436 réponses à ce sujet

[Inquisitor Recon]

If people had behaved like normal human beings then this could have sparked a more civil discussion among gamers and developers, but now it's something else.

This is the internet. That is normal behavior for when online.

[KaiserShep]

This is the internet. That is normal behavior for when online.

 

The Greater Internet F***wad Theory seems to remain sound.

[JAZZ_LEG3ND]

Agreed entirely. Her concerns in general are valid and worth discussing -- but DAO has nothing to do with it. She should actually play the game.. because apparently, she did not. It's empowering. Not diminishing to females.

Cherry picking and taking issues out of context isn't going to help her cause (the cause itself I have no issue with.. but come on. Pick your targets right at least. It would make the argument better).

Chances are, she has played it, and probably likes it... but that's neither here nor there, because the quality of the game is not what's in question in her video. The clue is in the name of her video series: Tropes vs Women. She didn't call her series "that thing wrong with Dragon Age".

In this instance, she was simply using Dragon Age as an example of where the trope in question was used. It’s not an attack on DA, nor is it meant to be indicative of the game’s intent, themes, quality, characters, story, outcome, or even how the game portrays women in the larger picture. She’s not reviewing individual games, nor is she saying or even implying that the specific artists involved deliberately made these plot choices with marginalizing or “damseling”, as she likes to say, in mind. No, she is saying that these “tropes” are habit.

Cherry-picking. Nope, that’s not a relevant phrase. It can’t connect with her case, because her case isn’t about context, it’s about tropes. I watch her stuff because I like to be informed with the latest who’s-saying-what, and she seemed to me to be quite articulate and well presented, but alas it has been some time and I don’t remember the specific trope she was pulling out of Dragon Age. But, I can give you test to run on her video.

1: Context is not a withstanding factor for a trope; by virtue of what it is, a trope exists outside of context.
2: Did or did not the specific trope she was discussing appear in Dragon Age? Or any other game she mentioned, for that matter?

Run that test on all her videos and see what you turn up. Is she really full of it, or is she actually highlighting a trend that sees the marginalizing, disempowering, victimizing, and so forth of women characters? Again, she is not discussing the quality of the games, or even the overarching portrayal of women. What she is doing is saying, here, look at this, this trope I just named shows up in all these games. From what I’ve seen of her work, she doesn’t drop names without evidence, and evidence doesn’t lie.

So no, she is not criticizing Dragon Age “the game”, she is showing that a game as progressive and well written as Dragon Age still, and rather shamelessly, uses the trope in question. If anything, that should further demonstrate the severity of the issue.

[Sir DeLoria]

The lies are that it's some global, wide-spread problem focused on women.
Women are treated better than men..both in RL and internet.

Only in the Western World and even there it's impossible to generalize.

If you think women are generally treated better, just look at how widespread FGM still is.

[schall_und_rauch]

In this instance, she was simply using Dragon Age as an example of where the trope in question was used. It’s not an attack on DA, nor is it meant to be indicative of the game’s intent, themes, quality, characters, story, outcome, or even how the game portrays women in the larger picture. She’s not reviewing individual games, nor is she saying or even implying that the specific artists involved deliberately made these plot choices with marginalizing or “damseling”, as she likes to say, in mind. No, she is saying that these “tropes” are habit.
 

First, thank you for replying in a reasonable manner on the original topic. While I disagree with you, it is that sort of discussion which I was looking for when I opened the topic.

 

Tropes are not bad per se, and some tropes are used more often than others. No big deal there.

She makes judgement calls. She tells us how horrible a game is for using that trope. She tells us time and time again how problematic it is to use these games, so yes, it becomes a quality issue for her.

And then she makes false claims when she explains the use of that trope.

 

I just looked at the start of her second video "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games".

 

Her definition of this trope is:

"The subset of largely insignificant non-playabe female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way of infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players."

 

The opening scene is from the city elf origin of DAO, and later on, DAO is used again as an example.

