[worry]

It's only part one of a multi-part series, a bit over 20 minutes, focused on the "Damsel in Distress" trope. Personally I'm glad that some critique is developing that's focused on the meat of games, rather than only the industry itself or online-play culture -- not that I think those two subjects have even nearly been exhausted, from feminist or any other critical perspectives, and they might still come up (the build-up to the existence of this very project certainly drew out a ton of brutal misogyny) -- but I'm most interested in analysis of the textual elements of video games. And this introductory segment does a fantastic job of getting at the core of D.I.D. saturation and its problems (for instance, how later-era Zelda can be differentiated from Peach, but still unfortunately regresses to D.I.D. in many cases). It's academic but easy, and only occasionally wry or sarcastic (never stooping to Gawker/Jezebel-style heavy needless snark). In short, it takes games and gaming seriously, as it should, and I think gamers should be proud of that.

Here's some introduction and background from ThinkProgress: http://thinkprogress...pand-its-great/

After launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund a long-term project that would examine the roles women play—or are consigned to—in video games, Feminist Frequency video blogger Anita Sarkeesian was subject to a vicious, violence-saturated campaign of harassment. While it was awful to watch Sarkeesian be threatened and slandered for the sin of wanting to do her job well and comprehensively, the utter inability of her harassers to shut her work down has been wonderful to watch.

And I’m cheering Sarkeesian’s perseverance even harder now that the first installment of her project, titled Tropes Vs. Women, is out—and it’s terrific. Examining both the depiction and gameplay of characters like Pauline, Princess Peach and Zelda, Sarkeesian goes back to the origins of the Damsels In Distress trope art and literature, explores how the trope migrated into video games after the rights to Popeye characters couldn’t be secured for a video game, and examines how the trope became valuable to the video game industry.

At the beginning of the video, Sarkeesian, explaining that “This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters,” says something that everyone who loves a piece of culture ought to be required to recite five times every morning while looking in the mirror: “Remember that it’s both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media while being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.” If that ability to hold two ideas in your head at the same time, to enjoy something while recognizing that it might have problems, is what the people who tried to harass Sarkeesian into silence are so afraid of, it only reinforces how intellectually cowardly and inept they are. The need for something to be immune from criticism isn’t a sign that it’s perfect and everyone else is wrong: it’s a sign you can’t defend the things you love. That’s a position any self-aware person ought to be embarrassed to defend.

[worry]

Also, I'm not sure if anyone's even gonna argue about this, but I'm not super familiar with the Games sub-forum so I put it here. Also a question, do people generally use spoiler tags for relatively recent games with big story elements?

[Illuyankas]

I'd say so.

Glad she's managing to work through the morass of morons trying to shout her down, cause a woman having opinions about your toys and getting rape threats over it sure isn't a sign she just may have a point, oh no.

[End of Disc One]

This girl is infamous because she raised $180K to fund this project, and then didn't do anything. This brought about a bunch of anger among her contributors. She finally got around to doing this video series.

It's cool that she's talking about issues she finds important, I just don't agree that video games shouldn't be marketed mostly towards men. Men make up the majority of the market.

[amphibian]

Do men make up the majority of the market because that's just the way it's always going to be or because there's been some degree of exclusion of women in the creation, design and marketing of most video games?

I've no idea about the 180k and not doing anything, but that's pretty egregious - if true. I recall seeing that people were faking things (fake pictures, fake tweets etc.) to make it look like the woman wasn't doing anything. That's messed up and severely drops the credibility of the detractors here.

[Primateus]

End of Disc One, on 09 March 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

This girl is infamous because she raised $180K to fund this project, and then didn't do anything. This brought about a bunch of anger among her contributors. She finally got around to doing this video series.

It's cool that she's talking about issues she finds important, I just don't agree that video games shouldn't be marketed mostly towards men. Men make up the majority of the market.

What do you mean she didn't do anything? She IS doing something, she's making this video series which, if I'm not much mistaken, was the whole point of raising the money...

