Women and Minorities in Geek Culture - Penny Arcade are at it again

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

thistlepong, I'm loath to mention this because I'm otherwise supportive of your posts, but her name is Anita Sarkeesian. Not Sarkassian. Getting names right is one of those little things that I find pretty important.

[Shryke]

It's definitely not a solo project. And the devourer of worlds is suggesting a wonder outside the data she's probably collected. What I meant, though, is that to prepare and organize this new series it's very likely that she has tables and spreadsheets and probably an annoted gameplay video archive already. Even that would be interesting to get a look at.

Her profile is high enough that were she to request market data she might get it, otherwise that's be the greatest expense. She received a lot of support, though. I imagine it's not too far fetched. The trouble is simply that she's doing this thing that gets people talking already...

Well, she did try to lean towards this kind of analysis. As I remember, that was the entire point of her kickstarter. She needed the money to buy a larger collection of games to play to do her research.

The problem is, afaik there's no pre-existing database of this kind of thing and creating one would be INCREDIBLY labour intensive. You'd have to sit down and play basically every game ever/within your prescribed limits. And pay attention and note down whatever things you notice based on some criteria you establish. And even then you get personal bias seeping in based on the person evaluating the game or you end up with criteria that may not even mean a damn thing.

This shit simply isn't feasible. Nor is it particularly necessary.

thistlepong, I'm loath to mention this because I'm otherwise supportive of your posts, but her name is Anita Sarkeesian. Not Sarkassian. Getting names right is one of those little things that I find pretty important.

Bah. If she wanted it spelled right, she'd have less vowels in it.

[Shryke]

The two bolded terms, if not interchangeable, pretty much overlap.

The interesting question is the extent to which these games are selected for promotion pushes because they are successful, vs being successful because they are selected for promotions. That dictates the extent to which the games publishers are pandering to the market, or to their preconceptions of what the market wants. But we've been over those questions already.

Here is something on that very subject:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them

What we did find is that almost no games with exclusively female heroes exist. Those that do are almost always sent out to die due to limited marketing budgets.

Also another relevant piece of information in these two sentences.

[thistlepong]

thistlepong, I'm loath to mention this because I'm otherwise supportive of your posts, but her name is Anita Sarkeesian. Not Sarkassian. Getting names right is one of those little things that I find pretty important.

Would you believe me if I told you that I thought it looked weird, but was letting autocorrect lead me? In any case, thank you. I'll fix that as soon as I get to sit in front of a decent screen. Mea culpa.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

No worries, thistlepong! I actually debated bringing it up at all, but I figure she's going to continue to be a main topic in here. :)

Galactus, I wanted to mention this as well: You're not the target of her videos. Neither am I. (Well, except that we're supposed to be glad someone's addressing it at this level.) This really is for those people who don't recognise some of these tropes as sexist at all, nor how prevalent they really are. Having statistics to hand would be great, but she has to start by getting people to agree on base definitions / occurrences.

[TerraPrime]

This really is for those people who don't recognise some of these tropes as sexist at all, nor how prevalent they really are. Having statistics to hand would be great, but she has to start by getting people to agree on base definitions / occurrences.

And judging by various things from comments to her Kickstarter project to xbox live chat to YouTube video comments to reddit channels, the number of people who ARE the proper targets for her videos is large and substantial.

[MinDonner]

Couple of things relevant to this thread: Really cool LJ post by Scott Lynch about a potential Wonder Woman movie (I wish they would make this!). And a new Star Trek themed Facebook-like game called Redshirt, which may or may not be any good, but crucially here, when you set up your playable character, gender is on a slider rather than a binary decision. How awesome is that?

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

I WANT THAT DIANA.

*ahem*

I would adore a good WW movie just as I adored the campy WW show.

That gender slider is also awesome. I wonder if they'll make a non-Facebook version of the game as well.

[Lyanna Stark]

Minecraft - asexual game with no story.

Portal - Female protagonist and female antagonist with a story.

Tomb Raider - Female protagonist, male antagonists, with a story.

Call of Duty - Male protagonists, male antagonists, with a story.

Halo - Male protagonist, non-human antagonists, with a story

Interesting you mention Call of Duty actually, check out this female gamer's account of what it's like to play games online as a woman.

