I respectfully disagree. I think it's extremely important to have discussions about various -isms in fiction. Fiction is a huge part of how we understand and view the world around us, and if our fiction has distorted worldviews, then we should know about it.

What I took away from that anecdote instead, is that tact is a thing and so is knowing what to say when, and that maybe charged opinions on tangential issues should be left to some occasion other than when your friend is trying to show you something that she worked really hard on.

Only recently has attention been turned to video games, as the genre is so new. The reaction from a minority in the video games community seems to view this criticism as an extraordinary attack, even some kind of corruption or conspiracy if you listen to some people on reddit.

These recent controversies (#GamerGate included) look pretty transparent from people with no stakes in the game. A lot of really violent backlash against an industry that is growing up.

If a book is published, it is allowed for journalists or other writers to say that this book is abhorrent for x, y, and z. It is also allowed for them to criticize and chastise the author for writing such an abhorrent book. This is not the same as censorship.

When a large part of society condemns something for whatever reason, or if a certain segment wishes to use their arguments to try convince enough people that something should be condemned, this is a natural, largely unpredictable, and unrelenting process that happens all the time to reflect shifting social values and morals. It's folly to fight that, and the trick is predicting where it will go. In my opinion, that is how companies and institutions survive.

A few years ago it might have been in (any random abstract) company's best interest to fire a gay employee. Regardless of the views of the decision maker at that company, for the sake of PR, this is the way it goes. These days, that decision goes the other way, particularly on the national scale.

The game studios are subject to these kinds of effects too, and that is what what will hurt the status quo of games in the long run (although there are arguments to be made that the desired status quo is already long gone, I dunno, it's been a while since I was attached to the games industry).

Critique is a discussion that is semi-private: It takes place between the critic and the artist, and not the audience as a whole. Audience members have the final decision in that they can walk away from the resulting discourse, but this doesn't mean that they need to intervene and announce which things should or should not be open for critique. When the audience does intervene directly in criticism, it generally amounts to bullying of either the critic or the artist, or sometimes both; it's not productive.

Where this dialogue becomes messy is when the space of discussion has not been agreed upon: Should this discussion aim for criticism or not? If "no," simply say you're thinking that. But if you're presenting an argument to avoid criticism as a means of shutting down a criticism, you're being a bully.

However, in the context of extensive advertising and unavoidable public discussion, we are having the opinions of those creators foisted on us.

It's not a matter of "choosing not to play" when the overwhelming prevalence (contrasted with the mere existence) of sexist or racist games shapes how you're perceived by everyone around you. It already an uphill battle to be recognized as an individual without the constant stream of objectifying media.

There's far more money and political power backing those invested in exploiting and perpetuating stereotypes. They can afford to defend themselves.

Other popular, socially influential, commercial media are subject to pretty similar pressures -- particularly media that are consumed heavily by youth; less popular/pervasive/commercial media are subject to criticism on similar grounds, but generally not pressure that something needs to be done to correct the problems in the medium (likely in part because even the groups that see individual works as problematic don't see the less-pervasive medium involved as having a substantial problematic influence on society.)

I hear you and agree that we should be allowed to explore fantasies. However, when one's sexist fantasies are similar to one's reality, intervention is reasonable. Concrete example: cat-calling.

A game is a work of fiction.FICTION.it doesnt mean developpers fantasize on rape or that it will turn player into sex offenders.When did COD turn players into mass murderers ? never. When did GTA turn players into car jackers ? or thugs ? I remember new york city being pretty violent in the early 80's.GTA didnt exist... Game X or Y didnt make the nazi kill jews... or made Ted Bundy be what he was ...

Reminds me Resident Evil 5 c"ontroversy" when "people" were outraged because players were killing blacks ... What the hell ? the game is set up in Africa, for christ sake...there will be some black people there ... RE5 didnt make the US south racist or lynch negros ...did it ?

> Many refute the idea that video games can affect a player's long-term behavior, and as far as I know both sides of that argument are difficult to study and prove.

Because people CAN tell the difference between reality and fiction.For those who cant , videogames are not to blame.They have issues at first place.

So yes,let's continue to have violence against women,objectified women in video games,just like men are objectified and raped and killed in videogames.

If only women were brutalized,you may have had a point,but that's not the case,at all.

that's why all this social justice warfare against videogames is silly.These are just game and do not turn people into monsters,trolls,racists,rapists,killers or whatever.

I want game artists to be able to express themself without fear of finger pointing by people totally unrelated to gaming.

If players dont like it,then they will not buy it.Let the market work...

So enough with all this already.A few people made a quick buck out of social justice warfare,good for them, but let us not fall for all that crap.

I don't see people out there arguing to rewrite Bukowski for being sexist.

In a sense, yes. For example, Grand Theft Auto rewards players for brutalizing prostitutes because it rewards players for brutalizing NPCs full stop. It turns out that including female characters in your game and applying the same generic mechanics to them as male charcters is a really good way of producing a misogynistic game. That's... odd, to say the least.

(Also, it doesn't even matter if the game encourages violence against them. Just having female NPCs that can be the receipient of violence is enough, even if it's penalized by the game mechanics. If you don't want to be accused of encouraging misogyny it's probably safest and easiest just not to include any women in your game.)

You can kill women in Hitman, but this is not in itself sexist. You can kill men too, with a penalty if they're not an armed guard. There's no difference between killing a homeless man or woman that just happens to be in the way of your plans.

It seems to me that this line of criticism is actually that the game is too violent in general. It's just that sexism is used as the tip of the spear, because we as a society are significantly more likely to be outraged - because we are sexist - by violence against innocent women in games than violence against innocent men. Against the ultra powerful player character, both are just as defenseless.

If any gender is dehumanized by Hitman, it would surely be men - more than 95% of who you kill in an average play through are male guards that are simply there to be a gameplay element, like ghosts in Pac Man. You violently kill them, dump their bodies and forget it seconds later. The female opponents are highly powerful assassins with names and unique faces.

There is plenty of low hanging fruit for criticizing Hitman. It's quite a disturbing game (and it happens to be one of my favorites). I'm all for deconstructing and analyzing the games we play, but doing it in an intellectually lazy way does nobody any favors.

(I can't speak to the other games, as I haven't played them)

This sort of dishonesty is precisely what causes the backlash. No, those games do nothing of the sort.

With a cautious disclaimer that she's usually reliable, he points out that she brings up this cliche as being a common silent film trope and she includes a short clip from a 1913 silent film using it. But here's the problem: the gag wasn't common in silent films at all, that's the myth the rest of the article debunks; and in the clip she was using, by 1913 it was already a gag scenario only suitable for making fun of, not seriously presented, yet this is how she describes it. In the span of two minutes I accidentally found somebody in a completely different hobby who called out a video of Sarkeesian making a incorrect claim she couldn't possibly have actually researched (that the trope was common in silent films,) and taking a video clip out of context either because she didn't really watch it, or on purpose because it made her point better.

I know that the trope can be presented ironically and still be part of a cultural pattern of objectifying women. That is not my point. It is just about accidentally finding the same sort of thing that gamers say she does about specific games in a completely different medium she has commented on. Noticing these things, if they keep happening, could be considered "honest criticism" of her videos that some people insist doesn't exist.