Tropes vs. Women in Video Games

[Grahf]

Most of you have probably at least a passing awareness of this whole thing. The Kickstarter campaign and some of the musings Anita has made regarding games have not been without controversy in and of themselves, but given that the actual goal of the project -- the videos themselves -- have finally started to come out that it would be good to focus on them. Although let that not dissuade any other discussion of this project in its entirety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q

I found that this was actually better than I was expecting it to be, although I'll be honest in that my expectations where significantly diminished over the course of the time from the announcement to date. I didn't find any of the points raised to be particularly objectionable, although the jazz music during the Krystal segment was a little much. I'll grant you that the Damsel in Distress isn't exactly the hardest topic to find instances of either in terms of research like this. I was admittedly surprised that she didn't go into a little more depth regarding Sheik and the idea that Zelda could only act as a participant when she took on a male persona, but perhaps that's for another time.

So, reactions. Positive, negative, apathetic? I'm interested to see what all of you think.

[Brian]

Nope, never heard of this 'whole thing' until now.

Video games do have a chance to challenge the old ideas, and it's a bit surprising that more hasn't been done in that regard, but it's also probably good to remember that (unfortunately), video gaming has by-and-large been considered a 'boy's club' until fairly recently.  Even then, sexism in gamer culture is sadly prevalent; so developers/manufacturers tend to try to cater to/appeal to what they see as their greatest demographic.

I'm not sure I 100% agree with her issues on Starfox.  While some of the points she raises are valid, the one thing she's overlooking is the decision, "Use an established existing character (regardless of gender) to ensure more sales of the product, rather than gamble on a purely original character."  I can't put my finger on it, but something about the delivery of that bit felt off to me.

Anyway -- that's at least partially marketing, and driven toward what is expected to generate the most profit; these people are in the industry to make money.  You kind of see the same trend in movies, particularly action films with male stars.

So ... she made me feel bad for enjoying the games I liked when I was a kid.  I'm ... not honestly sure what else she was trying to accomplish?

I would have expected that a kickstarter movement to establish empowered female characters or just to oppose the damsel in distress theme would have been better focused on making the kind of game they wanted and leading by example, instead of just posting a lecture-format video.  I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is the case, but ... am I missing something?

[Grahf]

I think that the reason it became a big deal was due to the utterly absurd amount of backlash that she got for the project on youtube. It wasn't pretty by any measure. There's been ongoing discussion, both rational and not so much, about how the vitriol really hurt any actual constructive criticism of the project. I thought that it was an interesting idea, but my hopes for any sort of long term legitimate discussion stemming from this pretty much died a cold, lonely death a long time ago. Sad really.

Granted, if we're going by tropes here, then it was often just that the Damsel in Distress was pretty much just an excuse plot. I wouldn't say that it was done maliciously, but rather that it was an easy fallback for when people who played games mostly gleaned stories from instruction manuals or the small handful of vignettes at the start of the game, if indeed any were present.

Considering that games were also taking cultural cues from movies and other media of the time, it's not really surprising that such a prevalent use of the damsel came into being.

I'm somewhat curious to see how other topics are handled, but this has become more of a "oh hey, it's a video, neat," thing than "oh boy, a chance to actually maybe see some valid points raised!"

Seems that I may have missed my guess on how big of a deal it was though. During the high point nearly all the places I went to seemed to be talking about it, even if only tangentially. Seems that just the amount of time in which nothing really came of it has pretty much cooled any sort of fervour, positive or negative, for this project. Strangely, I suppose that might be for the best.

[Brian]

I don't know what the project goals were, as I mentioned in my original post.

What was supposed to come of this?

[Grahf]

Feminist Frequency was a moderately well known youtube channel. Anita, who runs most of it, decided that it would be good to take a more in-depth look at some tropes regarding common portrayals of women in games. The list, including the Kickstarter stretch goals, is:

Spoiler: ShowHide

   Damsel in Distress - Video #1
    The Fighting F#@k Toy - Video #2
    The Sexy Sidekick - Video #3
    The Sexy Villainess - Video #4
    Background Decoration - Video #5

    Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress - Video #6
    Women as Reward - Video #7
    Mrs. Male Character - Video #8
    Unattractive Equals Evil - Video #9
    Man with Boobs - Video #10
    Positive Female Characters! - Video #11
    Video #12 - Top 10 Most Common Defenses of Sexism in Games

She was originally asking for $6,000 to help fund the videos. Then a whole bunch of negative comments showed up on the youtube video that was asking for help funding. Death threats, racial discrimination, calls to get the channel banned, etc.