I tended to not speak to PUGies, only to my own clan/guild but even so you get a lot of shit trown at you, and that includes request for naked pictures btw, and complaints that your boyfriend got your stuff/player your character/etc.

Also, this. Sooooo familiar.

[One More Gun]

Both of One More Gun's posts so far betray that ze has no idea what Sarkassian, and thus Shryke, and further thus thistlepong, is talking about. The clowning and bloviating is entertaining in a way, but the volume of words and the rambling bull slinging is kind of irritating. I hope I get the opportunity to respond in a timely fashion. *crosses fingers*

I do actually, and I totally agree with it. Sorry if my interest in the topic, thoughts, and questions offended you. Would it be preferable if I joined the ranks of juvenile tools who simply don't care about this?

[emberling]

The graphics in the PAR article Shryke linked are persuasive in exactly the way I thought Sarkeesian's video (mainly the first one) was a bit lacking. The sea of stubble-marines pictured doesn't only communicate "hey, no women" - it also communicates something even to men who care nothing about women and wouldn't want to play a game starring one; it says "hey, no variety, no creativity". The piles of money don't just say "look at all this sexist stuff", they say "look how many more resources go to sexist stuff than feminist stuff".

One of the properties of unconscious sexism is that people see womens' contributions to a conversation as much greater than they really are. If a woman talks 1/4 of the time in a conversation with two men, both men may feel that she has monopolized the conversation. Because men have the privilege to be expected to talk, and women talking is an aberration. (Subconsciously.) The same concept should apply to stubble-marines and other places where video games are out of proportion. Bros are privileged to be able to play a stubble-marine in almost any game; it feels like an intrusion into their rights when they cannot. Particularly when these games become classics and they are continually told to play them - BG&E, Mirror's Edge, whatever - it probably feels to many bros like there are a whole lot more female-led games than there really are. Showing the real numbers, I'd think, would be integral to persuading this audience.

Of course, Sarkeesian is talking about damsel-in-distress and not lead characters, and it makes a lot less sense to compare numbers of 'games that used a trope' and 'games that did not use a trope'. Maybe I'm just disgruntled that she started with that issue instead of the lead characters issue, which I personally see as a much better starting point - and it's totally an unrelated coincidence that I care very much about the lead characters issue (which actually prevents me from enjoying many games) and not so much about tropes (which I'm quite adept at ignoring). Completely unrelated.

[One More Gun]

Interesting you mention Call of Duty actually, check out this female gamer's account of what it's like to play games online as a woman.

I've bore witness to it more times that I care to count. It's shameful and stuff like that steers me away from online gaming more often than not. If down the road I catch my son acting like that towards anyone be sure that I'll hand him a hammer and make him smash his system and let him know he can get another when he moves out.

[Theda Baratheon]

check out this female gamer's account of what it's like to play games online as a woman.

First of all, I’m made to confirm that I’m a female. (“This dude sounds like a girl – are you a girl? HEY ARE YOU A GIRL?”) Then I’m prodded for pictures. Then every guy in the room wants to be my friend, and accordingly, nag me for pictures. If I refuse the advances, they rule out “slutty,” accuse me of being fat, ugly, “300 lbs,” send me a slew of erection emoticons which are the same give or take a few equals signs and “lesbian bitch” notes.

This has happened so many times when I played WoW from ages 12-18. Actually, not just WoW, all of the MMOs I played.

[Shryke]

None of the girls in my guild were ever harassed or given gifts. Or not that I ever heard or they ever told me. We seemed pretty good about it for the most part. Our guild tended older though, so maybe that was it. Mostly mid-to-late 20s guys. Our youngest player was, like, 15 I think? We used to mock him like a little brother.

The most I ever saw was a bit of very mild vying for female attention, but mostly we just chatted. And to be fair, the one girl I talked to alot that had a few guys trying to talk to her had the sexiest voice ever. That's what I remember most vividly. :P

Thinking about it now, there was alot of "we're gonna rape this boss" or the like thrown around. No anti-gay slurs that I remember though.

Now in gen chat or other groups? Yeah, holy shit were there some dickholes.

