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In my head this is what these mean.
“*I* don’t hate women” makes it sound like you don’t hate women but you are familiar or close to people who do.
“I don’t hate *women*” makes it sound like you don’t consider them people
“I don’t *hate* women” makes it sound like hate is an understatement of how you feel
Personally, I feel like putting the emphasis on "women" sounds like you're saying, "I don't hate women, but I do hate some other, as yet unnamed group."
As for putting the emphasis on "hate," I feel like that makes it sound like you have some other negative feeling towards women and are just about to keep digging yourself into the hole of misogyny. Maybe not as the bitter, spiteful misogynist, but a misogynist nonetheless (perhaps of the patronizing variety?)
Instead the controversy is that the companies themselves hate women and gay people and their customers in general. Treating all of them awfully and somehow keep getting away with it.
It's not that they hate us necessarily. It's that they just love to see that stonk going up. So what if that means buggy games, unsustainable working conditions, or micro transactions??? All they hear is cha ching cha ching
There’s actually a controversy brewing around gaming *right now*. It’s just as ludicrous as the last one was years ago, and it’s going to sucker young men exactly the same way the last one did.
It sucks ass, but seriously - Do not think it’s magically better today.
We’re so checked out creatively as a society that we’re even recycling controversies now. Many of the same characters from the last episode are in this one too! Exactly the same complaints, insults and scenarios as last time, even the same guy running for president. Fucking crazy. Makes you appreciate the fact the back to the future trilogy was the same movie 3 times, it was spot on.
Ahhh anita , The ultimate grifter
You know there was a few things i agreed with her like some games took sexualizations too far and the female characters weren't characters and just set pieces , The rest of her arguments are just shit she made up to get money from studios and companies , Even tried to coerce studios like CDPR to hire her
She made some surface feminist critiques of videogames and people went fucking crazy over it. She didn't make any convincing arguments for me personally but like she also didn't spread misinformation. Nerds are just way too sensitive about our hobbies wow.
She was just riding that feminist train back then , lucky for me i was never part of that GG shit show , I was too busy enjoying black flag back then.
I have to disagree about the misinformation tho, She twisted alot of games story to fit her narrative so she can prop up her career , She basically did nothing for the quality of games and took money for it.
I wouldn't say she didn't do anything. She certainly was one of the first very popular figures to start demanding a more varied, less sexualised, and female oriented characters in videogames. It was right after her that I saw a bigger shift in the roles women played in videogames. I do think it was around her time that studios started to realize that there is a huge demographic of women and queer people that wanted female characters that were more than eye candy. Again I don't think she made excellent arguments bit her impact on the space was felt imo.
I disagree, after her most female/queer characters became part of a checklist instead of unique and interesting characters.
Before her there were plenty of great female characters that weren’t plot pieces, they just weren’t being shoehorned in.
Jade (Beyond Good & Evil)
Tali (Mass Effect)
Faith Connors (Mirror’s Edge)
The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)
Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)
the list goes on, but you get the idea. The only thing back then was that a lot of “mainstream” AAA titles didn’t have female **leads** which still hasn’t changed to this day, unless it’s a game where you choose your character.
So essentially she complained about something that was blown out of proportion to begin with, and didn’t change much anyways. Most games with poorly written women have poorly written characters in general, more often than not.
Counterpoint. Lara, The Boss, and Tali were very male gazey. They were good characters but they appealed to a male audience that considers it necessary for the character design to be extremely hot ya know? And yahtzee croshaw (zero punctuation) made an analysis video where he did prove that games have gotten better at putting female characters in lead role by a huge margin.
Link: https://youtu.be/2NfRCAXgcd0?feature=shared
Going to throw this out there, studies have shown that pretty much everyone prefers good looking men and women. Even women usually prefer the female characters to be attractive.
But not over sexualized. There's a huge difference between liking a pretty character and having the camera track your female avatar's daisy duke clad ass or having repeated slow motion qt events where the mini goes flying up to expose white cotton panties.
It's like LC in Rise of the Tomb Raider: very pretty, not objectified at all.
But I'm sure you've watched Sarkeesian's videos enough to have seen the many, many, many examples of explicit objectification of women in games.
Nobody complains that all of the guys are ripped and shirtless wearing a loincloth like they are He-Man extras. So why is it only bad when the women are overly sexualized?
I watched her videos once to see how stupid they were. She proved my hypothesis, they were indeed stupid.
Male gazey? The Boss just looks like any middle aged woman, she isn’t hot. Tali isn’t hot either, unless you consider wearing a gas mask and space suit hot. Lara Croft is just suffering the crime of having a big chest.
Out of the three you named, the only one I could see people saying is “extremely hot” is Lara. But even then, you’re boiling down these complex characters into simply “well they’re designed attractive and that’s a problem”.
All I’m saying is, nobody was complaining when they made Leon or Dante hot. Why is it different for female characters if they are still well written?
Why does laura dress like she's at a beach party when fighting mercenaries and commandos.
I want to believe most women would want to be dressed like the men. BDU pants, with some kind of proper top, bullet proof vest, radio, weapons, mags, etc.
Laura though.....tight tank top with some small shorts.
Dante is a supernatural being, and I don't know which game Leon came from.
Tali is an odd one, she's an alien. But isn't it a coincidence that she has thick thighs, nice breasts and that hour glass figure? If it wasn't said one might even assume she's human that may have had to wear a helmet, like Vader.
If we want to desexualize her to make her more realistic, fine, she should die 100% of the time because a tiny 110lb woman would be fucking wrekt in a similar situation.
I don't disagree with the fact in question, but it bears noting that some evidence suggests that women want to play hot women even more than men do. Consider this wild stat from LoL[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/v7tohs/according\_to\_riot\_97\_of\_female\_players\_play/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/v7tohs/according_to_riot_97_of_female_players_play/)
Check out the word cloud too, they aren't gravitating towards the non-super model characters (illaoi or Taliyah for ex).
Clearly this isn't definitive proof of anything, but it starts to get pretty convincing to me when combined with my personal experience which supports that conclusion.
She would occasionally make a thought-provoking point, but her videos were mostly almost childishly shallow, and so long-winded, dull, and just weirdly dispassionate and emotionless. Also, often times would just kind of... list, random games that had women in them, and not really say much. And she weirdly mostly only talked about Japanese video games. Japanese game devs can't understand English, Anita! You can't convince them to be woke, they don't know what you're saying.
Yeah she also missed the point of many of the games she talked about. The one that comes to mind is Bayonetta. She said that the game always focused on her body and her sexuality and I'm like yeah. Bayonetta is supposed to be a powerful, sexual and confident witch who constantly sets boundaries, outsmarted all the men around her, is kind but not a pushover, put great importance in her female friendships, and is all around a very positive role mode.
It speaks volumes that the game has a fanbase of mainly women and gay men.
On the other hand, Japanese devs HAVE also gotten better. A great example from this last month is the remaster of Persona 3. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to 7/7 and saw that the shower scene wasn't as exploitative. 20 years ago, Atlus had a long, sensual pan-up to tease some 16-year-old-girl underboob, but not anymore. Made me feel MUCH less gross going through that scene than when I played FES.
Compare the ff7 remake aerith and Tifa with thier originals as well. The newer version actually has the two women as complete characters. In the og they barely spoke to each other for the length of the game.
I think this is why she was so notorious among 'anti-woke' people. Because she was the easy target for how dumb her points were.
Representation in games has improved in a multitude of ways, for many reasons. A lot of people made great points about feminism. Anita isn't one of them.
The problem with her cruitiqes was that she did very poor research and would often take stuff out of context for the sake of proving a point.
For example, she would often show footage of NPC's being murdered in sandbox games and say "this game views womens lives as disposable" despitr the fact that killing women was not actually promoted in the game. Hell at one point in one of her videos she lied about a mission in hitman and treated something discuraged by the actual game as the mission objective.
She did play games in ways that caused her to lose while saying that the game was encouraging and rewarding that style of play
Also she claimed a lot of footage was her's when it was not
"nerds are way to sensitive about our hobbies now" I actually agree with this as a fellow nerd. It's also why you can't have a simple debate about anything nerd related today. Like at all. Someone is going to hop in and not realize that we all have opinions and there just that. An opinion not fact.
