Clarkson gone!

[Greyblades]

IIRC the thing was that you can beat up the hookers you just payed for sex and get your money back. Free of charge healing. You also have the sex+shoot interaction, while the rest of the NPC:s only got shoot interaction.

That's a side effect of the game tracking how much money each character has on them, if you shoot a man who just came from an ATM he will drop more money than if you shot him before.
You also get free of charge healing if you buy a bunch of food items, eat them, then rob the food store to get your money back.

Firemen aren't in, buissnessmen are fairly generic, police I grant you (even if they're also enemies sometimes) and military are often the enemy.

Have you played these games? Because firemen are most certainly in the game, as are paramedics, lawyers, deli owners, grannies, drug dealers and pigeons and you can shoot them all, the only thing you cant find in these games that you couldnt find in a real city are children.

And the choice is all the players, you can shoot them, you can run them over, you can set them on fire or you can just let them go on with thier lives; Even the enemies will leave you alone if you leave them alone. It's all the player's choice and the game would suffer if such a range of choice was lessened to soothe the feelings of those who aren't even playing it.

If you want to be picky, it's the fact that they are a sort of background side effect is sort of the point that the producer never sat down and thought about it. It's too ingrained to think about it.

Except signs point to them actually thinking about it and deciding the players would enjoy the amount of detail they put in. They probably knew that the only people who would refuse to buy a GTA game because of that feature werent going to buy the games in teh first place and thus werent worth pandering to.

Actually why are we arguing about GTA's implications? The entire premise of video games affecting people's behavior is long disproven.



If you want to talk about the sexism in the gamer community that's fine, but leave the games themselves out of it.

It's around being a woman and saying anything critical of video games. Or being a woman and having to do with sex (the origin of GG or Quinnspiracy that it was called then).

What is?

The videos aren't flawless, but it is notable that the counter critics are doing as sort "that example aren't a good one, thus all other ones are invalid", in particular when the argument are about trends (which means that you'll have golden examples mixed with partial matches).

Yeah, as I said that's what happens when the complaints are done so incompetently. Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I like the outcome?

That is sort of a thing. With video games being as general and common as movies, getting similar criticism is sort of expected.

Yeah, and when gamers look at the examples of TV, Films and comic books they see periods where the criticisms of moral guardians results in rampant censorship that takes decades shake off, they fear the same thing happening to thier hobby, and when her videos failed to prove these fears wrong it is Sarkeesian's responsibility.

She got major attention because of the response. That's slightly different from jack thompson, unless his fame was from being threatened with rape and murder by a lot of people. And that while most people are sort of wondering exactly what would trigger such a harsh response.

The differing methods of thier ascend to mainstream is rather irrelevant to my point. They got attention but any legitimate point or message they might have wanted to impart to gamers overshadowed by an ignorance of the community they were commentating on. The end result is that now any attempt to press that message is lumped in with the crazy.

Eh not really. There's enough raw misogyny among a sub group of gamers to poison any well about this.up.

Ironside I am not blind, the group we call gamers encompass a good chunk of the entire world, the chances of us having no mysogynists is nil but to say that there is enough poison to make the rest of the community immune to the arguments of feminists is frankly wrong.
You and Husar are testiment to that if nothing else.
However when sarkeesian came along with such a shoddy video series that reek of ignorance and laziness, tells us the things we like are sexist and then gets declared as the face of feminism in gaming, it just gave fodder to her movment's detractors.

If Sakeesian couldnt do enough research to not so easily proven wrong then she shouldnt have tried at all, because in doing so she did more damage to the idea of feminist gaming than a thousand 4chan trolls.

Even if Women as Background Decoration contains parts that can be controversial, the nature and amount of the previous criticism (or threats) on things that are really basic and mostly very obvious, is sort of showing that it's not a fair debate, but something more vicious. I mean, you are aware that
is a parody of a lot (most) of the "criticism" against outspoken women and minorities?