[thistlepong]

I do actually, and I totally agree with it. Sorry if my interest in the topic, thoughts, and questions offended you. Would it be preferable if I joined the ranks of juvenile tools who simply don't care about this?

I'm certainly willing to admit I'm wrong. I've already done it once today. If so, though, I'd appreciate a clarification here and there. To whit:

Without any real statistics the argument falls flat because for every game that includes the tropes and female representations she's discussing you can think of a game that doesn't include them. The sheer numbers of games, and the diverse nature of gameplay that exists (something that wasn't possible with earlier technologies), requires better analysis than she provides.

What argument falls flat? And, now that I think about it, how do you totally agree with a flat fallen argument? 'Cause let's be honest, here. The argument, so far, is that the Damsel in Distress¹ trope is prevalent in video games. Seriously, though, she says it better than I could.

Part I

This video explores how the Damsel in Distress became one of the most widely used gendered cliché in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself.

Part II

In this installment we look at “dark and edgy” side of the trope in more modern games and how the plot device is often used in conjunction with graphic depictions of violence against women. Over the past decade we’ve seen developers try to spice up the old Damsel in Distress cliche by combining it with other tropes involving victimized women including the disposable woman, the mercy killing and the woman in the refrigerator.

While the presentation and exploration of the trope(s) requires exemplary games, nowhere does she say that her intention is to prove that all games employ them. In effect, your list of games following that paragraph is entirely irrelevant. However, if you wanna use it somewhere else try Tetris, Guitar Hero, Mario Party, Wii Fit Plus Aerobics, and Pong; that way there won't be much ambiguity about gendered roles.

That's just a small sampling, limiting each game to a simple breakdown. Fully dissecting games for the purposes of this particular discussion would require looking at.

<snip>

You could go on and on with this. Then of course there's the breakdown of who's playing what and why, or why they're not. People who never really played games, are less likely to know about sexism, violence or anything else within gaming, and thus aren't in a position to be turned off by those aspects. Some people just don't like video games.

<snip>

Indeed it would be safe to say that mobile gaming is different than PC gaming, Xbox, Playstation, Wii, and as an industry has followed a different path, and as a function of accessibility has skirted many of these issues.

<snip>

So you're clearly interested in gamers and gaming and perhaps disappointed that a rigorously thorough multidisciplinary longitudinal study of both the industry and the consumer is not and has not been made available. I don't think that has anything to do with a thorough analysis of some specific tropes in video games, nor does it invalidate said analysis. I snipped out a good chunk of your post to focus on a couple notions that appear to be non-sequiturs embedded in that argument.

Non-gamers are more likely to note sexism and violence in games immediately. This is why parents take away games. This is why it's easy to inflame public passions about it.

Jane McGonigal would probably point out why mobile games are similar to all other forms of gaming, possibly even superior in a lot of ways. What's interesting is that in part two of the examination of a single trope Sarkeesian already acknowledges that developers for triple a console titles may have cornered themselves with regard to gameplay mechanics. Rather than separating mobile gaming and just saying it's different, both women would note that alternative mechanics exist and are incredibly popular. But, again, that's neither the remit of Anita's series nor what folks wanted to give her money for.

What qualifies as "Mainstream Industry Product"? It's questions like that that I feel need delved into a little more deeply.

You do a decent job of exploring that, actually. However, while we can always take shelter in our own personal dictionaries, there's an accepted standard. Mainstream products are those games with the largest budgets, most copies published, and greatest profits. Not only is this kind of data readily available, it makes sense to use it and t examine those titles. Tangential to what mormont wrote, I have a library of excellent titles for a number of systems going back decades that are basically pointless to bring up in any discussion of mainstream gaming.

You have to ask why these games are popular, and what bearing sexism in and form has to do with that. In the case of last year's best seller, Black Ops 2, there are non-playable female characters ( a younger sister of the antagonist, whose death is a motivating factor, an F-35 pilot, a computer engineer, and the U.S. President ).

This is where I really need some clarification. You're using Menendez's sister, essentially an inverted disposable damsel, in exemplary refutation of the argument that the trope exists.

my point was that getting real answers that would be useful for game developers would require examining issues of gender in these games on a case by case basis, finding the good and the bad in order to form some sort of framework for positive female gaming that isn't some exclusionary side-show.

emphasis mine

Would you mind explaining what is, or would be, an exclusionary side-show in this sentence, or instance?