 

The victims of the scene are the female PC as well as a number of other significant female characters who you talk to, have a distinct personality and appear later for important (non-sexualized) plot involvement. You are taken to the castle for later raping (in case you play a female character), but somebody brings you a sword and you fight your way out -- the exact opposite of victimization. So that part of her claim is clearly false. The way the women are depicted is in no way sexualized. It is obvious that it is a show of power, socioracial discriminiation and how power is abused by evil people. So it's also false that the female bodies (they are more than bodies) are sexually objectified (their lack of power is shown, not their sexuality). The women are not environmental texture, but they provide an introduction about racial relations in Thedas. And there is absolutely nothing sexually titilating about that scene. It's about the experience of powerlessness as a result of racial discrimination against elves. 

 

So not only does she tell us what tropes are bad, but she also makes false claims on the use of these tropes.

 

As for rapes happening in a setting of extreme power dominance by one group of people over another -- that's as much a "trope" as people getting killed by violence in a war setting. It's reality. As unfortunate as it may be. And, yeah, reality wasn't always fair to women.

[Dean_the_Young]

I live in the USA and I never got the feeling I was treasured or an equal. Maybe I am just too ugly or too old to be treasured. I do, however, live in fear since I am on my own every day. When I get out of work late (every day), go grocery shopping in the evening/night, or jog and walk the dog (good guard dog but not bullet or knife proof) I am in fear that what if the guy approaching me is a 'bad guy'. What could I do? Will I react fast enough?

I can certainly believe you live in the USA. That was a not-uncommon view on terrorism in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, when there were widespread fears that everyone was going to be targetted next.
 

 

Because I sure as hell can't take a man on in a fist fight.

 

 

Why not?

[Nefla]

She's done a great job of making sure any actual issues of sexism in games get ignored. She's like the boy who cried wolf. If you bring up something sexist, people just kind of go "oh another one of those crappy whiners who cherry picks, misrepresents, and doesn't even play video games." If a game has the exact same thing happen to male characters and female characters it's the opposite of sexist but to her anything that happens to a female character is sexist regardless. A female hero gets slapped? "Violence against women!" the same thing happens to a male hero? No problem. A female character sacrifices her life to save the male hero? "Sexist! Women in refrigerators! Woman as an object to further the male character's story!" a male character sacrifices himself to save a female hero (or male hero) it's perfectly fine and not worthy of note. Not to mention that she's spent a huge chunk of time talking about how sexist video games are yet using games that came out 30+ years ago as her examples.

[Dean_the_Young]

If it's built into us all then there's no point in fighting it. If it's the product of evolution, then it's there for a reason.
 

 

Eh, hardly. Most evolutionary outputs are random garbage- they neither help nor hurt the evolutionary equation, so they just linger around while other factors dominate.

 

Evolution has no 'reason,' it's just applied math of rates of replication without thought or prior planning. Something mathematically advantageous for survival to the reproduction phase in one context may be disadvantageous afterwards, but there's no moral or ethical 'reason' behind any of it..

[JAZZ_LEG3ND]

First, thank you for replying in a reasonable manner on the original topic. While I disagree with you, it is that sort of discussion which I was looking for when I opened the topic.

Well, that’s why I’m here, bro. To discuss.

She makes judgement calls. She tells us how horrible a game is for using that trope. She tells us time and time again how problematic it is to use these games, so yes, it becomes a quality issue for her.

I honestly couldn’t say I ever got that impression.

But to be frank, she’s just a person; one person making critical arguments in a rather hostile climate. My estimation says she stepped into this as somewhat of a novice, and just because she’s being critical of something potentially controversial, she shouldn’t be held to some unreasonable high standard.

No doubt some things she says are just her opinion, dressed up to look like something more, but everyone does that, professional or otherwise. And beyond that, in the few cases she has called a game out as rubbish, it has been. Something as blatantly sexist and I dare say misogynistic as Duke Nukem should be nailed to a wall and called rubbish.
 

And then she makes false claims when she explains the use of that trope.

I just looked at the start of her second video "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games".

Her definition of this trope is:
"The subset of largely insignificant non-playabe female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way of infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players."

The opening scene is from the city elf origin of DAO, and later on, DAO is used again as an example.