You're gonna have to prove that one, cause while most of them are long gone this one is still here and there is no indication that it was all made up.

I mean if you're going to claim all those are fake and not provide proof then I will just as easily claim the MRA's you refer to are just 4chan trolls.

Though rhetoric aside I am fairly convinced that a lot of them are.

[Greyblades]

Oh and I forgot to mention Hitman Absolution, Sarkeesian blatantly lies:

Edit: for some reason I cant get it to load at a specific time so skip to 2:30 exactly if you dont want to listen to this guy go on.

[Ironside]

I'll do a proper response when I got time, but the quick response was about lack of firemen in DE:HR (from memory I admit) since you took it up, rather then the general genre.

Oh and I forgot to mention Hitman Absolution, Sarkeesian blatantly lies:

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't. To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes?

You can disagree with this construction, but she doesn't lie. Which are an example on the nature of the criticism. Its base assumption is that she lies, rather than being consistent with a position you might disagree with.

[Kralizec]

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't. To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes?

You can disagree with this construction, but she doesn't lie. Which are an example on the nature of the criticism. Its base assumption is that she lies, rather than being consistent with a position you might disagree with.

I haven't followed the rest of the discussion, but the Hitman example is a dishonest one, or at best grossly misinformed. I've only played the previous installments of this series, but what the video shows is pretty standard: you can murder innocent people, but are discouraged to do so in every game (by different means in every installment)
That you can move the bodies around is a game mechanic meant for hiding the bodies, so that other NPC's don't discover them and alarm the guards. Yes, you can move them around for sheer entertainment, but you're not encouraged to do so.

The argument, as far as that segment is concerned, seems to be about that there are scantily clothed women in it which aren't treated differently from any other NPC. Meaning: you can kill them just like anybody else, and toss their bodies around. It's a strip club, which FYI exist in real life. Other places you visit during these games include bars, office buildings, casinos, factories, military installations, et cetera...in every case a background for the target, who usually is a shady character himself.

Come to think of it, in the Hitman games that I've played I think it was not possible to remove clothing from female victims (most NPC's are male, anyway). That function was to enable your character to change disguise, which obviously does not work with the opposite gender.

EDIT: to answer your point, I suppose it would have been possible to make it impossible to harm the strippers specifically, but why? It would only have been a move to prevent criticism from feminist activists. It would be inconsistent with the rest of the game.

[Greyblades]

I'll do a proper response when I got time, but the quick response was about lack of firemen in DE:HR (from memory I admit) since you took it up, rather then the general genre.

I assumed GTA was the main point of contention but in Deus ex human revolution the npcs of all status', races and creeds are all represented. You can help, ignore or kill them at your leisure and noone is excluded from this and the absence of firefighters is irrelevant.

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't.

She lied.

She says: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters"
She said they are "meant to", but this is wrong, it is wrong in GTA, it is wrong in Deus Ex, but it is excruciatingly wrong here for one simple reason: the game explicitly punishes you for killing these women.
She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.
The only way her statment is true is if the definition of the word meant is now reversed.
It isn't, she lied.

To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes?

Flippant: because just because you dont like the game doesnt mean that it should be censored to accomidate you.

Serious: Why? Because the gamer is allowed to do it to everyone else. You are a hitman, you are tasked with killing people and you are scored on how clean your kill is. The score goes down every time you kill a person who is not your target and if their bodies are found the game gets harder so the game allows you to hide the body by dragging it by it's foot it to a hiding place.
If women were magically excluded from being dragged around or even killed the game would become inconsistent, and even become unwinnable. You might as well remove the game's women alltogether.
And I know you would like that even less.

Sarkeesian lies.
She has other problems, her narrative is only a swear and a raised voice from being the equivilent of Sargon of Akkad.
But it is her lies that condemn her.

With her lies, her arguments become worthless.

