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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Did Anita Sarkeesian fabricate the death threats made against her on twitter?

o_O.Q on 15 September 2014
champybh said:

Madworld - 

What I'm trying to say (more politely) is that ... I feel the people who are obsessively investigating these claims are coming from a place of disrespect. They want very badly for it to be true so they can justify their opinion that women gamers don't have a place in "our world". I've formed this opinion by reading the overwhelming reactions all her videos inspire. It made me wonder why this topic drives everyone so insane - and i see no other reason other than that it's because it's coming from a women's voice. 

While I'm the opinion minority in this forum thread, many game developers agree with with this - and that there is in fact an issue. She's doing a good thing for the video game industry, she's getting the people who create games to think twice before they choose the predictable choice. Don't we all want more unique ideas in the games that we play? 

or perhaps its possible that people do not agree with her viewpoint?

and so therefore they have reacted critically to her claims?

 

before you pull the sex card i think you should sit back and think about if this hasn't happened to a male offering a controversial viewpoint on the industry before now

and i don't know about you but i instantly think of michael patcher 

and from what i remember patcher hardly gets any support from anyone

 

but here we have so many guys willing to jump to someone's support merely because of their sex ( whether it be zoe quinn, sarkeesian etc )...

which ironically as i said before contradicts what feminists like sarkeesian are trying to acheive

and that is to do away with the notion that women are helpless objects for men to save

if you are aligning yourself with the cause of feminists then do not jump to her support merely because she's a woman analyse the situation, analyse her actions then come to a conclusion



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badgenome on 15 September 2014
champybh said:

Madworld - 

What I'm trying to say (more politely) is that ... I feel the people who are obsessively investigating these claims are coming from a place of disrespect. They want very badly for it to be true so they can justify their opinion that women gamers don't have a place in "our world". I've formed this opinion by reading the overwhelming reactions all her videos inspire. It made me wonder why this topic drives everyone so insane - and i see no other reason other than that it's because it's coming from a women's voice.

Perhaps a minority of them do feel that way, but I think most of them are perfectly fine with women gamers. They just don't like people trying to rock the boat and react over aggressively to anything that is seen as "attacking gaming". There is literally nothing that has been said against Anita Sarkeesian that wasn't also said against Jack Thompson, including death threats and hoping that he'd be gangraped.



Porcupine_I on 15 September 2014

I just know that the Nintendo Direct about Bayonetta 2 hurts someone like her more than any death treads



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

Richard_Feynman on 15 September 2014
Ckorik said:
Richard_Feynman said:
Ckorik said:
setsunatenshi said:
 


you can quit the patronizing attitude. no one is criticizing that snake oil salesman because she is a woman. the criticism comes directly fromt he fact she conned people out of 100's of thousands of dollars to make a handful of videos on youtube accusing games of creating sexism while having absolutely NO FACTS OR STUDIES to back up her claims.

Well this is a lie - she started a kickstarter - got backers who volunteered money into a system that says 'YOU ARE NOT GARUNTEED A PRODUCT FOR YOUR MONEY' in big neon letters when you sign in - and was funded. 

It wasn't that much money - and she's producing the video series she promised on top of that.  Kickstarter even lets you remove your pledge up to the very last second of the campaign for any reason.

She didn't 'con' anyone - in fact if nothing else potato salad guy shows us people will give money to anything.


BS.

That's blatant robbery. You get NOTHING from supporting her except making yourself feel good for being liberal.

You apparently need to learn what robbery is again, because that's nothing of the sort.  You get nothing from attacking her except making yourself feel good for being a communist. 

Apologies to real communists.

You are clearly unaware of political terminologies.

If I have to choose a desegnation, and my previous post would show it to be true, then I would be a right-wing capatalist.

Try harder next time - once you've got the nomenclature down.



Richard_Feynman on 15 September 2014
Ckorik said:
Richard_Feynman said:
champybh said:
How are her video snarky at all? I've watched them all and find the tone to be very straight forward and dry.
Also, she didn't MAKE anyone give her money. She came up an idea for a project and she followed through. Just because it got a lot of attention she is now supposed to live up to some impossible standard of what the videos should be.


HELLO.

You don't need any money at all to make those videos. Kickstarter projects usually require funds because they are fundamentally limited in scope if they don't have a capital to work with.

It's unethical.


Last I heard this was a free country where people could give their money to anyone without being attacked for their reasons - go back to Russia where they tell you what you can spend your cash on.


Terrible.

Does that mean that a pyramid scheme is legal? Have you read the terms and conditions of kickstarter? I have. Can you tell me why she needs funds for making her videos?

You fail at making your point.



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badgenome on 15 September 2014
MikeRox said:

I certainly wouldn't say there is no issue at all with the portraital of women in video games. Some games are even outright offensive to me.

I have a hard time believing this considering how active you are in the Vita thread!

But it is true that internet discussion or any "conversation" in mass media generally generally is quite futile as everything is instantly about tribal loyalties rather than logical debate.



Ckorik on 15 September 2014
MikeRox said:
badgenome said:
MikeRox said:

And without wanting to delve any further into this incredibly toxic subject, that is quite possibly the single biggest issue with her whole "critical" analysis of the subject.