The victims of the scene are the female PC as well as a number of other significant female characters who you talk to, have a distinct personality and appear later for important (non-sexualized) plot involvement. You are taken to the castle for later raping (in case you play a female character), but somebody brings you a sword and you fight your way out -- the exact opposite of victimization. So that part of her claim is clearly false. The way the women are depicted is in no way sexualized. It is obvious that it is a show of power, socioracial discriminiation and how power is abused by evil people. So it's also false that the female bodies (they are more than bodies) are sexually objectified (their lack of power is shown, not their sexuality). The women are not environmental texture, but they provide an introduction about racial relations in Thedas. And there is absolutely nothing sexually titilating about that scene. It's about the experience of powerlessness as a result of racial discrimination against elves.

So not only does she tell us what tropes are bad, but she also makes false claims on the use of these tropes.

As for rapes happening in a setting of extreme power dominance by one group of people over another -- that's as much a "trope" as people getting killed by violence in a war setting. It's reality. As unfortunate as it may be. And, yeah, reality wasn't always fair to women.

Hmm, this is curious. I should watch her video again, for sure, but just to look at what I have here a little more closely.

I don’t want to sound critical of your defence, but these characters can’t be too significant, I’ve beaten DAO twice just recently and I have no idea who they are, or even that this scenario existed within the game—I didn’t play an elf.

But, looking at another aspect of this, did she say the trope in question has to fill every part of the description in order to be valid? Her definition seems to be “either or”, not “always everything”. And even if she was completely obviously incorrect in the case of Dragon Age, that doesn’t impact the validity of her criticism at large. It’s fair as long as her rules are consistent, but definitely something I will look at when I re-watch her video.

That said, she may well have been stretching when bringing up DAO. But on that note, your defence of DAO is stretching also. Later happenings don’t modify the immediate context, and don’t erase the trope. That one of the characters was the player character, and that later the PC escapes, have no impact on the moment, and therefore no impact on the trope’s existence. And this power paradigm you described is indeed a display of the environmental texture she described, and the grittiness, edginess, both due to the victimizing of, unless I’m mistaken, exclusively female characters, in the selected instance.

Other things she said, and indeed some of the things you said, are just opinion, and I can’t do much with them. What constitutes as titillating, racy, etc. is a lot of the time very subjective. I could say a couple of elf girls getting dragged away to be raped isn’t at all, under any circumstances, to anyone, arousing, but I know for a fact I would be wrong.

[schall_und_rauch]

Except that's not what he says at all. He's not even remotely defending the attack, and he's mostly criticizing people for even paying attention to her, which is a strange sort of defence if it was meant to be a defence. Here's what he actually says:

Quote

Okay. Let’s pretend for a moment that, for those of you who feel this way, you’re absolutely right. My question is this:

 

Why the **** do you even care?

Is there such a profound shortage of shitty opinions on YouTube or elsewhere on the Internet that the appearance of this one constitutes a crime in the making? Have you asked yourself why it’s this particular opinion that drives you up the goddamned wall? What do you tell yourself, if and when you stop for that moment of introspection?

 

I don't care about her. I've looked at her videos, saw stuff that I considered well-articulated bullshit and thought I was done.

 

I admit it that I am a David Gaider fanboy. Not only do I like his story writing style, I generally like the comments he gives, the way he replies to questions, his snarky fashion, the fact that he doesn't sugar-coat all his answers with marketing speak, the insights he gives on game development and his explanations why he does the things he does. I thought his reply to tell off his "fans" who were insulted by the homosexuality was IMO appropriate. And I think his point of "let's not alienate female or homosexual players from our games" is fair, too.

 

I do care about what David Gaider has to say. 

So why the f*ck does he care? Somebody makes invalid critisism and false claims about his game on the internet, some people react in an inappropriate manner, and he has to write a lengthy post about how people's reaction are inappropriate and bad.

Is there such a profound shortage of shitty reactions to videos on YouTube that he feels the absolute need to adress this one? 

 

A bullshit message on the internet doesn't bother me. Some influencial, intelligent and usually reasonable people giving it too much attention does.

[Lotion Soronarr]

In certain parts of the world they are treated like animals. I had to post since they just hung a woman in Iran for killing a man in self-defense for raping her. Twenty-six and she had her whole life ahead of her.

 

Also as a woman I am terrified being alone outside day and night. I have to watch out that I won't be abducted, raped, murdered, and dumped somewhere. I am not physically as strong as a man to fight off an attacker. I live in a world where these kinds of things happen every day.