She literally did spread misinformation/misleading information like this one about the killing women in the game Hitman Absolution:
> "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters. It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality"
When in reality players were actually punished for doing that and she just essentially made that up. She’s a misleading grifter.
> Nerds are just way too sensitive about our hobbies wow.
[Considering the state of the video game industry in the 2020s Anita was just an early warning sign of things to come](https://www.reddit.com/r/videogames/comments/1bdp7b7/lead_developer_of_eas_new_black_panther_game/)
The first example is just a her point of view about the mechanics of a game. She may have had a very weird and imo wrong analysis about the topics but it's not misinformation to analyze something from that point of view. Misinformation is stating lies as facts. Not giving out bad opinions.
The second one... she just wanted to have a team comprised of mainly people of color. She even expressed that she is not doing it out malice against white people. There's a bunch of other studios comprised of only white or asian people and she's creating opportunities for the people of her community. What the hell do you want out of her?
If her “point of view” is wrong, then it’s still misleading/misinformation lol. You can wave away every misinformation and misleading claim as just someone’s “point of view”. Fact is the players were never meant to do that and were actually meant ***not to do that*** otherwise they could get penalised for it.
> The second one... she just wanted to have a team comprised of mainly people of color.
Only*. Right it’s not malice white people just do “microaggressions”..
> She even expressed that she is not doing it out malice against white people. There's a bunch of other studios comprised of only white or asian people
Name me one studio that hires only white people, and isn’t considered to be racists. I’ll wait (you can’t).
> What the hell do you want out of her?
Maybe to not be racist?
She 100% spread misinformation for outrage. Her critique for Hitman was that you were "actively rewarded for killing random women" even though you actively get punished for it.
Cherry picking examples and explicitly ignoring anything that doesn't confirm your pre-determined conclusion and passing it off as the absolute truth of the whole medium is 100% an example of spreading misinformation, actually.
How is Anita a grifter?
She made her series, she ran a kickstarter to make more of it, people donated to it of their own volition, and then she made the series. She never sold a course, she never claimed to be some brilliant guru, she never claimed that video games were causing the downfall of society. Hell, I don't even think she even sold merch beyond like, some T-shirts probably, maybe some mugs?
She's a fucking content creator, and that's all she *ever* was. Calling *her* the Ultimate Grifter when motherfuckers like Sneako, Fresh and Fit and Andrew Tate are running around is. I mean, quite frankly, it *reaks* of unaddressed lingering sexism from the Gamergate days.
I don't like Anita that much, but I agree calling her a grifter is BS. Now I wonder who the biggest grifter is. Although in all honestly it would be one we never realized was a grifter. But that aside it may be people that have had whole styles of grifting named after them. Like Charles Ponzi
Most largest is probably Trump, bro grifted an entire political party into picking him over people who actually share their ideology and then used his position in office to benefit himself as much as possible
I love that an academic who crowdfunds a ten episode podcast -- which got made! on time even! -- is a grifter while the biggest media platform in gaming is literally just people talking about stuff and random people giving them $3 and *that's serious culture*
How is she a grifter?
I'm not a fan, but she delivered what she was paid for. You might disagree about the content's quality, but she did produce everything she was contracted / kickstarted for. And the people who bought it were, by all accounts, happy with it.
I see your point, unlike Anita my position is if you don't like how certain video games represent people... Just don't play those games, people shouldn't be forced to make things that fit other people's worldview, if enough people don't like it the game won't sell and devs will make less games like it
So if somebody writes something you don’t like, you wouldn’t say anything, you’d just quietly go read something different? Because she said something you don’t like and here you are describing the thing you didn’t like instead of moving on like you said she should do. Interesting.
And sitting back and doing nothing means nothing will change.
I'm a gay man, and.with your attitude we would still being seeing almost 0 LGBTQ representation. Change happens because of people speaking up.
>Anita, the ultimate grifter
Ever hear about Jordan Peterson? How about Ben Shapiro? Or basically any right wing popular figure online?
Like, agree or disagree w her, but calling her the ULTIMATE grifter is such a fucking reach holy crap, you can certainly find progressive people more shady than her, that James Somerton guy for example.
She said a bunch of liberal femminist stuff, that's basically it, nothing radical, nothing revolutionary, people overreacted and gave her waaaay too much attention cause liberal femminism is so easy to attack and she became a punching bag, a lot of lies were thrown around about her and so on.
Nowdays we have way more radical femminists online who don't face the ammount of pushback she faced, she was the perfect target at the time.
Most of the time her video essays were just poor quality and sort of exposed her as a grifter (and I'm sorry to say that).
She would pick on female characters out of context and not address that the same character she was talking about actually had some deep humanizing dialogue.
I mean people like to pretend she isnt a grifter.... But a female game dev made a whole video series tearing her arguments apart one by one.
The most hilarious off the top of my head.
The strippers in hitman example by Anita: She srgued they were sex object props you can kill
The answer: They were killable yes... Like every npc, but the game would punish you for that and they had very humanizing dialogue as you pass by them doing the opposite of what Anita argued.
Anita: Monstrous feminine monsters bad.
The Answer: Simply why. Most monsters use exaggerated masculine traits for brute strength and other. A monstrous feminine is not sexism, but expanding the design space for monsters to be less sexist.
Anita: Male characters being shirtless isnt sexy. Its power fantasy
Answer: Being sexy is part of the power fantasy
I watched 15 minutes of her bioshock video before dismissing it because it was clearly trash to enrage people, and put her out of my mind.
The only time I ever see this lady is when people who allegedly despise her, KEEP BRINGING HER THE FUCK BACK UP.
She spoke to a lot of us who felt like we were crazy. Before FF it felt like I was the only one who saw the rampant sexism and endlessly repeated tropes. Then she started talking about this shit and suddenly dudes LOST THEIR FUCKING MINDS!
Of course it turned into a holy war.
I love when people break their minds doing mental gymnastics to explain things like this with sexism or misogyny when the answer is literally staring you in the face and it's capitalism, honey. You really think a game dev would sacrifice money in order to push a sexist message? Absolutely delusional thinking. They will make a video game that will make the maximum amount of money. If that means showing big tittys and ass then that's what they will do. If it means 100 gay characters and pronouns, then that's what they'll do. They will make money at all costs. There is no conspiracy here, just brain worms
If you live in a sexist culture, sexism sells. That's what Anita was pointing out in her videos. It was a critical analysis on something that a lot of people gloss over in society. You can criticize capitalists for being racist, sexist, whatever, even if in their hearts it's only for profit. The bigotry still feeds into society and is a bad thing, no matter the origin lmao.
If you live in a sexist culture, sexism sells. That's what Anita was pointing out in her videos. It was a critical analysis on something that a lot of people gloss over in society. You can criticize capitalists for being racist, sexist, whatever, even if in their hearts it's only for profit. The bigotry still feeds into society and is a bad thing, no matter the origin lmao.
Gamer gate is an astroturf wherein a group from /pol/ claimed that a different woman named Zoe Quinn slept with a game reviewer to get a good review of the game. Both the reviewer as well as the company he works for have confirmed this is not the case, and it’s been used as a dogwhistle rallying cry for men who want to gatekeep whatever they can from women. Many attribute some of the first mainstreaming of the alt right to GamerGate, hence the connection.
Edit: Pictured woman isn’t the one accused of sleeping with someone. Sarkeesian’s case is different in that “Gamergate” insisted she was “in on it” when she published articles that were feminist in nature. Her “damage” to the sphere of gaming is widely exaggerated for people to justify the harassment and constant death threats she received.
https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=J8VRgzgEIw4qyh9W
>Zoe Quinn who got sexually involved with 5 different journalists to get positive press for her game
It's five guys now? Last I heard she was only involved with one dude who gave her game a mention like once. All being blown up because she left her then boyfriend who sort of started it all with the accusation.
Literally never happened. Just trying to defend people who criminally coordinated together to harass and threaten women because they're literally misogynist incels.
https://youtu.be/S6wcXJRjQU4?si=w2jhPFhEwMrFJ_YV
It's been 9 years. Not my favorite video/source but this stuff has gotten very old. It's super interesting how wild of a ride the whole gamer gate thing was.
Anyways I'm getting ready for bed. Goodnight everyone.
You do realize that there was no evidence for this, right? Like nobody admitted to it. The one guy that she slept with never even reviewed her game and they hooked up later.
