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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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 Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:00 pm |
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Hi there! I'm not really privy to the drama surrounding this issue or the death threats, etc. I am watching the video in the original post and it seems as though Anita has maybe unreasonably high expectations for what video games are/should be and allow for in their choices. At about the 15 minute mark she's talking about how Watchdogs has a random event where you stop a woman from being beat up in a back alleyway or whatever and is talking about how you can't call for an ambulance to help her or anything after saving her.
This kind of seems like missing the point of the encounter. It's meant to be a quick event the player can choose to engage in, and making it a long drawn out affair where you have to get her to an ambulance or something would kind of detract from the intended pace of the event. It's not that the women have been "casually discarded" so much as that the event itself isn't really important in the grand scheme of things. She seems to think that because it involves violence against women that it by its very necessity needs to be a primary focus of the game, which is a bit odd to me, considering it's just one of many crimes that you deal with.
To me, it kind of takes credence away from her argument, because it seems like she's nitpicking things that really aren't that big of a deal. There's definitely some good examples in this video, and making a shorter video with a focus on the worse examples would probably be more productive than long videos that dwell on pretty tame occurrences of violence against women that aren't really examples of what she seems to be making the video about.
'We are perfectly willing to suspend our disbelief when it comes to multiple lives, super powers, health regeneration, and the ability to carry dozens of weapons in a massive, invisible backpack. But somehow, the idea of a world without sexual violence and exploitation as being (sic) too strange and too bizarre to be believable."
The driving conflict in so many games could be described as "human evil" and I think if you take the above set of sentences from her video and replace "sexual violence and exploitation" with "human evil" you don't really change the meaning of them. It is a means to show evil and encourage the player to fight it. Not saying it's not badly done and problematic in a lot of games, and I'm glad someone is calling them out on it, but... I don't think you can stop the buck at just sexual violence. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 10:15 pm |
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| evnvnv wrote: |
| What better place to begin a critique of the way we are taught to think about trauma, and victimhood than with an examination of the piss-poor way abuse and sexual violence are depicted in video games? |
This is a fair point. From the perspective of "it's better to talk about one thing than to talk about nothing" I can understand why these videos would be valuable.
I don't mean to be offensive when I say this, (which I will of course then colossally fail at, I'm sure...) but I don't see the point in drawing a line between sexual violence and other types of violence. Is sexual-based violence significantly worse than other types of violence in a way I don't understand? Like, is it more or less heinous than beating someone because they are black or because they worship a different God, or whatever other reason is used as an excuse? Or is it just that we are trying to quash this one issue then move on to other stuff?
If someone is beaten to death, or to within an inch of death, does it matter that it was a man and a woman or a man and a man, or whatever?
It clearly must and yet the motivation for the act seems secondary to me than the act itself. (IE: "I don't like something about the way you naturally are, so I'm going to kill you.")
It's possible Anita covers this in her other videos. I have only watched the one in the first post so far and if there are any you recommend, please link me to them.
It seems to me like the core issue is (or should be) with how violence against women is portrayed with a strange mixture of titillation and brutality. That's why the Watch Dog example she gave puzzled me a bit and I believe helped to weaken the overall message. Both were fully clothed, it was meant to be brutal, and it wasn't glorified. I guess the issue is that the solution is to kill the perpetrator? That's just a result of simple, trashy gameplay mechanics which don't strike me as a social issue.[/i]
Last edited by capgamer on Sat Aug 30, 2014 10:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 10:24 pm |
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| Rei wrote: |
| Also, Anita wanting to call an ambulance isn't missing the point of the encounters in Watch Dogs. I remember GTA IV gave you the option to call ambulances and the paramedics would resuscitate dead NPCs. Anita's comment wasn't simply out-of-the-blue. Watch Dogs is a GTA wannabe, after all, but murder seems to be the only option much of the time. And I'm quite sure Anita could see that the random encounters where female characters are brutalized were meant to be brief affairs, like snacks. Anita points out that the brevity is part of her problem with the random encounters in Watch Dogs. These encounters are also designed to show female characters as being helplessly overpowered by always-male characters. Anita addresses it in the video itself. |
Okay, so part of this sounds like I just don't have enough background information on these games. I don't play open world games as a general rule because they don't appeal to me, so what I hear of them is from outside sources, limited reviews, etc. I didn't know that you could call an ambulance for people in GTA and it makes more sense now why that would be expected. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 1:30 am |
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| EnDevero wrote: |
I think the Watch Dogs example might be easier to understand for some people if you take away the female angle and just use it as an example of how media is often sloppy in how it treats -victims- in general. Games often use victims as excuses to harm the perpetrator rather than framing the victims as real people in need of help. You see this sort of thing all over media-- victims are just disposable casualties while the narrative focuses on a thrilling hunt for the bad guy who caused all the harm. This treatment of victims just gets all the more problematic when the victims are women because of the pre-existing problems with portrayals of women.