 

There's a lot of strange and wrong things in different parts of the world.

 

But as a general rule, here in the west, women ARE treated better than men. People will be more receptive and helpful to a woman. Women have more positive traits associated to them than men. People are more likely to believe a women than a man. Etc, etc..

 

 

As a woman you are terrified of being alone outside at night? I know tons of women who aren't. I also know a lot of men who are. Depends on the kind of neighbrourhood you live in.

b.t.w. - technology has brought us to the point where physical strength isn't as much as an advantage anymore. Pepper spray. Guns. kick to the nads.

Also, tenacity and will to fight, coupled with knowledge. Even a tiny woman can beat up a man. Women aren't weak and helpless and anyone who convinces you that is what you should believe is doing you a disservice.

[Lotion Soronarr]

 

How many women do you know?

 

A lot actually.

I work in a software company and roughly 50-60% employees are women. Then there are all the other institutions and companies we work with.
 

[Lotion Soronarr]

Which goes right back to DG's why the **** even care then? 

 

Probably because if some idiots sez all men are rapist you wont' give a damn.

 

BUT if that idiot is on a soapbox and is spreading that lie to the masses, you start to care.
 

[JAZZ_LEG3ND]

@schall_und_rauch

Okay, so she used Dragon Age completely in context. She prefaced the footage by saying (paraphrasing) "the brutal treatment of women is often used as a sort of one-note character development for bad-guys". You then see the Dragon Age footage, where a character, instantly recognized as a "badguy", is treating female character poorly... because he's a badguy. One informs the other, and it is perfectly in-line with the trope she is discussing.

Not only do I think her use of the Dragon Age footage was completely fair to the game, but, in my brief analysis of her video, I never heard her mention Dragon Age by name, nor did I see it displayed on any of the "offender walls". As I eluded to earlier, she was using Dragon Age more to illustrate just how widespread and habitual these issues are. She was not unfairly criticizing the game.

[schall_und_rauch]

No doubt some things she says are just her opinion, dressed up to look like something more, but everyone does that, professional or otherwise. And beyond that, in the few cases she has called a game out as rubbish, it has been. Something as blatantly sexist and I dare say misogynistic as Duke Nukem should be nailed to a wall and called rubbish.
 
Hmm, this is curious. I should watch her video again, for sure, but just to look at what I have here a little more closely.

I don’t want to sound critical of your defence, but these characters can’t be too significant, I’ve beaten DAO twice just recently and I have no idea who they are, or even that this scenario existed within the game—I didn’t play an elf.

But, looking at another aspect of this, did she say the trope in question has to fill every part of the description in order to be valid? Her definition seems to be “either or”, not “always everything”. And even if she was completely obviously incorrect in the case of Dragon Age, that doesn’t impact the validity of her criticism at large. It’s fair as long as her rules are consistent, but definitely something I will look at when I re-watch her video.

That said, she may well have been stretching when bringing up DAO. But on that note, your defence of DAO is stretching also. Later happenings don’t modify the immediate context, and don’t erase the trope. That one of the characters was the player character, and that later the PC escapes, have no impact on the moment, and therefore no impact on the trope’s existence. And this power paradigm you described is indeed a display of the environmental texture she described, and the grittiness, edginess, both due to the victimizing of, unless I’m mistaken, exclusively female characters, in the selected instance.

Other things she said, and indeed some of the things you said, are just opinion, and I can’t do much with them. What constitutes as titillating, racy, etc. is a lot of the time very subjective. I could say a couple of elf girls getting dragged away to be raped isn’t at all, under any circumstances, to anyone, arousing, but I know for a fact I would be wrong.

 

I am not denying that there is sexism in video games. However, if you know that you are stepping into controversial territory and on some people's toes, you'd better back your point up with good arguments and facts, and leave out all the bullshit. Otherwise, you will be torn apart. This is where Sarkeesian fails.

 

And that "it's just an opinion" is really a weak excuse. She never states this as "that's all very subjective and just my opinion" she states this as she would be doing scientific research. Would people really donate $160.000 to somebody who declares "I want to write my opinion on what I consider sexist in video games"? I don't think so.