There were valid points raised as to why exactly she needed all the money for this, but they got drowned out. Due to the attacks Anita got a lot of press coverage, and the Kickstarter ended up raising over $150,000 dollars, which is absolute madness.

The videos were supposed to address concerns and facilitate discussion, at least that's what I thought. As time went on though it seemed that it got the undercurrent of just pointing out the flaws and leaving it at that, rather than trying to even take any steps to say "so, this is how we remedy this," also, given that the series was supposed to start in 2012 there were large delays which also hurt my interest quite a bit.

[Brian]

The videos were supposed to address concerns and facilitate discussion, at least that's what I thought. As time went on though it seemed that it got the undercurrent of just pointing out the flaws and leaving it at that, rather than trying to even take any steps to say "so, this is how we remedy this," also, given that the series was supposed to start in 2012 there were large delays which also hurt my interest quite a bit.

That's my general sense of it.  It's probably backlash against the haters, but what I watched felt devoid of real substance.  It was a criticism, but not a directed one with suggestions on improving things, or advice on how we can change -- it's only commentary without guidance.

I'm sad that there was so much backlash against it, but I also feel that the valid points she makes would be better served by hilighting positive counterpoints within the given subject matter's episodes to say, "This is a better way to do it; this is what people should be working toward."

I ... want to agree with her.  But something about her delivery feels like it's intentionally blind to exceptions and positives.  "This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, and this, too, is wrong.  Following this will be several more lists on what's wrong, followed by a side note about things that are less wrong, and then a list explaining why disagreeing is even more wrong."

I also see a lot of overlap between planned topics.  There's not much difference between #1 and #7 (they pretty much go hand-in-hand), #10 and #8 seem like they're going to be the same thing, and I suspect that #2 isn't going to be much different from them.  #6 seems like a subtrope of the chainmail bikini thing -- I'm not sure if she's going specifically to investigate the 'nature' element, or those are just the bywords she chose to focus on a prevalent issue with fantasy female costumes (ie., impractical armor/clothing).

I am afraid of #12 turning into an incredibly nonconstructive mess.

I guess, bottom line, what I'm trying to say:

It's really, really easy to criticize and complain.  Why not spend time actually encouraging positive changes, or providing superior examples of how things could go?

As it stands, she has accomplished:  Making me feel bad for enjoying games as a child without really thinking about the gender role issues.  And...?

[Dracos]

I'm gonna look at this, but I'll admit upfront that Sinfest/fans and far FAR too many ridiculously 'Women are suffering' lines recently have largely bled me of almost anything but contempt for folks talking like this.  I say this as someone who works at a company that has released constant female lead characters going back a decade now that I am well and truly sick of the pot-shot "Females aren't portrayed in protagonists roles of power, boohoo" or the equally ridiculous "Females don't get taken seriously in industry" cuz frankly, I know way too many female execs and company owners to buy that, and I have to go a whole one cube to find women doing design or coding work whose opinions get taken as seriously as any other developer on the project.  So bias established...let's go look at the next thing I'm probably not going to give a fair shot to anyway...

Yay, starting with Plumber rescues princess.  Joy. :P  Let's see...  Okay, the adventure island thing's a bit shitty, but you know what usually happens there?  "Hey, so we see you got a decent concept here, but it doesn't look like it would market well, how about we just close it and you all go home in the unemployment line?"  Because that's what usually happens in the industry.  Somehow though, I have trouble mapping what she's attributing to Shigeru with what I've encountered of the man in person.  Looking at it...I'd propose a different picture.

Rare had recently produced many original furry action/adventure games which while they reviewed well, sunk like a stone in the marketplace, selling virtually nothing despite the quality of the titles.  While their human spy-action/licensed titles were doing well, Banjo-tooie and Conker's bad fur day both sold like crap.  With another "this looks good" furry action/adventure game put before Nintendo and an upcoming sale of the overall studio to Microsoft in the works and a necessary 'you need to port this to the new system, so the overall expense of this project is higher', It's really not surprising that Nintendo pushed for it to be tied to a stronger brand franchise, one that would both be infeasible for microsoft to simply place on their system and would help bolster selling the product.  Was it the right move?  Who knows, I hardly give a shit about most rare games post GoldenEye, but there's an easy telling of the story that doesn't have Mysogyny as the basis because Nintendo really didn't have any female furry characters to tag on.  They could've used the Donkey Kong girls (Candy and Tiny), but that would've gotten crapped on too and I'm pretty sure Rare owned the IP for that, not Nintendo.  It also wouldn't have had the stronger branding that Star Fox brought.