Decades later and you losers are STILL making shit up
Zoe Quin was notnsexually involved with any journalists for her free game that wasn't ever written about on the websites. Also, her accusations aren't untrue because he took his own life.
"She was never investigated" is fucking stupid. Why would she be investigated?
Gamergate was a bunch of incels attacking and harassing women. Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong. Attacking her for lies you've been told is ignorant.
That one was Zoe Quinn. It’s claimed that she cheated on her boyfriend with five men and that one of them gave her game a positive review in return. I haven’t ever been able to find the review in question, though. The only article I’ve found from that guy that mentions Quinn is about a failed Game Jam that she was in, and all it really did was quote stuff she said.
I guess the review could have just been deleted and I haven’t been looking in the right places for an archive of it.
The one in the image is Anita Sarkeesian, she did a series of videos critiquing tropes in video games, which did contain some incorrect information (Ex: saying a game requires you to kill a woman to progress, when in reality you’re penalized if you complete the mission that way.) So, there were legitimate reasons to criticize her, but the response some people had to these videos was disproportionate, to say the least.
There was significant, and near constant barrage of support for her that was never really recanted at any point. As the support failed to wane despite a consistent stream of evidence of her being a deceptive piece of trash, it really enraged and radicalized people, as media portrayed her as the victim. To be honest, it really feels like a lot of media outlets doubled down because the criticisms were against game journalism, and actually helped promote the alt-right movement by giving them legitimate evidence of shitty behavior.
Going on gaming subreddits have become so tiring. "ThIs WOmAn NoT SexY" and It'll be a game set In the Post Apocalypse or something, as If anyone got time or care to pamper themselves In the apocalypse. I never played TLoU, but people got mad about the girl having muscle?
No shit Sherlock, you need to be strong mentally and physically In the zombie apocalypse, If not zombies, other people will get you. It's fucking mind numbing
The constant bitching and moaning about games they never planned on playing, people I don't know, and corporations I don't give a shit about, which gets me all pressed like now when I just want to talk games.
I still have no clue what Sweet Baby Inc do, aside QC games, but never heard of them till last week
imagine being so dull that you can only view video games purely through the lens of fan service. No desire to understand or critique the narrative themes or writing, nor the artistic direction, nor the gameplay mechanics or choice architecture or technical competency. Only how hot a woman character is.
The game becomes little more meaningful than the slop and Mountain Dew they shovel down their throat. It frankly disgusts me. A chimpanzee would be a more respectable player.
It's insane to me that someone like him can have a following at all. All these "no politics in video games" coomers are just ignoring the fact that video games have always had underlying political tones just like every other media. It's just when the politics don't align with their weird ass always-online views that they lose their shit.
Most of us just play games for fun, I don't need or really want to see giant titties in every game I play, I don't want to see more games that might be fun release but I won't ever try them because half the characters look like sexualized 15 year old girls (pretty much every anime stylized game).
Anita (and Zoe Quinn) were the targets of absolutely ridiculous claims that were never proven at all, most of which are objectively disproven at this point. They were constantly under threat of harm and other shit as well, and they had VERY mild takes about all of this, I'm probably more strong minded on the issue than either of them for fucks sake and I'm a dude.
>Going on gaming subreddits have become so tiring. "ThIs WOmAn NoT SexY".
Especially annoying because constant oversexualisation will send a medium down the drain.
Anime is a good example of this. So much anime is unwatchable due to the constant sexualisation of every female character. Then every now and then an actually good anime like Frieren or Jujutsu Kaisen comes along and you notice how much better an anime gets when it focuses on other things than constantly throwing comically sized tits in your face.
I honestly wouldn't play that many games if every game was hypersexualised like much of anime is.
My favorite part was how much they hated her, yet posted every video minute one, posted to her Kickstarter, and basically did everything possible to propel her into the spotlight. Their very hatred only made her that much more popular
She is a feminist media critic that got lumped into gamergate.
In short, gamergate started because Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend made the claim that Quinn had dated a journalist from Kotaku to get a good review of her upcoming game: Depression Quest, a text-based adventure game.
Now, just a reminder of the fact that Depression Quest was never reviewed by Kotaku, Zoe Quinn never had any game reviewed by Kotaku, Depression Quest was fucking free, the only coverage Kotaku ever had of Zoe is approximately 3 non-consecutive sentences that essentially said : "Zoe exists and is making a game" and said statement predates Quinn and the journalist's relationship. Yeah, you get the idea very fucking quick what was really going on.
Also, an IRC was made that homed the gamergate forming threads and the stated goal was to get Quinn to kill themself and using "ethics in games journalism" as a cover.
The headlines caught momentum, and Anita Sarkesian got lumped in because a harassment campaign built on hating women inherently hated Anita as well and saw an opportunity to attack all their "enemies." Which were mostly just women that worked in the game industry.
Also, this is the event that got Breitbart News into the mainstream, they covered gamergate postively, and the exec chair, Steve Bannon (convicted of multiple federal offenses for things like money laundering, contempt of court, fraud, etc) got his job as DJT's campaign manager (which resulted in him doing fraud and getting convicted of crimes) from this event.
Gamergate was basically a bunch of nazis and incels starting a culture war and the American Republican party picking up their rhetoric and strategies.
[Anita Sarkeesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Sarkeesian)
She was a target of [Gamergate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign))
Half the comments here are talking about how this woman was a hack and there was never any sexism in the gaming industry, and the other half are actively proving them wrong by parroting sexist misinformation about how women sleep with game reviewers.
Noooooo you don’t understand!!!! Videogames are art but they should be immune from critique by people I don’t like despite those same critiques being applied to literally every single other form of art!!!!!
Not really. Some of it was valid, the rest of her "criticisms" were just her complaining about things that made no sense or her just being dishonest about what she was trying to discuss. She lied enough that both men and women had to call her out on her dishonesty back in the day.
The validity was so very surface level, then she'd deep dive into some inane bullshit to such a severe level that it detracted from any validity.
Like the equivalent of saying Taco Bell is a worse value than it used to be years ago, then going on a rant about how the new color scheme is actually part of an alien conspiracy to turn you into a mole person, because one of the colors used was called "Alien Gray" by a paint company.
It was essentially conspiracy theory logic, which is pretty wild when the was a mountain of direct and blatant sexism she could have talked about. It really proved she wasn't there because she was informed or insightful. She was there to make a payday, not make a difference, and it worked.
She was right at the curve and a pretty important voice at the time. Impressive that she stuck with it as long as she did. She certainly has had an outsized influence on gaming culture, if not the industry. Her voice was definitely amplified by the objections raised against her.
short version goes something like this:
\> internet sees a very small indie game get really weirdly good reviews despite it's objective lack of considerable content
\> people look into it and find out the reviewer had an undisclosed sexual relationship with the game's developer. Controversy ensues.
\> tantrums are thrown about a nonexistent 'harassments campaign' that ironically ends up creating an actual harassment campaign via the streisand effect
Literally every single person involved with gamergate - no matter what side they were on - was an asshole who failed to conduct themselves with literally any amount of integrity, and as a result the very idea of discussing ethics within the context of gaming and entertainment journalism are now seen as a dog whistle for whatever flavor of bigotry the reacting individual holds to be the most vile at that particular moment.
Wasn't it revealed that the guy who was she was accused of sleeping with didn't even review the game? And that the person who made the accusations was her ex?
And also I'm pretty sure the side that sent constant rape and death threats is a liiiiiittle worse.
Well she tried, with her boycott about sexualism on woman and shit, when obviously she was right but she didn't consider was on both sides, man was also sexualized, but at the end of they day, she didn't accomplish anything, because Waifu gacha games still exists hahaha
She was paid 159k to make 12 videos about how women are taken advantage of in video games via male gaze, being sexy, etc., etc.
The first 3 years she made 5 videos, but they only covered 3 of the topics. I think she finally finished but it took 6 or so years to make 12 youtube videos and I don't think they covered every topic.
She still pops every now and then to bring up gamergate and stir the pot in an attempt to gain some sort of relevance. So it’s not like she totally disappeared.
I see what you're saying but the sexualization of male characters in video games is often the result of the same male gaze that leads to the over sexualization of female characters. Have you ever seen the joke of how a guy will decide they want to get really buff and jacked to impress women but when they achieve that goal it's mostly men who are impressed. What you consider the sexualization of men in video games which balances out the sexualization of women is often still just a male fantasy.