¹ On Wikipedia On TVTropes

Edit 1: spelling,syntax, and formatting

[kungtotte]

Yeah... my experience as a girl playing wow was incredibly different. I had GREAT guy friends, got Cold Weather Flying bought for me on my birthday, had a Zerg run scheduled and they GAVE ME the dragon drop... it was kind of awesome.

Unless these kinds of things happened to everyone in your guild then your guy friends are just as guilty of sexism as the public chat mouthbreathers, they just disguise it by being nice about it as opposed to being dicks about it.

I know a lot of people who only play as female characters in MMOs because other players will just up and give them stuff based on that fact alone. Note, these are all men who are playing as female characters, so they're given stuff on the off chance that they're actually women and in a fit of gratitude they will... I'm not exactly sure what the end game is here but you can be sure it's pretty dumb.

While you can argue that this type of sexism is more benign in that nobody is being called names or chewed out in public chat, it's still symptomatic of the marginalised role women have in geek culture. Though really the problem is not isolated to geek culture, it's just much more defined and easily detected there because of how very male dominated that field has been in the past.

One problem I have as someone who wants things to become different is that there's really not a lot of things I can do to fix this or help promote change in this area. I am always on the lookout for games, movies, books, and TV-shows that feature good female characters but it's slim pickings all around and it's all very catch 22. I can't vote with my wallet and buy feminist-positive culture because there's not enough of it around, because the executives feel like the market just isn't there which is only because people can't give them their money because there's nothing there to be bought.

In the past few years I feel like things have slowly started to improve, but when you look at things like videogames there's such a long road ahead that it feels like almost no progress is being made. Sure, Lara Croft has real, human proportions now and is wearing actual clothes, but she also started out looking like she was auditioning for a part on Baywatch. I wish game reviewers would focus more on this topic and point out games that are doing good things about it, and call out the ones that are fucking up.

[Lyanna Stark]

I've bore witness to it more times that I care to count. It's shameful and stuff like that steers me away from online gaming more often than not. If down the road I catch my son acting like that towards anyone be sure that I'll hand him a hammer and make him smash his system and let him know he can get another when he moves out.

Heh, I have the same worries about my own son. It's sad when these types of comments become the new "normal" and nobody reacts to them. Even people who didn't use to speak like that suddenly start to because "everyone does it".

While the presentation and exploration of the trope(s) requires exemplary games, nowhere does she say that her intention is to prove that all games employ them. In effect, your list of games following that paragraph is entirely irrelevant. However, if you wanna use it somewhere else try Tetris, Guitar Hero, Mario Party, Wii Fit Plus Aerobics, and Pong; that way there won't be much ambiguity about gendered roles.

So you're clearly interested in gamers and gaming and perhaps disappointed that a rigorously thorough multidisciplinary longitudinal study of both the industry and the consumer is not and has not been made available. I don't think that has anything to do with a thorough analysis of some specific tropes in video games, nor does it invalidate said analysis. I snipped out a good chunk of your post to focus on a couple notions that appear to be non-sequiturs embedded in that argument.

Non-gamers are more likely to note sexism and violence in games immediately. This is why parents take away games. This is why it's easy to inflame public passions about it.

I snipped some of that post, but it was really excellent thistlepong. :)

The call for statistics is not wrong, but also outside of Sarkeesian's scope. I am uncertain how well video games as a form of culture is actually represented in research at Universities etc. My gut feeling would be that it's still new enough that research has not yet caught up with development.

What Sarkeesian is trying to illuminate is definitely not that "video games are 75% sexist" or anything like that, but to explain the tropes and give examples of big mainstream games using these tropes, over and over again. The damsel in distress trope and the girlfriend in the fridge are well known in literature, even to a fine art philistine like myself (science degree here, unfortunately).

As a female gamer, it does feel relevant that we are asked again and again to identify with a very specific male centred narrative where women are disempowered more often than not, and that this is not necessarily something we should have to live with, or something that is necessary for the game to be entertaining. For example, when even thoughtful, fairly highbrow games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution falls into the damsel trope plus

You also have to enact gruesome violence on women who have been melded to a machine in order to kill that machine and also kill them for good. At least these trapped women don't ask to be put down, but there is certainly overtones of "death is better than this" in it.