[Khellendros]

I remember being utterly shocked by the vitriol and hypocrisy of the responses on Kotaku when they did a feature on what Sarkeesian was intending to make some months ago. All these people who supposedly deplored sexist and misogynistic behaviour whenever a news item in relation to that would be posted, suddenly did nothing but write abusive post after abusive post because Sarkeesian had dared to look at video games from another angle. It was pretty sickening.

[Dolmen 2.0]

The problem in gaming is the simple fact men are culturally interested in the media and women are encouraged to look at it negatively. Games become an outlet that men tend to seek more often than women and the gaming industry is vastly aware of this fact. The monetary investment needed to affect the psychological turnaround needed for womankind in its majority to recognize gaming as a viable pass time would take billions over several years. Imagine the campaign? most likely hated on either side of the fence. it would also undermine a major factor in game sales. The gaming industry is riddled with sexist content, only because of the nature of the market. It'd be great to see more gender balanced games. Not sure I could name any off the top of my head that are popular. I can see why a game manufacturer fears the economic rammifications in pursuing gender equality, doesn't mean they shouldn't be trying.

[High House Dark]

I'm so glad she's posting now and still has the strength and courage to put herself out there, despite all the abuse she received (and probably still receives).

And for those claiming she received this abuse on account of "not doing anything with money" - 1) don't realize how long it takes to write, produce, and edit something to perfection (or try to) and 2) don't realize that the abuse started before she had even finished raising the money. In fact, it really got attention before she had reached any of her kickstarter goals at all, merely because of the possibility (read 'threat') of a woman pointing something out.

I also wonder how many statistics are skewed due to women identifying as men anonymously for online gaming and whatnot... since the majority of the women I know and hang out with play video games, I just find it highly unlikely that the male majority is a HUGE majority? Then again, that's on account of me seeking out friends based on similar interests.

I've still always viewed it as 60% men, 40% women, or something like that (despite how obviously marketed it is towards straight men). I know that I am one of those people that never turns my mic on or goes by a username that is 'identifiabley female' when online gaming.

[High House Dark]

Dolmen+, on 09 March 2013 - 03:56 PM, said:

The problem in gaming is the simple fact men are culturally interested in the media and women are encouraged to look at it negatively. Games become an outlet that men tend to seek more often than women and the gaming industry is vastly aware of this fact. The monetary investment needed to affect the psychological turnaround needed for womankind in its majority to recognize gaming as a viable pass time would take billions over several years. Imagine the campaign? most likely hated on either side of the fence. it would also undermine a major factor in game sales. The gaming industry is riddled with sexist content, only because of the nature of the market. It'd be great to see more gender balanced games. Not sure I could name any off the top of my head that are popular. I can see why a game manufacturer fears the economic rammifications in pursuing gender equality, doesn't mean they shouldn't be trying.

Of the top of my head - Portal. You play a woman going against a female-voiced robot. I mean, it's a very short game, but it's very good, and it totally avoids that horrific attitude of "OMG YOU PLAY A WOMAN AND SHE OVERCOMES BEING-A-WOMAN-RELATED-STRUGGLES JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE" when starring women in games. (i.e., even playing FemShep in ME2 gets that bizarre, nonsensical line from the Batarian merc recruiting on Omega - FemShep is fully armored, looks nothing like a stripper, and it's 2130 or whatever, but ME creators still needed to throw in that one random sexist and gender-specific line because...??).

I play video games because I like escaping my current reality, thankyouverymuch, and I don't need a reminder of what I go through on a daily basis when you finally do find a woman-character to play.

[amphibian]

The Portal, Okami and Metroid games all featured women in an extremely positive way without resorting to tired gender-based tropes or exploitation. Granted, for the most part, the female protagonists are silent in these games.

Perhaps those who play more video games than I do can point to talking characters that do a better job of answering the "which games feature women in a good way" question.

[the broken]

Final Fantasy. Metal Gear (the FROGs)

There's a lot of noisy idiots on the internet. I don't think they're the majority of gamers. The majority of (male) gamers I know are more amused than anything else at the ridiculousness of female character design. Gears of War and HALO have female soldiers in similar uniforms to the men.

