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Ckorik on 16 September 2014
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teigaga said:
Areym said:
teigaga said:

Why does matter who its coming from, it doesn't change the content of her argument. Just because you don't listen to Hip Hop doesn't mean you can't find issue with its objectification of women.

It makes it more compelling and far more valid if an "expert" or at least a person involved in the action (gaming, playing the actual game) is making these claims and arguments. You would not trust the word of an outsider than that of a seasoned player, would you?

The gender of the messenger is not important, that is true. However, if it is a woman who wants to bring some of these issues to light, at least make sure she is actively involved in gaming. It would resonate far more, especially to gamers, knowing that she is actively playing the games she claims are part of the problem.


Although there is a logic there, I think it only applies if expertise in the medium is required or heavily favoured. In situations like this I don't see why its so important. Playing a ton of Halo may make you an expert of the games mechanics, but I wouldn't argue that someone needs to play it a ton to form very valid judgements on its art. Infact whats very common, and what we're seeing (as made evident by people's often brutal responeses), is that a lot of the time those so heavily invested in the medium are either blind to alot of issue's because we're just used to it, or we have the knee jerk reaction to defend something we love. We see this a lot in fanboys

When talking gender roles, its not something games invented, its a real life dynamic games are representing. If you have knowledge of the topic regarding the real world, then you are more then capable of discussing it in games. The only thing I would bring into question, is that maybe an uninformed gamer might not pull on wide range of references and thus portray and unfair image of the industry if tehy're only stuudying COD and Mario. I honestly I have only watched one or 2 of her videos so can't really comment on whether thats the case with her.

I don't particularly see the logic - there are photos of her as a kid playing nintendo - while she might not be a hard core 'gamer' (that definition seems pretty nebulous honestly) she seems to have a grasp of the different genres.  That being said I like the rest of your post - good points.

 

As to making an unfair image of the industry - this is the part that people who simply don't agree with her try to portray.  Should you - for instance - make a series showing use of sexist tropes in movies, you would go through thousands of movies - and find the parts that use those tropes.  Once accomplished you would then attempt to make a point about overuse of these tropes by stringing similar tropes together as a montage so that the viewer could see:  1) evidence of the trope being used 2) the number of films that use the trope 3) possibly show the trope being used in otherwise great films where the (and this is the important part) director and audience were not even aware it was used.  This doesn't make the film industry look bad, it doesn't make any particular movie sexist.  This could however, attempt to show the film industry where it is overusing tropes in lazy or inappropriate ways.  This in turn could cause the film industry (could - not will) to show some introspection and perhaps attempt to avoid these types of scenes because they are easy to write.

This is what she seems to be doing with games.  When reviewing this type of critique it's important to remember tropes are lazy writing/imagery at best - that's what makes them tropes in the first place - with just minimum effort you can goad your audience into a set of cultural expectations, and even then they can be used very cleverly and well.

That last point is a big one - existance of a trope (sexist or not) in any media doesn't mean it was used poorly - even if the trope was central to the feeling of the game - and thus creates a stellar game/experience - it still exists and is fair to be called out.  In particular this video series isn't about if the trope being used is bad or good in any specific instance - it instead is focused on the more widely used tropes that are degrading to women, and how *overused* they are - thus showing large numbers of games where they exist.  Disagreeing with a particular selection is fair, calling her work fake (or calling her worse) because of that isn't.