If feminism wants to make any progress with the game industry it cannot be associated with this sort of misdirection. To win they must be able to convert the other side's followers and they cannot do that if they allow this person to be thier face.

As long as people so blatantly manipulative and dishonest as she is are seen as the leaders people will think non-egalitarian feminism deserves to be sidelined and ridiculed.
And if anita truly is the leader, then they will be right to think it.

[Husar]

She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.

I think that part was a bit unclear in the video since to me it looked like killing a female gave a negative score of 1xx or 2xx while killing the (male) civilian gave a few thousands in negative score. Therefore one could say the women are not valued as highly as other civilians in the game.
I will agree however that her criticism of the game is quite a bit inflated in general and not everything she claims to be incentivized actually is.

[Greyblades]

I think that part was a bit unclear in the video since to me it looked like killing a female gave a negative score of 1xx or 2xx while killing the (male) civilian gave a few thousands in negative score. Therefore one could say the women are not valued as highly as other civilians in the game.

Which is wrong. Here's proof:




These are my own screenshots, I made them just now and as you can see both the stripper and the man in the courtroom lobby lost me a very similar amount of points when I shot them.
You have the game husar, you can check this if you want. It was a falsehood and in 2+ years she has yet to publically acknowledge it.


I am not exactly sure why the game took off less points for killing this random male civillian than the stripper, I think it was something to do with the difficulty modifier, I mean it affected the spotted bit too and that really shouldnt have anything to do with it.

I will agree however that her criticism of the game is quite a bit inflated in general and not everything she claims to be incentivized actually is.

She makes an excessive amount of fuss from mere speculation, like Akkad, but it is specifically the lies that makes her argument unacceptable by the viewers not already biased towards believing her.
It's made worse by the fact that she appeared to be actively avoiding critiscism by disabling the comments.


The feminist movment should have disassociated itself with anita and found a more honest person to be thier figurehead, or at least found a person who was a better liar; I mean hitman had freaking latex nuns, the lowest hanging fruit and she still screwed up?

[Husar]

You have the game husar, you can check this if you want.

This is wrong, my gaming computer is broken, but I believe you.

[Ironside]

That's a side effect of the game tracking how much money each character has on them, if you shoot a man who just came from an ATM he will drop more money than if you shot him before.
You also get free of charge healing if you buy a bunch of food items, eat them, then rob the food store to get your money back.

I'm curious. Is that as easy and got the penalty as killing a prostitute? I've only played GTA IV, so I'm not familiar with the details.

Actually why are we arguing about GTA's implications? The entire premise of video games affecting people's behavior is long disproven.

That's violence. Which has quite a different mechanisms to follow. Media is one information source and not the strongest one (friends and family are). The problem occurs when it's persistent and aren't balanced by other sources. Do you consider that you're close to reality to determine the odds of car explosions? I don't know if the UK got something similar, but the American dream is almost entirely media driven.

The counter point would be that media never has any influence at anything. Which are fairly ridiculous.

I really don't have time to write another huge post and dig up all the sources, but video games do affect people's thoughts and behaviour, even violence (world perception iirc, people seeing the world as a dark place will see the world as more violent if they consume violent media). Tropes vs. Women do actually spend to explain those concepts when going through them, but I do got the feeling that you reject some of them as a whole and not in the details.

If you want to talk about the sexism in the gamer community that's fine, but leave the games themselves out of it.

And if you have games that actively enforces the sexism within the community? Fighting games are pretty bad on this, even if it's been a diversification on that market.

Yeah, as I said that's what happens when the complaints are done so incompetently. Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I like the outcome?

Because a competent complaint on the same matter would contain the same thing, only use a better example and explain itself better?

Yeah, and when gamers look at the examples of TV, Films and comic books they see periods where the criticisms of moral guardians results in rampant censorship that takes decades shake off, they fear the same thing happening to thier hobby, and when her videos failed to prove these fears wrong it is Sarkeesian's responsibility.