As for damsels, it was a cheap easy way to kickstart a plot. Someone's kidnapped, go get her.

[Macros]

Meh, I think its a bit deeper than a simple way to kickstart a plot. Its a key theme in many stories, there's very few mythos and fables that I can think of where the lady is the lead, games are, on some level, all story driven (I think we can agree some are very thin on the ground on the story front but none the less) and in most media, historically it's been a heroic man saving the day and or damsel in distress. It's a formula that's sold through the centuries, so why would the games manufacturers rock the boat overly and risk losing their profit share?
I'm not saying its right or fair, and know nothing about the abuse being discussed here (on the face it reads like internet morons are morons) or the lady in the video (no time or sufficient internet to watch it alas) but on the subject of games subject matter its hardly just games that such male orientation is in evidence, games have just had less time to evolve past the basic trope of man is saviour.

[worry]

End of Disc One, on 09 March 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

This girl is infamous because she raised $180K to fund this project, and then didn't do anything. This brought about a bunch of anger among her contributors. She finally got around to doing this video series.

This is expressly untrue (though End of Disc One didn't invent this angle on it, and probably heard it through the rumor mill). She had a Kickstarter for $6000 with intentions to create a 5-part series, then metric ton after metric ton of vitriol was sent her way, which got some media attention, which in turn led to her raising a bit over $150,000 in response (I would suggest this at least implies the gaming community is made up of a pretty good-hearted semi-silent majority who are hungry for serious analysis of the artform they love so much), and that monetary response in turn led her to expand the series to 12 parts. At "worst", she adapted positively to new resources. And in other words, the post-money vitriol was just a shoddy new paint job on the same old stuff.

Now like I said, this is only Part I of a longer series, and in fact the Damsels In Distress trope is broken into two parts so we still don't have her analysis of exceptions to the rule, games that try to break the trope, etc. and I'm really interested to see what she says about that. Metroid is a clear early possibility ripe for both praise and critique. Half Life 2 has a strong female character (non-playable though), and though I haven't played them yet, I've heard very good things about the Mass Effect games. Unfortunately I don't know if these videos are coming out monthly or more frequently than that.

[Gothos]

With Mass Effect, Shep can be either sex and kicks ass just as much as both. Then you have the crewmembers - Tali, Liara, Miranda, Jack, Samara, Ashley, Kasumi and EDI (as far as an AI can be considered female anyway), as well as NPCs like Aria, Gianna Parasini, Nyreen Kandros, Eve and many others... Well, OK, first time you meet Liara she's in quite a bit of trouble, but I think that's just playing with the trope a bit

As far as damsels in distress go, I dare you to try that line with the Sisters of Battle

[MTS]

As for games that have realistic female protagonists, Beyond Good and Evil is a good example. The Fire Emblem games do a pretty good job of giving equal opportunity to male and female characters, although I do believe women get kidnapped more than once in the series (the protagonist Micaiah from Radiant Dawn was fairly good I thought, getting a good balance between both capable and vulnerable at times). Metroid I think used to be a good example, but Samus' portrayal has wandered into sketchy areas once she became three-dimensional (like that blue skin-tight suit in Other M for instance).

By the way, if you want to look at a Bioware game (or series) that has a good portrayal of women, Mass Effect is probably the worst example you could use. lthough there isn't any overt 'damsel in distress' moments, virtually all of them are big-titted women in skin-tight outfits, and even Jack has a skimpy outfit for Christ's sake. The only exceptions I can think of are Tali and Aria, but Tali's in a bloody space suit the entire time and Aria is still fairly sexualised (not that that is an inherently bad thing, but still). FemShep doesn't count because all the promotional material features Shepard as a man, and canonically he is one. The fact that Bioware gave us a choice is great, but not overly deserving of praise considering the rest of the series. KOTOR is actually the best Bioware example I can think of, but even that still clings to the tropes (i.e. rescuing Bastila at the start of the first game).

 tumblr_m2igymUT371rttqmlo1_400.jpg (69.68K)
Number of downloads: 0

This post has been edited by MTS: 10 March 2013 - 01:57 AM

[D'rek]

I get the feeling I'm going to write a lot here and it's not going to be too structured... oh well here goes...