And there are ways to make titilation very obvious. Revealing "sexy" clothing, poses, even camera angles, or some way of making it seem like the victim is enjoying the suffering. None of it is in the scene. So a villain saying "let's grab a filthy ******" doesn't make automatically for titilation.

 

She also makes it very clear that she considers all of the tropes she mentions as bad. She makes very dubious claims about how they shape the impression of women in the real world and why they should be avoided. I don't think "threatening a female with rape" is per se any worse than "burning or torturing innocents", but you don't hear any complaints about the latter.

 

If I put some energy into showing all video game tropes where a male character does something evil and cruel to anyone, and claimed it's heavily sexualized ("just my opinion"), then I came to the conclusion that video games are extremely, entirely discriminating against males and makes a generalization of all men, strengthening the stereotype that all men are violent and cruel by nature and should be killed and treated like beasts -- how valid would such a statement be? Yes, the scenes are all there, they are all examples of the trope. Without context, the statement is just as bullshit as the conclusions Sarkeesian draws -- except hers are more politically correct.

 

As for the scene -- male characters get beaten up. Yes, it's the setting: This male villain is in charge, his soldiers are male, neither the villain nor the guards want to rape males, so they chose to grab the females.It uses the trope because it's much more common in reality than the other way around. It's a world where some men consider themselves physically more powerful than women. So I don't deny that the trope "rape threats are made exclusively against female characters" is used, I deny that it is bad to use it. I still don't see what is noteworthy that makes the game sexist.

 

Regarding the significance of Shianni -- she is a minor character for two plots, like there are hundreds in Dragon Age. One of them is in the origins, the other is a role in the slavery plot in the alienage. Even with her little part, she displays a very distinct personality. 

Would you remember her without playing a city elf? Well, I sure wouldn't remember Cullen from playing DAO as non-mage, even though he has an appearance later on. The size of his involvement is similar.

[schall_und_rauch]

@schall_und_rauch

Okay, so she used Dragon Age completely in context. She prefaced the footage by saying (paraphrasing) "the brutal treatment of women is often used as a sort of one-note character development for bad-guys". You then see the Dragon Age footage, where a character, instantly recognized as a "badguy", is treating female character poorly... because he's a badguy. One informs the other, and it is perfectly in-line with the trope she is discussing.

Not only do I think her use of the Dragon Age footage was completely fair to the game, but, in my brief analysis of her video, I never heard her mention Dragon Age by name, nor did I see it displayed on any of the "offender walls". As I eluded to earlier, she was using Dragon Age more to illustrate just how widespread and habitual these issues are. She was not unfairly criticizing the game.

 

She uses the game in several instances (way to blow up your point by repeating the same anecdotical evidence in multiple cases).

In my last post, I refered explicitly to the second video, and the trope she spells out there. She uses DAO as both as an example later and as an opener of the video. I discussed why this use is completely incorrect.

 

Using rape (threats) as a way of showing how a character is evil: Yes, DAO does that, like many other things. So? Kidnapping children, slapping underlings, kicking dogs, etc. are similar tropes. Are they discriminating against children, underlings or dogs? Hardly. So I don't think "making rape threats to show the villain" is bad.

 

What is important is that she claims that the women ONLY exist to provide for that trope, that they have no other function. That is a claim which requires the look at the context. And with a look at the context, it is clearly wrong. Shianni is a character you interact with completely outside of her role as rape victim.

[JAZZ_LEG3ND]

@schall_und_rauch

If you misconstrue what she says as much as you did what I said, I can see why you come to the conclusions you have.

No one ever said Dragon Age was sexist.
No one ever said telling a brutal story was bad.

These are things you pulled out of the air. You're not seeing facts, and you’re not listening to her video. You're creating a narrative of your own to suit your kneejerk conclusion without actually analysing or fairly judging her criticism. Your argument starts and finishes with what you think she's saying.

The only thing I see out of context here is your criticism of her criticism of Dragon Age.

[Il Divo]

Chances are, she has played it, and probably likes it... but that's neither here nor there, because the quality of the game is not what's in question in her video. The clue is in the name of her video series: Tropes vs Women. She didn't call her series "that thing wrong with Dragon Age".
 

