I care because I'm tired of women being treated, and expecting to be treated, with kid gloves in the gaming industry, and I'm tired of them receiving adulation for the simple fact that they have a [censored] and exist in a male-dominated field. It's really not a notable achievement. From Hepler to Sarkeesian to every other incident (that girl who worked for Square Enix, then went on to review their games while not disclosing that fact, for example), when it's a woman that's being criticised everyone rushes to her defence and makes a big deal out of it but when, for example, MovieBob and Ben Croshaw regularly get online abuse it's just a part of their job. Do gender-specific attacks exist in these cases? Hell yes. That's definitely a problem. But that doesn't make the attack any worse or better than all the other, non-gendered, attacks that everyone on the internet gets. Women are not helpless little girls, and they don't deserve a brigade of white knights and sapphic support every time someone insults their sensibilities. It's exploitative [censored].

I haven't seen any of this kid handling. I'm not rushing to her defense. All this woman has done is make a video about stupid, sixist [censored] in videogames. That is not worthy of ridicule. I don't think she used the verbal attacks against her to get more money. I think she highlighted and said "Hey, all I've done is ask for donations to fund videos about sixist [censored] in videogames, and people are threatening to kill me for it. We clearly have a problem."



Those are really cool, actually. I should spend more time flipping through Kickstarter.

The art section has lots of neat stuff in it.



She got $150 000 for acting the victim, and she doesn't even have the academic or critical thinking chops to prove that she deserved the initial $6 000, let alone the eventual amount. None of this deserves my respect. I said as much when she initiated her Kickstarter, and people disagreed vehemently with me. I wanted some vindication. I wanted the satisfaction of saying, I told you so. And now I have it.

You act as if you're alone in that opinion. Reddit (Reddit, referring to the default subs, r/gaming more specifically) had (and has) the same problems with her as you. I am a bit disappointed that she didn't delve into more high-brained stuff. She really should have explained some feminist theory and how it applies to games. People have misconceptions about feminism, as this thread proves. I just don't think its anything to get worked up over. We don't know what she did with the extra money, so there isn't any reason to assume she just pocketed it.

I didn't watch the vid cause it's too sad, but did she mention the minigame in the God of War series? Still love the fact that minigame was designed by a woman.

People donated 150k to this?

THIS!

I watched the video for less than a minute and then closed it. She's just over-exaggerating a miniscule issue to get money.

Seriously. She could've at least made it interesting. That video was flat out boring. How many videos does she plan on making? Is she going over every sixist trope?

But that's just it. What's so worthwhile about this video? Nothing. A woman sets herself up as a Damsel in Distress (ironic), takes people's money, and regurgitates some trite, stock talking points. There's a guy on youtube who made a video about damsels in distress who 1. did it without first requiring $6 000, and 2. did a much better job of discussing the trope.

Welp this is pretty much the comments I was expecting. People raging about some intimate "feminist agenda" when they don't even have to watch her video. *Sigh* The video-game community is such a defensive one.

Welp this is pretty much the comments I was expecting. People raging about some intimate "feminist agenda" when they don't even have to watch her video. *Sigh* The video-game community is such a defensive one.



Hell, she wouldn't of got that much if idiots didn't threaten to [censored] her, state she's a "femnazi" and make an embarrassment of this community (video-game community that is).

And you support her getting 150k to make some femist video?
When that money could have been used to do somthing productive?

And you support her getting 150k to make some femist video?
When that money could have been used to do somthing productive?

Er...it's not my money. People felt her cause...plus see my edited post above.

AHHHHH, Those comments are pretty dikeish.
Still think the money is going to waste though.

It's clear she was a fraud after her first video. Or at the very least, thoroughly petty and inept. But she played people pretty well, played the injured feminist, and it worked.

So are you also playing issue with the "Taliban of Video-Gaming" and the supporters of a video-game to beat her up? I hope so. Because that's the cause of this whole 150k you have a problem with.

Just checking the priorities.

Imo she baited people, knowing the type of reactions she'd get. I mean who the hell expects manners and decorum online, especially when you come off as snarky and condescending as she does. I'm also skeptical of her video games 'roots'. And lastly, I think there are much bigger fish to fry in the realm of equal rights for women, yet she's picking on Mario Bros and Christmas carols. Not impressed.

Just finished watching the video: yeah, pretty tame in comparison to all the publicity that was surrounding this.

She does say in the video that future installments of the series will explore more contemporary examples as well as talking about positive female characters in videogames. I was also starting to feel like she was giving a pretty one-note view of things while watching it, but it looks like that's going to come in the next episodes. Probably not the best way to format your video series if you're interested in more than preaching to the choir, but there you have it.

Taken as one episode, however, it's really just a scholarly essay on damsels in distress in videogames, with a focus on the early years of the industry. And let's be honest - saying that most videogame stories of the time revolved around a male protagonist saving a damsel in distress is hardly a controversial view. I thought that was given, right? Not only was it common, but it happened a lot. Not just in videogames, but watch nearly action or kung-fu movie from the 80's and 90's and you'll see the same thing.


Her point, as I understand it (and she probably could have stated this better, to be fair) is not so much that any single game is "evil" for following what literally couldn't be a more archetypal story structure, but that taken as a whole there was just a lot of misogyny in videogames at the time. And when you take the industry as a whole, a focus on gearing games toward adolescent males and crafting stories that tie into a male empowerment fantasy isn't exactly the best thing ever for gender equality.

She's not demonizing any of these games in her video, but pointing out that this is something that happened. I think the real trap lies in my question of relevance (and this might be answered in later videos.) As I said, I don't think there's much question about early videogames being pretty heavily male-dominant.

But yeah, I don't know if a video is really the best medium for what she's going for. I kept thinking this felt like it would work better as an article, or in a blog.

There's also the matter of perspective. It's sixist for me to even think this (because I wouldn't have questioned her "geek cred" if she were a fat man in glasses,) but I couldn't help but wonder if she's a gamer or not. She says she played a lot of nintendo as a kid, but that's just about everyone. Doesn't make someone a "gamer," in my mind. As I said, it's sixist that a woman needs to "prove" her hobby, whereas a man doesn't - but given how gamers tend to react to "outsiders" having opinions about the industry, I think a bit of personal background would have helped establish her point of view much better.

Because as it stands, I just don't know who this is, really. I'd be much more interested in hearing views on feminism and videogames from someone in the industry. All things being equal, I'd be much more interested in hearing what Rhianna Pratchett thinks about the state of the industry than someone I don't know anything about and don't know her background.

Overall, though? Yeah, there's just not much there beyond being something for the conversation to take place around (ie, the ongoing debate about the role of women in the industry is larger than this one woman's short history of damsels in distress in videogames.)

Edit: Freaklore, look what you did.

What did I do?


Except that she closed the comments on her Youtube videos and directed viewers to her Kickstarter page.

You and I both know Youtube is hardly a place for civil discourse. I'd happily watch comments be disabled on Youtube entirely.


I don't know how you gathered that from my posts, but okay.



"Everybody disagreed with me vehemently." -You

She's employing the most surface-level anolysis possible. She doesn't even have to explain the level of feminism she's employing to criticise the games because it's in the popular discourse. Literally anyone could have done the anolysis she did. She's turning the whole topic into a caricature, and that's such a shame. (I'm surprised she went to university, really.) Lots could be done with gender in gaming, but Sarkeesian is not the one who will do it justice.



And? Because somebody else could have done it better, she isn't allowed to produce content?