Gross oversimplification. The real issue with gaming is how unbelievably greedy the biggest companies are. Stirring up controversy using generic feminist talking points only served to distract people from the real issues with these companies.
People did overreact I'll give you that though lol I didn't give a shit either way, I just wanted EA and Ubisoft to stop shitting all over the industry.
I genuinely don't know. All I know is that it had something to do with feminism or game journalism, a bunch of people got mad because they thought it was the end of gaming, and I think the last time it was mentioned was in a line from the English dub of an anime called Prison School.
Oh my fucking goodness. This was the worst time to be a gamer.
Youtube's algorithm promoted the gaming channels the most, because their long Let's Play videos happened to be the "it" thing at the time. As a result, a lot of fake gaming channels popped up and gained a lot of views, subscribers, fame and clout, where they used their meteoric success to express their political views.
Normally, I wouldn't care and just let them be them. But all of these fake "gaming" and "tech" were pushed so damn hard, that their anti-sjw, anti-femminism "critiques" was just them hating on anybody that had a vagina in the gaming work place.
At the time, I was in college for video game design and I only heard about Anita Sarkeesian because a fellow classmate did a presentation on her for our communication class. He brought up her background in the industry and the harassment that she went through as a result of her Tropes vs Women video series.
I remember the classroom of 30+ people unanimously agreeing that what she went through, was bullshit.
Additionally, this prensentation actually piqued my curiousity for this woman, because I needed to know what she said to earn scrunity of gamers everywhere. So I checked out her Tropes vs Women video series and found out, that it was a documentation of how women were portrayed in various forms of media. But the numerous "gaming & tech" falsified the series as Sarkeesian attacking gamers and their video games, that she wanted to bring down the patriarchy.
Now I'm a guy, and I am serious when I say this; as an gamer, people blew Anita Sarkeesian way out of proportion. The attacks and harassment she suffered, uncalled for. And the people who threw alll this shade at her, are just people who hate women.
A majority of the demographic of these Let’s Play videos are kids. I was 13-14 when gamergate went down and I fell down the “feminists are trying to ruin your video games” pipeline. It extends out to the anti-SJW and reactionaries to the feminist and LGBT movements. A big part of gamergate was grown ass men trying to convince pre-teens/teenagers to brigade and harass people. I grew out of it but I don’t think a lot of people did. I bet some of the misogyny among young men online has roots in gamergate.
Yes and no. The original “gamergate” was exactly that incident. But it spawned a cultural reaction within the gamer community that specifically targeted women in the video games industry regardless of their participation in gamergate. Many arguments eventually ended up being circled back to Anita sarkesian, who was the first notable feminist in the gamer community.
There is a whole discourse that has already been had regarding the issue. There were some legitimate complaints, but 90% of the fiasco ended up just being super sexist and toxic. My personal take is that the ”gamer“ crowd attracted a lot of social awkward, many of who were ASD, who felt sexual inadequacies confronted by an uncomfortable reality that the world does not cater to them.
One notable outcome is the KotakuInAction crowd, who if you check out their subreddit is just right wing dog whistle for “gamers.” People who unironically play wolfenstein and think the nazis were the good guys. Or people who play metal gear solid and call it “apolitical”
A notable perspective to consider is that there was some pretty aggressive astroturfing going on from the companies that were being accurately called out for shitty behavior. They were posting super sexist shit when the primary narrative was mostly legitimate criticisms, and using that as evidence to discredit their accusers. The astroturfing was so persistent and well done that it ended up shifting the movement toward what we'd now call alt-right. Then the actual alt-right people picked up the torch and ran with it.
If the media outlets being criticized didn't start the radicalization astroturfing as a defense mechanism, the alt-right movement would not have been as strong as it was. It's insanely shitty behavior that doesn't get enough attention.
Why is everyone talking about gamergate again all of a sudden? That was some irrelevant shit from 10 years ago. I don’t even think any of the creators who spear headed that are even popular anymore. I, as a 97 baby, was a highschooler at the time so I don’t think most of gen z was even there to remember it.
is she a grifter and a likely plagiarist? yeah, but that doesn't make all the abuse a bunch of women, her included, would later receive in any way justified.
I'm a bit OOL on this but from what I gather on the surface level stuff, One side has a section of far-right gamers who hate anything "wOkE" and will admonish any entity that supports it. But that section isn't the only part of that side who are against Sweet Baby Inc and her.
My understanding is that this came about because of some tweets and the poor quality of Suicide Squad. And how there was evidence that Sweet Baby Inc maybe was the cause of that because of claims that they have a history of coercing companies into doing things their way. At least in regards to the narrative.
Feel free to send me sources about this topic suggesting otherwise or confirming my claims.
Edit: Basically as far as I can tell so far, aside from the crazy anti-woke people there are legitimate reasons to hate her and Sweet Baby Inc based on their tactics
Critiquing games from a feminist position didn’t ruin games. In fact if people want games to be treated as art then we need to accept that they will be studied and critiqued from various schools of thought just like literature and other art forms. Not every critique of a game should be simply a review of its perceived quality as a product.
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I'm so glad games are not constantly given controversy today because some people hate women and gay people
I don't hate women.
That's good
Its funny that he needed to clarify that it’s women that he doesnt hate. 😂
That’s the point of the comment
Yeah... I kind of hate women though. I've noticed Dee has a smell to her, all women have it and frankly I hate it.
i hate women in a gay way
Sir I wish more people understood your comment 🤣
putting emphasis on random areas for laughs. Which sounds the worst? *I* don't hate women. I don't *hate* women. I don't hate *women*.
The second and third one are tied first for different reasons.
The first one can be interpreted to mean, that OP doesn't hate women, but everyone else does, that's the worst scenario. *I* don't hate women.
My submission for worst would include quotes… I “don’t” hate women.
I don't hate "women"
In my head this is what these mean. “*I* don’t hate women” makes it sound like you don’t hate women but you are familiar or close to people who do. “I don’t hate *women*” makes it sound like you don’t consider them people “I don’t *hate* women” makes it sound like hate is an understatement of how you feel
Personally, I feel like putting the emphasis on "women" sounds like you're saying, "I don't hate women, but I do hate some other, as yet unnamed group." As for putting the emphasis on "hate," I feel like that makes it sound like you have some other negative feeling towards women and are just about to keep digging yourself into the hole of misogyny. Maybe not as the bitter, spiteful misogynist, but a misogynist nonetheless (perhaps of the patronizing variety?)
What... What about gay people?
Plead the fifth
One Two Three Four Fif
and...
I hate everyone, equally.
https://preview.redd.it/q3d6y2r4x7oc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cf7a8b9fb105e653184486fbfefc72d5e86b5b0
I hate everyone equally but some people are more equal than others and so get more of my equal hatred.
Hate to ask, by what about Gay people? Mention of them is conspicuously absent...
I would fuck anyone and anything (legally of course). I dont discriminate.
Then fuck me to prove it.
You uh… you left out half the list
Said nothing about gays
Well I’m glad that you don’t hate women, but I’m glad about the oth- [deleted]
Instead the controversy is that the companies themselves hate women and gay people and their customers in general. Treating all of them awfully and somehow keep getting away with it.
It's not that they hate us necessarily. It's that they just love to see that stonk going up. So what if that means buggy games, unsustainable working conditions, or micro transactions??? All they hear is cha ching cha ching
There’s actually a controversy brewing around gaming *right now*. It’s just as ludicrous as the last one was years ago, and it’s going to sucker young men exactly the same way the last one did. It sucks ass, but seriously - Do not think it’s magically better today.
We’re so checked out creatively as a society that we’re even recycling controversies now. Many of the same characters from the last episode are in this one too! Exactly the same complaints, insults and scenarios as last time, even the same guy running for president. Fucking crazy. Makes you appreciate the fact the back to the future trilogy was the same movie 3 times, it was spot on.
I HATE EVERYONE
They're not in constant controversies as Minecraft youtubers but they get their fair share of controversies
Uh, right. That totally doesn't happen anymore-
You must be new. Starfield got review bombed because it gave players the option to change their pronoun.
Ahhh anita , The ultimate grifter You know there was a few things i agreed with her like some games took sexualizations too far and the female characters weren't characters and just set pieces , The rest of her arguments are just shit she made up to get money from studios and companies , Even tried to coerce studios like CDPR to hire her
She made some surface feminist critiques of videogames and people went fucking crazy over it. She didn't make any convincing arguments for me personally but like she also didn't spread misinformation. Nerds are just way too sensitive about our hobbies wow.
