Anita Sarkeesian

[KagatobLuvsAnimu]

He's just mad I said I'm not going to respond to him anymore.

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[iruinedyourday]

well to be honest i thought it was cus you were gona hang yourself.

[iruinedyourday]

Well to be fair guys in her videos he constantly sights the lack of black and other minatory role models for that matter, as examples of the gaming industry being unable to escape its reliance on bad tropes.

And game devs listen. So, once again she champions the good fight and challenges developers to think critically about their art.

[Grimfan]

Originally Posted by iruinedyourday [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Well to be fair guys in her videos he constantly sights the lack of black and other minatory role models for that matter, as examples of the gaming industry being unable to escape its reliance on bad tropes.

And game devs listen. So, once again she champions the good fight and challenges developers to think critically about their art.

One of the problems that I have with some of the people that defend her work is that if you remove some of the trope elements from some of these games they just won't be as interesting. Yes, you can take the strippers out of the strip club, but does that really do anything? Should we force narrative away from strip clubs, dens of sexual deviance, legit brothels, etc, just because they use women as background decoration? I'm not really sure that it's fair on a creative level if you think about it.

It's one thing to see the tropes for what they are, and it's another to remove them all together from the gaming industry. I think a lot of her supporters feel that you can still create an interesting environment without exploiting humans in some way, and I disagree. Human exploitation is one of the easiest and most often the most interesting way to drive story.

However, there are other tropes that can easily be challenged. A 20 something white male does not need to be the main character of every major game, and that's one of the reasons I found Watch Dogs really kind of boring. There's no reason why a woman has to so often be something that men are fighting over, and there's no reason that she needs to be saved all the time.

For me though, as a game designer/writer, I feel like you should write for your game and not for your audience. That's not a philosophy most share.

[iruinedyourday]

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

One of the problems that I have with some of the people that defend her work is that if you remove some of the trope elements from some of these games they just won't be as interesting. Yes, you can take the strippers out of the strip club, but does that really do anything? Should we force narrative away from strip clubs, dens of sexual deviance, legit brothels, etc, just because they use women as background decoration? I'm not really sure that it's fair on a creative level if you think about it.

I have little doubt that if you wrote a deep and real story that takes place in a strip club or den of sexual deviance Anita Sarkeesian would stand behind you.

If you made a game about shooting people in the mall, and going to the strip club and pressing triangle over and over again to listen to girls moan and dance around doing nothing to move the story forward, she would call you out as being a bad game designer/writer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[KagatobLuvsAnimu]

Originally Posted by iruinedyourday [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have little doubt that if you wrote a deep and real story that takes place in a strip club or den of sexual deviance Anita Sarkeesian would stand behind you.

If you made a game about shooting people in the mall, and going to the strip club and pressing triangle over and over again to listen to girls moan and dance around doing nothing to move the story forward, she would call you out as being a bad game designer/writer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Serious question. Noting that 'depth' is a subjective term, have you even played that level in Hitman? Did you at least watch a complete let's play for that level of Hitman? Judging by your post I'm forced to assume that you haven't.

[iruinedyourday]

Originally Posted by KagatobLuvsAnimu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Serious question. Noting that 'depth' is a subjective term, have you even played that level in Hitman? Did you at least watch a complete let's play for that level of Hitman? Judging by your post I'm forced to assume that you haven't.

Try not to make to many judgments it will make your life communicating anonymously with strangers a lot easier.

as a matter of fact I played the last hitman and it was an alright game.

but.. it is still incredibly childish compared to even the script for fucking Taken for fucks sake.

If you think games are not childish then you're just not playing games, mon!

[LulzSect]

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[Grimfan]

Originally Posted by iruinedyourday [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have little doubt that if you wrote a deep and real story that takes place in a strip club or den of sexual deviance Anita Sarkeesian would stand behind you.

If you made a game about shooting people in the mall, and going to the strip club and pressing triangle over and over again to listen to girls moan and dance around doing nothing to move the story forward, she would call you out as being a bad game designer/writer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't want to assume what game you're talking about here. But if you're talking about the Grand Theft Auto series then we've got a slight issue. Lets use the most complex Grand Theft Auto game from a story standpoint if that's okay with you, GTA 5, because of the multiple protagonists has, by far, the most complex story that I've seen from a GTA game. If you look at the protagonists they are all meant to be hated from one direction or another, none of them are good people, they're robbers, murderers, thugs, misogynists, assholes, druggies, etc.

They all have good sides as well, Michael is a family man trying to do what is best to keep his family together while breaking it apart. Franklin is trying to make money to get out of the hood, he doesn't want to be dragged down by his past. Trevor really believes in loyalty and friendship, and he would do anything for his crew.

So the issue I have with the strip club being toted as shallow is because these men are all deviants. You're meant to try and live a life in their shoes and really you direct them from place to place. The designers are giving you a choice to see how those characters react while getting a lap dance etc and it's supposed to be uncomfortable. In some cases, the strip club is the only way they can get away from the daily routine of their lives and experience something that isn't robbing or killing. And I'd say for Michael it's the only way to get away from the family that he is both running from and trying to keep together.

I'm not saying that you couldn't have a character walk into a strip club, have the camera go high and let us imply all of this, but putting us in the seat of the character makes more of an impact.

I would like to state though that it's all up to interpretation, you could say that the developers wanted us to get off to pixelated boobs and to make us aroused to keep playing the game longer. Heck, there are strip clubs in the multiplayer where you can yell into a mic, and I am sure that relegating those women to a minigame is pretty offensive to some. But for me I find all of those scenes really uncomfortable, and it just brings it home how lonely and sad the characters I am playing are.

[iruinedyourday]

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't want to assume what game you're talking about here. But if you're talking about the Grand Theft Auto series then we've got a slight issue. Lets use the most complex Grand Theft Auto game from a story standpoint if that's okay with you, GTA 5, because of the multiple protagonists has, by far, the most complex story that I've seen from a GTA game. If you look at the protagonists they are all meant to be hated from one direction or another, none of them are good people, they're robbers, murderers, thugs, misogynists, assholes, druggies, etc.

Totally agree, great game. Rockstar as far as I'm concerned (surprisingly because they are AAA and very successful, usually signs that you are not indi and cool) are the most independent and least tropey of all the game developers out there (with many great close seconds).

One thing I found sad about GTA5 though was the strip club sequence in particular. I brought 4 people over in separate instances to play GTA5, they were not gamers.

At social occasions since then, despite all the fun they had playing the game, all 4 of them made denigrating jokes about the strip clubs.

To make a long post short, because of that scene they all championed the game publicly as tripe. Sad because there was some great stuff in there!

OK one of the four only talks about how he beat up white trash dudes while they BBQ near the hospital.