What it did do was move over four times as many units as the last rare game, Conker's Bad Fur Day and possibly ended up being commerically viable instead of an expensive well reviewed failure in the marketplace.  Because had it released as an n64 game when it had, it certainly would've ended up with just that fate.

Mmm...   "Games use a Trope that is literally over 2000 years old.  But this is anti-feminist, and therefore wrong?"  I'm not sure where she's going off on games specifically after spending four minutes covering the long oral story telling, written story telling, cartoon shows, live action, and movies that all use not only the trope but the specific "Ape captures women, man saves woman" that has been a popular international story for over one hundred years.  I give cred to the research and all that, but may I note it's kind of bullshit to basically put a lineup of folks who all told the same story and go to the last one in the line and say "Hey, you asshole, stop picking on women!"

"Princess Peach is kidnapped in 13 of 14 Main mario games."  Okay, Well, you're including the Land and Galaxy spinoffs, but what the hey.  I'll play this game.  Ignoring of course that basically saying "Hey, this story worked as a framework for our enormously popular platforming game, so we kept using it" is kind of just hyperfocusing, what about all the spinoff titles...and Peach's own one?  Oh, btw, the reason they ditched Peach was really they didn't want to deal with the skirt or deal with giving her proper pants.  Stupid, I know, but when you look and realize that adding good cloth mechanics for that can be a many-thousand dollar and many week expense and you have a brand team that goes "No, she has to wear a skirt", sometimes stupid decisions happen.  But I'll play the core franchise game. 

"Lara Croft saves the day and kills or watches get killed all of the male characters in 9 out of 9 core games.  Men merely exists as window dressing to give moralisms before dying to clear a path for her."  Also, for funsies, She also does it in all DLCs and spinoff titles for the franchise too.  Man, this "Women Killing Men" trope is out of hand?  No, it's a single game series and it tends to repeat the narrative framework for the game that made it actually publicly noticeable with millions of people buying into the story the first time around because millions of people bought into the story.  Also, female characters tend to survive and hold roles of power in them, but that's probably also because if you have women getting shot at, people tend to throw a hissy fit (In the same way they do if you have primarily ethnic people getting shot at).  But white men can be killed constantly without complaint.  Especially russians, poor guys.  Congrats

What about Bowser?  In 13 of 14 core games mentioned, turtles are ruthlessly slaughtered and their diligent king is murdered in lava.  In the 14th, he doesn't even get to show up.  In most of the spinoffs he is also made fun of as a buffoon.  Do overweight kings never get to win?  Should fatties feel bad about being portrayed as the incompetent villain?  Does Mario have a secret anti-fat person motivation going through it?  Is it a secretly giving a ruthless communist overthrow storyline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_xQ-ns5whw ? 

Am I belittling that there's problems?  Yes, a bit :)  But I don't think these are meaningful discussions on there being an issue.  Protagonists tend to be the only people that do something in games.  Everyone else is simply a decoration.  If they're male, then the men are doing everything.  If they're female, then the women are doing everything.  That's pretty much how it goes.  Referencing 30 year old arcade titles certainly though is a pretty weak way to discuss the modern state of Damsels in Distress.  Oh, she handles that later.  Joy.  Always good to see references to poorly performing fringe works as examples of modern play.

Mmmm, zelda.  Man, she makes it out pretty good really.  I mean check the old wise men.  They're generally all killed off.  Or the hundreds of townspeople who lived in Zelda's kingdom?  Their gender sure didn't matter for Ganon exterminating the town in several of them. But sure, she has it bad off being an object for the protagonist to rescue instead of the bones under the protagonist's feet.

What I think is somewhat pertinent on most of her examples is that these are games that millions have voluntarily payed for repeatedly.  Many of them really only being interactive takes of incredibly ancient stories (Yes, Dragon's Lair's princess is a completely idiotic ditz, but you know what?  Did you really expect better in a 45 minute visual cartoon about a knight rescuing a princess from a dragon?).  These aren't "Hey, some rich group is forcing these on people" but "These stories involving a damsel in distress are so popular they form foundational products for companies".

  There is some smug ridiculous concept being waved that we should be ashamed that these kind of fantasies occur, are purchased, and are consumed, despite them be dehumanizing women?  This just in, war fantasy dehumanizes us all, sells BILLIONS!  Construction fantasy belittles the hard work put in by millions every day to build the foundations that we all walk on!  Harem power fantasies dehumanize both the male and female cast~.  Action hero fantasies mock professionals every day by painting them as incompetent baboons.  I enjoyed R.E.D. which spent the entire time declaring a group of four retired vets and paper pusher girl could take on the CIA and special military suppression forces.  Man, the delivery of the underlying contempt for professional military! 