She was just riding that feminist train back then , lucky for me i was never part of that GG shit show , I was too busy enjoying black flag back then. I have to disagree about the misinformation tho, She twisted alot of games story to fit her narrative so she can prop up her career , She basically did nothing for the quality of games and took money for it.
I wouldn't say she didn't do anything. She certainly was one of the first very popular figures to start demanding a more varied, less sexualised, and female oriented characters in videogames. It was right after her that I saw a bigger shift in the roles women played in videogames. I do think it was around her time that studios started to realize that there is a huge demographic of women and queer people that wanted female characters that were more than eye candy. Again I don't think she made excellent arguments bit her impact on the space was felt imo.
I disagree, after her most female/queer characters became part of a checklist instead of unique and interesting characters. Before her there were plenty of great female characters that weren’t plot pieces, they just weren’t being shoehorned in. Jade (Beyond Good & Evil) Tali (Mass Effect) Faith Connors (Mirror’s Edge) The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3) Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) Jill Valentine (Resident Evil) the list goes on, but you get the idea. The only thing back then was that a lot of “mainstream” AAA titles didn’t have female **leads** which still hasn’t changed to this day, unless it’s a game where you choose your character. So essentially she complained about something that was blown out of proportion to begin with, and didn’t change much anyways. Most games with poorly written women have poorly written characters in general, more often than not.
Counterpoint. Lara, The Boss, and Tali were very male gazey. They were good characters but they appealed to a male audience that considers it necessary for the character design to be extremely hot ya know? And yahtzee croshaw (zero punctuation) made an analysis video where he did prove that games have gotten better at putting female characters in lead role by a huge margin. Link: https://youtu.be/2NfRCAXgcd0?feature=shared
Going to throw this out there, studies have shown that pretty much everyone prefers good looking men and women. Even women usually prefer the female characters to be attractive.
But not over sexualized. There's a huge difference between liking a pretty character and having the camera track your female avatar's daisy duke clad ass or having repeated slow motion qt events where the mini goes flying up to expose white cotton panties. It's like LC in Rise of the Tomb Raider: very pretty, not objectified at all. But I'm sure you've watched Sarkeesian's videos enough to have seen the many, many, many examples of explicit objectification of women in games.
why can’t men and women in games have a huge dumpy though
Nobody complains that all of the guys are ripped and shirtless wearing a loincloth like they are He-Man extras. So why is it only bad when the women are overly sexualized? I watched her videos once to see how stupid they were. She proved my hypothesis, they were indeed stupid.
Male gazey? The Boss just looks like any middle aged woman, she isn’t hot. Tali isn’t hot either, unless you consider wearing a gas mask and space suit hot. Lara Croft is just suffering the crime of having a big chest. Out of the three you named, the only one I could see people saying is “extremely hot” is Lara. But even then, you’re boiling down these complex characters into simply “well they’re designed attractive and that’s a problem”. All I’m saying is, nobody was complaining when they made Leon or Dante hot. Why is it different for female characters if they are still well written?
Why does laura dress like she's at a beach party when fighting mercenaries and commandos. I want to believe most women would want to be dressed like the men. BDU pants, with some kind of proper top, bullet proof vest, radio, weapons, mags, etc. Laura though.....tight tank top with some small shorts. Dante is a supernatural being, and I don't know which game Leon came from. Tali is an odd one, she's an alien. But isn't it a coincidence that she has thick thighs, nice breasts and that hour glass figure? If it wasn't said one might even assume she's human that may have had to wear a helmet, like Vader.
If we want to desexualize her to make her more realistic, fine, she should die 100% of the time because a tiny 110lb woman would be fucking wrekt in a similar situation.
Leon literally has the tighted t-shirt ever on for 99% of the game
Yeah those triangle titties got me goin /s
I'd be lying if I said I don't regularly fap to geometry textbooks.
See this is why I hate trigonometry, it appeals to the male fantasy
I don't disagree with the fact in question, but it bears noting that some evidence suggests that women want to play hot women even more than men do. Consider this wild stat from LoL[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/v7tohs/according\_to\_riot\_97\_of\_female\_players\_play/](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/v7tohs/according_to_riot_97_of_female_players_play/) Check out the word cloud too, they aren't gravitating towards the non-super model characters (illaoi or Taliyah for ex). Clearly this isn't definitive proof of anything, but it starts to get pretty convincing to me when combined with my personal experience which supports that conclusion.
Bro if you don’t think half these characters are male gaze designed then you have not played these games lmao
She would occasionally make a thought-provoking point, but her videos were mostly almost childishly shallow, and so long-winded, dull, and just weirdly dispassionate and emotionless. Also, often times would just kind of... list, random games that had women in them, and not really say much. And she weirdly mostly only talked about Japanese video games. Japanese game devs can't understand English, Anita! You can't convince them to be woke, they don't know what you're saying.
Yeah she also missed the point of many of the games she talked about. The one that comes to mind is Bayonetta. She said that the game always focused on her body and her sexuality and I'm like yeah. Bayonetta is supposed to be a powerful, sexual and confident witch who constantly sets boundaries, outsmarted all the men around her, is kind but not a pushover, put great importance in her female friendships, and is all around a very positive role mode. It speaks volumes that the game has a fanbase of mainly women and gay men.
Haven’t played bayoneta Only know her as the sexy teacher shooter chick It’s like the biggest thing about that game. Hot chick shoots guns
On the other hand, Japanese devs HAVE also gotten better. A great example from this last month is the remaster of Persona 3. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to 7/7 and saw that the shower scene wasn't as exploitative. 20 years ago, Atlus had a long, sensual pan-up to tease some 16-year-old-girl underboob, but not anymore. Made me feel MUCH less gross going through that scene than when I played FES.
Compare the ff7 remake aerith and Tifa with thier originals as well. The newer version actually has the two women as complete characters. In the og they barely spoke to each other for the length of the game.
I think this is why she was so notorious among 'anti-woke' people. Because she was the easy target for how dumb her points were. Representation in games has improved in a multitude of ways, for many reasons. A lot of people made great points about feminism. Anita isn't one of them.
The problem with her cruitiqes was that she did very poor research and would often take stuff out of context for the sake of proving a point. For example, she would often show footage of NPC's being murdered in sandbox games and say "this game views womens lives as disposable" despitr the fact that killing women was not actually promoted in the game. Hell at one point in one of her videos she lied about a mission in hitman and treated something discuraged by the actual game as the mission objective.
She did play games in ways that caused her to lose while saying that the game was encouraging and rewarding that style of play Also she claimed a lot of footage was her's when it was not
"nerds are way to sensitive about our hobbies now" I actually agree with this as a fellow nerd. It's also why you can't have a simple debate about anything nerd related today. Like at all. Someone is going to hop in and not realize that we all have opinions and there just that. An opinion not fact.
So Hitman was about abusing women to fulfill violent male fantasy’s? Did not seem that way to me.
She literally did spread misinformation/misleading information like this one about the killing women in the game Hitman Absolution: > "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual characters. It's a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality" When in reality players were actually punished for doing that and she just essentially made that up. She’s a misleading grifter. > Nerds are just way too sensitive about our hobbies wow. [Considering the state of the video game industry in the 2020s Anita was just an early warning sign of things to come](https://www.reddit.com/r/videogames/comments/1bdp7b7/lead_developer_of_eas_new_black_panther_game/)
The first example is just a her point of view about the mechanics of a game. She may have had a very weird and imo wrong analysis about the topics but it's not misinformation to analyze something from that point of view. Misinformation is stating lies as facts. Not giving out bad opinions. The second one... she just wanted to have a team comprised of mainly people of color. She even expressed that she is not doing it out malice against white people. There's a bunch of other studios comprised of only white or asian people and she's creating opportunities for the people of her community. What the hell do you want out of her?
If her “point of view” is wrong, then it’s still misleading/misinformation lol. You can wave away every misinformation and misleading claim as just someone’s “point of view”. Fact is the players were never meant to do that and were actually meant ***not to do that*** otherwise they could get penalised for it. > The second one... she just wanted to have a team comprised of mainly people of color. Only*. Right it’s not malice white people just do “microaggressions”.. > She even expressed that she is not doing it out malice against white people. There's a bunch of other studios comprised of only white or asian people Name me one studio that hires only white people, and isn’t considered to be racists. I’ll wait (you can’t). > What the hell do you want out of her? Maybe to not be racist?