End of Disc One, on 09 March 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

It's cool that she's talking about issues she finds important, I just don't agree that video games shouldn't be marketed mostly towards men. Men make up the majority of the market.

High House Dark, on 09 March 2013 - 05:28 PM, said:

I've still always viewed it as 60% men, 40% women, or something like that (despite how obviously marketed it is towards straight men). I know that I am one of those people that never turns my mic on or goes by a username that is 'identifiabley female' when online gaming.

Yup, that was the numbers reported by the ESA a couple years ago (for the USA only).

Dolmen+, on 09 March 2013 - 03:56 PM, said:

The problem in gaming is the simple fact men are culturally interested in the media and women are encouraged to look at it negatively. Games become an outlet that men tend to seek more often than women and the gaming industry is vastly aware of this fact. The monetary investment needed to affect the psychological turnaround needed for womankind in its majority to recognize gaming as a viable pass time would take billions over several years. Imagine the campaign? most likely hated on either side of the fence. it would also undermine a major factor in game sales. The gaming industry is riddled with sexist content, only because of the nature of the market. It'd be great to see more gender balanced games. Not sure I could name any off the top of my head that are popular. I can see why a game manufacturer fears the economic rammifications in pursuing gender equality, doesn't mean they shouldn't be trying.

I would agree that this is the case for most of the "hardcore games" industry, but not a problem for the "casual games" industry. Go to a random free flash game website, or look at all the farmville clones on facebook, or at games that are geared more towards random fun than experimentation like The Sims. Collectively, these sorts of games do not seem to have much of a problem depicting males and females equally well. There doesn't seem to be a really good reason why. I think it's just a matter that those sorts of games are being made now and the culture we are in (or getting into) calls for that sort of thing, whereas the "hardcore games" industry has a few decades of traditional business/development practices holding them back.

Getting fully back on-topic, the video is interesting but doesn't seem especially relevant to the present. I guess part 2 is supposed to address that a lot more, so we will see. But I don't really care how games were made in the 80s, it was a different time and culture, and if 99% of gamers back then were male then it makes sense from a business standpoint (I have no idea what the actual percentage would have been back then). What matters is whether the issue is ongoing now or whether things are being changed. The games industry is so enamored of building on previous successes without changing things that real changes to these problems are never going to come from games made in the 80s like Mario or Zelda. Those games were based upon the DID trope and there'd be big backlash from their fans if they deviated too much from their standard elements.

Change is going to come from new franchises, or from sequels to games that didn't already have negative feminine tropes. As already mentioned, Half-life did this with their Alex character, but they could do so because Half-life was pretty much devoid of any female presence at all before. The best Zelda would be able to do would be to add new female characters that are interesting and dynamic, but they wouldn't be able to change the Zelda-gets-kidnapped formula (oh wait, they already do this all the time... sariah, midna... but we are still fixated on Zelda who will never change).

Anyways, personally I don't have a problem with their being Damsels In Distress in video games. Yes, it is a plot device, but plot devices are useful. There are, in fact, games with Handsome Men In Distress, too, and likewise it is just a plot device. Not every character, male or female, needs to be multi-dimensional, heroic and capable. Nor do I have a problem with sexy costumes in video games, as sex appeal can be whole heaps of fun. The only problem is when these things are over-used, and currently they really are. We all know the fantasy RPG trope where the men level up into wearing entire wagons of armour while the women level up into chainmail bikinis when this neither reflects their skills nor their personalities. The next Starcraft is coming out soon, where you will play a character who is obviously just as good a strategist as the super-aromoured space marine guy from the last game, but this female protaganist needs to look as naked and sexualized as they could make a green zombie girl be, because clearly mutating your feet to have five-inch stiletto heels is a key part of commanding alien hordes.

