| Shatts said: First my apologies, I was drunk writing that so it's really messy. I'll try to keep it simple and easy in this response. 3. All of this is difficult. I never implied that games are meant for boys because majority of creators and consumers were boys. I meant it as, it's natural that boys would make games for boys as they know what they want. Since majority interested in game creation were boys, it makes sense that content were "male oriented". Anyways there's no such thing as complete freedom. Just because games can express someone's thoughts doesn't mean it should. There is a line of common sense as to what is okay and what isn't usually decided by majority rules. Anita's claims tried to change that line on how much is acceptable and people didn't like it. It would be much less controversial if her stance was simply "I want different types of female characters in future games", but the narrative was more like blaming existing games and developers for the lack of intentions to. Hence restricting creator's freedom of choice making it seem like they needed to take those into consideration, or they're sexist. It doesn't cross the "line" if the game doesn't explicitly convey discrimination, but looks like to me Anita and her followers thought the tropes mentioned were. Although she probably played a role in the future of gaming, it was bound to come as society change and video games became more mainstream. Her claim would be far more valuable if she had claimed the gaming industry was preventing female characters or female devs to succeed (as there are probably lots examples like Activision Blizzard) but that wasn't the case. There were plenty of dependable female characters and main characters even at that time so her narrative was almost out of place. It was just a selfish request to push her opinion and poor narrative that gaming is sexist. Her intentions could be seemed like she wanted to restrict the gaming industry to how she wanted even if that wasn't the case, which cycles back to my statement on how the way things are presented is very important. To conclude, it's obvious that there needs to be a balance of both restriction and freedom. I value freedom as I want games to be imaginative as much as possible. Instead of changing what already exists, make a change with something new. |
Lol! Well it was well-written by the metric of drunkenness then. 
I appreciate the greater clarity of this response. Still, I think we're just going to have to disagree on your first two points. While I think we all need and value our shallow escapes every now and again (myself certainly included) and while I think we can agree that changing things just for the sake of doing so isn't always a good thing since it can lead to "fixing" a lot of mechanics and such that aren't broken, at the same time my choice of avatar here ought to make it obvious that I value games for much more than empty escapism and see no reason why games, as any other art form, shouldn't push boundaries or challenge preconceptions or take commercial risks. Reliance on tropes to me is a lazy alternative to crafting believable, dynamic, interesting characters and creative stories. In that sense, there are more than just moral reasons why sexist (and other) stereotypes in our media landscape deserve to be challenged.
Concerning your final point, you're right: there's no such thing as complete freedom. But I also really feel that your speculations on Anita Sarkeesian's motives for creating the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games web video series are just that and nothing more. You keep using the term "force" to describe criticism. There is an innate difference between the two things that I don't think you're appreciating.
Should Anita have made a video series about the kind of toxic climate that female gamers and developers often face instead? *shrugs* I feel like that work has been done and continues to be done by others. The purpose of Feminist Frequency was to examine the media landscape itself and I feel like she did plenty in the way of bringing attention to the harassment of women in gaming in the process. The Tropes series is a one-of-a-kind project that has no true equivalent and that's the legacy I wanted to honor with this thread.
To be sure, in case there's any confusion about this, I am not infected with the woke mind virus. Too much political correctness can get people killed. So can too little though.