This is an example of what they look like. To finish the game, one of the ways you can do that, and probably the simplest, is to release 3 (or maybe 4, I can't remember) of the women-melded to-computer and shoot them repeatedly in the face. For some reason, only women can be melded to a computer in this fashion? Men is apparently also made into drones, but I'm not sure any are seen, the last boss consists of only female "drones". I say this as someone who is very fond of DX:HR btw.

(Personally, aside from statistics, what could be interesting is to look at masculinity in video games and what tropes are in effect there. Clearly it seems a lot of video games pander a fairly reactionary view of masculinity, centred around violence as the only way to solve problems. I'd say that is a fairly problematic position as well. )

[karaddin]

The call for statistics is not wrong, but also outside of Sarkeesian's scope. I am uncertain how well video games as a form of culture is actually represented in research at Universities etc. My gut feeling would be that it's still new enough that research has not yet caught up with development.

<snip>

(Personally, aside from statistics, what could be interesting is to look at masculinity in video games and what tropes are in effect there. Clearly it seems a lot of video games pander a fairly reactionary view of masculinity, centred around violence as the only way to solve problems. I'd say that is a fairly problematic position as well. )

I agree with you that I don't think research has yet caught up enough and I think it's a shame. Both Brook and myself are going back to Uni at the moment (well hopefully in my case, I just applied - she's already been accepted) and in looking at subjects, one of them was on game analysis and I initially misread what it was about and now I really want a subject on what I thought it was - analysis of social trends, gender issues etc through the lens of gaming.

I also would be very interested in your last bit as well.

[Galactus]

^{The call for statistics is not wrong, but also outside of Sarkeesian's scope. I am uncertain how well video games as a form of culture is actually represented in research at Universities etc. My gut feeling would be that it's still new enough that research has not yet caught up with development.}

^{Definitely. Games just hasn't been taken seriously as a form of culture. (to some extent the same thing can be said about e.g SFF, but there's at least some degree of critique and research going on there becuase even if it forms a disrespected part of it, it's still literature at least...)}

^{(Personally, aside from statistics, what could be interesting is to look at masculinity in video games and what tropes are in effect there. Clearly it seems a lot of video games pander a fairly reactionary view of masculinity, centred around violence as the only way to solve problems. I'd say that is a fairly problematic position as well. )}

^{Definitely, although this part is at least occasionally questioned.}

[Werthead]

Playing Company of Heroes 2 at the moment and I was impressed that Relic took account of the fact that women fought in the Red Army in WWII in vast numbers (40,000+ at Stalingrad alone). They don't go as far as they should, but when you build a sniper unit, for example, the game determines whether the sniper should be male or female based on an unseen ratio. It seems to be about 3/1 based on playing so far (i.e. I built 3 snipers on one mission and one was female). It's a shame they don't do this across the entire board - women fought in the infantry, as pilots, tank crew, artillery troops and as engineers as well - but it's a nice nod to historical accuracy. And what would be interesting is if someone did a new Call of Duty WWII game (as they surely will at some point) and make a female Red Army soldier a major character, or hell do that in a modern or near-future game. Would that really impact sales hugely or would the fact it's CoD and CoD always sells overrule that? Maybe Activision should take a chance and find out.

I was also struck by the bizarre anger that erupted when GTA5 was announced and people thought it was odd that all three main characters were male. When it was suggested they could have made one of them a female, the misogynistic response was staggering, ignoring both history (there's been plenty of notable female criminals and gangsters in history) and the series itself, which has always had a huge number of female characters, just not in the central role. Again, Rockstar could have taken a chance there and made one of the three a woman without any problems at all, I suspect.

I also just completed Mirror's Edge, which had a strong female protagonist who was completely non-sexualised at all. It wasn't a failure - it sold 2 million copies at launch which was very good for a DICE side-project and is now getting a sequel featuring the same character - but it had a mixed critical reception. That was entirely down to the game being short and the mechanics not being entirely well-thought-out. I'll be interesting to see how well the sequel does.