 

Honestly, is this even the case? Not that her playing video games is the only important criteria, but most I've actually heard regarding Anita is that she has not actually played most (if any) of the games she references in her videos and does not regard herself as a gamer. 

[schall_und_rauch]

@schall_und_rauch

If you misconstrue what she says as much as you did what I said, I can see why you come to the conclusions you have.

No one ever said Dragon Age was sexist.
No one ever said telling a brutal story was bad.

These are things you pulled out of the air. You're not seeing facts, and you’re not listening to her video. You're creating a narrative of your own to suit your kneejerk conclusion without actually analysing or fairly judging her criticism. Your argument starts and finishes with what you think she's saying.

The only thing I see out of context here is your criticism of her criticism of Dragon Age.

 

I have put the context before, but this time, I will point exactly to things she said in her second video.

The video which uses DAO as opening sequence and later on uses it again (twice).

So it's not "miscontruing, pulling things out of thin are, not seeing facts, not listening or not analysing". It's using her quotes directly from the video.

 

This is what she says

 

0:40: "The subset of largely insignificant non-playabe female characters whose sexuality or victimhood is exploited as a way of infuse edgy, gritty or racy flavoring into game worlds. These sexually objectified female bodies are designed to function as environmental texture while titillating presumed straight male players."

 

I have argued why this is false: the victims are not insignificant (they are a character to interact with outside of sexual victimhood), in certain cases this concerns the PC itself, nobody is sexually objectified and they are more than environmental texture. You talk to them, you interact with them, you learn of who they are.

 

15:58 "specifically designed to appear pitifully vulnerable. These scenes serve no other purpose to the plot other than to let the audience know that the perpetrator are truly deplorable monsters"

 

That's obviously false for DAO. The whole DAO city elf origins plot is built around that scene.

 

17:01 "is exploited by the developers as a sort of cheap, one-note character development for the bad guys"

 

While it is true that it is a way of designating clearly the villain, the way she describes it is definately judgemental. Both "exploited" and "cheap" are used in a negative way. I see nothing wrong with that form of power play using to characterize the bad guy. And I have yet to hear how many female players who play that sort of game for enjoyment felt creeped out by that scene.

 

18:14 "But there is nothing mature about invoking female trauma. It ends up sensationalizing an issue that is painfully familiar to a large percentage of women on this planet, while also normalizing and trivializing their experiences.

"so when games casually use sexualized violence in a hamfisted form of character development for the bad guys, it reinforces a popular misconception of gendered violence by framing it as something abnormal, as a cruelty only commited by the most transparently evil characters"

(She then goes on about how rape is common and is commited by seemingly normal people among friends and family)

 

There is nothing that normalizes or trivializes experiences of raped women in that scene -- not any more than violent experiences in general are normalized in Dragon Age.

As for the second part of the accusation: Rape has been and is still used as a way of establishing power dominance. It happens in wars or supressive environments all the time. That is the context of Dragon Age Origins, which is shown here: Elves are being supressed by the human rulers. This guy abuses his power and is evil because of it.

The fact that a lot of western countries have a social system and jurisdiction that makes rape as a form of open power suppression tool not quite as prominent and shifts the instances of rape to more private settings is completely irrelevant for the setting of DAO. 

 

25:52: "with the pattern of utilizing women as background decoration reinforces the myth that women are naturally faded to be objectified, vulnerable and perpetually victimized by male violence, the games also display misonogy and sexual violence as an everlasting fact of life, as something inescapable and unchangeable"

 

Again, looking at DAO, context is required. If ONE specific woman is raped by ONE man, then using the game as an example to draw this kind of conclusion is just bullshit. Women play a very critical role in DAO, are largely not objectified and vulnerable or victimized. Anora or Morrigan being the strongest examples, but also Wynne and Leilana come of as anything but objectified victims. In fact, Leilana is the victim if female evilness (plotting by Majorlene) and Alistair is basicly used for sexual purposes by Morrigan.

[Morroian]

 

So why the f*ck does he care? Somebody makes invalid critisism and false claims about his game on the internet, some people react in an inappropriate manner, and he has to write a lengthy post about how people's reaction are inappropriate and bad.

 

Um you look at what has happened and continues to happen around gamergate and you still ask that question?