The differing methods of thier ascend to mainstream is rather irrelevant to my point. They got attention but any legitimate point or message they might have wanted to impart to gamers overshadowed by an ignorance of the community they were commentating on. The end result is that now any attempt to press that message is lumped in with the crazy.

About the harassment. This is one week twitter harassment for FF. At that point, FF haven't posted anything in a while, so it's low harassment season.

Thing is, that's normal for a woman in the gaming industry daring to have an opinion.

This is what I'm talking about when I mention poison. Any feminist criticism of games, no matter how well done, would create a shitstorm on the net, in particular if made by a woman. And yes it's a huge issue and drowns out any more reasonable discussions, but it's having this in

You're gonna have to prove that one, cause while most of them are long gone this one is still here and there is no indication that it was all made up.

I mean if you're going to claim all those are fake and not provide proof then I will just as easily claim the MRA's you refer to are just 4chan trolls.

Though rhetoric aside I am fairly convinced that a lot of them are.

Can't really prove it, but see above on what happens with people that threatens the norm. It has some parody vibes in the first and second post and the third is certainly a reference to how those internet debates looks like.

Some are trolling. The persistence of a lot there do show something worse.

However when sarkeesian came along with such a shoddy video series that reek of ignorance and laziness, tells us the things we like are sexist and then gets declared as the face of feminism in gaming, it just gave fodder to her movment's detractors.

If Sakeesian couldnt do enough research to not so easily proven wrong then she shouldnt have tried at all, because in doing so she did more damage to the idea of feminist gaming than a thousand 4chan trolls.

The games mentioned are having sexist tropes. Any feminist talking about it, would have to say the same thing. I'll go into more further down, but that the games contains sexualised women (and only women) and allows violence against everyone. As a consequence, you get sexualised violence against (only) women. The reasons and details might need a further discussion, but that is the baseline. How much and how common sexism should be are also debates that are worth taking. Getting zero sexism is sort of hard, as a lot of tropes are meta situation dependent, ok in each individual case, but not ok as a aggregate. Lack of female protagonists are an example of this. And frankly, having some games heavy on it is not much of an issue. Persistence is worse.

You honestly think she's the first woman that thought about the idea? What do you think happened to the others? She got the leading position by endurance.

EDIT: to answer your point, I suppose it would have been possible to make it impossible to harm the strippers specifically, but why? It would only have been a move to prevent criticism from feminist activists. It would be inconsistent with the rest of the game.

It is a side effect of having normal game mechanics applied to sexualised female characters. It's more on how common it is. Having a strip club/prostitutes aren't plot important in any way (DE:HR has one part where prostitutes are getting forced to augment. That's an example on it being really plot important), it's treated as to show that this is a dark world or as background decoration for a setting.

The game wouldn't really lose anything on not having a strip club, correct? It's a critique on every dark game has to have strip club (for the leering, don't pretend otherwise. I admit, sometimes I do like doing that in games), with strippers as background decoration, which you the player are supposed to enjoy. Then add the killing interaction on top of that.

She says: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters"
She said they are "meant to", but this is wrong, it is wrong in GTA, it is wrong in Deus Ex, but it is excruciatingly wrong here for one simple reason: the game explicitly punishes you for killing these women.
She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.
The only way her statment is true is if the definition of the word meant is now reversed.
It isn't, she lied.

It's a minor "easter egg" that you have search for if I got it correct. It's certainly made to be meant to you to be able to sneak around strippers. They're also meant to be treated as any NPC (aka killable). So they are both treated not like any NPC (by being sexualised) and like any NPC (killable, but in this game not recommendable for the highest score). And there's so many sandbox games that insists on this. It's a norm for most AAA titles. That is sort of interesting part, since there's no need for that.

It is certainly made as a provokable statement, but anything that is not considered a bug in a game is meant to be possible.

Flippant: because just because you dont like the game doesnt mean that it should be censored to accomidate you.