Well considering tripple a games have kinda gone down the drain i understand why ppl are sensitive
She 100% spread misinformation for outrage. Her critique for Hitman was that you were "actively rewarded for killing random women" even though you actively get punished for it.
Cherry picking examples and explicitly ignoring anything that doesn't confirm your pre-determined conclusion and passing it off as the absolute truth of the whole medium is 100% an example of spreading misinformation, actually.
How is Anita a grifter? She made her series, she ran a kickstarter to make more of it, people donated to it of their own volition, and then she made the series. She never sold a course, she never claimed to be some brilliant guru, she never claimed that video games were causing the downfall of society. Hell, I don't even think she even sold merch beyond like, some T-shirts probably, maybe some mugs? She's a fucking content creator, and that's all she *ever* was. Calling *her* the Ultimate Grifter when motherfuckers like Sneako, Fresh and Fit and Andrew Tate are running around is. I mean, quite frankly, it *reaks* of unaddressed lingering sexism from the Gamergate days.
I don't like Anita that much, but I agree calling her a grifter is BS. Now I wonder who the biggest grifter is. Although in all honestly it would be one we never realized was a grifter. But that aside it may be people that have had whole styles of grifting named after them. Like Charles Ponzi
Most largest is probably Trump, bro grifted an entire political party into picking him over people who actually share their ideology and then used his position in office to benefit himself as much as possible
She’s made a bunch of kickstarters, didn’t fulfill the promise and pocketed the money. Also her videos were genuinely low effort.
https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=J8VRgzgEIw4qyh9W I think you’re the one getting grifted, bud
I love that an academic who crowdfunds a ten episode podcast -- which got made! on time even! -- is a grifter while the biggest media platform in gaming is literally just people talking about stuff and random people giving them $3 and *that's serious culture*
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God, this so much. She basically did a “my first look at feminism” take with very vanilla beginner looks at video games and people Lost their gd minds
Weren't those threats never substantiated and not reported to police?
How is she a grifter? I'm not a fan, but she delivered what she was paid for. You might disagree about the content's quality, but she did produce everything she was contracted / kickstarted for. And the people who bought it were, by all accounts, happy with it.
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I see your point, unlike Anita my position is if you don't like how certain video games represent people... Just don't play those games, people shouldn't be forced to make things that fit other people's worldview, if enough people don't like it the game won't sell and devs will make less games like it
So if somebody writes something you don’t like, you wouldn’t say anything, you’d just quietly go read something different? Because she said something you don’t like and here you are describing the thing you didn’t like instead of moving on like you said she should do. Interesting.
It's everyone else who has to get over their problems and not talk about them. Not me though!
And sitting back and doing nothing means nothing will change. I'm a gay man, and.with your attitude we would still being seeing almost 0 LGBTQ representation. Change happens because of people speaking up.
>Anita, the ultimate grifter Ever hear about Jordan Peterson? How about Ben Shapiro? Or basically any right wing popular figure online? Like, agree or disagree w her, but calling her the ULTIMATE grifter is such a fucking reach holy crap, you can certainly find progressive people more shady than her, that James Somerton guy for example. She said a bunch of liberal femminist stuff, that's basically it, nothing radical, nothing revolutionary, people overreacted and gave her waaaay too much attention cause liberal femminism is so easy to attack and she became a punching bag, a lot of lies were thrown around about her and so on. Nowdays we have way more radical femminists online who don't face the ammount of pushback she faced, she was the perfect target at the time.
Most of the time her video essays were just poor quality and sort of exposed her as a grifter (and I'm sorry to say that). She would pick on female characters out of context and not address that the same character she was talking about actually had some deep humanizing dialogue.
I mean people like to pretend she isnt a grifter.... But a female game dev made a whole video series tearing her arguments apart one by one. The most hilarious off the top of my head. The strippers in hitman example by Anita: She srgued they were sex object props you can kill The answer: They were killable yes... Like every npc, but the game would punish you for that and they had very humanizing dialogue as you pass by them doing the opposite of what Anita argued. Anita: Monstrous feminine monsters bad. The Answer: Simply why. Most monsters use exaggerated masculine traits for brute strength and other. A monstrous feminine is not sexism, but expanding the design space for monsters to be less sexist. Anita: Male characters being shirtless isnt sexy. Its power fantasy Answer: Being sexy is part of the power fantasy
She lives rent free in some of y’all coomers minds
>coomers Bruh really went there
Had to be done
He called it like it is.
I watched 15 minutes of her bioshock video before dismissing it because it was clearly trash to enrage people, and put her out of my mind. The only time I ever see this lady is when people who allegedly despise her, KEEP BRINGING HER THE FUCK BACK UP.
She spoke to a lot of us who felt like we were crazy. Before FF it felt like I was the only one who saw the rampant sexism and endlessly repeated tropes. Then she started talking about this shit and suddenly dudes LOST THEIR FUCKING MINDS! Of course it turned into a holy war.
I love when people break their minds doing mental gymnastics to explain things like this with sexism or misogyny when the answer is literally staring you in the face and it's capitalism, honey. You really think a game dev would sacrifice money in order to push a sexist message? Absolutely delusional thinking. They will make a video game that will make the maximum amount of money. If that means showing big tittys and ass then that's what they will do. If it means 100 gay characters and pronouns, then that's what they'll do. They will make money at all costs. There is no conspiracy here, just brain worms
If you live in a sexist culture, sexism sells. That's what Anita was pointing out in her videos. It was a critical analysis on something that a lot of people gloss over in society. You can criticize capitalists for being racist, sexist, whatever, even if in their hearts it's only for profit. The bigotry still feeds into society and is a bad thing, no matter the origin lmao.
If you live in a sexist culture, sexism sells. That's what Anita was pointing out in her videos. It was a critical analysis on something that a lot of people gloss over in society. You can criticize capitalists for being racist, sexist, whatever, even if in their hearts it's only for profit. The bigotry still feeds into society and is a bad thing, no matter the origin lmao.
Gamer gate is an astroturf wherein a group from /pol/ claimed that a different woman named Zoe Quinn slept with a game reviewer to get a good review of the game. Both the reviewer as well as the company he works for have confirmed this is not the case, and it’s been used as a dogwhistle rallying cry for men who want to gatekeep whatever they can from women. Many attribute some of the first mainstreaming of the alt right to GamerGate, hence the connection. Edit: Pictured woman isn’t the one accused of sleeping with someone. Sarkeesian’s case is different in that “Gamergate” insisted she was “in on it” when she published articles that were feminist in nature. Her “damage” to the sphere of gaming is widely exaggerated for people to justify the harassment and constant death threats she received. https://youtu.be/lLYWHpgIoIw?si=J8VRgzgEIw4qyh9W
Wow, how can you be so wrong on so many levels? holy hell. The woman in the picture isn't even Zoe Quinn.
This is Reddit - being completely wrong on things is the norm here.
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>Zoe Quinn who got sexually involved with 5 different journalists to get positive press for her game It's five guys now? Last I heard she was only involved with one dude who gave her game a mention like once. All being blown up because she left her then boyfriend who sort of started it all with the accusation.
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Literally never happened. Just trying to defend people who criminally coordinated together to harass and threaten women because they're literally misogynist incels.
>It's five guys now? yes, she slept with an overpriced cheeseburger and far far too many fries! /j
Story changes to match the outrage
https://youtu.be/S6wcXJRjQU4?si=w2jhPFhEwMrFJ_YV It's been 9 years. Not my favorite video/source but this stuff has gotten very old. It's super interesting how wild of a ride the whole gamer gate thing was. Anyways I'm getting ready for bed. Goodnight everyone.
You do realize that there was no evidence for this, right? Like nobody admitted to it. The one guy that she slept with never even reviewed her game and they hooked up later. Decades later and you losers are STILL making shit up
Zoe Quin was notnsexually involved with any journalists for her free game that wasn't ever written about on the websites. Also, her accusations aren't untrue because he took his own life. "She was never investigated" is fucking stupid. Why would she be investigated? Gamergate was a bunch of incels attacking and harassing women. Zoe Quinn did nothing wrong. Attacking her for lies you've been told is ignorant.
