At 8/24/14 03:22 PM, Splats wrote: 1. most games with female stereotyping or any stereotyping for that matter are pretty much standard issue by now, they don't mean to insult anyone so getting personally offended is not a reason to confront the industry about alleged misogyny/sexism (imo and many others')
It's not about the intentions behind these tropes, whatever they might be, it's about the effects they have regardless of those intentions. Sarkeesian knows that game developers don't mean to insult anyone, she knows that for the most part they're not actively trying to send misogynistic messages.
That's the whole point of the videos: to shed some light on the sexist underpinnings of these tropes so developers/players/critics can be wary of them in the future, because right now misogyny in the gaming industry/culture is so deeply entrenched that people constantly perpetuate it unconsciously.
2. anita sarkeesian, while having done a lot of research regarding the vidya, is not a gamer and therefore many do not care what she has to say and view her opinions as invalid. (this is not my opinion, i think it just explains why so many people got mad at her in the first place
Well those people are morons. First of all, all of Sarkeesian's videos have been primarily focused on narrative and aesthetic tropes that exist in lots of other media and whose effects aren't really ever changed by the context of gameplay (if you can think of some examples where this isn't the case, then that could be a valid argument against some of Sarkeesian's specific assessments of individual games, but not against her broader points or goals as so many mouth-breathing dweebs have claimed).
Second of all, look at the enormous variety of games that get mentioned in her videos. Old games, new games, blockbusters, indies, classics, obscurities, games of every genre and style you can think of. Her work clearly displays a far greater breadth and depth of gaming knowledge than that of your average self-described "gamer," so who cares whether or not she meets his arbitrary standard of expertise?
At the end of the day, I find the "controversy" over Sarkeesian's work to be utterly laughable. Feminist criticism is a thriving branch of the critical writing of virtually every single other artistic medium, feminist film, lit and art critics have been talking about these sorts of tropes for the past half century, yet for whatever reason even the most clear-cut, basic Women & Gender Studies 101 shit like the content of these videos whips the gaming community into a blind panic. And these are the same people who constantly complain that gaming isn't respected enough as an art form. It's just fucking bonkers.