I don't really think it is. It frequently helps to have an outsider's perspective on a subject because they tend to notice things that other people may be too close to really see. Now, I can't say whether Anita Sarkeesian's commentary is any more worthwhile because of this, as I've admittedly never watched one of her videos, but if there's a problem with her work I don't think it's because she's some carpetbagger who isn't qualified to talk about video games. Games are just another form of media, and I sincerely doubt most of the same gamers who so resent Sarkeesian for sticking her nose in "our" business would give a damn if she were just another person criticizing movies from a feminist perspective. If her work is really so bad or sophomoric or uninformed or whatever as to justify any of the venom she's been receiving, I suspect it has more to do with being a professional activist who stirs up controversy to make a buck (which, again, I don't know if she does or doesn't do) than with her non-gamer status.

Her critical analysis was pitched as having had extensive experience with beloved videogames.  And the money was meant to pay for her to be able to do thorough research.

The fact that this was masked, gave the entire thing an instant bias agenda making her entire project of zero academic worth, other than how not to do an academic critical investigation in something.

An outside perspective would be great, but when the examples are so cherry picked, again, it's not really a critical analysis, more a lets find the worst stuff and uses this to form a generalised conclusion supporting the initial hypthesis.

Critical analysis starts with a hypothesis, then looks at all the evidence both for and against this hypothesis, then decides whether the hypothesis has been proven.

I certainly wouldn't say there is no issue at all with the portraital of women in video games. Some games are even outright offensive to me. But to find these moments and state they are the norm is incredibly unfair. When people are challenging this, just shutting down the debate is completely unhelpful to both gaming and the "cause".

That said, I'm also hugely disgusted at the internet in general at the moment. It's not just gamers lashing out with death threats, you only need to look at the more extreme opinions in the Scottish independence debate, I feel 2 groups are being merged and painted as one. As the death threat throwing trolls exist in social media in general thanks to the anonymity of the internet. I don't personally understand how anyone can communicate so prehistorically with another human being with or without a veil of anonymity masked in 1s and 0s.

Two wrongs don't make a right and the trolls on both sides are killing what could actually be a genuinely interesting debate.


Well if you look up the dfinition of a trope and how they are used in other media (including literature and film) you will find that any discussion of use of - or overuse of said tropes (sexist or not) will consist of nothing but 'cherrypicked' examples of those media.  This is (by definition) how tropes are used and discussed.  Tropes are never intended to be indictive of the whole work - again by their very definition.

The complaint that she picks tropes out of larger pieces of work - is pretty much spot on to *what she set out to do in her kickstarter*.

She's not making a series on sexist games - or about gamer culture (although given the vitrol surrounding anything she's done - she'll make a huge name academically for herself by writing a paper on the phycology surrounding these events) - she set out to point out tropes - which (in her view) were sexist and overused in the plots and settings of video games.  This can't be done without 'cherrypicking' the tropes out of the games they are used in.



Madword on 15 September 2014
champybh said:

Madworld - 

What I'm trying to say (more politely) is that ... I feel the people who are obsessively investigating these claims are coming from a place of disrespect. They want very badly for it to be true so they can justify their opinion that women gamers don't have a place in "our world". I've formed this opinion by reading the overwhelming reactions all her videos inspire. It made me wonder why this topic drives everyone so insane - and i see no other reason other than that it's because it's coming from a women's voice. 

While I'm the opinion minority in this forum thread, many game developers agree with with this - and that there is in fact an issue. She's doing a good thing for the video game industry, she's getting the people who create games to think twice before they choose the predictable choice. Don't we all want more unique ideas in the games that we play? 

(Bolded) - I dont think most people want that to be fair, yeah theres a small minority but, well crazies are everywhere.

In terms of making videos, ..she really didnt need to do a kickstarter to make a video about it all, I dont know if she had made videos before the kickstarter on this subject, but considering there are so many youtubers making videos for free, I dont really know why she couldnt just make the videos regardless of a kickstarter. 

Many game developers may agree with her. I'm not sure what that means to be fair. Being PC seems to be all the rage at the moment. One gaming website got upset with a game because it had the main character as a male and it was rescuing a female princess like character, - they said it made women look weak... no offence the world has gone mad :)

I am all for diversity in gaming, and I think we already have it - you can get what you want from many different games and platforms... but at the moment it seems if games dont have all of the boxes ticked (and they dont have to) then it's hell to pay. 



Making an indie game : Dead of Day!

Ckorik on 15 September 2014
Richard_Feynman said:
Ckorik said:
Richard_Feynman said:
champybh said:
How are her video snarky at all? I've watched them all and find the tone to be very straight forward and dry.
Also, she didn't MAKE anyone give her money. She came up an idea for a project and she followed through. Just because it got a lot of attention she is now supposed to live up to some impossible standard of what the videos should be.


HELLO.

You don't need any money at all to make those videos. Kickstarter projects usually require funds because they are fundamentally limited in scope if they don't have a capital to work with.

It's unethical.


Last I heard this was a free country where people could give their money to anyone without being attacked for their reasons - go back to Russia where they tell you what you can spend your cash on.


Terrible.

Does that mean that a pyramid scheme is legal? Have you read the terms and conditions of kickstarter? I have. Can you tell me why she needs funds for making her videos?

You fail at making your point.

So Kickstarter is a pyramid scheme enabler?  Better call the feds!  Sorry I got lost there for a second in the unrelated and nonsensical comment.


Potato salad guy got tens of thousands of dollars to make a potato salad - it was funded and paid - you fail to make your point.



Rafux on 15 September 2014

She is a professional victim/con artist it would not be unbelivable if she fake it