Do you have sources for any of this? And no, 4chan is not a source.
That one was Zoe Quinn. It’s claimed that she cheated on her boyfriend with five men and that one of them gave her game a positive review in return. I haven’t ever been able to find the review in question, though. The only article I’ve found from that guy that mentions Quinn is about a failed Game Jam that she was in, and all it really did was quote stuff she said. I guess the review could have just been deleted and I haven’t been looking in the right places for an archive of it. The one in the image is Anita Sarkeesian, she did a series of videos critiquing tropes in video games, which did contain some incorrect information (Ex: saying a game requires you to kill a woman to progress, when in reality you’re penalized if you complete the mission that way.) So, there were legitimate reasons to criticize her, but the response some people had to these videos was disproportionate, to say the least.
I think disproportionate is kinda the key word for me
There was significant, and near constant barrage of support for her that was never really recanted at any point. As the support failed to wane despite a consistent stream of evidence of her being a deceptive piece of trash, it really enraged and radicalized people, as media portrayed her as the victim. To be honest, it really feels like a lot of media outlets doubled down because the criticisms were against game journalism, and actually helped promote the alt-right movement by giving them legitimate evidence of shitty behavior.
Innuendo Studios' entire gamergate playlist was fantastic: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA\_jUddXvY62dhVThbeegLPpvQlR4CjF](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY62dhVThbeegLPpvQlR4CjF)
And this is how misinformation is spread, idk how yall just make up stories and then blame it on the alt right and get up voted..
Going on gaming subreddits have become so tiring. "ThIs WOmAn NoT SexY" and It'll be a game set In the Post Apocalypse or something, as If anyone got time or care to pamper themselves In the apocalypse. I never played TLoU, but people got mad about the girl having muscle? No shit Sherlock, you need to be strong mentally and physically In the zombie apocalypse, If not zombies, other people will get you. It's fucking mind numbing The constant bitching and moaning about games they never planned on playing, people I don't know, and corporations I don't give a shit about, which gets me all pressed like now when I just want to talk games. I still have no clue what Sweet Baby Inc do, aside QC games, but never heard of them till last week
imagine being so dull that you can only view video games purely through the lens of fan service. No desire to understand or critique the narrative themes or writing, nor the artistic direction, nor the gameplay mechanics or choice architecture or technical competency. Only how hot a woman character is. The game becomes little more meaningful than the slop and Mountain Dew they shovel down their throat. It frankly disgusts me. A chimpanzee would be a more respectable player.
Stay away from /r/asmongold they literally post every unattractive women and rage, then post attractive women and jizz themselves.
Unsurprising, asmongold sucks as a creator so his fan base should suck just as much
It's insane to me that someone like him can have a following at all. All these "no politics in video games" coomers are just ignoring the fact that video games have always had underlying political tones just like every other media. It's just when the politics don't align with their weird ass always-online views that they lose their shit. Most of us just play games for fun, I don't need or really want to see giant titties in every game I play, I don't want to see more games that might be fun release but I won't ever try them because half the characters look like sexualized 15 year old girls (pretty much every anime stylized game). Anita (and Zoe Quinn) were the targets of absolutely ridiculous claims that were never proven at all, most of which are objectively disproven at this point. They were constantly under threat of harm and other shit as well, and they had VERY mild takes about all of this, I'm probably more strong minded on the issue than either of them for fucks sake and I'm a dude.
Poltics are everything I don’t like is the mindset
>Going on gaming subreddits have become so tiring. "ThIs WOmAn NoT SexY". Especially annoying because constant oversexualisation will send a medium down the drain. Anime is a good example of this. So much anime is unwatchable due to the constant sexualisation of every female character. Then every now and then an actually good anime like Frieren or Jujutsu Kaisen comes along and you notice how much better an anime gets when it focuses on other things than constantly throwing comically sized tits in your face. I honestly wouldn't play that many games if every game was hypersexualised like much of anime is.
SBI is literally just a consultancy firm, but its being used as an excuse for more of the "woke is making games go bad" thing.
My favorite part was how much they hated her, yet posted every video minute one, posted to her Kickstarter, and basically did everything possible to propel her into the spotlight. Their very hatred only made her that much more popular
whos that
Sarkeesian
Who? I'm plungerman ask me anything 🚽🪠🚽🪠 r/plungerman
I think she was involved in gamergate don't recall
She is a feminist media critic that got lumped into gamergate. In short, gamergate started because Zoe Quinn's ex boyfriend made the claim that Quinn had dated a journalist from Kotaku to get a good review of her upcoming game: Depression Quest, a text-based adventure game. Now, just a reminder of the fact that Depression Quest was never reviewed by Kotaku, Zoe Quinn never had any game reviewed by Kotaku, Depression Quest was fucking free, the only coverage Kotaku ever had of Zoe is approximately 3 non-consecutive sentences that essentially said : "Zoe exists and is making a game" and said statement predates Quinn and the journalist's relationship. Yeah, you get the idea very fucking quick what was really going on. Also, an IRC was made that homed the gamergate forming threads and the stated goal was to get Quinn to kill themself and using "ethics in games journalism" as a cover. The headlines caught momentum, and Anita Sarkesian got lumped in because a harassment campaign built on hating women inherently hated Anita as well and saw an opportunity to attack all their "enemies." Which were mostly just women that worked in the game industry. Also, this is the event that got Breitbart News into the mainstream, they covered gamergate postively, and the exec chair, Steve Bannon (convicted of multiple federal offenses for things like money laundering, contempt of court, fraud, etc) got his job as DJT's campaign manager (which resulted in him doing fraud and getting convicted of crimes) from this event. Gamergate was basically a bunch of nazis and incels starting a culture war and the American Republican party picking up their rhetoric and strategies.
Great analysis, thx dude 🙏
[Anita Sarkeesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Sarkeesian) She was a target of [Gamergate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign))
A 41 year old woman who threw a fake wedding for herself for her own birthday party 😂😂
The fact that people in this very thread are still buying into the gamergate-era misinformation about Sarkeesian shows its long term negative effects
Half the comments here are talking about how this woman was a hack and there was never any sexism in the gaming industry, and the other half are actively proving them wrong by parroting sexist misinformation about how women sleep with game reviewers.
Nah, nobody I’ve seen is saying there’s no sexism. She’s absolutely a fucking hack though. Lmao
Noooooo you don’t understand!!!! Videogames are art but they should be immune from critique by people I don’t like despite those same critiques being applied to literally every single other form of art!!!!!
Has enough time passed where we can all safely admit that a good amount of Anita’s arguments were fairly valid?
Not really. Some of it was valid, the rest of her "criticisms" were just her complaining about things that made no sense or her just being dishonest about what she was trying to discuss. She lied enough that both men and women had to call her out on her dishonesty back in the day.
I mean, a lot of them are kinda SWERF adjacent and very shallow. But no matter what, nothing deserves the harassment she received for years.
The validity was so very surface level, then she'd deep dive into some inane bullshit to such a severe level that it detracted from any validity. Like the equivalent of saying Taco Bell is a worse value than it used to be years ago, then going on a rant about how the new color scheme is actually part of an alien conspiracy to turn you into a mole person, because one of the colors used was called "Alien Gray" by a paint company. It was essentially conspiracy theory logic, which is pretty wild when the was a mountain of direct and blatant sexism she could have talked about. It really proved she wasn't there because she was informed or insightful. She was there to make a payday, not make a difference, and it worked.
She was right at the curve and a pretty important voice at the time. Impressive that she stuck with it as long as she did. She certainly has had an outsized influence on gaming culture, if not the industry. Her voice was definitely amplified by the objections raised against her.
i was around back then and I dont even know what it was can someone explain it to me?
short version goes something like this: \> internet sees a very small indie game get really weirdly good reviews despite it's objective lack of considerable content \> people look into it and find out the reviewer had an undisclosed sexual relationship with the game's developer. Controversy ensues. \> tantrums are thrown about a nonexistent 'harassments campaign' that ironically ends up creating an actual harassment campaign via the streisand effect Literally every single person involved with gamergate - no matter what side they were on - was an asshole who failed to conduct themselves with literally any amount of integrity, and as a result the very idea of discussing ethics within the context of gaming and entertainment journalism are now seen as a dog whistle for whatever flavor of bigotry the reacting individual holds to be the most vile at that particular moment.
ye, best move was to just disengage. ‘twas a nothing burger
Wasn't it revealed that the guy who was she was accused of sleeping with didn't even review the game? And that the person who made the accusations was her ex? And also I'm pretty sure the side that sent constant rape and death threats is a liiiiiittle worse.