In contrast, I don't find Ivy from Soul Calibur offensive at all. Yeah, she's always dressed up like a dominatrix, but in the same game there are other female characters who do dress more like their profession, or I can play as shirtless Maxi or the giant axe guy in a loincloth. Obviously Soul Calibur is sexualizing its characters, but its not doing so exclusively. (Though my memories of Soul Calibur are from the second one, I hear this may have gotten much worse since.)

In a pseudo-summary sort of way, I see most of the "hardcore games" industry developers as defining their characters into categories something like this:

Male or Genderless Hero
Female Hero
Male Villain
Female Villain
Male or Genderless Primary Supporting Character
Female Supporting Primary Character
Secondary Supporting Character
Male Plot Device
Female Plot Device
Identity-less Character (ie basic enemies)

and each of those categories has its own "rules", including that sex appeal/sexualization is a rule for Female Hero but is optional for Male or Genderless Hero. What more developers should be striving to be is having their cahracters categorized as:

Hero
Villain
Primary Supporting Character
Secondary Supporting Character
Plot Device
Identity-less Character

such that there are no "rules" for how they use or depict a character that are based solely on gender. There would still be rules that the hero needs to overcome personal obstacles, the villain needs to inspire fear, etc, but the same decision process of whether to make a Primary Supporting Character sexualized should be used whether the character is male or female (or a genderless space lobster, for that matter).



Lastly, another (shorter) video that covers another point on the topic, similar to what I've said above but more about depiction: Escapist - The Big Picture - Gender Games

[Illuyankas]

Yeah, I'm definitely coming back to this thread later but for your Soul Caliber comment, D'rek; it will not be even remotely equal until, say, Kilik is in a mankini, boob jiggle physics, and I also found this image a while ago and I feel it's relevant:



Also Saria, from Ocarina of Time? The gets-kidnapped-after-giving-Link-a-flute, zero agency beyond fancies the protagonist Saria? Midna's better there Zelda character-wise but the Wind Waker Zelda still rocks the casbah right until she gets thrown into a pit for almost the entire final third of the game.[/Nintendo knowledge]

Oh, and anyone mentioning Other M positively in this discussion is a madman.

[worry]

I think one can argue that in a vacuum "a damsel in distress" can be one of several neutral plot devices...but the sheer wealth of evidence/examples Sarkeesian gathers here for the imbalance of damsels in distress (as opposed to say, dudes in distress) -- from that Starfox re-write example to the Double Dragon intro (played it countless times as a kid, was always disturbed by that punch) through the comparison of imprisoned males (agency) vs imprisoned females (no agency) -- lends weight to it being a problem and not just a choice. I also don't think the notion of who you're selling it to (ie perhaps mostly males in the 80s) excuses the problems in the trope, if you're cashing in on people's worst natures. Sure, customers shape culture, but it's not a one-way interaction. For instance, I was pretty disturbed by the constant misogynist talk -- admittedly from mostly villains -- in Arkham City. It was a bombardment that uglied an excellent game. And I couldn't help but connect the notion that it didn't sound so different from the talk of plenty of gamers, even if the game put it in villains' mouths. I also kind of think there are plenty of male gamers who, while ambivalent about the tropes like this, will generally side with buying a good game despite its problems. It doesn't mean they wouldn't like to see changes.

I appreciate the mention of Beyond Good and Evil, fantastic protagonist. Perfect Dark was solid along these lines too, at least as far as I got (unfortunately never completed the story mode). I don't want to keep wondering what's gonna be in D.I.D. part 2, but I am curious if she'll have a take on Braid and what it might be.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 10 March 2013 - 03:40 AM

[D'rek]

Ew, okay Illy now you've got me reading about boob jiggle physics controversies... yeah okay I am definitely limiting my previous statement back to no more than soul calibur 2 and before. And I was thinking about Cassandra, Taki and Xianghua in my head, mostly (ok, well no I was thinking about Maxi a lot in my head, but you know what I mean )

And what? When does Saria get kidnapped? She is all motherly and helps run the village and then is sad that her friend is leaving but she teaches him a song that is helpful like any good supporting character in a zelda game should. I don't remember her getting kidnapped?

(I am not good knowledge to make talk good on this topic I think)