I say we introduce male on male rape into the TW series, to reach higher realism (it is fairly common in war. But very little spoken about). Or are you one of those censorists? We do that stuff all the time.

If feminism wants to make any progress with the game industry it cannot be associated with this sort of misdirection. To win they must be able to convert the other side's followers and they cannot do that if they allow this person to be their face.

As long as people so blatantly manipulative and dishonest as she is are seen as the leaders people will think non-egalitarian feminism deserves to be sidelined and ridiculed.
And if anita truly is the leader, then they will be right to think it.

It's done more progress in short order compared to what was before. Silence from a weak position often get you nowhere. It's now an open and active issue and the condensate makes it more obvious (I mean watch her videos as an agglomerate, even if some details might be wrong, the sheer number of examples is staggering). More consideration about if mr. Strip Club producer guy should do his pet project. Admittedly, some will give him a larger role and miss the point that sometimes you can fully embrace it as well.

The shock waves of harassment noise that will linger for years could be better though.

[Greyblades]

Ah, I didnt know, steam put you on the "you have # friends who play hitman absolution" and I assumed.

I'm curious. Is that as easy and got the penalty as killing a prostitute? I've only played GTA IV, so I'm not familiar with the details.

Depends on the store, some of them have storekeeps that are armed and will shoot you in the back if you let them live after you rob them, others just call the police, it varies like in real life. I dont know if there are armed prostitutes but I wouldnt be adverse to the idea of having some of them armed.

That's violence. Which has quite a different mechanisms to follow. Media is one information source and not the strongest one (friends and family are). The problem occurs when it's persistent and aren't balanced by other sources. Do you consider that you're close to reality to determine the odds of car explosions? I don't know if the UK got something similar, but the American dream is almost entirely media driven.

Violent fantasy causing violence and sexist fantasy causing sexism; both run under the assumption that the average human is incapable of observing or interacting with something they know is not real without being influenced by it and I find the implication both wrong and somewhat insulting to my intelligence.

I can see the argument for children not being exposed to these things: that children are less capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality (that's why I stopped railing against age ratings when I exceeded them) but there has to be a point where we stop treating people as gullible children. Censoring things that are clearly marketed towards adults is going too far under a false pretense.

Now, if the feminist movment's message was: we need more alternatives to the stupid male fantasies of nubile women and powerful men then I think you would get more people agreeing with you, bring on the male strippers and the practically armoured warrior women.

However my observations of the movment from the outside is that feminism just wants to get rid of these fantasies altogether. That is not only impractical it is absolutely abhorrent.

If that observation is incorrect then I think the people running it need to seriously consider why those outside are getting the wrong idea and rework thier image to fix that. They can start by fact checking thier points and toning down or eliminating the rhetoric. Oh and ditch sarkeesian's feminist frequency. Actually ditch sarkeesian altogether, her actions will hang like an albatross on feminism's neck for years and I dont see it being worth the effort to salvage her credibility.

Side note: I also would agree that we should stop producing games that are actually maliciously sexist. The thing is that these games are few and far between to begin with. (hell, the last mainstream game that I remember actually being such is duke nukem forever, and that was a massive flop.)
The impression I get is that feminists are lumping the stupid male fantasies in with the outright attacks on women, for whatever reason. They need to stop doing that or they'll get nowhere.

[Husar]

If that observation is incorrect then I think the people running it need to seriously consider why those outside are getting the wrong idea and rework thier image to fix that. They can start by fact checking thier points and toning down or eliminating the rhetoric. Oh and ditch sarkeesian's feminist frequency. Actually ditch sarkeesian altogether, her actions will hang like an albatross on feminism's neck for years and I dont see it being worth the effort to salvage her credibility.

Who are "thew people running it"? You say that as though feminism were an organization with a clearly defined leadership.
And this accusation could just as well be brought up against the ones who claim males are the bigger victims.