. Anyway the interesting stuff maybe take more work that simple sexualization, so maybe we get big tits instead of something more interesting because sex is used as filler, in with case is because the lack of skill of authors or lazyness, and not other type of bias.

I am in principle against somebody saying “Stop being humans!” because is a waste of time (I hate it when the Pope do it, I hate it if is Anita who do it). “Authors be better” could be equally a waste, but maybe not as much, maybe lazyness in authors is something worth fighting against.

[RickH]

Anita Sarkeesian spells out what she’d like to see change in video games. Long, rambling article about her presentation.

So she wants to have the game industry to stop making Barbie dolls and start making Lammily dolls.

And step three will be profit!

[RickH]

Now I’m trying to think of female antagonists who are “sexualized” and drawing a blank. I mean there must be some out there.

I’m thinking Elexis from Sin, but that’s a looong time ago.

[Brad_Wardell]

To be fair, you could look at almost any turn-based strategy game* and you’d get decent checks on that list. The genre overall is less “BOOYAH! High-five bro!” and more hand-on-chin-thoughtful-nod.

*Western dev

No, Not fair. Can you name a single 4X game in which you design male and female units where the female units got art assets like this? This was a non-trivial cost in order to provide equality to both sexes.

[Brad_Wardell]

I mean, Elemental is a pretty obvious one.

Really? You don’t think Elemental deserved coverage? You think Elemental is in the same category as some quickie text based one-person indie?

There’s no point in even continuing this discussion with you, you’re nuts.

[RickH]

Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and countless others have been attacked because they are women.

ZQ was “attacked” by a guy she treated very shabbily in matters of the heart.

AS was “attacked” because she wants to fix video games to full feminist compliance, ridding it of “toxic masculinity.” Clearly, the concept is not picking up as many early adopters as she’d like.

Don’t deny these women agency by ignoring that they are engaged in acts of free will. That’s extremely condescending at least.

[Telefrog]

No, Not fair. Can you name a single 4X game in which you design male and female units where the female units got art assets like this? This was a non-trivial cost in order to provide equality to both sexes.

Great. The TBS genre as a whole is generally pretty decent at not sexualizing women because the subject matter and audience don’t warrant it. In contrast, the third-person action genre is chock-full of Sarkeesian’s bullet points.

Credit to you guys for not going all Japanese lolli-style in your games, I guess.

[Quaro]

I just keep imaging someone writing about how they are annoyed by quicktime events in their games, and gamergate reacted like it does with Anita. STOP KILLING GAMERS YOU MONSTER! Burn down the internet! Be as cruel and hurtful as you can everywhere you go, that will show everyone how awesome gamers are!

[Dan_Theman]

… maybe lazyness in authors is something worth fighting against.

Interesting point(s), especially the above. It really rubs me the wrong way when games are over sexualized (yeah, intended). It’s not because I don’t enjoy sex, but rather that someone took the time, money, and effort to add that particular content instead of simply making a better overall game. That’s usually the developer/publisher saying something not so great about the consumer (“screw quality, we’ll trade that for t&a”) or something not so great about the industry (lacking conceptual maturity to make enough compelling products so that we don’t have to rely upon overcharged hormones to make up for our shortcomings). Having sex in games is fine, and having a game about sex is fine. But the consistent over-reliance on sexualizing characters (especially in RPG’s, and moreso with the women than the men) just sucks. I see jiggles, and it’s a short step to feeling insulted by the judgement that someone in a marketing department made about me.

[Quaro]

I also find it detracts from my enjoyment of games. Constantly rolling your eyes at something in a game gets pretty damn annoying.

[Soapyfrog]

2. Same. Fallen Enchantress female armor was functional, practical.

Race: MEN

…

(for the humourless, this was a joke)

[Brad_Wardell]

Race: MEN

…

(for the humourless, this was a joke)

Heh. Touche, my friend. Touche.

[tomchick]

If you can’t answer the question, “What, exactly, is it that you’re angry about here?”, well, the obvious response is to throw the controller and rage quit. Blame the game, not the player. It’s UNFAIR that I asked that question.

The problem isn’t the question, the problem is your demeanor. I consider it a point of pride for this community to so many people in this thread ignore you.

-Tom

[ShivaX]

The problem isn’t the question, the problem is your demeanor. I consider it a point of pride for this community to so many people in this thread ignore you.

-Tom

Left, Right and Middle we can all unite on this thing.

Makes me get all teary-eyed and hopeful for the world.

[Virgil_Hilts]

Pretty much exactly my point. Nobody be mean to another nerd, unless that nerd calls someone a sexist, in which case it’s time for a celebration of how we’ve built a community where people who say offensive shit shouldn’t face the unbelievable mental trauma of mild social scorn. The gaming community is limitlessly accepting of anyone, so long as they are at at least two of white, male, and quiet.

[Busbecq]

You get your hackles up and cry ‘racism’ whenever anyone even mentions anything about race, and that the white, male point of view is the dominant one in our society

It seems the debate is whether you can/at which point you should reify a viewpoint as “white, male” (and whether we sacrifice argumentative rigour when the quantum of good discussion is the intersectionality of the speaker or those they purport to speak for rather than the substance of their arguments) so on that point I think you are begging the question a bit.