Fantasy at its core tends to involve large portions of society being reduced to simplistic mocking concepts that are easy to cheer for or against, lack hard decision making and misery being delivered at all ends.  Is killing in your fantasy?  Then somebody is getting killed and they're being dehumanized.  Is rescue in your fantasy?  Then you know what, somebody has to not escape.  What saving someone?  Then somebody needs to be saved.  And you know what?  That person odds are is not going going to get much screen time solving the problem with you out there and isn't going to be given the opportunity to solve the problem themselves because it doesn't gel well with the fantasy.

Just imagine this.  You play the next mario.  Game 15 or whatever by her silly counting.  Eight worlds as usual.  Eight of Bowser's kids guarding castles (So Damsel in Distress is bad, but Child Violence is okay! as long as they're turtles).  You get to world eight, murder bowser violently in lava...and arrive to find an empty prison where Peach has escaped ages ago and went back home.  No one even says thank you.  Hey for more screen time, she can escape in world 2, so you can feel like a huge putz murdering all those turtles on the way to rescue someone that's already home.  Extra points if she then sends her toad troops to conquer the weakened Koopa Kingdom and thanks you for your effective work as an assassin.  Aren't we glad that we've changed the fantasy from rescuing the princess from the dragon to include assertive female non-player character that doesn't really need you anyway?  Redundant Rescue taken to the fridge horror tier.  Of course everyone would love it right?

Reality?  Yeah, heroes are often unneeded or unwanted.  People rescuing people from trouble rarely ends up helping them anyway and we're all better off in a dog eat dog world.  Women get to be important, but just as often are figureheads being used by other rich people to put other poor people down, or just as terrible as anyone else who fought their way to the top.  Women are less prevalent in many industries not due to horrible sexist obnoxious men and HR departments that look the other way, but decades of not being interested and setting up the foundation for it.  But you know what?  Most games are fantasies...and are more enjoyable anyway.

I know, I should take lessons from this.  I'll recommend more women in our next project.  They can stand alongside the white russian men getting shot out for being the generic easy mode mooks.  What?  Doesn't sound like a win for feminism?

So I'll go back to my token adventure fantasy where we're hunting the demon with the generic 3 guy, 1 girl party: Hero, fat thief, handsome playboy, beautiful mage; all generic tropes that sell well in the fantasy universe.  Maybe when someone wants to actually spend their time promoting those games that have female characters that are interesting and meaningful or discuss actual considerations on how things can be better, intellectual discussion can happen :P

</Completely obnoxious posting+4 of Shaming>

And yeah, I'm just being mean half to get it out of my system at encountering just too much of this kinda hateful diatribes.  There's no separation from productive "Hey, we're making and communicating different and useful ideas and here's how you can participate" and "You should be SHAMED for enjoying X, Y, Z or NOT enjoying X,Y,Z".

Shame we haven't advanced as a culture to a degree that we can go "These people like these fantasies and it's okay.  It's a fantasy.  It isn't hurtin' anybody.  Let's worry about problems happening in the real world."

[Grahf]

See, sarcastic though it may be, the commentary that you've given is what I hoped would be done, or at least what would have come of it. However, it seems that unless something really changes, it won't be like that at all.

Sadder still, if you posted that anywhere in relation to that video, you'd probably be buried under postings from people saying things like "You're just giving excuses for the misogyny," and "What do you have against strong women in games!" Even though what you're doing is giving a reasonable rebuttal. It seems that in the case of this group at least, it's gone from one opposite to the other, where now you can't give any argument, rational or not, without being labelled as a woman-hater or a person that wants to maintain the status quo.

It's pretty depressing, either way.

[Jason_Miao]

What about Bowser?  In 13 of 14 core games mentioned, turtles are ruthlessly slaughtered and their diligent king is murdered in lava.

Just imagine this.  You play the next mario.  Game 15 or whatever by her silly counting.  Eight worlds as usual.  Eight of Bowser's kids guarding castles (So Damsel in Distress is bad, but Child Violence is okay! as long as they're turtles).

See, sarcastic though it may be, the commentary that you've given is what I hoped would be done, or at least what would have come of it.

Reading Drac's post I want to see a parody-video about the history of amphibian oppression in video games.  I can see it now: An opening emphasizing modern video games, followed by "So, let's talk about Frogger."  Shocking scenes of heros being successful by climbing over the dead bodies of turtles.  Maybe some scenes from the old Jaws Nintendo game.