It’s called Pearl Harbour! google it!!!!!
Bro I was playing tekken 8 the other day and couldn’t play it anymore because of this women I’ve never met. FUCK HER!!!
Well she tried, with her boycott about sexualism on woman and shit, when obviously she was right but she didn't consider was on both sides, man was also sexualized, but at the end of they day, she didn't accomplish anything, because Waifu gacha games still exists hahaha
Idk why she has a problem with sexualized fictional characters
Because she was earning money by saying shit
So rage bait?
Kinda
She was paid 159k to make 12 videos about how women are taken advantage of in video games via male gaze, being sexy, etc., etc. The first 3 years she made 5 videos, but they only covered 3 of the topics. I think she finally finished but it took 6 or so years to make 12 youtube videos and I don't think they covered every topic.
She still pops every now and then to bring up gamergate and stir the pot in an attempt to gain some sort of relevance. So it’s not like she totally disappeared.
It’s called grifting
Did you watch or read any of the content where she explains why she has a problem with it?
I see what you're saying but the sexualization of male characters in video games is often the result of the same male gaze that leads to the over sexualization of female characters. Have you ever seen the joke of how a guy will decide they want to get really buff and jacked to impress women but when they achieve that goal it's mostly men who are impressed. What you consider the sexualization of men in video games which balances out the sexualization of women is often still just a male fantasy.
Is that the woman who said that she hates video games because they appeal to the male fantasy?
No but in the same circle
No I think that was a Buzzfeed person
What even *was* gamergate? Like I don't even get what happened. What was the whole...deal?
Basically incels realized women play video games too and they were not happy about it
Gross oversimplification. The real issue with gaming is how unbelievably greedy the biggest companies are. Stirring up controversy using generic feminist talking points only served to distract people from the real issues with these companies. People did overreact I'll give you that though lol I didn't give a shit either way, I just wanted EA and Ubisoft to stop shitting all over the industry.
It was always about ethics in gaming journalism, except for the 95% of the hateful bs seen in /r/kotakuinaction and similar places like kiwifarms
I genuinely don't know. All I know is that it had something to do with feminism or game journalism, a bunch of people got mad because they thought it was the end of gaming, and I think the last time it was mentioned was in a line from the English dub of an anime called Prison School.
Haven't heard of Anita in years, who gives a shit
Oh my fucking goodness. This was the worst time to be a gamer. Youtube's algorithm promoted the gaming channels the most, because their long Let's Play videos happened to be the "it" thing at the time. As a result, a lot of fake gaming channels popped up and gained a lot of views, subscribers, fame and clout, where they used their meteoric success to express their political views. Normally, I wouldn't care and just let them be them. But all of these fake "gaming" and "tech" were pushed so damn hard, that their anti-sjw, anti-femminism "critiques" was just them hating on anybody that had a vagina in the gaming work place. At the time, I was in college for video game design and I only heard about Anita Sarkeesian because a fellow classmate did a presentation on her for our communication class. He brought up her background in the industry and the harassment that she went through as a result of her Tropes vs Women video series. I remember the classroom of 30+ people unanimously agreeing that what she went through, was bullshit. Additionally, this prensentation actually piqued my curiousity for this woman, because I needed to know what she said to earn scrunity of gamers everywhere. So I checked out her Tropes vs Women video series and found out, that it was a documentation of how women were portrayed in various forms of media. But the numerous "gaming & tech" falsified the series as Sarkeesian attacking gamers and their video games, that she wanted to bring down the patriarchy. Now I'm a guy, and I am serious when I say this; as an gamer, people blew Anita Sarkeesian way out of proportion. The attacks and harassment she suffered, uncalled for. And the people who threw alll this shade at her, are just people who hate women.
A majority of the demographic of these Let’s Play videos are kids. I was 13-14 when gamergate went down and I fell down the “feminists are trying to ruin your video games” pipeline. It extends out to the anti-SJW and reactionaries to the feminist and LGBT movements. A big part of gamergate was grown ass men trying to convince pre-teens/teenagers to brigade and harass people. I grew out of it but I don’t think a lot of people did. I bet some of the misogyny among young men online has roots in gamergate.
Wasn't gamer gate about journalists helping the indie devs they were sleeping with win awards and get free press
Yes and no. The original “gamergate” was exactly that incident. But it spawned a cultural reaction within the gamer community that specifically targeted women in the video games industry regardless of their participation in gamergate. Many arguments eventually ended up being circled back to Anita sarkesian, who was the first notable feminist in the gamer community. There is a whole discourse that has already been had regarding the issue. There were some legitimate complaints, but 90% of the fiasco ended up just being super sexist and toxic. My personal take is that the ”gamer“ crowd attracted a lot of social awkward, many of who were ASD, who felt sexual inadequacies confronted by an uncomfortable reality that the world does not cater to them. One notable outcome is the KotakuInAction crowd, who if you check out their subreddit is just right wing dog whistle for “gamers.” People who unironically play wolfenstein and think the nazis were the good guys. Or people who play metal gear solid and call it “apolitical”
A notable perspective to consider is that there was some pretty aggressive astroturfing going on from the companies that were being accurately called out for shitty behavior. They were posting super sexist shit when the primary narrative was mostly legitimate criticisms, and using that as evidence to discredit their accusers. The astroturfing was so persistent and well done that it ended up shifting the movement toward what we'd now call alt-right. Then the actual alt-right people picked up the torch and ran with it. If the media outlets being criticized didn't start the radicalization astroturfing as a defense mechanism, the alt-right movement would not have been as strong as it was. It's insanely shitty behavior that doesn't get enough attention.
Thanks for the sensible response . I was hoping more people would react like this
Now it’s become everythinggate
It's so funny to think people were losing their shit over her and now it's like, nobody even fucking remembers her lol.
Blaming Anita for capitalism is so wack
But, like, it appeals to the male fantasy
Sadly they’re trying to make the sequel
Why is everyone talking about gamergate again all of a sudden? That was some irrelevant shit from 10 years ago. I don’t even think any of the creators who spear headed that are even popular anymore. I, as a 97 baby, was a highschooler at the time so I don’t think most of gen z was even there to remember it.
is she a grifter and a likely plagiarist? yeah, but that doesn't make all the abuse a bunch of women, her included, would later receive in any way justified.
Ah yes, the idiot who was mad about Hitman allowing you to kill strippers, like literally every other npc in the game.
[удалено]
I'm a bit OOL on this but from what I gather on the surface level stuff, One side has a section of far-right gamers who hate anything "wOkE" and will admonish any entity that supports it. But that section isn't the only part of that side who are against Sweet Baby Inc and her. My understanding is that this came about because of some tweets and the poor quality of Suicide Squad. And how there was evidence that Sweet Baby Inc maybe was the cause of that because of claims that they have a history of coercing companies into doing things their way. At least in regards to the narrative. Feel free to send me sources about this topic suggesting otherwise or confirming my claims. Edit: Basically as far as I can tell so far, aside from the crazy anti-woke people there are legitimate reasons to hate her and Sweet Baby Inc based on their tactics
This is even older than that. I think it was around 2014.
I think the post they are replying to is sarcasm making fun of Gamergate morons
Ok sub 85 iq guy
started to play elden ring and that game is fucking amazing
Critiquing games from a feminist position didn’t ruin games. In fact if people want games to be treated as art then we need to accept that they will be studied and critiqued from various schools of thought just like literature and other art forms. Not every critique of a game should be simply a review of its perceived quality as a product.
Anita sarkesian and Zoe Quinn, what a throwback 😂
She has ruined some games tho by contributing when she didn’t need to. She basically bullied a few companies into hiring her.
Lmao y’all really treating this woman like she’s got that kind of power.
Yeah well now she no longer has a job.
Thankfully
I mean... I have MORE games... does that mean I ALSO ruined gaming?
I never got gamer gate. I know that I should avoid alot of big game companies cuz the game is undercooked and they spam dlc or battle passes tho.
Boy, this sub sure is a shit hole. Do better, Gen Z. You are embarrassing yourself here.