The only thing I dislike here is that people are obsessed about Anita the person - be that love or hate for her. The issues she brings up and the validity of her arguments seem entirely based on whether you think she is a good person/"deserves" the attention/has good delivery or knowledge. If you're on her "side", she's totally right. If you're not, nothing she says is apparently worth anything.

If she's working on the Mirror's Edge 2 protagonist, I'd like to see discussion of how and why the result is good/bad for the game and for the industry. Not about how Anita personally is ruining it/profiting/leading the industry/etc.

It's like she wants to make developers responsible for what other developers create.

"This dev made a sexualised prostitute so lets go to another dev and threaten them to make a strong fake woman otherwise we will not buy their game"

And Anita is the one that blocks her youtube comments section hmm...

I can see why reading this thread. There is a point when criticism becomes hate, not to mention all of the criticism she gets for things she didn't even say/do. If people were reasonable and gave her well thought out counter arguments instead of all this ridiculousness I'm certain she would allow comments.

I don't believe it is an issue of not being able to take criticism.  It's a matter of black or white with Anita.  As stated in this thread, Anita's agenda is female supremacy, and equality.  

"Ellie is the most empowered female character ever created"

then to be blunt you do not understand what empowerment means

ellie spends the whole game relying on joel to keep her safe so ultimately she was only ever a dependent and that is not empowering

to be empowered means that you for example have the power to keep yourself safe that you are truly independent and autonomous

ellie was neither and this is pretty much why i take issue with a lot of the things feminists say... because, for example, its clear that they lack a fundamental understanding of many of the terms they use commonly such as objectification, empowerment, independence, autonomy etc

Anita Sarkeesian has stated numerous times in her videos that she sees a problem in gaming where females are concerned. Her argument is purely that the way games portray women don't put them in a strong light where they can fend for themselves or put them in the background. Of course she knows that is not completely true, but its not completely a lie either. She cites games that treat women like meat or sources of males sexual fantasies and look at it as a place that while inspiring can be very troubling in her opinion. The problem I don't think she understands is that she doesn't speak for all of female gamers. I am a feminist myself and I can cite numerous female characters who can hold their own in a game. 

Hate is still criticism. So we supposed to sugar coat her and only talk about the good points of her video. Thats censorship at its very finest.

Want well thought out counter arguments? Watch Thunderf00t on youtube. Plus, he doesn't censor his criticism, including the hate.

Guess what, if everybody hates something, it's probably bad.

I want complex, awesome female characters for video games too, but chastising the industry for every nit-pick just comes off as obnoxious.

After watching a few of her videos, it just reminds me of the gender studies class I took in which every single thing in society was seen as a thing oppressing women. Is there still sexism? Yes, harassment and stereotypes still float around but she comes off as a fringe feminist in that EVERYTHING is oppressive instead of maybe more marketed to males (doesn't mean all males like it) just as things such as Pinterest or Seventeen magazine are marketed towards women (again, doesn't mean all women like it).

I guess it comes down to if we want video games to be a forefront of social change forcefully or let the market decide what we want video games to have. Honestly, awesome female protagonist, though few and far between, do have huge fanbases from both genders and deserve more place in the video game culture. I think putting women in for the sake of having a quota is dumb. We are better than that.