[Dracos]

See, sarcastic though it may be, the commentary that you've given is what I hoped would be done, or at least what would have come of it. However, it seems that unless something really changes, it won't be like that at all.

Sadder still, if you posted that anywhere in relation to that video, you'd probably be buried under postings from people saying things like "You're just giving excuses for the misogyny," and "What do you have against strong women in games!" Even though what you're doing is giving a reasonable rebuttal. It seems that in the case of this group at least, it's gone from one opposite to the other, where now you can't give any argument, rational or not, without being labelled as a woman-hater or a person that wants to maintain the status quo.

It's pretty depressing, either way.

Frankly, the status-quo is pretty friendly for women as it stands.  They're making progress in lots of business areas and generally being treated as a special class on the same tier as crippled war vets for benefits and government money.  In the states particularly, women have more rights and freedoms than almost anywhere else in the world, and a good deal of laws specifically dedicated to their protection, which is kind of silly since laws shouldn't care about gender anymore than they care about race.  Not to say everything is perfect, but largely you'd think modern feminism would be dedicated to at least maintaining the status quo instead of basically tearing story things down while also ignoring legal challenges going against many of the rights they've hard won *eyes the constant reproductive freedom fights*.

Basically, people like this should really be treated with the same sort of contempt as those who proudly say they're PETA members.  They're folks not actually helping any dialogue to create a better tomorrow and just adding hate into the world.

Jason:
I think that would be hillarious.  I'd love to see that too.  But not quite enough to make one.

Or one for russians.  Cuz not kidding, they are probably shot at and killed even more than Germans are and almost nobody ever sees that as a problem.  They're the generic easy-mode flunky, so even when well out of territory, they show up :P

[Jason_Miao]

Or one for russians.  Cuz not kidding, they are probably shot at and killed even more than Germans are and almost nobody ever sees that as a problem.  They're the generic easy-mode flunky, so even when well out of territory, they show up :P

I think some of that stem from the people who are spending their own money to buy games grew up during the Cold War, when shooting Russians meant shooting Soviets, and plenty of people thought that was inevitably going to happen anyway.  Maybe 10-20 years in the future, when the kids who grew up after 2001 have large quantities of disposable income, we'll see games using enemies with bombs strapped to them charging you while perched on top of camels (and shooting oil slicks at the turtles you are escorting in your electric-powered convoy)

[JonBob]

Mostly what I get is that we're still in Negative Nancy land, where misogyny is rampant in video games. I'm hoping that we'll leave that and get to "positive portrayals of women" soon and maybe some ideas like she tried to get to at the end of the video. But it doesn't look like that since that's video 11.

Also, the blinking.... the blinking....

[Dracos]

Or one for russians.  Cuz not kidding, they are probably shot at and killed even more than Germans are and almost nobody ever sees that as a problem.  They're the generic easy-mode flunky, so even when well out of territory, they show up :P

I think some of that stem from the people who are spending their own money to buy games grew up during the Cold War, when shooting Russians meant shooting Soviets, and plenty of people thought that was inevitably going to happen anyway.  Maybe 10-20 years in the future, when the kids who grew up after 2001 have large quantities of disposable income, we'll see games using enemies with bombs strapped to them charging you while perched on top of camels (and shooting oil slicks at the turtles you are escorting in your electric-powered convoy)

Or when in Russia, you kill russians.

In GTA, almost everyone killed is american.  In their SA one a lot of them are black or police officers.

This is reflective of the setting that they're actually being told in really.

Sure, a lot of this takes easy mode known villains, but sometimes things are like this just because the story got chosen to be told in a certain part of the world, and falling out of that, the bad guys are people from that part of the world.

[Kt3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJihi5rB_Ek

Another woman thoroughly dismantles Anita's video.

It's rather well done, I just wish she didn't *have* to be so apologetic, as she keeps saying "I don't want to invalidate anything Anita said as bad and wrong... buuuuuuut....".  Sadly, if she weren't so apologetic, I'm rather sure there'd be a lot of emotional kneejerk reactions if she just straight up stated "I think her argument is flawed in these certain ways, and that's why her conclusion is false."

[Grahf]

I think that statement pretty much nails the problem on the head. I'm not sure whether it was due to the nature of the content, the person presenting it, the initial backlash it got, or a combination of all three, but it seems to have become nearly impossible to even argue any points without being labelled a troll or misogynist by the people supporting her.