I'm not sure if I believe that these portrayals directly cause problems in the real world exactly (I'm just not sure yet), but I definitely think they are representative of already-existing issues. When I see how victims are represented in media, I can't help but draw comparisons to how people around me often talk bout strong vs weak. I mean, victim blaming is everywhere in our society and our media seems to reflect that disregard for those that are oppressed. |
Okay, thank you this makes more sense to me now!
If I understand what you mean:
The issue with it is that we are "punishing the guilty", not "protecting the weak." We are rewarded for hunting down the killer, regardless of whether or not we were too slow to save the victim. There are no consequences for what should be complete failure (the victim dies) and only rewards for doling out "justice."
I think what I was getting stuck on was not understanding how the fact that the victim was female played into the situation which made me not get what was wrong with the situation. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 12:52 am |
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I really like this article and I think it gives a good view of the situation without getting passionate about bemoaning those who consider themselves "gamers" for their misogyny or perceived misogyny.
Gamergate is basically doomed to fail, but it will be interesting to see what comes out of it. I like the author's suggestion that people disenchanted with the existing game journalism sites would create new websites to fill their personal niche. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Sep 07, 2014 6:36 pm |
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| evnvnv wrote: |
| Quote: |
| deeper than just women |
Does anyone who advances this line of reasoning realize how demeaning and trivializing it sounds? |
I think the line of reasoning you're talking about is an attempt to make the conversation inclusive instead of exclusive. It's an attempt to make it about more than women, because the issues that are being talked about apply not only to women.
I suspect that people do this sometimes because they are trying to empathize with the argument, not necessarily because they are trying to demean it. Whether it's destructive or not to try to broaden it, I could not say. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 3:58 am |
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I have to wonder if the conspiracy theories would have taken hold if people had been allowed to discuss things instead of the mass attempt at censorship (which is still ongoing). I can't help feeling that a large reason this mess happened was that there was poor communication by the various sites why they were removing discussion about the blog post.
I honestly don't think you can paint the entirety of the Gamergate movement with a broad brush as being entirely about slut shaming and misogyny. A lot of people came in after the initial controversy when the 8 or 9 "Gamers are dead" articles were posted within the same 24 hour period. I think the ill-timing of that is what fueled the conspiracies for a lot of people.
Of course, the end element is that some people believed the conspiracies because they wanted to... which is pretty fucked up. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:50 am |
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| sarsamis wrote: |
I'm genuinely curious: are there any games that handle rape in a tasteful or, idk, "artful" manner?
Does it amount to anything in Silent Hill 2 (I've never played it)?
Killer 7 implies that Emir's mother sexually abused him. Does that fall in line with what 1CC is talking about? |
The truth of the matter is that it depends on who you ask. For some, there is no such thing as a "tasteful" or "artful" depiction of rape. I get it: the issue is just too personal or disturbing for people for it to be intellectually stimulating.
I did find it interesting that in the FEAR games, one of the player characters is in essence raped at the end by the scary little girl. All the times she followed you around scaring you and making you uncomfortable, well...
Is that interesting? Tasteful? Artsy? No? I dunno. I guess it's what you make of it. If you put something which kind of spins the whole sexual violence/rape thing against women on its head like that I think it's kind of... what's the word... nifty?
In general I don't think it'd be constructive to put a "blanket ban" on depictions of sexual violence or something. I don't really think attempting to enforce that kind of thing would make the world a better place.
It's sort of like (I'm sorry already for making this cliched analogy) forgetting the holocaust. If we just forgot the holocaust and stopped making games about World War 2 then there'd never be genocide again or any more world wars, right? |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 1:51 am |
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| misadventurous wrote: |
i really liked this and want to draw more attention to it. |
This is a nice read. There are five women programmers I work with in a team mostly comprised of men. I would consider two of them to be relatively social, and the other three to be quiet and a little bit mysterious to me. I don't really know how to interact with these three and don't feel comfortable trying to actively befriend them because I don't want to be forcing that interaction on them. I can't tell if they are intentionally keeping their heads down, or if that is just the impression I've invented. I don't really know how to interpret it, which I kind of feel is the whole problem. |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 3:39 am |
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| EDIT: Nevermind |
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capgamer
Joined: 20 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:02 pm |
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| MattCD42 wrote: |
| That sad parents of gamergate really hit me. I'm so lost as to what Gamer Gate is really about though. I hear the gender hate, but then it's about over hyped games? There's been over hyped games since video games were marketed. |
A lot of different frustrations for different people that consider themselves part of the overall "movement." The main complaints I've seen are:
1. Gaming media is anti-consumer due to collusion between the industry and the media
2. A sense of being attacked for playing video games (a result of the "Gamers are dead" articles). In general, a lot of complaints that they feel these articles and general media backlash are a sort of cyber-extension of schoolyard bullying.
3. Frustration at politics bleeding into video games, and video games in general becoming the target for gender equality, etc. activism ("Why can't we just play games?")
EDIT: Just remembered another common one:
4. Feeling as though they are being denied the right to talk about it ("The Streisand Effect")
I'd say those are the main three complaints I've seen. |
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